Blog Me a Story

I’m not sure how I missed it before, but since I attended the Gaming in Libraries program at Dominican, I have been enjoying Jenny Levine’s Shifted Librarian blog. She collects all the best ideas about using gaming and technology in libraries into one, easy to digest blog.

Here are a few of my favorite recent posts:

Dance your fines away

I love this idea. Not only is fine forgiveness a great way to encourage people to come back the library, this idea is a guaranteed publicity magnet. Any time we can draw positive attention to what we do, we are making our communities more aware of what the library provides the community. Not only that, but the library is publicizing its acceptance of gaming and gaming culture in the library. This is very important for changing the public’s impression of the library as a quiet, boring place.

What do games have to do with literacy?

I had a couple of run-ins with this question in my own library as we were questioned on our policy restricting gaming on public computers (which has since been lifted) and our purchase of a PS2, DDR and Guitar Hero. A new staff member was questioning why the games had been purchased and what they were being used for.

Besides the fact that video games fit perfectly with the iREAD Summer Reading Program theme, games are a fun way to teach. Take the article by Brian Mayer linking the New York State Curriculum standards to board games. Or Paul Waelchli’s article on teaching information literacy by playing fantasy football.

Barack Obama may be telling parents to turn off the video games in order to encourage learning for their children, but maybe they need to keep those games on in order to prepare kids for a Web 2.0 world.

~Renee

On Monday, I conducted a successful program for 3rd-6th graders

It’s the fifth in a series I’m doing called Just Dewey It, where we explore each of the Dewey Ranges and do fun stuff that corresponds.

This month was the 500’s and we did “kitchen science” experiments. You’re probably familiar with most of them, like baking soda and vinegar to make a “volcano” and cornstarch and water to make “quicksand.” We used water from boiling a red cabbage as an indicator to see what is an acid and what is a base. We used a candle to suck water into a jar and used a balloon to light a fluorescent bulb.

14 kids registered and 10 kids came, which is a pretty good number for this sort of program. There were only 2 minor problems: One of the experiments I did almost set off the smoke alarms (oops) and when we were making slime, some of the kids added too much food coloring and their hands turned purple and green. I’m sure it will wash off in four or five days…

I wanted to post pictures, but I don’t have permission forms for all these kids, so I’ll have to work on that for next time.

I’d love to hear about programs other libraries are doing, so we can steal share ideas.

~Renee