There was a great article in this weekend’s New York Times about NYPL adding video games to their collections and services for teens. They’ve also added gaming space in a bunch of their libraries. Check it out!
BTW, Jack Martin, who is quoted often in the story, will be here to do a workshop on serving GLBTQ teens on May 12. Cool!
Add comment March 24th, 2008
During the February school vacation, librarians at the Chelmsford Public Library in northeast Mass did a fun math-based program. Yes, that’s Fun and Math in the same sentence! They are doing a lot of math-based programming this year, and, inspired by the book “All of the Above” by Shelley Pearsall, decided to construct a Sierpinski tetrahedron. It became an all-ages program, that anyone in the community could work on.
Volunteers spent many, many hours cutting out 4,000 tetrahedrons on the Ellison machine. Library patrons taped them together to create small, 3-sided pyramids. During February vacation teens took all the individual tetrahedron shapes and glued them together to form large structures. The end result is amazing.
You can read about it in the Chelmsford newspaper, and see an excellent explanation of the whole project on YouTube . They also have photos on their Flickr site.
Congratulations to the teens, staff and volunteers who made it happen!
Add comment February 29th, 2008
I just read an article in eSchool News about teachers who are incorporating geocaching into their curriculum with kids. How cool is that?! If you’re not familiar with it, geocaching is like a scavenger hunt using a handheld GPS device. Caches are hidden all over the world, but like the official website says, it’s one thing to find it on the GPS and another to actually find it wherever it’s hidden. Caches usually contain a logbook for you to sign, and sometimes small items for you to take. (The general rule is if you take something you’re supposed to leave something of equal value for the next person.) A quick scan of their site today showed 213 caches in Massachusetts alone! Each listing gives you the coordinates and sometimes a description of where to find it.
Wouldn’t that be a fun program for teens in the summer? Maybe a local orienteering group or geocaching group could lend their expertise and/or their GPS units!
Add comment February 12th, 2008
The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), the fastest-growing division of the American Library Association (ALA), announced this week that Dungeons & Dragons, a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast, Inc., is the 2008 Corporate Sponsor for Teen Tech Week, taking place March 2-8. D&D!! How cool is that?
Registration information, resources, products and more can be found at the Teen Tech Week Web site, www.ala.org/teentechweek.
Add comment November 29th, 2007
I just read about a new “face” for Singshot.com - the former karaoke/audio reading website - on the YALSA blog. Here’s what Beth Gallaway had to say:
“I’m not clear if the site was originally owned by Maxis’ EA Games, with intent to launch another Sims Expansion pack, but I don’t care if it was a bait & switch, because the tools are really cool, like Movie Mashups - you can make your own machinima music videos with clips and stills from the Sims. You can create an avatar of yourself that looks like a Sims character. Plus, they added 100 new songs at the beginning of month, and this may become a regular thing: over 80 new titles were added at the end of September, with hits from current pop artists like Teddy Gieger, Nickleback and Fallout Boy, plus a nice mix of country, R&B, and Christian artists as well …”
Wouldn’t that be a fun teen program? Hook up the PC to a projector, plug in a couple mikes, and you’re ready! Or have kids create recordings of poetry, comedy routines, or stories - lots of possibilities!
Add comment October 12th, 2007
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