Kids Are Customers, Too

Author Name: Abigail Andrews
Library System: Washington County Free Library

Top 3 things learned:

1. How to host a dance party for children of all ages
2. How to host a digital camp for pre-school aged children to learn how to use laptops and tablets
3. About key skills and knowledge families need to effectively use technology in developmentally appropriate and intentional ways with young children

How to implement:
I've been hearing about libraries having dance parties, especially for active little ones, and have thought about trying to do one. Now, I've heard someone talk through the process (scheduling, picking music, structure), and I feel more confident in how to go about the planning process. The presenter mentioned a Noon Year's Eve Party- that might be a fun time to start! The presenter mentioned using primarily traditional kids music, such as Jim Gill, Greg and Steve, Laurie Berkner, etc.

Additional learning:
The keynote speaker, Tanya Baronti from the Fred Rogers Center, sparked my interest in investigating the Center's work regarding children and technology.

Kids Are Customers, Too

Author Name: Amanda Kaufman
Library System: Washington County Free Library

Top 3 things learned:
1. In regards to the use of technology with young children, technology should enhance and not replace learning.
2. Make passive technology experiences with children active by asking questions, talking about the experience, doing activities, and seeing how it relates to your life.
3. All the reasons music is needed in child programming, how to implement, and playlists to use.

How to implement: 
With exercise and movement the summer reading theme for 2016, implementing techniques from Bibliobop or creating a movement program for young children would be a great way to incorporate what was learned at the conference into summer reading programming.

Additional learning:
internetessentials.com - for low income families who qualify for free school lunch programs - this resource allows families to have access to low cost internet and electronic devices if they qualify.

leafsnap - an app that shows kids how a leaf changes through the seasons. You take a picture with the app of a leaf and it will transform.

www.NAEYC.org - technology resources for children age birth-8.

Kids Are Customers, Too

Author Name: Aimee Rutt
Library System: Washington County Free Library
Event Title: Kids Are Customers, Too- October 15, 2015

Top 3 things learned:
1. BIBLIOBOP!!!
This was a fantastic presentation that showed off the unique idea of an all dance and movement based story time session. The presenter outlined how she conducts her programs, and provided us with song ideas and a basic outline for how we could do our own Bibliobop story time! I like the concept of this
program very much!

2. Introducing Technology to Children and Families
The opening presentation was done by Tanya Baronti of the Fred Rogers Centre, and the primary focus was on technology and how it can be used effectively in kid's lives. She taught us the importance of introducing children to technology, and how we could distinguish between effective use or frivolous use. She also taught us the importance of an adults role in their child's use of technology. Parents should be aware of how their children are using technology and what they are doing online, and should also teach their children (by example) of appropriate uses of technology and appropriate online behavior.

3. The lengthy process that goes in to writing and illustrating a children's book AND the importance of bilingual children's books. Spanish American children's author Lulu Delacre gave a presentation, and went in-depth about all of the steps that she took to write her most recent children's book (to be released in 2016). She took us on a journey that expanded from her initial idea for the book all the way to the final steps in preparation for publication! She also talked about how her book was written
in both English and Spanish, which I thought was very awesome because it makes it so special and diverse!

How to implement:

• I will do some research to plan my own Bibliobop/movement based story time.I thought this was a wonderful idea because it gives kids an opportunity to experience a different type of story time, and also helps them get active while still having fun. I plan to use both new and old songs, and may even try to implement some of my childhood favorites.
• Author LuLu Delacre inspired me to look for more diverse books to implement in to my storytimes. This will help the kids be exposed to new and different cultures, and will also meet the needs of the different groups of children that come to storytime.
• I will try and implement more technology in my children's programs in the future as a learning tool for the kids.

Children's Interest Group Fall 2015 Meeting

Author Name: Aimee Rutt
Library System: Washington County Free Library

Top 3 things learned:
1. I really enjoyed learning about the different story time books and strategies that are used by my colleagues. It was very interesting to learn about what has worked for them and what their patrons enjoy.

2. I enjoyed learning about the Playaway Launchpad! I feel like that will be a very useful tool for our young patrons, and will be an effective way to introduce technology in to their lives.

3. I thought that the "500 by Five" presentation was wonderful! There are so many great things about that program! I love how it not only motivates kids to read, but makes them excited to do so! I would love to see how our patrons would respond if we were to introduce this program in our library system!

How to implement:
1. I will try and implement some of the strategies and books that were introduced by my colleagues in future story times to see how my patrons respond.

2. Whether or not our library system chooses to add the Playaway Launchpads to our collection, I will become more familiar with all of the educational apps that are out there for children.

3. I will teach children and families the importance of reading every chance I get. I will also make sure to read to my own children every night and always have books available to them when I become a parent.

Charlie 'Noiseguy' Williams Reviews

Image source: http://www.noiseguy.com

On Monday, April 8th, 27 children's specialists from Allegany, Garrett, and Washington counties' public libraries, health departments, and higher ed extension offices came together in the LaVale library to participate in, Sound Advice with Charlie 'Noiseguy' Williams.

I must have been feeling uncharacteristically quantitative because I actually asked the participants to fill out ... wait for it ... evaluation forms. *gasp*

This does not mean they are immune to the email that is destined to arrive in their inbox one of these days soon, asking them to share their learning reflections to the blog.

I wanted to share the aggregated results of the evaluations with you because both the numbers and the free-responses are fairly insightful.

Participants assigned a 1-5 rating to the following questions, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest.

