Tech Project 2: Circuit Art

I, like all of you, have been in full Summer Reading mode for the past couple of months.  I had about 40 teen programs all told, luckily all that's left other than my monthly clubs is the Wrap Up Party.

I've been doing more tech projects, at least one per newsletter cycle.  This time around I did Circuit Art, which was really fun even though the teens were a bit apprehensive at first.

What is Circuit Art?  Using paper and other stuff lying around (buttons, googly eyes), teens could make any type of picture they wanted and add LEDs to it.  Here's my sample:

Using a coin cell battery, conductive paint, and an LED I made a robot who learns to love when you pet his kitty.  In this case, the cat acts as the "switch" that makes the light turn on when it's connected to the battery.

This is the conductive paint product that we used: http://www.bareconductive.com/

I bought one tub, which was plenty for the 12 teens that showed up plus all of my practice projects.  So long as you're making smallish things one tub should be just fine. I have plenty leftover.  You can get LEDs cheaply wherever--mine were just found on Amazon. I bought a variety of colors.

This project was a little difficult, if only because the teens couldn't decide what to make.  Next time I will probably make it less open-ended and have a basic project ready to go--for example, we'd ALL make robots or something.  Still, we had some cute projects in the end, including one TARDIS with working light!  Fun Fact:  All the girls finished functional projects, and none of the boys did. Heh.

Oh hey, it's May

Late Winter and Spring are slow-ish times for programming, as the teens are busy with school stuff and I'm getting ready for Summer Reading.  The programs I've done lately have been all the same old stuff--all of my clubs plus a couple of crafty things.  I had two pretty big flops--both things that my Teen Advisory Council asked me to do.  I made Duct Tape tote bags at both branches and had very low attendance, and then I did egg decorating at the main library and had ZERO attendance.  I mostly know better than to listen to the suggestions of my TAC by now, but this pretty much cements it!  The egg decorating was saved by making an announcement that anyone in the library who wanted to decorate an egg RIGHT NOW could do so.  It ended up being very fun anyway!

My big project this month is my kickoff party for the The Fault in Our Stars movie!  I'm having a 5 hour party in our auditorium.  So far I'm planning:

1) To build a giant fort for reading in.  I was fretting about how i'd get enough blankets and things to make this happen, and then I remembered that I own a 1500 sq. ft. parachute.  That'll work! 
2) To watch lots of Vlogborthers/Sci-Show/Crash Course videos, plus the trailers. 
3) To play a couple of games.  Haven't really planned these yet.  Trivia of some kind, and maybe a scavenger hunt or something?
4) Pizza AND an ice-cream sundae bar.  My usual start to summer reading is an ice cream social, which I'm skipping this year in favor of this party, so I figured I'd combine them!
5) To give out 100 free copies of TFiOS!  I'm really excited to be able to do this.  My Friends of the Library group is awesome and generous with their funding! The books arrived yesterday.

The teens are encouraged to wear PJs and spend the day reading and lounging and, of course, sobbing. It's going to be really fun!

Screen Printing!

I'm going to apologize in advance for the quality of the photos on this post---I was working quickly and with hands covered in stuff so I used my phone, and now I'm working on a sloooooow computer and so i'm forgoing editing!

For this project I'm starting with these instructions.  For the most part they worked fine, though there were once again a few things that were a little unclear.  Also I fudged some things to keep it cheap.

FIRSTLY:  I started out using the directions to make a screen with embroidery hoops and mesh fabric.  The instructions just say to buy mesh fabric, but when you get to the fabric store you'll see that there are a LOT OF OPTIONS.  I ended up purchasing something that was pretty much what you'd use for window sheers, and that worked OK.  If you could find something finer it would probably be better--there were some problems with too much ink getting through the screen and making things a little gloppy.

See? It works, but my attempts that did anything finer than a basic shape didn't come out very well.

While I was searching our supply closet for tote bags to practice on, I found an entire tub of printing supplies.  No one here has any idea where they came from or who bought them, but the tub included a bunch of pre stretched silk hoops!  Very similar to these: http://www.dickblick.com/items/63005-1003/

I decided to give those a try, and WOAH, way less hassle.  A little pricey, but the embroidery hoops were too.  I'll probably let the teens make one of each.

Step 1: decide what you want to make.  I made stencils with our diecuts and had some success with those, but of all my practice attempts (4 total), the freehand drawing turned out the best.

Here's my mysterious hoop of unknown provenance.  Where did you come from, hoop?

My narwhal went through a few different facial expressions before I got his essence right.  The drawing is on a piece of paper under the hoop.  NOW.  If your hoop has a bit of a lip to it, you want to put down the hoop in such a way that it is raised up a little.  Like, if it were a very shallow cup, you'd be putting it top down.  Is this making sense? Ok good.  Now you'll use your screen drawing fluid to drawn on your design.  IMPORTANT! You are drawing your design BACKWARDS. Mostly this isn't going to matter, but it will matter if you're using any letters. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES.

