Urban Legends

On Wednesday, 10 people showed up for our after-school urban legends day.  Urban legends are stories that get passed around by people that are false or only partially true.  Sometimes a person will tell a story that happened to "a friend of my mom's" or "a girl down the street."  Other times, you hear a story in an email or text, or read something in a Facebook or Twitter post.  You should always be sceptical, because they're often urban legends!  If you want to know if a story you heard is real or fake, check out http://www.snopes.com/.  Another great way to tell is to try to find newspaper articles or news stories that back up the claim. 

At the program, we talked about urban legends we had heard, took a quiz, watched a few segments from Mythbusters, and wrote our own urban legends.  Each urban legend was created by randomly drawing a perpitrator, a victim, a location, and an object and weaving them into a story.  Here are a few of our own urban legends:

Urban Legend #1 by Kaitlyn and Alyssa
OK, oh my God, I read this crazy story in Seventeen magazine.  There was this really nice teacher/professor lady walking around the mall with her two-year-old toddler, shopping for a Christmas outfit.  And they were all minding their own business and stuff, right?  And then some crazy dangerous escaped criminal came up behind them, pointed a gun at the lady's head, and stole her kid's lollipop!  Then he, like, ran away!  The store clerk call the cops and they arrested him in the next town.  Turns out he was a serial lollipop stealer!  Insane, right?  But totally true.

Urban Legend #2 by Billy and Ashton
A pizza delivery guy stopped by a store to deliver a pizza and soda to Mark, a store clerk.  Mark went out to pay the pizza guy.  As the pizza guy drove away, Mark dropped the can of soda in the road.  The wheel of the pizza van drove right over the soda and the pressure made the can shoot right into Mark's head!  He was in a coma for six months and has a permanent indentation of a soda can on his forhead.  True story!

Urban Legend #3 by Taliah, Janae, and Blya
This really happened to my friend's cousin!  One day this innocent child was in a pet store and a nerdy computer whiz came in.  Since he was a nerd, he had a mini-stapler in his pocket.  It fell out of his pocket just as a dog escaped from its cage.  The dog thought it was a bone and picked it up with its mouth!  It ran over to the child while biting the stapler, and the dog accidentally stapled the child's ankle!! 

TTW Site of the Day: Wayback Machine

March 6 to 12 is Teen Tech Week!

Today, have fun with the Wayback Machine.  This is an internet archive that documents how websites have changed over the years.  Just put in your favorite link, then click on a year and a date to see what it looked like back then.  It's really funny to do with sites that have been around for a long time.  Try it for Google or Yahoo, or enter the website for a product like Pepsi or Coke.

TTW Site of the Day: Science of Music

March 6 to 12 is Teen Tech Week!

Today, mess around with music and rhythm at the funky online exhibit Science of Music. My favorite activity is the Step Re-mix, where you can create your own composition by clicking and dragging step dance video clips!

TTW Site of the Day: The Mint

March 6 to 12 is Teen Tech Week!

Today, learn how to manage your money at The Mint.  Whether you're just thinking about buying some new clothes or video games, looking for a summer job, or trying to figure out how to pay for college, money matters!  You may not have a lot of money, but it is still good to think about how you use it.

TTW Site of the Day: Youthink!

March 6 to 12 is Teen Tech Week!

Today, take a look at Youthink! You are the present. You are inheriting the future. Use Youthink! to figure out what you can do to make your community and this world a better place.  Tell them what it's like to be a young person of your heritage, comment on any of the issues they cover, or post your comments on the Youthink! blog.

TTW Site of the Day: FreshBrain

March 6 to 12 is Teen Tech Week!

Today, check out FreshBrain.  Learn how to build the next big phone app or just make a funny music mashup.  FreshBrain is an amazing website for teens that gives you ideas for tech activities and projects, then teaches you how to use the tools to make them happen! 

