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By Nicholas Eskey Taking his regular seat in front of the all too familiar line consisting of convention goers, Comic-Con International’s President John Rogers readies himself for the inevitable. The “Talk Back Panel” always signifies the end of a convention, giving the chance for attendees and vendors alike to voice their opinions on their experiences; […]

I recently made an expedition to SXSWedu in Austin. I was really excited about this conference because I thought it’d be useful to me as an educator/facilitator/enabler of science and technology-based programs and projects at my library. I was looking forward to hearing new-to-me perspectives on student (or in my case teen)-centered learning; maybe I’d pick up some tips on how to help teens feel comfortable expressing their interests or how to frame  a challenging project in a manageable way or chunk it into achievable pieces. What I most hoped to do, I think, was speak with other educators about the unique challenges and opportunities of learning in a makerspace-type environment. It was a valuable experience in many ways, but not quite what I expected. (The usual caveats apply – YMMV, perhaps I picked the wrong sessions, didn’t find the right folks to network with, etc.)

As I left SXSWedu and headed for home, I reflected a bit on my experience. I was disappointed, because I had hoped to connect with experts - people who knew more than me about what I was doing. I didn’t. At a panel where I expected higher-level conversation about makerspaces and learning, I left frustrated that the conversation was ‘what is a makerspace?’ and ‘low-budget vs high-budget’ and ‘you don’t NEED a 3d printer’ instead of ‘this is what makes a makerspace special, and this is how to maximize that opportunity.’ I wanted nuts and bolts and a user’s manual, and I got Tinker Toys. As I thought more and more about what had happened, it occurred to me that if I wanted to talk about this, I ought to just start the conversation I wanted to hear. To that end, here are the questions on my mind right now, and some of my possible answers.

Question 1: What’s the best way to enable teen-initiated learning in a makerspace?

A makerspace-based learning environment is very different from the structure of classroom-based learning, and I wonder how to scaffold learning and build skills methodically in such an unstructured, come-and-go environment (or whether I should even be worrying about that).

We could provide pre-chunked modules for each tool or skill (in physical or digital format). For example, a set of Arduino-themed handout-style modules, beginning with Blink and advancing to more complicated projects. We could curate a tailored, leveled set of links to digital resources for self-directed learning, like Youtube videos, Instructables, tutorials from sites like SparkFun and Adafruit, and resources created in-house. Another option might be leveled project challenges, with resources on hand and mentors (staff and/or teens) on-site to help. For example, “program the EV3 robot to follow a line maze” with Mindstorms programming books and websites accessible, and volunteers from a local robotics team.

Question 2: How should progress be measured or tracked in a makerspace learning environment?

The first option that springs to mind is badging – digital, physical, or both. A bonus (and a drawback) of this method is the opportunity to engage an artistically inclined teen volunteer to design the badges. One major question for this method is the procedure for issuing badges. There could be an online form to fill out, though that feels disconnected and impersonal, and I know I value any chance to engage with a teen during the learning process. Staff could be the primary issuers, but that reinforces the adult-as-authority dynamic. Teen mentors could also be deputized to approve badge earning, but organizing that as a face-to-face interaction could be complicated. Would these badges stay with the badge earner, or in the makerspace? Would we need to create physical artifact to hold the badges?

Chart-based tracking is a simple, time-tested method. The information is all in one place and easily accessible, but it feels (to me) a bit internal and closed off. It could be made more accessible, however. A binder is more restricted than a Google Doc, and quite private as opposed to a classroom-style wall chart.

It could be handy to track progress on the resources themselves, especially for those teens who are looking for help learning to use a resource. Imagine a sticker on the back of a resource sheet or ‘Expert’ badges displayed alongside digital resources – the teen looking at those resources can easily see peer mentors. Privacy issues could come up here, but an opt-in system might alleviate that worry. One possible complication is the difficulty of scheduling peer-to-peer learning sessions with so many demands on teens’ time.

In addition to those questions, I’ve been thinking a bit about some of the unique challenges and opportunities inherent in makerspace-based learning.