Here he is!

I cheated and did the lettering lightly on the wrong side of the screen, and then covered it from the correct side.  That worked out fine.

This is the BACK of the screen.  See how you can see the lip there?

Let it dry completely. This will take a few hours unless you want to bust out a hairdryer.  I left it overnight.  When it's dry, cover the whole thing (on the same side you put the drawing fluid on) with your screen filler.  It needs to be thick enough that all the holes are plugged, but be careful not to get too much on the drawing fluid or it runs a little. I didn't manage to get a photo of this step.  I used a piece of cardboard to spread it around, which worked fine--though try not to leave any streaks--aim for a nice even layer.

Let it dry again.  I'm doing this with the teens as a two part program--one day they will make the screens (we'll dry the drawing fluid with a hairdryer and then let the filler set overnight) and the second day they'll do the actual printing.  After your filler is dry (overnight), rinse the screen under cold water.  The drawing fluid magically rinses out, leaving just the screen filler.  On the real silk screens it did leave a bit of blue dye behind.

The rinsed screen! I will do this for the teens in the days between programs.  Make sure the water isn't hot--cold was best for me. Once it's dry, you're ready to print! Yay!

To print:

If you're printing on a bag or t-shirt, make sure to put some cardboard or paper inside so the ink doesn't leak through to the back.  Put your screen where you want it, this time so that it lays FLAT and the lip faces up. Glop a bit of your printing ink at the top, and pull it downward.  I'm trying to keep things cheap, so I used a pink rubber eraser instead of buying an expensive rubber squeegee, and it totally worked great. Be wary of using TOO MUCH ink, or it will seep outside the lines of your drawing.

 

Here's the back of my inky screen...

and here's the front.  You can rinse the ink out afterward, though I haven't tried re-using it yet.

And here's my amazing shirt! There are a couple of areas where it could have used a little more ink, but that just makes it look screen-printed, to me.

Shirts were on sale 4 for $10 at Michels, so I grabbed a few to practice on.  For the program, the teens are bringing their own shirts or whatever to print on.

Overall I think this will go pretty well with the teens, but I'm glad I gave myself plenty of time to practice! 

Teen Tech Project #1 : Solar Bugs

For the past few years, library makerspaces have become quite The Thing.  Unfortunately we don't all have the space, staff, or $$ that it takes to set something like that up as a permanent thing.   Starting with the current round of programming (we divide the year up into 3 newsletters, and plan things far in advance so that we can get them printed and out to residents), I'm doing at least one Teen Tech Project every time.  This was my first, and required a bit of self education.  I've never messed with electronics and things like that, but I'm glad to be learning!  For this project I had to learn to solder, which was very easy.

This is the project we did. Once again I found myself in a position where the instructions are written assuming a certain amount of prior knowledge that I didn't have.  For example, at one point it says you need "Scrap Wire...they can be anything".  Now, I know enough to know that PROBABLY there are at least a few things that wouldn't work.  But I don't know enough to know the difference between something that obviously WILL or obviously WON'T work.  So I'm going to break it down for you here in excruciating detail.

What You Need:

To make the Solar Bug function:

2v Solar Cells 
It looks like the seller I bought from doesn't have anymore, but the description should help you.  There aren't a lot of non-shady places to get these, most people I talked to said to use e-bay. I lucked out that this seller had them on Amazon.
Tiny Motors
Soldering iron and Solder (Ask your IT and facilities departments, they probably have these!)
Wire Cutters (again, IT and facilities)
Wire to connect the Motor to the Solar Cell (link goes to what I used, which is what he used in his instructions.  If you have a better knowledge of what counts as useable "scrap wire", use what you like!)

To make the solar bug into a creature:

Big paper clips, cut down with wire snips
Hot glue gun and glue sticks

totally optional:

Pipe Cleaners
Googly Eyes
Tiny Bells
Anything else you may want to add--though keep in mind you have to keep the solar panel uncovered!

 The Process:

Decide how much soldering you want the teens to do.  I decided "just a little" and so I did the first bit myself and had them do the less fiddly bit.

There exists a tool called a "helping hand" and if you have one, they look like they would be super helpful.  If you don't, you can totally rig a system of binder clips.  The first step is to solder your "scrap wire" or resistor (snip it apart from the thing in the middle so you have two plain wire pieces) to the motor. 

The quick-and-dirty of soldering is that you want to hold the hot tip of the soldering iron to your wire near where you want to solder two things together.  The heat will travel down the wire---you are NOT touching the solder to the soldering iron!  After 10-20 seconds, touch your solder to the wire, keeping the iron in place.  Does the solder melt? Great! Goop that all in there to hold things together.  If it doesn't, give it a few more seconds. It's important to keep contact between the iron and the wire, or else it will cool off and you start over.

