Yesterday morning the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom sponsored a session titled Your Brain on DOPA.  The program was designed to give attendees an opportunity to find out:

• What is happening with federal and state legislation related to social networking (and with technology in general).  John Morris, General Counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology presented this part of the program.
• What current research says about child and teen use of online tools in the areas of cyberbullying and predation. Dr. Michele Ybarra, President of Internet Solutions for Kids presented on this topic.
• How libraries can educate their communities about the positive impact of social networking. This was the portion of the session that I presented.

(more…)

How often are teens criticized for not engaging in “proper reading”? According to a recent study by the UK’s National Year of Reading consortium, 45% of teen readers have been told off for their reading habits.

The researchers, through their “Read Up, Fed Up” report of British 11-14 year olds, also found the following:

• There is an explosion of digital reading, with four out of ten top teen reads being online
• Teens also love reading film scripts and song lyrics
• Traditional literature is by no means lost, with Anne Frank’s Diary ranking just one place below Harry Potter nearly 60 years after it was written
• A massive 80% of teens have actually written their own story, film, play or song

(more…)

Many librarians are probably familiar with designing programs that build developmental assets. We help build youth assets like leadership, helping others, and succeeding in school so that there is less of a chance that teens will make destructive choices such as vandalism and drugs.

You may even have heard of asset building in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMORPGs) and Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) such as World of Warcraft, Entropia Universe, Teen Second Life and more. This article in the May Harvard Business Review, Leadership’s Online Labs, talks about how real world transference can occur as a result of game play - from being leaders in online games to being leaders in the work world. (more…)

Over the past couple of weeks new web-based search tools have popped up. These tools are worth investigating as a way to help teens expand their research lives. Two of these search sites use images, in two completely different ways, as a way to enhance the search process:

• Searchme - When someone enters a search term at Searchme the results are displayed visually in a scrollable stack. The result images are screenshots of the sites that match the search terms. For anyone familiar with iTunes and Apple’s cover flow style of display, the results “list” is very similar in look to that.Along with the visual results display, Searchme also filters results into categories. For example, in the image below, when the search term YALSA is entered into the search box, a list of categories appears for that search - libraries, children’s books, etc. A searcher can click on a specific category and see the results for just that category. Or, the searcher can click on all and see everything that Searchme uncovered. Even if just one category is selected, on the results page the other categories are displayed so it’s easy to switch from one to another.

  

  (more…)

  

Last week on the MacBreak Weekly podcast roundtable members briefly discussed a little-known fact about MacBook USB ports. As I listened I thought to myself, “Oh my gosh, this is why L Lee had audio troubles this the semester.) When I had a chance, I emailed L Lee the information I’d heard on the podcast, and he agreed what they talked about could very well have been the problem.

Thinking about this I realized, once again, how serendipitous information gathering and the exchange of information with others can be. I also realized how important it is, as a librarian, to really listen to what others say so that these opportunities for serendipitous information exchange can actually take place.

(more…)

Earlier today, as I was waiting for a meeting to start, I found myself eavesdropping on a group of librarians who were lamenting the fact that the students they served only wanted to use Google. As I listened in on the conversation a couple of things came to mind.

• First, I thought, why is this conversation going on AGAIN? Aren’t librarians finally at the point where they realize Google is here to stay, we have to accept it, and our job is to figure out ways to help teens use it in the best way possible?
• Then I thought, are librarians such a judgmental lot? Are we always judging the teens who come into the library and not simply accepting them for who they are? Do we focus too much on what we judge to be the best in materials, searching, etc.? Is this the reason why a conversation on this topic STILL takes place?

(more…)