YA helping Aged People

The March/April 2012 issue of Technology Review includes an article, Too Young to Fail, with a photo of Laura Deming who enrolled at MIT at age 14, to start her own business. Too Young to Fail describes Laura as a teen who won a $100,000 award to explore the "science of extending human life span, an idea she hopes to turn into business."

We see more teenagers getting involved in big ideas. Another example has been FaceBook's CEO Mark Zuckerman who eyes new talented teen programmers. The same goes on in other Silicon Valley startups where high risk is encouraged and highly awarded.

So this post is not about low achievers or even average high school students, it is about teens prodigies who are smart, curious, willing to take high risk, and sometimes fail.

Here's the piece on Killing creativity: Why kids draw pictures of monsters and adults don't. It is all about imagination and kids' attitude to explore, to fail without being punished, to experiment, and imagine. Powerful qualities of good artists.

El Sistema "transforms" kids from poverty to high achievers

On Friday's NewsHour (February 24, 2012), education correspondent John Merrow reported on how an adaptation of a music program from Venezuela is playing out in the United States. Venezuela's national youth music program "El Sistema" has produced professional musicians, such as Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel. The American version of El Sistema is Harmony Program. Its director Anne Fitzgibbon discusses the "transformative power of music" which transforms KIDS from poor neighborhoods and homelessness into high achieving orchestra players.

This is what they learn in this learning, welcoming, and supporting environment.

They learn:

to listen to one another

to share in a collaborative manner

to collaborate with many diverse players, instruments

to follow directions from music teachers and conductors

to read music scores

to learn about music pieces, composers, instruments

to be disciplined and practice daily for several hours

to be creative young musicians

to be dependable, reliable, and rely on others

to love what they do

to perform on stages at worldwide music halls

I could do forever and make 100 bullets but the point is clear. By the way, the kids are given free music instruments, scores, and other materials necessary to play in the youth orchestra. Isn't this similar to what we are trying to do in school libraries?

It is all about the kids and music making !

Great stories.

ADOLESCENCE: SOME DIFFICULT ISSUES

Besides the literary genres on just about any topic of importance to teens, some stand out and should be an important part of reader's advisory programs. You may start off with a general portal, Children Now.

Drugs, alcohol, substance abuse

toxicology and overdose

tobacco use

Health and mental health

mood and anxiety disorders

attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder

nutrition and eating disorders

allergies and asthma

adolescent pregnancy and parenting

Poverty

Sexual behavior and abuse

contraception

sexually transmitted infections

sexual assault

pregnant teens

Cyberbullying

Violence and gangs

accidents (49%)

homicide (15%)

CDC Control and Prevention: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance--US

National Vital Statistics--US

GENRES in Young Adult (YA) Works

There are many classifications and definitions of YA literature.

Literary Genres K-12 developed by the California Department of Education lists and defines each genre.

Also see award winning books.

There are stories about:

Adventures

Animal characters

Bullying, teasing, ignoring

Fairy Tales see discussion below

Folklore, mythology (electronic folklore and mythology e-texts)

Family relationships, Romantic relationships

Famous people, little people

Foreign Cultures

Moral issues

Old times and various places

Professions, hobbies (sports, arts, science, knitting)

Portraits of American Women Writers compiles a unique gallery of American Women Writers that appeared in print before 1861, by the Library Company of Philadelphia, founded by B. Franklin in 1731.

African American women writers

American Women Writers as well as Society for the Study of AWW

Fairy Tales, according to Propp (1970), are built on the following sequence of functions:

Preparation -- the hero violates the rule

Complications -- the hero is approached with a request

Transference -- the hero leaves home; is tested or attacked

Struggle -- the hero and the villain join in direct combat

Return -- the hero returns

Recognition -- the true hero is recognized

Take any well known story (e.g., Anne of Green Gables, Charlotte's web, Peter Rabbit, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Three Little Pigs, The Frog Prince, and on and on) and run the Propp's sequence.

It doesn't have to be a fairy tale !

An example: The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier.

Preparation: the hero is Jerry Renault

Complication: Jerry is approached by the Vigils (Archie Costello, Leon)

Transference: Jerry is harassed, bullied, locker vandalized

Struggle: A boxing match between Jerry and Emile (Jerry is badly beaten)

etc.

Some well represented names include:

Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973)

Willa Cather (1876-1947)

Kate Chopin (1851-1904)

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Edna Ferber (1885-1968)
M.F.K. Fisher (1908-1992)

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865)

Nadine Gordimer (1923

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929

Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

Zora Neale Hurston (1901-1960)

Anais Nin (1903-1977)

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Jean Rhys (1894-1979)

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

Kathryn Stockett

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

Eudora Welty (1909

Edith Wharton (1862-1937)

Explore Feminism in literature, Chicana feminism, and antiwar protest.

Visit Book Awards including the Michael Printz Awards, sponsored by Booklist as well as the 2012 Fabulous Films for Young Adults

Young Adults: A DEFINITION

There are many definitions of Young Adults (YA). The one often used defines adolescents or young adults as follows:

"Adolescence is the period of transition from childhood to early adulthood, entered at approximately 11-13 year of age and ending at 18-21 year of age -- the exact time, period, however, depending on such diverse factors as the surrounding culture and biological development."