Here's how I held things steady.  My first attempt included a clip torn from an old conference badge.

Both sides are in place and soldered!

I did this step for all of the motors, and then assembled kits for each teen that had all the basic parts:

Then the teens bent the wires so that they would touch the contact points of the solar cell (not seen above...they're on the underside).  We used binder clips for this too, along the long edge of the cell leaving plenty of wire exposed. Then you can lift the motor up a bit so that it has a little more room to turn. 

There you go!  At this point, take it outside to see if it works!  You will definitely know if it does.  I found that we needed direct, outdoor sunlight to make them go.

To make it into a jiggly creature, unbend the paperclip wire into legs and hot glue them to the bottom.  After that it's all a matter of personal taste.  This is my little practice bug:

He looks depressed. Probably wishes he were dancing!

From the side.

Here's a link to a video of mine moving

I liked adding googly eyes and bells because they add some movement and noise.  Some of my teens added things to the spinning part of the motor, so that their bots would have a tails that twirled!  So cute!  Here are some photos of their projects:

Summer Reading Wrap Up 2013

I think enough time has passed that I'm ready to think about this party!

Instead of giving away junk prizes for the teen SRP, I give away grab bags that MOSTLY contain just candy, though some contain little junk prizes and gift cards.  The real prize though, is the invitation to the wrap-up party that every teen who completes the SRP gets.  It's the most expensive part of summer reading for me, and really the most expensive thing I do all year.  This year was my third year in a row of doing the SRP this way.  The first year was just a big party with LASER TAG, the second year had a Hunger Games theme, and this year I went with a circus/carnival theme.  The teens were encouraged to come in costume if they wished, and many did!  My teens are the best teens ever.  I'm including pictures, but since I will only use one where any teens are unidentifiable they are not always the best ones.  You get the idea, though!

Because we have outgrown the laser tag arena (we had it for the HG party, and each kid got to play ONCE for all of about 3 minutes. They loved it, but it costs about $1000 to rent, so I knew I could better spend the money) so this year I decided to rent 3 smaller/cheaper inflatables.  I got:

The Bungee Run:

In this game two kids put on harnesses and race to the end of the lanes, trying to slap their flag down as far as possible before they get pulled back.  Hilarious!

The Wrecking Ball:

They stand on pedestals and try to knock each other off with an inflatable wrecking ball (SO HILARIOUSLY hard just to stand up on the pedestal!)

The Fly Wall:

Pretty sure you've all seen this one before.  Way harder to do than it seems!


In addition to the inflatable games, I had a midway with carnival games.

Are you for real not going to let me rotate that, Blogger?  Well FINE, but I want everyone to know it's your fault.

I bought a bottle toss game and a tic-tac-toe game from Oriental Trading.  They were both way harder than they looked!  I also created a game called "Twilight Toss" where the teens threw suction cup balls at cardboard standups of Jacob and Edward.  They LOVED it, because they HATE Twilight!

When I was looking into renting carnival games (Don't do it!  Around here they were asking about $60 bucks for one evening.  You can make it yourself with a roll of red and white striped tablecloth and cheap stuff, and then you have it forever), I saw a PLINKO board and was immediately smitten.  I looked around the internets to see if I could find instructions to make one. I found them, but it was a little beyond my abilities.  I emailed our amazing facilities guy, and not only was he happy to make me one, he suggested improvements to the plans I sent him.  Mega thanks to Phil!

We plan on using this for all sorts of things at the library.  Can't decide where to go for lunch? LET PLINKO DECIDE!

They won candy and tickets by playing these games.

The tickets were entries into prize drawings. I had some leftover gift cards, and I gave them away this way.  The more they participated in the activities, the more chances they had to win Minecraft accounts and Barnes and Noble/Game Stop cards! It was a great incentive for them to keep playing the games, though they loved them anyway.

I also had a couple of games going upstairs--because I really think it's best to have A LOT going on at an event like this where there will be more than 100 teens in the building.  I bought giant inflatable bowling from OT, and made giant Jenga from the cardboard boxes some of our kid's SRP prizes had come in.

There were also a scavenger hunt, tarot readings, and I had Sing Star and Just Dance set up in our conference rooms.  Because I have a lot of friends who are involved in the circus arts, I hired a few to wander around juggling, making balloon animals, and just generally goofing off to create some atmosphere.  Anthony always had a crowd of girls around him, I can't imagine why!

