Observe, Analyze... Blog: Awesome Articles from SLJ August 2013

The School Library Journal is great for keeping up to date on Digital Literacy and Digital Citizenship resources. Helpful not only for the teacher of young students, but for the seniors and adult students who are new to using computers and learning to be Internet savvy. Some sites recommended by Richard Byrne:

Admongo.gov - game and curriculum to teach the difference between content and advertising on the Internet. (currently down due to 2013 Fed Gov't Shutdown) Looking forward to reviewing the site for my seniors (and other adults) in computers classes.
TeachingCopyright.org - these look like hardcore, one hour long lessions (a series of 6 or more), comes with assessments, too! I don't know that I'll use these in my classes, but they'd be useful for me to be aware of them and even to watch to update my knowledge.
There's the obligatory reminder about using Google Alerts to track mentions of you on the web and via social media.
There's a fee based resource called CommonCraft.com which has net safety videos teaching about phishing scams and viruses. I watched one and they're cutesy, but I started to phase out b/c of the type animation (watched the Secure Passwords one) used. Still, very simple, so you can focus on the concept.

Advocacy at all times can be made manageable with a calendar based plan of action. Carolyn Foote's brief article notes thinking about your audience (Teens, Parents, Administrators), thinking about the mode of communication the audience prefers (Twitter, Facebook, text vs. video), and thinking about how often the audience would want to hear from you/ receive updates (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly?). She suggests timing advocacy with library or community related events around the year. For instance, the beginning of the year many hispanohablantes in my community begin ESL classes at the local church. I could time outreach with this, or send flyers to be passed out to encourage ESL learners to find additional resources at the library. Foote also supplies a sample advocacy calendar with suggested resources, for example:

Create a (vimeo) video to welcome the target audience to the library - pass out as a DVD to be shown at the ESL and citizenship classes if Internet is not available.
Create a resource of essential library tools that the target audience would find interesting (this is intended to be a curated list) using any resource like:

a wiki,
Libguides,
MentorMob for Educators (I like the layout of this site, but am wondering if it is free and sustainable. I don't think it would work for big lists, but if the idea is to create a short step by step intro to vital library resources in a visual way, this has a nice interface. At the same time, it isn't really that different from Pinterest)

Explain online stuff via screencasts. The Explain Everything app is recommended and looks very interesting, but with a perhaps small learning curve. (for android and Mac)
Invite interactivity - Foote suggests using Animoto, an online service to make a video (as opposed to having video editing software such as iMovie or After Effects) to have the audience talk about their favorite resources or provide feedback- note, you still have to have a (video) camera of some sort (such as that provided on a smart phone) in order to have either moving or still images.
There were lots more suggestions for interacting with parents and administrators, so if your primary target is one thing, then you can keep your secondary audience informed via specifically designed communication. (I've recently been given a new job assignment and I'd love to use one of these tools to create a "if I were allowed free reign w/in reason" way to go about my job. I may just do so, simply for the experience.)
Foote ends with a reminder about assessment to evaluate the effectiveness of your tools and help you to decide whether it is worth your continued efforts.

Nell Colburn offers some great "best practices" for storytime in her article on page 30. My favorites include "speaking directly to adults" to reinforce the literacy elements that storytime supports (such as singing and rhyming help kids learn sounds) while also engaging adults as participants. "Establishing expectations" can help kids and adults know what behaviors are appropriate (I should have used that in my summer experience), and "having a selection of resources" on hand for both children and adults to browse through which support the theme or literacy element make it easy for everyone to take something home. Just three of the ten jewels Colburn offers.

Finally there was an article by Chad Sansing on the Raspberry Pi, which is a $25 computer preloaded with Linux that is cheap enough to let the kids experiment with computer hacking without worrying about breaking an expensive hard drive. You still have to supply the monitor, mouse and keyboard, but if you already have those things lying around, you're golden.You can pre-order a kit from Adafruit or other sites and start engaging in physical computing (essentially writing code that then makes physical items do things. Why? Because you can!). Resources in the article are: