A Little Vampire with a Big Problem!

Image from http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com

Interview: Jess Smart Smiley on Upside Down

Though this book is geared toward younger kids, I have to say that it's nice to see a book on vampires that doesn't take itself very seriously. With all the Twilight books and Vampire Diaries out there, having some fun with the vampire genre as a graphic novel does make things more interesting. The author goes into some detail about the story in this interview, and gives a little background on the origins and inspiration for it. Now, it would be nice to see more of this in teen fiction, especially if it's about a vampire who lost his teeth!

http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/goodcomicsforkids/2012/10/30/interview-jess-smart-smiley-on-upside-down/

Apps for the Election

Image from http://www.slj.com/2012/09/books-media/reviews/
apps/touch-and-go/touch-and-go-countdown-to-an-election/

Touch and Go: Countdown to an Election

This is a great posting on the latest apps for your e-Device related to the upcoming presidential election. Some of these are general apps that anyone can use, and others are specifically made for teens and younger children to help them make sense of this momentous day in our history. Better still, many of them are available at no charge or for a modest fee.

Now, if you’re one of the lucky ones out there that has a budget to provide iPads for student use, you are luckier still! There are so many apps out there that deal with the election and politics in general, that it seems like you could develop an excellent lesson on the Electoral College or have students do some fact finding on these distinguished historical figures going all the way back to George Washington himself. Not that you couldn’t do something good without the technology, but students sure do get a kick out of using the iPad.

Teen Read Week Ideas: Crafting “It Came From the Library!”, a quick comment...

Image from yalsa.ala.org.

Image from http://newportvirtuals.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html

I came across this article at the YALSA blog regarding crafting during Teen Read Week and how much fun it is for teens to participate in a program that encourages them to use their hands in addition to their minds. Developing this type of activity definitely has its appeal with teens if done right. Read the article and my reply that follows here.

IMAG-N-O-TRON?

Image from http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/touchandgo/

So I just discovered a very cool app called the IMAG-N-O-TRON by Moonbot Studios that is used with the iPad. The app comes with a specific book (The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore) and was designed to work with it. You position the iPad over one of the pages of the book, and the app "augments" the pages with an incredible collection of animated images from the page! Sounds pretty weird, right? You have to check this technology out! Really. I can see this becoming a great way to illustrate Biology textbooks for example. Have a look here or at the Touch and Go blog from SLJ.

What is Our Mission as Youth Services Librarians?

Image from http://e-literatelibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/12/librarians-role-in-promoting.html

R. David Lankes is a passionate librarian who cares about what we do and why we do it as librarians. He views us as guardians of knowledge, the builders of community, and the destroyers of ignorance. This is a tall charge, but we must take it on to the best of our abilities, especially if we are working with children and young adults. Our communities are our patrons and serving them needs to be our priority. We must be dynamic and willing to challenge others and ourselves in promoting this mission.

This mission encompasses many facets, and according to Lanke in "What We Do and Why We Do It…", it starts with "improving society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities". What branches out from this would be service that promotes education, reference, access to materials, and youth centered programming like Storytime or Teen Read. See his document here.

YALSA, although very different in approach to Lanke, has its "Competencies for Librarians Serving Youth: Young Adults Deserve the Best"…

Area I. Leadership and Professionalism

Area II. Knowledge of Client Group.

Area III. Communication, Marketing & Outreach

Area IV. Administration.

Area V: Knowledge of Materials

Area VI - Access to Information

Area VII. Services

(http://www.ala.org/yalsa/guidelines/yacompetencies2010)

What doesn't come through quite as well in YALSA's document is the need to EDUCATE the school community to address its literacy needs now and into the future. Although they do mention the word "instruct" in a number of the competencies, "educate" should, in my opinion, be very important in the role of a librarian working with youth. We are teachers, leaders, and professionals but we must educate our young patrons. In this list of competencies, "instruct" is listed under Services. If we consider the role that Youth Services librarians play in serving youth, maybe a reconfiguration of the areas could make Education an area, as well as make these a little more dynamic sounding like…

Area 1. Know Your Community

Area 2. Educate Your Patrons

Area 3. Create and Share Your Knowledge

Area 4. Know Your Resources

Area 5. Be a Knowledge Leader and Mean it!

Area 6. Protect Your Knowledge

Area 7. Plan for the Future

I won't go into the reasoning behind these (I'm still thinking about them), but I must say that I felt these competencies needed to be spruced up a bit. What I can say is that there is a closer connection among these competencies and that they aren't completely discreet areas. Also, by making these sound more dynamic rather than static, perhaps we can better engage our communities and make our libraries indispensable in their "knowledge" development. 

Reading for All Students- what do we know about our students' reading abilities, preferences, and habits?