Around 8PM anyone who wanted played a game of Sardines.   Toward the end of the evening I did the prize drawings, and then sent everyone home!  It was a great success, and I think we had about 140 attend this year.  A smaller crowd than last year (216!), but I think the Hunger Games theme drew in a LOT of teens.  I always want my programs to grow every year, but I'll be honest---I was okay with a smaller crowd!

The party went from 6 (closing time) until 9, and the library was closed to the general public.  I do not allow parents to attend teen events, but I had LOTS of adult volunteers--Staff members and friends of mine.  It all went very smoothly, no problems at all.

I have no idea what I'm going to do next year to top it!

Minecraft Crafts

For the kids and teens of my area, Minecraft isn't just a videogame it's a way of life.  So this newsletter cycle I did Minecraft Crafts for teens, and because I'm nice I repeated the program for kids in third through fifth grades. 

There are tons of papercraft templates online, I trust you can google those yourself.  I had the inspired thought to also make awesome stuff out of Perler beads---those little beads you stick on a plastic template and then iron so they melt together.  I had the idea on my own, however it's something LOTS OF PEOPLE are doing.  They turned out great, and both the kids and teens managed to muster up the patience for such a finicky project because they REALLY wanted the resulting product.  I let them turn their creations into pins and keychains if they wanted.  Findings are pretty cheap at craft stores and it made their stuff more useful.  I had a great time at both programs.  I capped attendance at 20 and did it alone, though next time I'll have one of our adult volunteers come help.  I hadn't really considered how busy ironing I would be! 

The Minecraft perler stuff I found online was great but not quite what I needed for a room full of 20 kids/teens, so I made my own.  Feel free to use.  These make a nice size for pins or keychains when they are done. 

Dirt Block, Creeper Face, Pig Face, Wood Block.  Each square is one bead.

Duct Tape

When I presented at MLA last year, my co-presenter and I called it "Beyond Duct Tape: Programming for Today's Teens".   Really though, I have no beef with duct tape.  It remains a staple in my programming wheelhouse--a sentence that I'm not sure makes sense and which also makes me want to slap myself in the face.  ANYWAY!

I've found that teens need a lot more instruction than you would expect them to.  I always hope that they will just play and create and end up with awesome stuff, but their imaginations just don't seem to go that way.  I usually provide them with samples and instructions for roses and wallets, and this time around I had put in the newsletter that they could bring a t-shirt if they wanted to make a t-shirt bag.

While we did have a couple of reluctant ladies who I don't think ended up making anything other than a bit of a mess, most of the teens came well prepared this time around.  I'd only allocated an hour--next time I'll make it two.  They weren't ready to leave!  I let them stay over for about half an hour, but I had tickets to that night's Tiger's game so I had to kick them out eventually.

Lots of the instructions that I have used before haven't been detailed enough for teens who haven't done these kinds of projects before, so I drew my own.  Please admire my awesome skillz!

Oh lordy it's June

Our local high schools are having finals right now.  Because we were so packed during midterm exams, I decided to throw a study hall.  We started yesterday, and I estimate we had a total of 25-30 teens make use of it, the most at one time was about 15.  Not too shabby, though I'm hoping for more today and tomorrow!

It's easy enough to do--I just booked our auditorium for Thursday-Tuesday, and had all the round tables set up.  I borrowed the laptops that our ANF department uses for computer classes and set them up, and had the IT department set up a printer so that I can offer free printing!  I filled a table with supplies that I thought they might need--paperclips, staplers, tape, markers, pencils and pens, scrap paper, rulers.  I bought Doritos, Cheetos, and pop in bulk (and some other snacks) and put them out on a counter (all free for studying teens!).  Tomorrow I'm coming in and doing nothing but Study Hall all day, so I'm getting them pizza.  I made sure to notify the schools, and one of them has been in contact with me.  They've been pushing it hard during announcements and that sort of thing.  The kids who came yesterday loved it--I heard a group of boys talking as they left yesterday about how much more they got done than they would have at home. 

Even if the crowd was a little small yesterday, it was made up mostly of teens I've never seen before, which is definitely a success.  I left flyers about summer reading around, and filled the display case across from the auditorium doors with summer reading prizes. 

Such a simple thing to do, yet it has helped our bond with the local schools and general community goodwill.  I had adults popping their heads in to see what was going on and commenting on what a good idea it was.  Yay!

Minecraft 2 --The Plugins Episode

You have a functioning server!  Ain't life grand?  But what about all the fiddly details that will make your server YOURS?  You want PLUGINS, my friend!

As my teens start logging in, I'm sure my needs will change, but I started with a few basics.  Start here to see what's available, http://plugins.bukkit.org/  These are what I'm playing around with now:

Anticheat: http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/anticheat/
Essentials: http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/essentials/
WorldEdit: http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/worldedit/
GroupManager: http://wiki.ess3.net/wiki/Group_Manager
ChestRestock: http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/chestrestock/


To add a plugin, you just download what you want, unzip it if necessary, and put the files into your plugins folder.  Personally, I put the download into my plugin folder and THEN unzip it, but my computer programmer boyfriend had a heart attack when I did that---though he couldn't give me a good reason why NOT to, so nyah nyah.