Question 1: How well did the presenter keep you engaged?
Average:  4.7 (no one said they were bored)

Question 2: How well did the presenter display knowledge of the material?
Average: 4.9 (Perhaps a 5.0 was out of reach because there's always room for improvement)

Question 3: How helpful was this material to your work at the library/school/organization?
Average: 4.3 (pretty helpful)

Question 4: How good a use of your time was this training?
Average: 4.4 (pretty good use of time)

Question 5: How might you use what you've learned at work?
For this, I created this word cloud.

 

Question 5: Additional questions or comments.

For this, I created another word cloud.

 

Final thoughts:

All in all, I'd say this workshop was a success and for any other trainers/staff development folks out there who might be reading this review, I highly recommend working with Charlie. He communicates well, is sensitive to the financial constraints of working with public library budgets, and has an abundance of energy and enthusiasm.

In the Works: Reader's Advisory for Children/YA/Teen/Juvenile Librarians

Go to 100 Scope Notes to view full image.

This morning Jeff Ridgeway and I met to talk about the possibility of coordinating efforts in order to schedule a day-long staff development event for the region centered around reader's advisory for children's/teen/YA/juvenile literature and below are the notes and ideas I gleaned from our discussion. Please chime in with feedback and ideas!

Format: We're looking at following a modified format of BCPL's Great Books events they once held back in the day where it might look something like this:

10am-11am - Keynote speaker (author or RA guru)

11am-11:30am - Q&A with keynote speaker

11:30am-12:30pm - lunch and time to catch up w/colleagues

12:30pm-1:30pm - Breakout Session: Hands-on RA activities

1:45pm-2:45pm - Breakout Session: Colleague show-n-tell

2:50pm-3pm - Evaluations / CEUs (up to 3 CEUs)

If there's interest among the library staff and the public school teachers in each of the three western counties and if I'm feeling especially ambitious, I can foresee a plan where we hold this event three days in a row - once in Washington county, once in Allegany county, and once in Garrett county. But this absolutely depends on interest and # of attendees because of course the cost would go up regardless of the keynote speaker and we definitely want to make sure ROI is high for something like this.

Content: I like the idea of using films to predict popular titles among youngins and if we can identify 3 top trends in this genre then we could identify either one author from one of those genres or one RA specialist to be our keynote. These top trends would then set the stage/framework for the hands-on breakout session at 12:30pm and the show-n-tell session at 1:45pm. Some current trends that we identified: fairy tales, distopian fiction, supernatural but not vampires. Which trends do you see on the horizon? It might also be to our benefit to invite local authors/RA specialists who fit the bill rather than looking nationally. Thoughts on this?

WENTK: (Who Else Needs to Know?) I'm currently working to pick the brains of my colleagues at the Eastern Shore Regional Library who recently hosted a public event featuring Jack Gantos.

 

But if you know of other libraries near or far who have done something similar, please let me know. This type of thing - content wise - finds me bit out of my element so, I'm happy to learn from those who have more experience! 

In addition, I have been in contact with Jamie Watson at BCPL to get more information about their Great Books events - they haven't had one of these in a couple of years but it's still good to have a contact to give me some perspective! These events were on a much grander scale than what I'm envisioning is possible for the west but it seems scalable enough.

As far as who else I might be roping in with me ... well, I definitely want to involve anyone from the MLA Reader's Advisory Interest Group - especially those who work in Allegany, Garrett, and Washington counties; any and all library staff from the western region who work closely with the youngins in our libraries; and possibly the public school teachers from those counties, as I know this group is near and dear to Jeff's heart since he works with them (at least the ones in Washington county) quite frequently. 

Did you know? There's a Children's Literature Centre at Frostburg State University? This just happens to be almost right in the middle of the western region! They often host literature festivals and author institutes. These would count toward certification so, if you're interested be sure to bookmark the site and talk with your staff development coordinator.

Stay tuned ...

Web Resources for Children's Librarians

This workshop highlighted quality web resources to be used by children and/or adults working with children. Most of these recommended sites utilize human editing or reviewing as opposed to machine selection (e.g. Google search).

The recommended web resources included child-friendly directories, reading resources, image searching, film guides and reviews, and reference tools on the web. Sites specifically geared toward parents and public librarians were also showcased. A full listing of these websites can be found here.

My favorite sites were DAWCL, Author Name Pronunciation Guide, and NCES Search for Schools.

The Database of Award Winning Children’s Literature, aka DAWCL, is a searchable database of 8,300 award winning books. Ninety-one awards across six English-speaking countries are included. Searches can be conducted using the following criteria: suggested age of reader, format, setting, genre, historical period, multicultural, ethnicity/nationality of protagonist or tale, gender of protagonist, languages, publication year, keyword or phrase, author/illustrator/translator, and award. An explanation of awards and calendar of awards is also provided.

Author Name Pronunciation Guide is a fun, yet useful, tool. How many times have you needed to tell a patron about an author only to feel uncertain about the pronunciation of his or her name? Jon Scieszka? Shirley Hrdlitschka? Genevieve Simermeyer? This site is a collection of brief recordings of authors and illustrators saying their names. As someone who has her name butchered on a near-daily basis, using correct pronunciation for other people’s names is of great importance to me.

The National Center for Education Statistics’ Search for Schools [and public libraries] offers a wonderful resource for parents, educators, and librarians. Parents can obtain valuable information about schools when considering a move to a new area. Educators and librarians can use this same information when applying for grants. Some of the information to be found includes student/teacher ratio, enrollment by race/ethnicity, enrollment by grade, and number of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

It was helpful to have someone else do the legwork of selecting quality web resources for children, parents, educators, and librarians. I have already added a number of these recommended sites to the Kids portion of our webpage.