More MySpace for Parents

We are teaching a new MySpace for Parents class tomorrow evening in partnership with a local television station who will be capturing footage. That show is set to air on Oct. 26, and at that time I will post more information about the show and its results. I would suggest that your library, school & community center consider doing regular workshops for parents on various social networking sites that youth utilize in their growth & play. Parents need to be in the know and more comfortable with the use of these tools in youth development.

In the next few weeks I will also post more information on the development of a series of workshops for parents on various social networking tools, gaming technologies and Internet safety that we will be offering with another Charlotte community media partner.

Computers in Libraries 2007

Howdy,

I’m back, and tomorrow I’m off to do a couple talks at the Computers in Libraries Conference.

Building Libraries in Virtual Worlds
Lori Bell, Director, Innovation, Alliance Library System
Matt Gullett, Emerging Technology Manager, &
Kelly Czarnecki, Teen Librarian, Imaginon, Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Library
Tom Peters, CEO, TAP Information Services
Virtual worlds such as Second Life, Active Worlds, and World of Warcraft are growing at amazing and increasing rates. These presenters will talk about their experiences, challenges, and successes in creating a library presence in Second Life for adults and teens. Involvement for all types of libraries will be discussed as well as how your library can get involved in these projects or start your own. A growing number of users are on the Internet in the virtual worlds. Libraries need to be there, too.

Tech Freebies & Program Ideas
Janie Hermann, Technology Training Librarian &
Robert Keith, Tech Aide, Princeton Public Library (PPL)
Matt Gullett, Emerging Technology Manager &
Robin Bryan, Technology Education Manager, ImaginOn, Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County
Discover how you can take one innovative program and turn it in to the cornerstone for a broader range of technology training for both the public and your library staff. Hermann and Keith, PPL’s technology teaching team, talk about the Fantastic Freebies program they used to jumpstart their 2.0 Technologies Training initiative. This program, in which staff and patrons are trained together, is expanding monthly with great success. They illustrate with a quick tour some of the hottest freebies and examine a few of the newest and most useful tools to keep you on the cutting edge of technology. Gullett and Bryan discuss new ideas and perspectives for any sized library and budget to place in your teens’ and tweens’ programming portfolio. They provide lots of resources, including ideas, sites, program plans, software, and hardware recommendations on technology oriented programs to offer in your own environment.

We will also be demonstrating the new portable animation station that John Lemmon built for ImaginOn and PLCMC. Here is the Handout for the program.

Teen Second Life: Meet the New You …

The Eye4You Alliance in Teen Second Life published an article in January, Meet the New You: In Teen Second Life, librarians can leap tall buildings in a single bound and save kids from boring assignments—all before lunch, in School Library Journal on Second Life and their project to build cultural and library services in a virtual world.

The Eye4You Alliance is a partnership between the Alliance Library System & the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County with many other partnering organizations coming on board.

YouthLearn’s 100 Big Things …

YouthLearn’s 100 Big Things in Youth, Technology & Education

If you are working with youth in any capacity that touches upon either technology & education you need to read through this list (http://www.youthlearn.org/resources/newsletter/issue100.html),
print it out and use it in planning your activities for the next year or so. Following are a few things that I pulled out of the list that looked interesting.

4. Text Messaging & IM
20. Wikipedia
21. YouTube
23. MySpace.com
32. Gaming & Education
33. Global Kids Online Game Project
34. Girls Creating Games
35. Second Life
39. Youth Civic Engagement & Technology
56. MediaRights.org
78. NAMAC’s Youth Resources
94. Youth & Media

Check out the newsletter list for descriptions and links to further resources.
http://www.youthlearn.org/resources/newsletter/issue100.html

Whyville & Stacey Orrico …

I recently received an email from Whyville. Need I ask why? I don’t know, but anyway it is one of the more interesting social networking sites out there for tweens and teens. eSchool News writes about it as being a safe social networking site for youth.

Whyville has over 1.7 million residents that come to learn create and have fun together. It has its own newspaper, politicians, beach, economy, city hall and much, much more.

Check it out, for tonight Stacey Orrico is giving a free virtual concert there.

Storytelling Event for Teens by Teens

This looks awesome. HarperTeen editors and authors invite teens to join thousands of others online to collectively create an original short story—one chapter at a time. The beginning of the storyline will be posted on October 27, so get singed up to join in. Participate in author blog posts from Meg Cabot, Farrin Jacobs and others.

Check it out at: http://www.harperteenfanlit.com/

Teen Second Life

The Alliance Library System (ALS) and the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (PLCMC) have announce a partnership to offer a culutural and informational service on an island in Teen Second Life. The Eye4You Alliance Island’s leadership comes from, Lori Bell (Director of Innovation at ALS), Kelly Czarnecki (Teen Librarian at ImaginOn of PLCMC) and Matt Gullett (Technology Education Librarian at ImaginOn of PLCMC). They are just at the beggining stages of developing this innovative service and welcome interested partners to submit a statement of interest to either Kelly Czarnecki (kczarnecki@plcmc.org) or Matt Gullett (mgullett@plcmc.org).

See a full press release here: Eye4UAlliance.

Technorati and MySpace

While investigating Technorati for my Learning 2.0 exercise I noticed an interesting post and thought that I’d pass it along. I’m still not finished with investigating Technorati, but already am convinced that I need to pay more attention to this for my posts as I do hope to post more frequently in the future.

Just a side note: if anyone is reading or paying attention out there, I’m wondering if you all have taught youth about Techorati or del.icio.us. If so, how have you gone about it and for what purpose.

Back to the MySpace post. I thought this was cool for a couple of reasons one that it was at NC State and another that it was socially oriented and being done by a tenure-track faculty member, i.e., someone that is a bit older than the typical MySpace generation. I would be in that older demographic as well. Enough of my gibberish, here is the actual article.

“Hip Happy Prof” teaches over MySpace, bosses protest …
Evidently a Sociology Professor at NC State is offering a class on Social Movements for Social Change that is using MySpace as its primary place of instruction and interaction. Cool! Yeah go for it, evidently that’s not the case, for he is catching all sorts of flack for it, especially from administrators. When that kind of stuff (flack from folks, etc.) happens within a controlled space of learning you have got to know that you are on to something. My depiction of this does not do it justice please check it out and support such bold innovative thought and movement within our academic environments. http://indyweek.gyrobase.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=38223

Reading and the Brain by the Fonz

Although I tend to focus and all forms of literacy I do believe, as a librarian, that if one were to rely upon one basic form of literacy it should be reading a language. Here is an interesting documentary that I have not watched, but looks to have much promise for those of us in the literacy business, especially libraries and schools. It is hosted/narrated by Henry Winkler (the Fonz).

 

Check it and more info about it at: http://www.readingrockets.org/shows/watch#brain.

Science & Math Keys for Afterschool Activity

Experts meet with Congress to discuss how afterschool programs that teach science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills through fun, engaging activities such as computer programming, robotics, and 3-D digital animation. The briefing was sponsored by the Coalition for Science After School, the Afterschool Alliance, the National
Science Teachers Association and the National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics in conjunction with the Senate and House Science, Technology,
Engineering and Math (STEM) Education Caucuses and the Senate and House
Afterschool Caucuses. For more information on STEM and afterschool check out: http://www.afterschoolalliance.org/news_events.cfm#4000491