J.W. Santrock. (1981). Adolescence: An introduction.

YA is inherently stressful for numerous internal and external reasons. Many of these were studied and reported in the early adolescent literature.

Especially stressful relationship is the one that exists between parents and their teens.

Internally, they are changing biologically, socially, emotionally, behaviorally; teens search an identity and voice, independence, care about appearance and sexuality issues.

Externally, teens are affected by family (and transformation of family patterns), peer pressure, school culture of bullying and teasing (if you have not read The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, you must).

Additionally, teens are also affected by mass media, popular culture, and Internet.

The 2012 QuickPicks for reluctant young readers suggest books that teens, ages 12-18, will pick up on their own and read for pleasure; it is geared to the teenager who, for whatever reason, does not like to read. The 2012 list features 117 titles.

WHAT are the (YA) READERS LIKE?

-- from an early version of "Letting students use Web 2.0 tools to hook one another on reading." Knowledge Quest, 40(3):36-39, Jan/Feb 2012.

What are the readers like in terms of

§ Comfort zone for mobile technologies

§ Preferences for literary genres

§ Reasons for reading

Eighty-four seventh graders, enrolled in the Digital Media Literacy (DML) class during 2009, provided the initial participants pool. We made sure that participation was entirely voluntary and that grades would not depend in any way on their participation in the Program. No identifiers were used to associate students’ responses with their names. Students who expressed interest to participate were asked to complete a one-page questionnaire on their use of mobile devices (e.g., cell phones, smartphones, iPods), and Social Networking Services (e.g., blogs, Instant Messaging, FaceBook, Twitter). Upon reviewing students’ responses, a blog was created and posted throughout the School. From their early comments, the students were excited that they would be reading what they wanted and leading the Project themselves.

These data were triangulated with observations of students’ reading patterns in their library, and what transpired during focus group discussions among students, teachers, librarians and administrators. One of the questions in the group discussion was to elicit students’ answers to an open-ended question, “I read because…”. Students encouraged library staff to expand “reading for pleasure” collections into different genres, expressions, and media. For example, some of the students who were accomplished musicians wanted more CDs and DVDs. Since the conversations were kept informal and were not linked to required readings, students felt welcomed to discuss and share their insights. They also felt important to be heard about their reading preference.

Students’ responses from focus group discussions revealed that students read a lot and especially when reading was voluntary, when they were in charge, when they could read when they wanted to, and under minimal guidance. As predicted, among the most widely given purposes for reading among middle school students was reading for assigned projects, finding factual information, and for glancing over current events. For most of these readings, students are required to include specific types of sources (e.g., encyclopedia(s), books, journal articles, visuals, primary sources, RSS news feeds). Finding information on fashion, popular culture, places, and consumer goods was the predominant category of students’ self-motivated reading (e.g., Google, FaceBook, YouTube). Several students made connections between reading and writing, and wanting to have different expressions based on the same work. Finding the voice that students could identify with was the most often given as a response to “I read because…”. Students seek similarities with their own issues (perceptions others have formed about them, about bullying, fitting in, and teasing), family conditions, sexual orientation, self-esteem, health specific problems, racial, language or cultural characteristics. One student was determined to become a famous scientist; she read everything on Marie Curie (Nobel Prize in 1911). Others were seeking information about famous people and celebrities they aspire to become. Some students wanted to read about “little people that you never ever get to meet or see.” Students wanted to read more about living in multi-racial, unconventional or dysfunctional families, and about coping with various chronic diseases and pressures. Several students connected reading with writing because they wanted “to improve,” communicate better, and express thoughts more clearly. Reading was mentioned to experience something that “is very different from my family;” to develop a relationship (e.g., friendship), a particular mood (e.g., forgiveness). One student said that reading helped “to get an idea, insight and to be a part of something that wouldn’t be possible without reading experience.” The purpose of reading, for a few students, was to help organize thoughts and to put in order certain events.

DIGITAL IMAGE TAGGING (SLW Jan 2012)

Digital image tagging: A case study with seventh grade students

School Libraries Worldwide, 18(1):97-110 (Jan 2012).

Zorana Ercegovac

ABSTRACT

Results of this exploratory study are of analytical and educational importance. Analytically, the study was designed to gauge middle school students’ capacity to describe digital expressional images. When describing the image attributes, students (N=81) used freely chosen single words, multi-word phrases, interpretations, feelings, and questions evoked by the images. These were used to derive conceptual categories for the seventeen digital images from two open source digital libraries. Educationally, the study demonstrated to the students the responsibility indexers have in their choice of index terms they assign to objects in collections for the purposes of identification, organization and retrieval. The study sheds light on the potential to improve age-appropriate access to images by means of offering a multi-tiered approach to image representation. It also introduces a transparent approach to teaching information literacy concepts through creative thinking about the meaning of resources and their relationship in a broader information cycle context.