Image from http://www.alhathaway.com/2010/05/students-reading.html

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has released their Policy Research Brief "Reading Instruction for All Students" that discusses many aspects of students' reading and how we as teachers and librarians need to be aware of the different instructional strategies to make them better readers. The part that I am interested in is the reader preferences and abilities, plus the types of texts they select to read. The NCTE found that...
 
"What we know about our students as readers:
- Students come to reading tasks with varied prior reading experiences,
or prior knowledge, which can support their reading of complex texts.
- Students who are engaged and motivated readers read more often
and read more diverse texts than students who are unmotivated by
the reading task.
- Students who develop expertise with a particular kind of reading—
science fiction or online games, for example—outside of school may
not think this kind of reading will be valued by their teachers."

This underscores the wide range of student reading abilities and preferences that we encounter as librarians on a daily basis. It also draws attention to the fact that we need to provide a diverse, engaging, and up-to-date collection that draws in readers with these varied abilities and appeals to their tastes in books and other reading material. As school librarian, we should value all reading as a means to an end and not judge the materials that students pick as either "good" or "bad" for them. This last point is extremely important because of diverging reading patterns between boys and girls, where boys are perceived to be reading less than girls, but may actually still be reading materials that are not judged as "appropriate". Encouraging all reading will likely remove any stigma attached to reading texts in different formats or genres and hopefully increase overall reading among boys and girls.

"What we know about the texts students read:
- In and out of school, the texts students read vary significantly, from
linear text-only books to multimodal textbooks to online hypertexts,
each of which places different demands on readers and requires different
strategies and approaches to reading.
- Students read texts from a variety of disciplines, so
content area literacy is important.
- The level of difficulty or complexity in a text is not the
only factor students consider in choosing texts; interest
and motivation also matter.
- Readability or lexile levels can vary significantly
within a single text, so it is important to consider
other dimensions of textual complexity."
 
To continue the previous thought in relation to the texts themselves, to get students to read more and read better, one should have reading material that is varied in format and should provide the interest and motivation a student needs to read it. Each student is different and our collections need to at least attempt to address these differences. Since we are not the classroom teacher, we as librarians, have more leeway in offering students more reading material that appeals to them, can be challenging or easy, and that can fill a need not addressed by the classroom collection/textbooks. Some questions that come to mind however:

1. How do you know what a student wants to read?
2. Do you push a student to read material that is more challenging? How do you do it?
3. How much effort should you exert in getting students to read challenging texts?
4. How do you develop a collection around your users if you have a collection that isn't what your students really need in terms of reading difficulty?
 
These are some of the issues, but there are certainly many more to address when discussing student reading abilities, tastes, texts. What do you think?

Read NCTE's policy brief on "Reading Instruction for All Students" (pdf).
Read Peter Gutierrez's comments from Connect the Pop blog on NCTE policy brief here.

Transmedia and School Libraries

Image from http://transmediaevaluation.co/.

So what is transmedia and what does it have to do with Youth in Libraries?

Well, I was walking along the Internet one day, when all of a sudden I stumbled across a blog posting on School Library Journal's blog Connect the Pop called "Convergence", DIY Transmedia, and Librarians. Now this blog describes itself as being "At the intersection of pop culture, transliteracy, and critical thinking" so they tend to dedicate themselves to some pretty cutting edge developments that can affect our kids, libraries, and education. As it turns out, "Convergence" is a transmedia conference at the New York Film Festival and the post's author (Peter Gutierrez) was talking about the possibilities of transmedia within the school library. But I have to say that I didn't know what they were talking about with this transmedia stuff. It sounded like another hyped up term that I am sick of hearing (see the cloud), so I was a bit wary of giving this post much notice. But I glanced at it, skimmed it, read it, and read it again to find that it does make sense for the right reason: it gives kids a lot of creative control in determining what the medium will be in creating a story. They may not be able to publish a novel or use broadcast tv, but they sure can shoot a video, animate a story, record a song, shoot photos, or perform a play while at the same time connecting it all to their smart phones.

Isn't it all about telling stories anyway? These are new tools being used for an old concept: how do you make a compelling NARRATIVE? How do you get kids to tell a story that gets other kids and adults interested, and at the same time teach them how to use the tools and thought process to execute this story? Being in an elementary or high school library presents us with some opportunities and challenges. We might have some of the technology at our disposal (school computers, students' iPhones, etc.) but do we have the expertise? We may have willing students, but do we have a supportive administration, staff, and parents? Do we have a clear vision for what we are trying to accomplish on a given project? Can you pull off a sophisticated story project on your own or do you need the structure of collaboration with another faculty member to really get the kids engaged and legitimize your curricular goals? How can you tap in to the integrated way kids perceive media?

The school library is in a unique position to help students not only be consumers of media, but also be the creators and critics of media as well. We have a responsibility to facilitate literacy for our students in multiple formats and methods, and by teaching reading and writing with technology and narrative in mind, we can address many of our learners' needs and enhance their learning experiences. We can probably have some fun in the library, too!

See also transmedia on Connect the Pop.