Tales from a Loud Librarian

I think that this year's events for Teen TECH Week (TTW) were more successful than any other year. Not sure why, but I tried to simplify which made my life easier. Since the kids seemed to enjoy the daily activities, I am thinking that my plan worked. I designed one lunch time activity each day, and I sent out a research riddle by email each day. One of our TTW traditions is to show the animated shorts that are nominated for an Academy Award. I started this a few years ago because TTW fell about the same time as the awards, so there is always some buzz in the media about the shorts. This is an easy activity to plan, and all I need is the movies and popcorn. I usually start the week off with the movie.  On the second day of TTW, the students put on their engineering hats to design towers made from marshmallows and toothpicks. I was really hoping that the students would be inspired by the books that I had available, but none of the books enticed them. I am sorry about th...

Prizes for the game I have several posts to make about a recent author visit and all of our activities for Teen TECH Week 15 (TTW15) . Those posts will get written, but I really want to get the explanation of the activity that we did on Thursday for TTW15 posted first. This is the story of how it all started.  Members of the National Honor Society (NHS) were going to help with the Key Club's family night. I am the faculty adviser for NHS, and the students and I were going to create a photo scavenger hunt using phones or another device with a camera. Initially, this group was going to run a game where players would be given a list of photos to take at the event. Once all the photos were taken, the players would come back and get a prize. In the end, it turned out that the Key Club was going to plan all the games and activities, and the members of NHS would help run those games. That was the end of the phone scavenger hunt for NHS. When I was planning for TTW...

Spring is upon us in southern Louisiana, and the azaleas are blooming. All this means that it must be time for YALSA's annual event to celebrate technology in the library. By this time in the school year, I am swamped in the library, and I look for ways to simplify my life. I still wanted to celebrate Teen TECH Week, so I needed to plan it all out in just a couple of days because I ran out of time (usually I plan weeks in advance) and I needed it to be easy to administer without a lot of help. We always do a set of research riddles sent via email that students must answer daily to receive a small prize, I used old questions from Google-a-day for the riddles. I found these questions in a lesson plan format from Google with hints which I am giving to the students because I think that many of them could use guidance on good search techniques. I devised one activity for each day that I could design and implement quickly. Putting on weekly events like this always take a lot of tim...