The coolest thing about forming partnerships between libraries, city agencies and community-based organizations is that they seem to develop exponentially.’ Maybe it’s just the nature of networking, maybe it’s that, like librarians, social workers and case managers in service agencies are used to doing more with less.’ Whatever the reason, every partnership I’ve gone into with folks in other youth-serving agencies has been worth more than the sum of its parts.
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.
The most recent On the Media (OTM) broadcast includes a segment called The Net Effect. That segment is worth listening to. What is also worth listening to is the audio file on the OTM web site which is the uncut version of OTM host Brooke Gladstone’s interview with Pew Internet in American Life Director Lee Rainie. You can listen to that file right from this blog post. Liisten
Rainie has been present at many library and education events as keynote speaker. As a result, many librarians and teachers have had the chance to hear what he has to say about technology in the lives of Americans and its impact on educational institutions. However, even if you have heard Rainie before, this interview is worth listening to in order to hear him discuss the impact of technology in a broad context. Read More →
Last week I blogged about the teens I work with at a jail using Publisher. They used it again today and are making great progress on their flyers. Today, two actors from the theatre my library has a partnership with, had a follow up visit with the youthful offenders. Read More →
Today at the jail where I do outreach we worked with Publisher software. The group is designing a flyer that will be posted in the facility to let people know about a project they are working on. By using Publisher they learned how to focus the message of their project in an attractive way and to match the images to their topic. Once we got past the clip art search for ‘girls’ we were well on our way to having a product that could be posted. When a group of observers came to visit the library they were impressed with the guys ability to navigate the software. Read More →
This year, we invited freelance game writer, Rafael Chandler, to talk with teens about what he does in his career. “I had a great time,” I heard one of the attendees tell his mom after the program.
What I liked, and from the teens’ questions and comments, it seems like they did as well, was how much game writing ties into what we already do at our libraries. Rafael compared the release of games in various languages to teens noticing cultural differences when they read manga. Read More →
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.
There’s still time to register for the first ever YALSA Young Adult Literature Symposium.’ Check out YALSA’s new video ad for the event and find out from members why it’s worth attending.
Today the Pew Internet in American Life Project released a new report titled Writing, Technology, and Teens. The opening paragraph of the report states:
Teenagers’ lives are filled with writing. All teens write for school, and 93% of teens say they write for their own pleasure. Most notably, the vast majority of teens have eagerly embraced written communication with their peers as they share messages on their social network pages, in emails and instant messages online, and through fast-paced thumb choreography on their cell phones. Parents believe that their children write more as teens than they did at that age.
The core of the report focuses on what teens have to say about their own writing practices. The findings in the report span teen writing practices in and out of school and look at what mode teens use to write – long-hand or computer, the most common types of writing, and the impact of technology on teen writing behaviors.
OK, this is going to start out as another post about something related to Twitter. Bear with me and it will go beyond Twitter. I promise.
Recently I tested out tweetclouds, a web-based tool that allows anyone who uses Twitter to get a “cloud” of the words and phrases they most often use when tweeting. I discovered that my tweets often include the phrase really interesting and the words gr8, yay (in a variety of forms), and think.