The YALSA online chat on Advocacy is archived at http://connect.ala.org/chatrooms/archives/249. Thanks to everyone who joined us and stuck with it through the technical difficulties! Lots of great ideas and resources were shared, but of course, the topic doesn’t end with the chat session, our conversation can continue, here on the blog!
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I had the pleasure of visiting the Wilton (NH) Public and Gregg Memorial Library this week to conduct a staff training on Gaming at the Library, followed by a gaming session for teens. While setting up Rock Band, I noticed a display board propped in the window that was titled “Return on Investment.”
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YALSA will offer three online courses in October: AIMing at Tweens: Advising, Involving, Motivating, taught by Teri Lesesne; Graphic Novels and Teen Readers: The Basics and Beyond, taught by Francisca Goldsmith; and Reaching Teens with Gaming, taught by Beth Gallaway  (hey, that’s me!).

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If you are going to be around on Monday afternoon, June 13, the ALA Committee on Literacy is sponsoring an off-site visit to the real and working school library at the Claremont Academy on Chicago’s Southside from 2:30 to 4:30 PM. This is a fabulous opportunity for YALSA members and other youth serving librarians to see what’s happening in Chicago.

Through a federal Improving Literacy through School Libraries grant, Claremont Academy and 11 other Chicago Public Schools are taking an A-B-Cs approach to addressing primary students’ literacy needs. During the visit, participants will:

• Learn more about the federal grant program from the U.S. Department of Education and Chicago Public School representatives.

• Learn more about Claremont and the community from school administrators, library media specialists, parents, and students.
• Observe Claremont’s library activities.
• Talk with school media specialists and literacy teachers about changes, challenges, and progress.
• Share your experiences with everyone!

Claremont Academy is located at 2300 West 64th Street, Chicago, IL 60636. Transportation is available from McCormick Place departing at 1:30 pm and returning at 5:30 pm. Space is limited and MUST be reserved in advance.  Please contact Dale Lipschultz, OLOS Literacy Officer dlipschultz At ala DOT org with questions or to reserve space.

Event Flyer for ABCs of Library Literacy

CHICAGO – Libraries are changing and dynamic places, and no better evidence of that exists than the spread of gaming in the nation’s public, school and academic libraries.

In recognition of this trend and the increasing value of gaming to literacy improvement, the American Library Association, with assistance from a $1 million grant from the Verizon Foundation, has developed an online toolkit to aid librarians in serving this growing constituency.

The Librarian’s Guide to Gaming:  An Online Toolkit for Building Gaming @ your library offers content contributed by expert gaming librarians across the country.

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The American Library Association (ALA) Office for Literacy and Outreach Services is seeking applications from public, school and academic libraries interested in developing and implementing innovative literacy gaming services for youth ages 10-18.

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For those who won’t be attending the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting in Denver, Colorado, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) will recreate the YALSA Mixer and Tech Playground in the 3-D virtual world, Second Life.

This interactive exhibit, which runs Jan. 9 through Jan. 31, 2009, features models of some of the gadgets being featured at the special event, which kicks off YALSA’s Teen Tech Week™ and will be held Jan. 23 at the Hyatt Regency Denver, 8 – 10 p.m. Gadgets are displayed on platforms at ALA Island (61, 228, 35). You may need to fly to see all the platforms! A menu with locations is in the large column at the entry point.

Each gadget featured in SL includes an informational notecard with tips on incorporating the item into Teen Tech Week events. Teen Tech Week is a national initiative sponsored by YALSA and aimed at teens, their parents, educators and other concerned adults to ensure that teens are competent and ethical users of technologies, especially those that are offered through libraries such as DVDs, databases, audiobooks, and videogames. The 2009 theme for Teen Tech Week is Press Play @ your library®. Teen Tech Week is March 8-14, 2009. (more…)

I’ve been fortunate to teach “Pain in the Brain,” a class on teen behavior, for YALSA several times, and am always on the lookout for new information on how biology influences (undesirable!) actions. Last week,  U.S. News and World Report followed up on their 1999 article “Inside the Teen Brain” with a feature titled “Deploying the Amazing Power of the Teen Brain” that reports on a  Duke University program designed to empower teens to use their brains. The article covers basic brain changes, other factors for teen behavior and a quiz you can take to see how much you know about the adolescent brain. (more…)

Someone told me a few weeks ago that the average 16 year old was born the year I graduated high school. Then, I got a Facebook invitation reminding me that I have been out of graduate school for ten years. Wow! Where has all the time gone? And how do I keep up with today’s youth, and the chasm of years between myself and them continues to grow?

One great tool is the Beloit College Mindset List…

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We had a very low turnout for our Teen Gaming Interest Group meeting on Saturday afternoon, making a swap and share of resources difficult at best. One of the things we did was unanimously elect Jami Schwarzwalder as the new chair fo the Teen Gaming Interest Group. Congrats, Jami!

We also discussed creating a list of great games (tabletop and videogames) for teen programming. The list has been started on the YALSA wiki; please feel free to contribute annotations.

On Sunday morning, I counted over 125 at our Sunday Morning program, Beyond Gaming Tournaments. Slides and handouts are forthcoming.

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