My three year old son Finn loves going to Chuck E. Cheese to play video games. I’m so happy about this. Some of my favorite moments as a child were spent in arcades playing video games.
But what I love even more is the phrase above the video game he’s playing:
WORK TOGETHER!!!
Isn’t that what video games and life are all about?
Posted in Family, Libraries, Life in Portland Maine, Technology, Video Games
Tagged Arcade, Chuck E Cheese, Community, Cooperate, Finn Hoenke, Play, Together, Two Player, Video Games, Video Gaming, Work
There’s a lot of talk going on about the recent announcement that Portland, Maine area schools will be filtering the school issued netbooks at home in addition to while the students are in school.
Everyday here in the teen library we see anywhere from 70-100 teens everyday (last Tuesday, we saw 153 teens!) . These teens come to our library as a meeting place and use our resources. Many of them rely on their netbooks as their primary source of connection. This connection includes internet access, word processing, social networking and Skype to communicate with their friends and family, and YouTube to connect them to their passions (many of them use YouTube to listen to music and watch soccer games). These teens (many of which are immigrants from Sudan, Somalia, and Rwanda) use this connection for good. It helps them connect with their family and friends through social networks. It gives them access to the music and soccer they love so much, the hobbies they enjoy that keep them going.
The original article can be found here
The Portland Press Herald Opinion piece can be found here
Cory Doctorow’s response on Boing Boing can be found here
Here’s some great information that I’ve found to be very helpful in understanding teens, social media, and just how this all fits together in their lives and how librarians can help them
Teens and Social Media from the Pew Research Group
Elements of Educational Technology by Heather Braum
Straight from the DOE: Dispelling Myths About Blocked Sites by Tina Barseghian
The use of social media – from blogging to online social networking to creation of all kinds of digital material – is central to many teenagers’ lives.
Some 93% of teens use the internet, and more of them than ever are treating it as a venue for social interaction – a place where they can share creations, tell stories, and interact with others.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that 64% of online teens ages 12-17 have participated in one or more among a wide range of content-creating activities on the internet, up from 57% of online teens in a similar survey at the end of 2004.
Preparing teens for their future in a digital, connected world is imperative this day and age. Technology will continue to become a larger part of our lives every day, and it is in our best interest to offer these teens access to the tools they need now to give them the best chance they have to succeed tomorrow.
I’m very happy to announce that I have been invited to speak at the Bibliothekartag Library Conference in Hamburg, Germany later this month.
I’m excited because the Bibliothekartag is the biggest library-conference in Germany andEurope. Every year more than 4000 librarians from Germany, Austria and Switzerland join together to talk about the future of libraries. I can’t wait to meet some new folks and talk about libraries.
You can find more information about the conference here: http://www.bibliothekartag2012.de/
I will be in Hamburg from May 21th to the 25th to attend and present at the conference. During my time there, I will be presenting on the following topics:
Thank you very much to my trip sponsors and Christoph Deeg of the Zukunftswerkstatt Gaming Roadshow
Posted in Libraries, Presentations, Technology, Video Games
Tagged Bibliothekartag, Christoph Deeg, Community, conference, Eli Neiburger, Games, Gaming, Germany, Hamburg, Learn, Play, Presentations, Speaking, Video Games
Over the past few days, I’ve come across two must read pieces for librarians as we move ahead into a very interesting and exciting time for public libraries. I’ve included links and some choice quotes below:
Services More Meaningful Than Ebooks by Aaron Schmidt
Why are we obsessed with libraries as places of access to commercially published material? It’s traditional, it’s easy, and it makes for easily measurable circulation. But the publishing industry—an integral part of our ability to provide commercial content—is experiencing upheaval. For the most part, we’ve taken the bait, responding with complaints and, in some cases, boycotts. Something else is going on though. We’re really so upset because we see in publishers’ erratic behavior a reminder that we’ve built libraries on a now shaky foundation.
Unfortunately, this focus is distracting us from the realization that we don’t need to treat access to commercial content as our primary mission. Yes, we’ve put a lot of effort into it in the past, and we’ve done it well. But it’s time to take a step back.