Here's my plugin folder after adding Essentials and Anticheat

Easy!  Try logging in now and then to make sure nothing has gone wonky.  There's nothing worse than having something go wonky and not knowing WHICH of the many things you just did has caused the problem!

Another important thing:  Make sure you have given yourself permission to use the things you're installing.  In the main folder, you'll see a file called "ops".  When you open it, it shows a blank notepad document.  Just type your name, and the names of any other admins in there.  Just make a list, no need for punctuation.  That should make everything work.  To check, get the server running and sign in.  Then try a command.  Wait, you don't know any?  Well then, try this:

type:

/time set night

Did you go from something like this:

 to something like this:

If so, you're golden.

You can read about what those plugins all do at their sites, but here's a rundown:

AntiCheat: keeps teens from being able to use cheats in your server.  Seems like a good idea.


Essentials: gives you lots of handy tools.  I'm still learning to use them, the loooong list of commands is here:http://wiki.ess3.net/wiki/Command_Reference/Perm 


WorldEdit:  Does what it says on the box!  You can get really creative with this, but I've mostly used it to fiddle with the landscape a little to make room for my town. You can easily flatten land, dig big holes, drain ponds, etc.  It takes some time to figure out, and it is possible to make a very wonky world, so PRACTICE this one!


GroupManager: This was the easiest permissions thing I have found.  It allows you to decide who can do what. In my world right now there are two groups: admins (me and my intern) and the default group that all the teens fall into.  GroupManager had things pretty nicely set up already-if the teens decide they need more permissions I think I'll be able to add them, but it gave them reasonable stuff.  They can build and fight, but don't have access to TNT, and only I can change the game mode.


ChestRestock:  This allows you to put items in a chest, and the chest restocks itself through magic.  I like the idea of being able to hide things for the teens to find--this way everyone who finds it gets the prize, and I don't have to worry about restocking it myself. 

That's all I'm using, currently!  I'd love to know if you discover/have heard of interesting plugins.  I saw one that generates a TARDIS, and one that gives you the arena from The Hunger Games!  Lots of cool stuff available!

Trivia!

It's Trivia night!  Last summer I had my first pub-style trivia night at the library and it was super fun--more fun than even the teens who showed up had anticipated.  This newsletter cycle I scheduled 4 different trivia nights--one at each building for teens as well as one for Young Adults (18-29).

Tonight I'll be at our North Branch, and I'm pretty excited about who has signed up.  Many of the teens who normally hang out at Main and South are signed up!  That's definitely a sign of a good program.  Another good sign is when you see teens you've never seen before.  Hopefully that happens, too!  It's snowing pretty hard here this morning though, I hope that it stops and the roads clear up so that everyone can make it.

I assume none of my teens know about this blog, so I'm going to post the questions I wrote here.  There is also a round where I show a famous painting and ask either who painted it or what it's called, and one where I show pictures of famous people and ask the teens to identify them.  Last time I used Kevin Bacon, Jenna Marbles, and our library director for that round.  They didn't know Kevin Bacon or the director, but they knew Jenna Marbles!  This time I chose Hilary Clinton, Psy, and Walt Disney.

Here are the questions! How many can you get right?

Presidents:

1)Which president was the first to be sworn in on live TV? He was the 33^rd president.

2) Which president was the first to have a pet cat in the white house?

3)Who was the FIRST  first lady had both a husband and a son serve as president?

Famous African Americans:

1) This famous man developed 325 different products from peanuts.

2)This woman developed beauty products for African American women, eventually employing as many as 5000.

3) This man was the first African American supreme court justice:

Animal Nicknames:

1)What marine mammal is known as the “Sea Cow”

2)What kind of whale is known as the “Killer Whale”?

3) What is one of the mountain lion's multiple other names?

Vintage TV:

1)Name the three grown men who share a house in the show “Full House”

2)It was recently announced that this 90s show will soon be getting a re-boot revolving around the teenaged daughter of two of the main characters of the original show. What was the original show?

3)Name the show that centers around the patriarch of the Huxtable family.

Pop Culture:

1)How many members are in the band One Direction?

2)What is the first name of the butler in the anime/manga Black Butler?

3) What song is currently #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 list?

Mythology:

1)According to the recently celebrated Chinese New year, we have just entered the year of the what?

2)Name the Egyptian sun god

3) Who is the Norse god of Thunder?

Books:

1)Everyone knows J.K. Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books.  What does the J stand for?

2) Everyone knows J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings books.  What does the J stand for?

