Katie's Library Blog

 It's undeniable today that social media plays an integral part in children's lives, both inside the library and out. However, it's important to remember that it wasn't always this way; with the advent of the internet and smartphones, social media use in children has been on a steady increase. This article from the Pew Research Center  breaks down usage by most popular social media apps today. To me, one of the most surprising results is YouTube and TikTok's breakthrough spike in usage; from the infographic shown, it seems that it wasn't even on the radar of children's usage back in 2014-15. Today, however, they are the most used social media apps by children (with Youtube used by 95% of teens and TikTok by 67%). I'm not surprised that TikTok has grown in popularity, considering that the app didn't launch internationally until mid-2017 . However, YouTube has been around long before Pew's initial survey in 2014 and 2015. Perhaps YouTube was previo...

 The idea of our online presence being permanent, like a tattoo, is daunting but very, very real, especially with the advent of technologies such as the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine . This free service takes "snapshots" of webpages in different points in the Internet's history, so even if you think something online has been deleted or modified, a record of it still exists through archives similar to this. Once you share something online, theoretically anyone could access, save, and re-upload it elsewhere, so there's really no sense of privacy or security online. The general rule to posting online I've followed for the past few years is: if your name can be associated with it, you should expect anyone and everyone to view it. It's the advent of the Internet but also its disadvantage: it links you with potentially anyone in the world, for good or for bad. With this in mind, I decided to perform a data mine to see how much personal information is out th...

 Professional Learning Networks, or PLNs, are a great way for educational and library professionals to create their own community of learning and interaction that aligns with their career needs. Any field can benefit greatly from use of a PLN, as it empowers one to take control of the learning in their career that they'd like to see. In personal experience, I've used social networking tools such as email lists to connect with other librarians in career or work related issues. A recent example of this is my reaching out to other programming librarians in the area to see which outside performers are good to hire for youth programs, and if there are any that someone could recommend. Without this network of fellow librarians, the job of finding performers for our next programming slate would have been far more difficult! In an effort to create a more robust PLN for myself, I started a Twitter account ( @librarykatie123 ). My hope with this was that I could find other librarians to ...

 Earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to host a group of deaf students at my library for a storytime and activity hour. The group was from the special education unit in a nearby school district. Initially, my only involvement in these programs was to set up a meeting room for them, pull some picture books and conduct a tour later. Although we had gone over accessibility issues over email prior to the visit, I initially didn't think there would be many barriers to the students that came to the library. However, the more I interacted with the group, the more I realized that there were barriers to their library experience--and learning experience--that were only obvious once I interacted with them. Each student attending required their own aide, and when requesting materials or asking directions, they often communicated with me through that aide. Without them, my communication with the students would have been strained. Though I had tried my best to make the library accessible, ...

As a youth librarian in a public library, I work closely with tweens and teens and often see them in a more "natural" environment than other adults in their life--say, parents or teachers--usually would. Our teens generally view the library as a place of leisure rather than education, so that type of environment naturally elicits a different response from them. After school, I often see teens engaging, either independently or in groups, with social media apps such as TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram, video game systems, and--believe it or not--schoolwork! The school district our kids are zoned for distributes an iPad to each student, so occasionally we will see someone pull theirs out to work on classwork after school. At the same time, I'm also in the unique situation of having more frequent exposure with parents and caregivers of these children. Parents often come into the library to pick their child up, or accompany them to pick out books or attend programs. As librarians...

 This week, I took a look at several active learning techniques that can be used in the classroom to engage students in their material. The one that stood out to me the most was the "memoir in six words" activity that students used to summarize their year. Included in the blog post referenced is a slide show of memoirs from students in various grades. Students grades 1 through 6 were asked to reflect on their school year and summarize within a six-word sentence, as well as create a visual aid in the form of a Powerpoint slide to supplement that memoir. The results were widely varied and extremely interesting, with students mixing their own interests in with their own perspective on the school year. I then created a Jamboard slide to display my thoughts. Image source: Jamboard/author To start, I thought this was a great exercise to get kids thinking about what they experienced and learned in the past school year. Often times, students and teachers alike are rushing to finish...