Libraries as software by Hugh Rundle
What libraries have all too often focused on in the past is hardware – buildings, books, journals and rooms. Librarians get caught up in hardware questions continually – hardback or paperback, how many PCs, should we buy Blu ray discs, lend Kindles, subscribe to downloadable talking books, throw out our cassette tapes….? In this context, we can consider things like journal databases, ebooks and other downloadables as hardware as well – we treat these things as artifacts, things to be collected and stored…The real value of libraries is not the hardware. It has never been the hardware. Your members don’t come to the library to find books, or magazines, journals, films or musical recordings. They come to be informed, inspired, horrified, enchanted or amused. They come to hide from reality or understand its true nature. They come to find solace or excitement, companionship or solitude. They come for the software.
Great stuff, eh? I’ll leave with a doozy of a quote from Rundle’s piece:
How we change the software – the services we provide, the way we make information findable, how we help people to make connections between things – will determine the future of libraries and the communities they serve.
Posted in Books, EBooks, Graphic Novels, Libraries, Technology
Tagged Change, Communities, Community, Hardware, Libraries, Place, Relationships, Software, UX
This is pretty awesome.
Free stuff for your patrons to get them into audiobooks!
2 Free Audiobook Downloads Each Week
June 14 – August 22, 2012
Teens and other readers of Young Adult Literature will have the opportunity to listen to bestselling titles and Required Reading Classics this summer. Each week from June 14 – August 22, 2012, SYNC will offer two free audiobook downloads.
The audiobook pairings will include a popular YA title and a classic that connects with the YA title’s theme and is likely to show up on a student’s summer reading lists. For example, Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone, the first book in a new series about a girl who opens a door to two otherworldly cities at war, will be paired with Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities.
To find out when you can download titles to listen to on the run this summer, visit www.AudiobookSync.com or text syncya to 25827.
(full disclosure: This is part of a program created by Curious City and AudioFile Magazine. I’ve worked with Curious City on this project in the past and am currently on their Board of Advisors)
Posted in Libraries, Technology
Tagged Audiobooks, Books on CD, Books on Tape, Curious City, Free, Literature, Reading, Sync, teens
I’m very honored to be part of this amazing program along with Susan Considine, Lauren Britton, Joseph Sanchez, Jason Griffey, and Lisa Carlucci Thomas. I think some great stuff is gonna be discussed.
What happens when you take a place that has traditionally been about learning and transform it into a place of doing and making? Find out, when we look at how librarians, teachers, students, faculty and communities are turning their focus to creation—whether providing digital tools for game makers, programmers, musicians and authors, or makerspaces for 3-D printing and other “real-life” projects.
If you’re interested, click here to register for this FREE event.
Have a great day!
I know you probably see/hear about 10 different Kickstarter pages every day (I do too). However, every once in awhile a great project comes along that’s TOTALLY worthy of support. To me, this is that project.
The Young Writers and Leaders film is part of a Telling Room program (who I’ve worked with at the library here), Sonya Tomlinson (who I’ve worked with at the library here), David Meiklejohn, and 15 Portland, Maine area teens (all of which who use the library almost every day!). Simply stated, the film tells the stories of the teens and their involvement in the program and their lives in Portland, ME.
This is the real deal, folks.
Please consider supporting this project by visiting their Kickstarter page here.
The Young Writer’s and Leaders is a program of the Telling Room, a non-profit writing center in Portland Maine. The program is home to 15 high school students from Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti, Uganda, Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo and Kenya. In addition to one-on-one literacy tutoring, college prep assistance, creative writing, job skills and leadership training, the students also participate in arts programming. This year’s concentration is the film project featured in the above video led by teaching artists, David Meiklejohn (filmmaker and director ofMy Heart is An Idiot) and hip-hop recording artist, Sontiago (Endemik Music).
On May 24th, the students will premiere their short films in their hometown of Portland, Maine at Space Gallery. Over half of the students in the program have not spent time in another city outside of Portland. Over half of the students have not spent time in Boston, though it is a mere two hours away. Over half of the students have not traveled by train.
If funded, our plan is to travel to Boston via the Downeaster train and spend the day in the city visiting a sister writing center and pairing up with Boston-area young writers. In the evening we will rent a film house that holds 250 people and screen the 15 original short films featuring each YWL student performing their individual stories based on myths about America and life as new Americans. The screening will also offer a Q&A with the Young Writers and Leaders students.
Posted in Libraries, Life in Portland, Life in Portland Maine, Music
Tagged Afghanistan, arts, Congo, film, Haiti, immigrant, Iraq, Librarian, Libraries, Library, Maine, ME, Portland, Rwanda, Somalia, Sontiago, Stories, Story, storytelling, Teen, teens, The Telling Room, Uganda, YA, young adults, Youth