One challenge I’ve run into more than once is a complicated first foray into learning a new tool, resulting in frustration and discouragement and eventual abandonment of the project altogether, which in turn colors the teen’s view of the tool and makes it less likely that the teen will attempt to use that tool again. I hope that providing a structure for learning new tools and skills (see: Question 1) will ameliorate the problem. In discussions with others, I’ve also heard the suggestion of leaving the project as-is, in hopes that the teen will revisit it or that another teen’s curiosity will be piqued and they’ll take up the challenge. (Tangential – should projects be marked abandoned or off-limits to limit toe-stepping?)

Some makerspace materials are disposable, but many must be reused (for example, Arduinos), but being able to show off projects is important. What’s the best way to record these projects for posterity and ensure that the maker has some artifact of their accomplishment? Video clips? Time lapse photography? And what’s the best way to store and catalog these digital artifacts so that they’ll be accessible to the makers? Should they also be publicly accessible?

Caroline Mossing is a Teen Services Librarian in the Teen Library at the San Antonio Central Library.

Girl Scouts. Cookies. The two have become synonymous, but there is much more to being a Girl Scout than selling cookies. As it turns out, libraries and librarians are often right there helping the troops during their non-cookie-selling time. Juliette Gordon Low organized the first troop in Savannah, Georgia, in 1912, and since then this organization has grown to include over 59 million American women and 10 million international members spread over 145 countries (source). Chances are that many of you reading this blog post are counted among that number.

That was definitely the case when I inquired across the listservs to see how libraries across our nation are working with their local Girl Scouts. Many of the responses were from librarians that were once Girl Scouts themselves and were more than happy to help the next generation of young females earn their badges. The responses ranged from as simple (but important) as offering space for troops to meet and public places to display their projects, to more hands-on collaborative planning and implementing programs for girls to earn badges and Gold/Silver/Bronze Awards. Here are a just a few of the wonderful ways that libraries across the country have worked with local troops:

For the sake of space, I’m unfortunately not able to share all the great responses I received, but I do want to highlight a few library/Girl Scout collaborations that have made big impacts on their communities. The first is an official partnership between the Girl Scouts of Kentucky’s Wilderness Road, the Kenton County Public Library and a few other community partners to host a day-long program titled Transition Quest to help prepare incoming 6^th graders for middle school.  The second is the official partnership that the Girl Scouts of NE Kansas and NW Missouri and the Johnson County Public Library (Kansas) formed to assist the girls in completing their Journey entitled It’s Your Story: Tell It!

Photo provided by Barbara Brand, Youth Services Manager, Johnson County Library (Kansas)

Just last month, JCL librarians, Megan Bennen and Kelly Sime presented this program at the Kansas Library Association Conference and their sessions handouts provide a lot of information on how other libraries could implement a similar collaboration with local Girl Scouts.

With 2.3 million active girl members and 890,000 adult members serving mostly as volunteers (source), chances are there is an active Girl Scout troop in your community and they would love to work with their public libraries (search for a local council here).  The most important piece of information that I gathered from those librarians that have worked with their local girl scouts is to make sure that there are no communication glitches along the way.  The librarians that did experience a few obstacles along the way mentioned that they were usually because of travel accommodations (getting the girls to the library), timing (try to avoid school holidays, such as Fall and Spring breaks), publicity (whose responsibility is it to publicize the event), and budgets (who is going to purchase the supplies, including the badges).  Youth Serices Librarians, Karen Lucas from Madison Public Library-Sequoya Branch in Madison, WI, and Deidre Winterhalter, from Hinsdale Public Library in Hindsale, IL, both encountered the transportation problem when working with their local Girl Scouts.  Ms. Lucas helped her local troop earn their Reading Badge by asking them to write a brief paragraph about their favorite books and then she used this information to compile a bibliography for 1st and 2nd graders.  Ms. Winterhalter also worked with a local troop that could not travel to to the library by having them create a banner to promote the library’s summer reading program.  This banner, with their names and troop number proudly displayed, satisfied not only their badge requirements, but also fulfilled a service the library needed.

Here’s a fun idea from Abbe Klebeanoff, Head of Public Services for Lansdowne Public Library in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, that might help brighten your library this winter!

(video owned by Abbe Klebeanoff, Head of Public Services for Lansdowne Public Library and shared with her permission)

QOTD: Have you worked with your local Girl Scout Council?  What did your library do and what did you think was most successful about the program?

