Looking for something new to offer to your youngest customers?
The Sesame Street folks have added a video player to their website, providing access to hundreds of short clips from the show. They feature videos of the major characters, including Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Ernie & Bert, Elmo, Zoe, The Count, and Grover, but you can also do a keyword search to find other characters or topics.
Go to Sesame Workshop to check them out, but don’t forget to spend some time checking out the educational games while you’re there!
(P.S. Do a search for “library” in the video player. There are some cute ones available. My personal favorite is the one of Elmo singing “Where are the computers in your neighborhood?” At the library, of course!)
Ever heard of Common Craft? I hadn’t until yesterday. (Thanks, Deborah!)
Common Craft is a cool company that makes explanatory videos for the web. They’ve done a wonderful “plain English” series on a variety of web 2.0 topics, including social networking (the one you see embedded here), blogs, social bookmarking, RSS, wikis, and online photo sharing. Their videos are creative, humorous, and most of all, informative! Check them out at CommonCraft.com, find their videos on their You Tube Channel, and subscribe to their blog. You can also connect with them on Facebook and Flickr.
The staff of the Georgetown County Library has every reason to be proud of the success of their current project — the Digital Arts Experience or DAE. The program is a fast-paced 12-week course designed to expose middle school students to the basic concepts and skills required to complete digitally oriented audiovisual projects. The students are encouraged to think for themselves as they work together in teams to concept, storyboard, shoot and edit their own video productions.
Not only did they get promotion from WebJunction, there was a front page article about the project in the Myrtle Beach Sun.
Go here and here for more information. Congratulations to the Georgetown County Library Staff!!
…the Sesame Street writers ventured out to craft episodes designed to teach kids “warm and fuzzy” concepts, such as the benefits of sharing, empathy, and accepting death and birth as part of the natural order of life. Increasingly, serious game makers are realizing that videogames are perhaps the best medium for instilling “fuzzy” lessons like this in students. Teamwork can easily be practiced within a MMOG [massively multi-player online game]; consequences to choices can be easily realized in a good RPG [role playing game].
What he says about games is great, but I must say that the best lesson I’ve learned from Sesame Street (not counting the Spanish vocabulary words) is that learning can be fun, and when it’s fun, I’m much more engaged as a student. I have such fond memories of Big Bird and Oscar. (Can’t say quite the same about all the teachers I’ve had over the years…especially in Spanish class.) There’s also a subtle message to teachers that when you’re having fun, your students are too, and that’s something that I’ve tried to use when I’m doing instruction of any kind.
Good news to start the new year!! In a new Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, shows that Generation Y (defined here as 18 - 29 year olds) is using the library more than any other age group when searching for government-related information.
Here’s a paragraph from the announcement:
The survey results challenge the assumption that libraries are losing relevance in the internet age. Libraries drew visits by more than half of Americans (53%) in the past year for all kinds of purposes, not just the problems mentioned in this survey. And it was the young adults in tech-loving Generation Y (age 18-30) who led the pack. Compared to their elders, Gen Y members were the most likely to use libraries for problem-solving information and in general patronage for any purpose.
Furthermore, it is young adults who are the most likely to say they will use libraries in the future when they encounter problems: 40% of Gen Y said they would do that, compared with 20% of those above age 30 who say they would go to a library.
The study also looks specifically at users on both sides of the digital divide, those with broadband access to the Internet at home and those who either have no access at home or only through dial-up connections. Interestingly enough, users with access at home were as or more likely to use the library than those with low or no access.
