In honor of Teen Tech Week, a national initiative, St. Charles libraries geared up last week to get area youth excited about technology.
The focus of the week is to ensure that teens are competent and ethical users of technology, especially the types offered through the libraries and social media sites.
Libraries around the parish offered special classes, like an eReader day at East Regional Library and a Pinterest workshop at the Norco branch. The week culminated with an iPad 2 giveaway.
Amy Boling, young adult librarian, said that the Pinterest workshop grew such a large crowd that the youth services staff will be teaching how to use Pinterest at their next group meeting so that the workshop can be repeated.
“Developing technological literacy is very important for young people,” Boling said. “Libraries are trusted places where this kind of learning happens in a fun way.
According to a 2011 study pay the Pew Internet and American Life Project, “95 percent of all teens ages 12-17 are now online and 80 percent of those online teens are users of social media sites.”
On display during the week-long event was vintage technology lent by library staff members. Some items on display to celebrate the evolution of technology included 8mm movie cameras and projectors, still cameras like Polaroids, a reel-to-reel player, casette players, turntables with vinyl, slide projectors, typewriters, and items from the 1980s and 90s, such as VHS recorders and older cell phones.
“It’s a lot of fun seeing younger patrons run up to the display case, peer in and excitedly try to name the objects,” Boling said.
Even though Teen Tech Week is over, the library still has great opportunities for kids to learn about and use technology. Laptops can be checked out at some locations and eBooks are already available online. Boling said the libraries may consider adding eReaders to their catalog soon. The branches also offer an onling tutoring service and other electronic resources for homework help. Robin Bourgeois, a technology trainer at the library, is also developing a hands-on workshop featuring applications for mobile devices and how to download eBooks from the library onto an eReader.
Times and locations for the libraries’ teen programs can be found at www.myscpl.org/teens.
Be the first to comment