Rubiks cube Mosaic project Dec 2018

My clerk Lynn and I heard about the Rubiks.com cube lending program. I had read about them being used on a library blog that used them during teen tech week. I didn't want to wait until spring, so we put in for 100 before winter break 2018 thinking we didn't want to be overwhelmed with too many.

Lynn and I looked at the patterns, it looked like we had better do more so that we would have better resolution on our images. I upped our order to 225.

We contacted the Rubiks.com cube lending program.
Some basic FAQ's
We can borrow 3x3 cubes for up to 6 weeks, using the Rubiks Cube Lending Program.
You put in a request for a lending time.
You have to agree to several things (like pay for shipping, replace broken ones, submit Principal's name and I think 3 emails)

We received an email that we could get them and confirming our dates- awesome!  We got lots of emails confirming our shipping dates and they were delivered a week before they were supposed to come.

We used the Create your own mosaic website and the mosaic.twisttheweb.com which allows you to upload images and it will create the pixelated templates...which are awesome. Not every image works very well, the more pixels the seemed like the better.  You can also play with the dithering and get something that works ok. 

We started with a cropped image of Harry Potter from the cover of the Goblet of Fire...that uploaded worked ok. Lynn was searching google for book covers and saw Good Night Moon (which was really popular). 

We took free block kiddos, my makerspace crew, lunchtime folks, study hall folks. I did personally go to a few classes to seed the pot, but it worked very well regardless...plenty of folks. 

We kept the boxes of cubes behind the counter and had the templates ready for students that requested them. If someone wanted to do some we gave them a 9x9 template with the picture, a basket of 9 bricks and if needed a basic booklet from Rubriks.com

Promo- teased on announcements, tv announcements, and set up a table right in front of the library entrance. 

The first puzzle we started and then finished the next day. Good Night moon started with one study hall kid 2nd block and finished that same day after school. We email staff and display for a full day after completion and tear down to rebuild the next day. 

Feedback:
Some of the kids say how wonderful it is to have this resource for a stress reliever for finals week. 
We took it and displayed it for our open house night.

So far so good...we are on our 3rd puzzle and are trying Wonder. We need to do a better job of pictures with kids who are building and completed puzzles for our blog, website, Instagram and Twitter accounts. We did put them on TV announcements though.