Lori Coffey Hancock is a school librarian for The Lexington School, an independent private school in Lexington, Kentucky.  Her involvement with Girl Scouts began when her daughter joined the Girl Scouts as a Daisy in 2009.  She is currently the Awards chair for the Kentucky Association of School Librarians and serving as co-chair for ALSC Liaison to National Organizations Committee. You can reach Lori on Twitter (@onceuponarun_lh).

Tomorrow, March 2, is Read Across America day (and this year’s featured book is “The Lorax” — he reads for the trees! The cast of the upcoming film recorded a PSA for the event, and Zac Efron will be on hand for the national... Read the rest of this post

More and more Millennials are checking in to media events and TV shows. They already have their smartphones, tablets, and laptops nearby, chatting with their friends on social media about what they’re watching; checking in was the next logical... Read the rest of this post

I got out of bed to draw this late last night. I couldn't sleep. I drove for six hours yesterday. Do you find it hard to sleep after a long distance drive? When you close your eyes are you still behind the wheel? Weaving in and out of all that traffic? Putting your foot down on the accelerator and not taking it off? Not caring what's in your way? Feeling like you could just drive off the end of the earth? No? Oh. Right. Ok then. Oh.

Foreskin’s Lament — out this October — is a hilarious and very angry memoir that chronicles Shalom Auslander’s move from the devout Orthodoxy of his childhood into a state of perpetual war with God. Like Twain, Auslander skewers his forebears’ religion not from the outside, a la Dawkins, Hitchens, and friends, but by turning the logic of the belief system against itself.

In the opening pages, he writes (and here, like the irresponsible and quasi-illiterate blogger scum I am, I quote without permission from the uncorrected proof):

When I was a child, my parents and teachers told me about a man who was very strong. They told me he could destroy the whole world. They told me he could life mountains. They told me he could part the sea. It was important to keep the man happy. When we obeyed what the man had commanded, the man liked us. He liked us so much that he killed anyone who didn’t like us. But when we didn’t obey what he had commanded, he didn’t like us. He hated us. Some days he hated us so much, he killed us; other days, he let other people kill us. We call these days “holidays.” On Purim, we remembered how the Persians tried to kill us. On Passover, we remembered how the Egyptians tried to kill us. On Chanukah, we remembered how the Greeks tried to kill us.

– Blessed is He, we prayed.

In the meantime, sample his work at Nextbook. Unfortunately, the old This American Life appearances aren’t free to download anymore.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the When I Was a Loser party last night, and especially to those who shushed the throng of investment bankers until they were shamed into relocating their networking/backrub party outside the reading zone.

Kelly Braffet and Owen King dug out actual plaid shirts, concert tees, and baggy jeans from high school, while I wore a gold-lamé-with-black-flowers affair that I bought at a Goodwill on Miami Beach four years ago. It looks every penny of the three bucks I paid for it. Jim Othmer got in the spirit with a corduroy jacket.
 

A gentleman named Norm won the trivia quiz, which I assembled Wednesday night with a little help from some friends. (By the way, Jessa, nobody got the Reznor/Amos question right. Well done.)

With 17 correct answers, he won four DVDs: This is Spinal Tap, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Wet Hot American Summer, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. How would you have done?
 

1. How many sides are on the D&D die with the largest number of sides?

A. 5
B. 7
C. 10
D. 20

2. What became Chuck Woolery’s trademark commercial break gesture on Love Connection?

A. The two minutes, two seconds sign
B. A “V” for “victory”
C. Two thumbs-up
D. A high-five

3. When, in Freaks & Geeks, Lindsay’s father tells her a cautionary tale about his first sexual experience (which happened while he was serving in the armed forces), which of these lines does he say?

A. Condoms just don’t last long in that kind of heat.
B. I wish I could get that five dollars back.
C. Marching is a lot harder when you have to keep stopping to scratch yourself.
D. And remember, they didn’t have “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” then.