3) Everyone knows Lemony Snicket wrote The Series of Unfortunate Events.  But that’s just a pen name.  What is the author’s REAL name?

Quotes:

1) Who said, "It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt"

2)What French Queen allegedly said “Let them eat cake”

3) “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads” comes from what movie?

A gash, a rash, and purple bumps.

Last week had some flops and successes.  The flops were all due to injury or illness--Swing Dancing was cancelled because one instructor was out of town and the other managed to gash/burn his leg with some sort of saw (I have learned not to ask too many questions when it comes to him!).  I was out sick Thursday and Friday--D&D happened Thursday without me, but Friday's Anime Club did not.

Still, not a wasted week.  The teens have come up with their own crazy club, the Extremely Great Club for Geeks.  They created it on their own but I made it an official library program so that I can do my best to find them space to meet so that they don't cause the rest of the librarians and library patrons too much stress.  They are great kids, but when  you've got more than 3 or 4 teens together things tend to get noisy, and there were 20 or so here for the meeting.

I happened to have another program going on on Wednesday night, so I roped them into participating.  One of our youth librarians organized having the library make valentines for patients at a local hospital.  Each branch had a kid's program to make them, and I had a teen program at the main library.  Only about 3 people showed up specifically to make valentines, but when I combined them with the 20 already there it ended up being quite a party.  Two tables full of teenage boys studiously making valentines is maybe one of the cutest things I've ever seen.  I should have taken photos of some of them, but they get nervous when the camera is out!

I hope the Extremely Great Club for Geeks keeps going.  Our Anime Club hasn't been doing so well, I think because of the mix of younger teens and older teens. This summer I'm going to try splitting them up for some programs and seeing how that goes--probably 6th, 7th, and 8th grades together, and high school together.  I don't blame the older teens for not wanting to hang around with the sixth graders, but it's going to make a lot of extra work for me.  Oh well, being extremely busy is one of the joys of teenbrarianship!

Another week of SO MANY PROGRAMS!

The first Monday of every month is the Pizza and Paperbacks meeting at our North Branch.  This month we were discussing The Alchemyst by Michael Scott, a book I hadn't read before selecting it and which I couldn't even slog all the way through.  That's one of the beautiful things about such an informal book club, they're encouraged to hate the book if they hate the book.  They know if they don't finish it for whatever reason they can still come, and they know maybe the next book will be more their style.   A couple of them liked it, but only one said he liked it enough that he would read the next book in the series.

I run this book club VERY casually.  I don't come in with questions prepared, I just start by saying "so, what did you all think?"  and we go wherever the conversation takes us.  Most of them didn't care for this book, and discussing why definitely encourages them to think about things like pacing and writing style.  One things we've noticed as a group is that if an author uses too many exclamation points we tend not to like the book.  Yesterday one of the ladies mentioned that she didn't like the character name "Sophie", and she feels like it's overused in YA books.  So we stopped to investigate why an author might use that name, and looked up what the name means.  Looking up "Sophie" and "Joshua", another main character's name, led us to believe that the names HAD been chosen on purpose.  You don't need to beat them over the head with the idea of symbolism--that one quick moment taught them another place to look for it.

There was a program scheduled for today--Swing Dancing for Young Adults (ages 18-29), but it's been cancelled.  The instructor burned the heck out of his leg somehow.  It's good news for me, because if we were having the program I'd be working 8:30AM-8PM today.  Instead I get to go babysit the cutest baby in the history of babies.

Though it's snowing today there's not enough on the ground for the Snowman Building Contest I'd scheduled for today.  We schedule months in advance, so I picked today just based on the fact that I would be scheduled to work today.  We'll try again in two weeks!  There weren't many people signed up, so I don't know how well it would have gone, but a few of them were unfamiliar names.  I love to see unfamiliar names signed up for things.  I've got a great core group of teens, but I want more!

Yesterday I was off and starting to feel the pressure from all of the things I have going on right now.  A few emails and some quick poster design work and I'm ahead of the game again, though.  Just needed to actually GET those things done instead of putting them off.  I'm running our first ever Battle of the Books, and it starts Monday to coincide with our Winter Reading program.

What's that you say? Isn't Battle of the Books a thing for younger readers, not teens?  Yes, indeed it is.  Now and then I step in and do youth programs when I see a gap in our programming that no one else is willing to fill.  Someone mentioned that we should have a BotB, and I loved the idea, and so it's my project now.  It's for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, so this will be a good way for some future teens to get to know me!

The Secret

By now you might be getting the idea that my secret is hard work and dedication.  That's the only way this works!  You've got to spend time with your local teens, let them get to know and trust you.  You've got to listen to their ideas and try things even when you are pretty sure they aren't going to work.

