Lately, I've enjoyed reading posts from "The Show Me Librarian"by Amy Koester, a children's librarian in Missouri. Her lastest blog was about Halloween programming at her public library, for which I wrote in a comment:

http://showmelibrarian.blogspot.com/2012/10/halloween-safety-story-time-partnership.html

Partnering with the county ambulance district, the children's Halloween event opened with a tour of the the ambulance, in which two EMT's demonstrated the stretcher, heartbeat monitor, and lights on the ambulance. After presenting safety rules on Halloween, the spooky stories were finally told. This might have been a very common Halloween program, but for someone like me who didn't grow up celebrating Halloween and generally preferred staying home and rest early on the night, this was a brand new idea.

Even though I am not into ghost, monster and alien stories, over the years, I did acquire a taste for zombie-themed novels and movies. When I first started working with teens, I didn't share the same excitement with my students when the spooky season came close. A few years later, I pushed myself into learning about the imagined apocalyptic world occupied by zombies as a way to connect to my students and the important part of modern American culture. (I imagine I will be doing more of that as I progress into the profession of librarianship.)

Koester's Halloween program reminded me of the zombie-themed disaster preparedness program I saw last year on CDC's website. I visited the site again today, and found that they added even more ideas and activities:

http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/learn.htm

There are lesson plans, activities and even a graphic novella. These are good resources for teachers. Teacher librarians as well as public librarians can also use the site as a part of their Halloween programs.

Flipped

I read a blog article by Joyce Kasman Valenza on VOYA:

http://www.voya.com/2012/09/21/tag-team-tech-october-2012/

The article, titled "The Flipping Librarian," serves as a good introduction to the concept of "flipped classrooms and libraries" as well as resources of information and technology necessary for the implementation of this concept. (Of course, teachers, especially English and History teacher, have been using non-hightech ways to flip their lesson for a long time. They front load the content by assigning readings.)

The concept of a flipped classroom was not foreign to me. I have previously adopted it in teaching Mandarin to adults and home-schooled students. I uploaded my slides and recorded the lesson on VoiceThread, where my students could also easily record and add verbal and textual answers to my mid-lesson questions. We then used class time for group activities and pronunciation corrections.

The "flipped library" was a rather new idea to me, however,  I could see it working quite naturally in school libraries. A video guide introducing students to new databases could be viewed at home, and then in classes, students would form groups and work on search challenges. Groups would present their findings and describe how they used the databases. Practice activities, group discussions and presentations would work as interactive tactics for reinforcing and integrating the newly obtained information.

However, even in the well-to-do school district where I work, there is still a significant difference between the haves and have-nots in terms of technology resources at home. With the implementation of flipped classrooms and libraries, it is even more important to make sure we are sensitive to the digital divide. Our library offers over-night laptop checkouts for students who need them. If we encourage  teachers to try flipping lesson, which I think quite a few teachers would come abroad right away, I am afraid we will not have enough laptops for all of the students in need.

I ran into a couple of blogs on dystopian YA literature this week:

One showing the float chart decoding the genre:
http://www.embowman.com/2011/is-it-dystopia/.
I suddenly remembered that I wrote some dystopian-ish short stories as a teenager, but after reading this chart, I realized what I had written was only post-apocalypse.

The other blogs I read attempted to explain why teens are attracted to dystopian stories:
http://busyteacher.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/why-dystopian-lit-is-so-hot-with-teens/.
I think she summarized the reasons very well.

Dystopian fictions are definitely a big hit at the school library where I work. These posts got me thinking about programming for teens based on their interests in this genre. I tried to search on the web, but only found more book recommendations like this one:

http://www.lawrence.lib.ks.us/2012/07/if-you-liked-the-hunger-games-3/

Does anyone know any public or school library programs based on teens' fascination with dystopian fictions?

Ada Lovelace Day

This year's Ada Lovelace Day (http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/adalovelace/) was on October 16th. On this day, some celebrate women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) in honor of the world's first programmer, Ada Lovelace. After talking to a couple of senior and junior girls in the beginning of the school year, I realized some of our female students needed more information about the field of computer technology and encouragement to pursuit it as a career. I met some of these bright young women when they volunteered in our library, and the others I got to know for they visited the library on a regular basis. When the topic of their future careers came up, they said it would be cool to work for Google or Facebook. They aparently lacked knowledge about the profession and the diversity of the field of engineering and technology. Taking advantage of the time I had with them, I told them computer engineering is more than programming. The field has deep connections with other disciplines.  In addition, computer engineers of various types can have very different responsibilities and work environments.

These girls became my motivation for setting up a display in the library for Ada Lovelace Day. I created a informational display using both digital and print materials. On a Mac desktop, I looped videos about Ada Lovelace and inspiring modern female engineers and scientists:

http://pioneers.bcs.org/pioneer-profiles/ada-lovelace

http://www.ted.com/themes/women_reshaping_the_world.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/award_winning_teen_age_science_in_action.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/heather_knight_silicon_based_comedy.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_smith_shares_simple_lifesaving_design.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/nina_tandon_caring_for_cells.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/natalie_jeremijenko_the_art_of_the_eco_mindshift.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_wertheim_crochets_the_coral_reef.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/cynthia_breazeal_the_rise_of_personal_robots.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_armstrong_architecture_that_repairs_itself.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/christien_meindertsma_on_pig_05049.html

A libGuide created by our librarian about careers in mathematics was used as an interactive display.

I created a handout on pre-engineering local summer camps for high school students based on the recommendations from our teachers and this website:

https://www.engineeringedu.com/shop/engineering-camps/ 

I also printed and displayed short biographies of successful young female engineers taken from

http://engineeryourlife.org/

Attracting the artistically inclined girls to the display, I included a brief biographical sketch of Lovelace in the form of comic:

http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/lovelace-the-origin-2/