Carver’s Bay Branch Library Reports on Successful Digital Arts Experience

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!!

 

Technology Camp for Teens

Computer World has an interesting article about a Technology Camp for Teens at the Memphis Public Library.  What a great opportunity to identify the library as the place to learn about emerging technologies!  Go Here

 

Educational Game Technology Try Out

The South Carolina State Library has recently purchased a selection of educational game technology that may be loaned to South Carolina public libraries. This is a great opportunity to get your “feet wet” before purchasing gaming equipment for your library. Below is a list of the games and the consoles (updated 11/6/07):

Equipment & Software:

PlayStation 2 with controller with two guitars for PS2 Guitar Hero with Guitar Hero game. (Suitable for tournaments) Guitar Hero Kit

• PlayStation 2 with controller Two Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) Pads with DDR Supervnova game (Suitable for tournaments).DDR Kit
• Tony Hawk’s Underground Game (Suitable for tournaments with additional controllers for larger group, 1 controller for smaller group.) Request PlayStation 2 separately. Tony Hawk Game
• One Nintendo Wii comes with Wii Sports Game with Call of Duty 3 (suitable for tournaments) and Big Brain Academy (suitable for tournaments or individuals). Wii Kit
• Three Nintendo DS Lite (bundled together for loan) with MarioKart DS, yoshi’s Island DS and Big Brain Academy DS games (individual play only). Nintendo DS Lite KitEach bullet indicates a kit that may be borrowed. We are suggesting that that items go out for no longer than two weeks, but that is dependent on demand.

To borrow these items, contact Deborah Hotchkiss, Library Development Consultant at dhotchkiss@statelibrary.sc.gov or 803-734-8646.

Searching for Program Ideas?

The Gaming Zone is designed for people who want to come to gaming programs at the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg Counties. In addition to highlighting programs at ImaginOn, there are a number of gaming nights hosted by branch libraries in the system.

List of libraries providing gaming programs around the US with contact names comes from Library Success – A Best Practices Wiki.

Go also to Game On: Games in Libraries! Game On strives to keep librarians up to date on gaming with convenient one-stop shopping for all your gaming news and information.

Outagamie Waupaca Library System has a list of additional sites on education game programming and collection development for teens.

Best Book on Educational Gaming Programs in Public Libraries. Even if you are just thinking about teen programming for your library and believe that gaming will be part of your future, you need this book!!

Gamers … in the Library?! The Why, What, and How of Videogame Tournaments for All Ages. Eli Neiburger. American Library Association, 2007. Cost $42 / ALA members $37 and available at SC State Library for loan.

Need Research on Gaming Technology & Education go here! and here!

 

 

TeenTrax

Yesterday, we hosted our first teen services institute, TeenTrax.  It was a blast!  Patrick Jones, *the* teen services guru in my book, started the day with a great reality check.

What do you call young adults in the library?  By their names!  It’s all about relationships, and you can’t have a relationship with someone if you don’t know their name.

How true!

Michele Gorman,  the truly awesome Teen Services Manager at Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s ImaginOn, gave us some of the basics on doing Reference for teens, and followed up with practical approaches to creating programs that meet the developmental needs of teens.  The thing that really blew me away is that she’s had her Teen Advisory Council assist in the hiring of three recent employees.  The teens create questions and interview the candidates.  That’s what I call radical trust.  Best part….the results have been terrific!

Teen services is one of the hot topics right now, but I don’t believe it’s a fad or a ignorable trend.  I think it’s a central part of the library landscape for years to come.  I admit, I’ve never really had an interest in doing teen services in my relatively brief career, but being around people so passionate, it’s hard not to get catch the fever.  I hope TeenTrax helped create the fever in a lot of people yesterday.