Today I just have one program--a teen gaming event with a Pokemon theme.  We'll see how it goes.  At my library gaming has really gone out of style, but I usually throw in one or two gaming events in each newsletter cycle just in case.  I've found that having a theme sometimes helps--our last Pokemon day went well, and a Retro Games day went pretty well also.  This newsletter cycle I've got today's event and another one in a couple of months where we're going to break out my new Kinect and play Just Dance.  There's already at least one teen here for the program (it starts at 3, but I'm on desk until 3).  If it's just her and I, we'll eat Doritos and gossip and come up with ideas for EGCG (Extraordinarily Great Club for Geeks) and the afternoon will not be a waste.  Numbers aren't everything--though that's another post for another day.

Hard work, dedication, PROGRAM PROGRAM PROGRAM.  Other than the holiday Monday, this was a pretty normal school week, and I had 6 programs.  Am I so exhausted that I can't WAIT to get home and eat Chinese food while watching The West Wing?  Yes.  Is it worth it? YES.

The Very Busy Spider

I've been trying to update about my programs as they happen, but this week has been super busy.  Monday went well, with about 15 teens coming to hang out and/or play D&D all day.  They actually really buckled down and played--usually there's a fair amount of wandering the library, but it seems that the most serious players were the ones who showed up for the marathon.   I left them in one conference room while I hung out in the other with the ladies, who proposed a new club based on an idea I had a while ago.  They have been discouraged by Anime Club lately, and want something a little broader.  I told them, jokingly, that we should just have a Nerd Club for all nerdy teens to gather and geek out.  They ran with it, and created a FB event for The Especially Great Club for Geeks and gave it the following description:

"This is a club for nerds and geeks of all kinds! Whether you're into anime, comics, video games, or British television; we want you here.
Bring your friends! There will be contests, trivia, and many more fun activities. Yes, there will be food. (Feel free to bring your own beverages and snacks. The more the merrier!)"

The club had their first meeting Wednesday, since I had already booked the auditorium for that evening.  From 4-6 about 20 teens hung out eating chips and playing Apples to Apples while this video played on a loop.  Sometimes the teens really just need a space, and they really will make their own fun.  It's so important to give them some breathing room--many of my programs are pretty unstructured, because I've found that when I expect them to sit down and do something specific they often lose interest pretty quickly. 

I had the auditorium reserved for Wednesday evening because it was supposed to be Young Adult Trivia Night.   I have started doing "Young Adult" programs (for ages 18-29) at the request of the people who USED to be teens but have since grown up.  Unfortunately, they haven't been as popular as I'd have hoped.  I ended up opening trivia night up to all ages, and a lively group of about a dozen teens and young adults had a great time.

TRIVIA NIGHT SPECIFICS:
We play pub style.  Usually 8-10 rounds, with 3 questions in each round.  I ask a question, and they write down the answer on a slip of paper and assign it either 1, 2, or 3 points.  You can only use each point value once per round.  They have the length of one song to answer the question and bring me the paper.  Simple!  I write the questions myself and try to use a wide variety of topics.  It is important that you tell them before you start that they have to put their phones away, or one team will raaaather suspiciously know that the 13th president was Millard Fillmore.

I don't work in the sort of library that closes just because everything else is closed, so I'm at work today.  The schools are closed, though, and so the teens will start rolling in as soon as they wake up.

In anticipation, I reserved two of our meeting rooms--one for a D&D marathon and the other in case some of the other teens want to get a second D&D game going, and if they don't I'll let them use the room as a hub today, a place to hang out and eat pizza and make a little more noise than they could up in our teen room. All it will cost me is pizza money and some of my stockpile of pop and snacks, and will earn me major points both with the teens who need somewhere to go and the other librarians who don't want to have to shush them all day.  It's a win all around.

We're also broadcasting the inauguration in our auditorium, and I can't help but hope that they will head over there and watch a little. 

Anyone reading this probably knows about the financial struggles of libraries and library staff.  I love the system I work for, but we're not immune--we haven't had raises in years, we started having to contribute to our healthcare, and that payroll tax holiday has ended.  I don't grumble too much, but it does mean we're making less and less each year.  We try to keep spirits up around here with jeans days and funny contests.  Today a coworker and I are making everyone participate in settling a long-standing feud between us, and I'm excited both for the inevitable thrill of victory and to have a little something fun going on today.  Details and pictures when she FINALLY GETS HERE.

After a long week, we all need some pizza

It has been a tough week for me, professionally.   I'll skip the details, but you know how a workplace that's mostly women can be super stereotypical sometimes?  Essentially that.

This morning I wasn't looking forward to going to work, even though I had a pretty pleasant day lined up.  I went in a couple of hours late (the teenbrarian always has comp time) and spent the afternoon doing a pretty harsh weed at our smallest branch.  At 4 it was time for my Pizza and Paperbacks book club.

