Tag Archives: student engagement

General, Public, School Media Specialist

Pokeman Go and Libraries

Gameplay_of_Pokemon_Go
By Sadie Hernandez [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The odds are pretty good that this past summer you witnessed (or participated in!) the craze of Pokemon Go. The free app took off with incredible popularity, and had people of all ages wandering their communities in search of Pokemon. (Personally, I’ve never played, but while visiting a friend, I heard all about Pokestops, the frustration of running out of Pokeballs, and the excitement of catching a water Pokemon). Luckily, while people were out and about in search of Pokemon, their quest often brought them to their local library!

In this blog post from ALSC, librarian Sarah Bean Thompson does a great job of explaining the logical partnership of libraries with Pokemon Go. The author shares how libraries can use the popularity of the game to get more people to come to the library, especially since so many libraries are already Pokestops. Her library offered a “life size game day” and featured activities like decorating Pokeballs and having players share on wall displays what Pokemons they have caught at the library. Library staff also used that time to promote their summer reading program.

Thompson has written another article that mentions several other libraries that have incorporated programs like “Pokemon Go Safaris” and activities like Pokemon trail walks, all taking place under adult supervision. Within this same article, she describes an additional advantage of the collaboration between Pokemon Go and libraries, which is the opportunity it offers to  families to learn about digital citizenship and online safety.

 

 

General, Public, School Media Specialist

Library Girl shares six tips for meaningful book displays

libgirlupandawaywIf you attended the Fall ITEM Conference, you still have a mental image of Jennifer Lagarde, AKA Library Girl! With her red glasses and upbeat content delivery, she exuded energy and wisdom. What I found most appealing about her was her acceptance of the fact that she (and we) should be continually evolving. If we ever get to a point of feeling we know everything we need to know, it is probably time for a new job. This just isn’t the way this dynamic world works anymore!

True to form, Library Girl hearkens back to earlier book displays she had done earlier in her career, and reflects that while they may have been works of art, it is possible that they missed the mark. Do your book displays show what you value and the purpose of your work with the end user? And, do you use your book displays to connect with your end user? If not, you may be missing out!

Take a moment to review Library Girls six tips for great book displays!

Adventures of Library Girl by Jennifer LaGarde is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

 

 

 

Academic, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

A Guide to Digital Scavenger Hunts

Image by Anna-Stina. Retrieved from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons' licensing.
Image by Anna-Stina. Retrieved from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons’ licensing.

According to the folks at Edudemic, “a high quality hunt should have the goal of inspiring learning, creative thinking, reasoning, and qualitative assessment.” Student engagement and active learning are the big goals too.  Sounds very much like information literacy to me and lots of fun too. In an effort to get your scavenger hunt jump-started, this guide offers  a few useful tech tools that might be of use. They range from devices to apps to other blog posts on the subject. Read the Edudemic blog post to link to lesson plans and simple ideas to further explore this fascinating idea. If you develop a digital scavenger hunt, we’d love to hear about it and share with our readers…..let us know at cmle@stcloudstate.edu and thanks for sharing!