4. Walker Percy called which cult novel centered on a misfit protagonist a “gargantuan tumultuous human tragicomedy”?

A. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
B. The Sot-Weed Factor
C. A Confederacy of Dunces
D. The Catcher in the Rye

5. Trent Reznor of NIN sang back-up vocals for which Tori Amos song?

A. “Past the Mission”
B. “Little Earthquakes”
C. “The Wrong Band”
D. “Cornflake Girl”

6. Donnie Darko/Battlestar Galactica actress Mary McDonnell had her first recurring TV role on which soap opera?

A. The Young and the Restless
B. As the World Turns
C. General Hospital
D. All My Children

7. What band performed the song “Weird Science,” which appeared on the soundtrack for the 1985 movie of the same name?

A. Thomas Dolby
B. Erasure
C. Oingo Boingo
D. Gary Numan

8. In the Doctor Who episode “City of Death,” Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, running around Paris with several copies of the Mona Lisa, save the world from an alien invasion. Who wrote the episode?

A. Stephen King
B. Douglas Adams
C. Terry Gilliam
D. John Cleese

9. According to the Smiths song “How Soon is Now?,” when you go to the club hoping to “meet somebody who really loves you,” you will end up doing all but which one of these things:

A. Cry
B. Want to die
C. Wear all black
D. Leave on your own

10. What early ’90s book inspired fascination with Elvis Presley among previously disdainful music scenesters?

A. Dead Elvis
B. White Blues
C. We’re All Living in Graceland Now
D. Son of Tupelo

11. In television’s Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, Parker and friends would synchronize what ’80s must-have accessory before embarking on one of their hijinks-heavy schemes to elevate their social status?

A. Calculator watches
B. Digital timers
C. Mickey Mouse Seikos
D. Swatches

A. “Creep,” Radiohead
B. “Loser,” Beck
C. “Eat It,” Weird Al Yankovic
D. “Groove is in the Heart,” Deee-Lite

A. The voice-over narration is eliminated
B. A replicant snake devours a replicant owl
C. The ending is shorter
D. A unicorn dream sequence unfolds

14. In the pre-Internet era, in the absence of free-flowing porn or actual information about sex, some junior high school girls turned to which slightly risqué book written by an author best known for her teen classics?

A. Forever
B. Giving It Up
C. My Darling, My Hamburger
D. The Art of Sexual Seduction

15. In the movie Heathers, Heather asks another Heather to fuck her gently with which piece of machinery?

A. Drill
B. Jackhammer
C. Chainsaw
D. Bulldozer

16. When the original Boondoggle rage of the ’70s abated, only losers continued to:

A. Play this particular pinball game.
B. Plait these strands of plastic into keychains.
C. Put this type of grease in their hair.
D. Have these scenes painted on the sides of their vans.

17. “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” is a hit song originally recorded by?

A. Joe Jackson
B. Elvis Costello
C. Graham Parker
D. Gram Parsons

18. In which of Jonathan Lethem’s novels does a private investigator converse with animals and take mood-altering drugs?

A. Amnesia Moon
B. Gun, With Occasional Music
C. Motherless Brooklyn
D. The Fortress of Solitude

19. In Pump up the Volume an FM radio pirate obsessed with Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” runs an underground station from a suburb in which state?

A. Montana
B. Arizona
C. Wyoming
D. Utah

20. Beavis’s sugar-fed alter ego is:

A. Assholio
B. Bungholio
C. Cornholio
D. Dungholio

21. The title of the Duran Duran album Seven and the Ragged Tiger was (cough) allegorical. The “seven” were the five members of the band and their two managers; what was the “ragged tiger”?

A. Sex
B. Success
C. A model
D. The lead singer’s “little friend”

22. In the show Family Ties, Alex P. Keaton’s first major girlfriend was Ellen; The actress who played her later became Michael J. Fox’s wife. She was:

A. Courteney Cox
B. Justine Bateman
C. Tracey Pollan
D. Billy Vera

23. Which of the following musicians did not do a guest appearance on Miami Vice?

A. Sheena Easton
B. Robert Palmer
C. Leonard Cohen
D. Ted Nugent

25. The protagonist of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series is Dream. He is also called:

A. Morpheus
B. Desire
C. Teleute
D. Olethros

Answer Key: 1. D; 2. A; 3. B; 4. C; 5. A; 6. B; 7. C; 8. B; 9. C; 10. A.; 11. D; 12. B; 13. B; 14. A; 15. C; 16. B; 17. A; 18. B; 19. B; 20. C; 21. B; 22. C; 23. B; 24. A