I do this program at both of our branches now, but it started when I was the FT youth librarian at the South branch, where I was today.  It is an idea stolen from an existing youth program---a book club where teens  get a NEW copy of a book TO KEEP so long as they keep showing up on the third Friday of the month to discuss it.  I got a grant to cover the expense of the books and pizza for each meeting for the first few years, this year it's funded by the FotL.  I wasn't sure how it would go over at first, but it turned out that the teens in that area really want exactly this sort of program.  A great group of teens started coming pretty regularly and I have a core group of about 15 or so.  They are a rowdy and diverse group, and we often run over the hour I'd planned by half an hour or more.  A couple of boys in the group liked it so much that they kept coming for the first few months of their first year of college. 

The key thing here is to make it as unlike school as possible.   I go in the room with nothing more than some scrap paper to write down books, websites, and other things that they mention being into.  No list of discussion questions or anything like that.  I start with, "so, what did you think?" and we go from there.  At the first meeting, someone asked if I was going to be picking books from "some list of books teenagers are supposed to read".  My answer was something along the lines of "no way, I'm totally just making you read the books I like!" and that's how it's gone.  We quickly made it through my favorites, and their favorites, and a few books that we went into blindly that none of us had read yet but I'd heard were good.  They almost always all actually read the book, and they aren't afraid to tell me if they hate it.  The best months are always the ones where some LOVED it and some HATED it.  We're all in agreement about one book though: Twilight SUCKED.

Today though,  I just wasn't feeling it.  I was tired and looking forward to the weekend and not in the mood for teenagers.  And then they started to arrive, and the rest of the week lifted off of me and I remembered that no matter what is going on behind the scenes at the library, THIS is what matters.  They loved the book this month, they wanted to tell me about their exams and their excitement about having a half day today, they were excited I got BREADSTICKS with the pizza.  I'm entering year four of this book club, and many of the people who came to the first meeting are still coming.

And now I'm home, ready to unwind from the week with a cup of tea and my cat.  I'm going into it from a place of happiness and satisfaction though, instead of one of exhaustion and grump.

*****
This is an expensive program, to be sure, but for the first three years I was lucky enough to get a grant from Walmart which pretty much completely covered it.  If you haven't tried to get a grant from them before, I suggest you do!  The process has gotten much easier, it is now completely online.  This year they turned me down, but I think it's probably just because I'd already gotten it 3 years in a row.  I will try again next year!

Off the top of my head, for those who may be interested, here are some of the books we have read over the past several years:

Divergent (that was the one we discussed today!)
The Hunger Games
The Monstrumologist
Speak
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian
Paper Towns
An Abundance of Katherines
Will Grayson Will Grayson
Looking for Alaska
Shine
The Glassmaker's Daughter (we managed an author visit for this one!)
Stuck in Neutral (with phone visit with Terry Trueman!)
Graceling
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
The Merchant of Death
The Mysterious Benedict Society
This Dark Endeavor
Ender's Game
City of Bones
Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
Coraline (the graphic novel)
Hate List
If I Stay

Dungeons & Dragons & Donuts

There's a teen program happening in the library RIGHT NOW and I'm not even in the room.  Does the idea terrify you?  A couple of years ago I wouldn't have entertained the thought, but it turns out that if you give a few of your problem teens some real responsibilities that a lot of you behavior issues vanish.

I stole the idea of having a D&D night from fellow local teenbrarian and good friend Kricket (my co-presenter at the conference a few months ago and usual travel companion for TCAF).  I scheduled a once-a-month night and roped a couple of my older teens into being DMs.  I went to the first meeting and made a character, figuring that if it was a small group I might need to play.  By the next meeting they were over a dozen strong, had split into two different games, and wanted to meet EVERY Thursday, not just once a month.

There have been a few bumps--one of my DMs got a job and a girlfriend and his game-the one all of the older teens played-had a dramatic falling out.  But the younger teens stayed, and their game has continued to grow under the leadership of a teen who is a conspiracy theorist and thus would rather I not share his name.

The problem with their desire to meet so often is that I simply cannot be in the room with them every Thursday night for 3 hours.  And so while I am at the reference desk they are tucked away in our activity room with the knowledge that so long as I can't hear them they are free to swear and play a violently gory game of D&D.  I stick my head in now and then to make sure everyone is literally alive (though often their characters are not) and nobody's upset.  Generally they are just fine, munching away on donuts and slaying dragons.  Their parents couldn't be happier.  In some cases some VERY awkward boys have just found the group of friends they've always wanted, and I suspect these guys (and a few girls!) will be around the library for years to come.

I am so, so happy I didn't have to continue to play after that first meeting.  I sometimes snag a donut though.