Recommended Reading

No matter how much you read, there are some great books you just miss. Maybe you tend to read in one genre, or read a lot of series and sequels, or read what your friends are reading. Winter is a great time to get out of your reading rut, so here are some recommendations for recent teen books:

Amazon.com's Top 10 Books for Teens
These are their editors' 10 picks for best books of 2009 for teens. Their number one choice is the newly-published Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.

2009 Teens' Top Ten
An online vote by teens during Teen Read Week helps YALSA narrow down a list of books from 2008 and 2009. Paper Towns by John Green came in first this year!

Reading Rants 2009 Top Ten
Reading Rants is a great teen book review site that features quirky book lists. The site's author put up her "from-the-gut" 2009 list last week, and it has several unique recommendations.

Gift Books 2009 Part One
Gift Books 2009 Part Two
These teen gift recommendations from librarians in Seattle, but I like the variety of books they suggested. Their list includes a few of the year's best graphic novels, too!

Test Your Driving Distraction

All drivers are guilty of some level of distracted driving, whether it's eating fast food or talking to their passengers. Anyway, since the invention of cell phones and text messaging, distracted driving has become almost normal. But, anything that takes your attention away from the road, for even a second, can be the cause of an accident. In high school, one of my friends totaled his car while just reaching to change the radio station! Try this game from the New York Times to test what happens to your reaction times when you text and drive. No matter how well you think you can drive, this activity is food for thought.

Love Is Not Abuse

Yesterday, 20 high school students showed up for our Love Is Not Abuse discussion group led by Katie Kenyon from the Delaware County Domestic Abuse Project. We had 5 guys and 15 girls, representing a variety of grades, schools, and backgrounds. (Three of the people were even getting extra credit from their health teacher for attending.) Our starting activity provided us with enough to talk about for the entire session! Everyone worked in pairs to determine if the scenario they were given was no big deal, something to talk about, or a dealbreaker in a relationship. Our freewheeling discussion gave everyone a chance to voice their opinions, share stories, ask questions, and think about the issues in a new way. The conversation went until the last minute and then some! At the end, I talked about some of our new fiction and nonfiction on topics related to dating and relationship issues.

We wll have Katie back in the new year to do a few more programs, including a possible series of classes to continue this discussion. Meanwhile, here are some online resouces that might give you more insight:

http://www.athinline.org/
This is MTV's new project aimed at preventing digital abuse among teens. Take their quiz, then get informed about issues like constant messaging, cruelty, sexting, digital disrespect, and spying.

http://www.thesafespace.org/
This site for teens from Break the Cycle has quizzes, a place for questions, and a lot of great resourses on teen dating issues. I particulary like the ideas in their Take Action section.

http://www.thatsnotcool.com/
This website provides teens with tools to combat digital misbehavior, including Callout Cards that you can share through email and social networking sites. I like the one that pictures a toilet and reads, "Thanks to your constant calls, the sound of your voice offically makes me want to puke."

http://www.knowmoresaymore.org/
This site for young women from the Family Violence Prevention Fund talks about the link between relationship abuse and reproductive health.

http://www.giveitaponder.com/
This new ad campaign features the disembodied beard of James Lipton, which attaches itself to teens' faces and makes them think before they text inappropriate things. It sounds completely weird, but just watch one of the videos. They made me giggle.

Live Online Homework Help

Don't forget that the Delaware County Library System offers FREE online homework help to all library cardholders from any computer with internet access. You can use it at home, at a friend's house, at the library...anywhere!

The service is open Sunday through Thursday from 3:00 to 10:00 pm. It offers help to everyone K-12, and even beginning college students and adult learners! You can get help in your core subject areas: Science, Math, English, Writing, and Social Studies.

All you have to do to use the service is log in with your library card and last name. It operates like a chat room, with some extra teaching features like a two-way whiteboard that you and the teacher can use to illustrate problems. The website is safe and effective, and way cheaper than paying someone!

What are you waiting for?!? It's FREE!!!

Dance Like an Egyptian

Last Wednesday, we were pleased to welcome Habiba (a.k.a. Barbara Siegel) to teach us about traditional Egyptian dancing. The program was arranged through the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, which has a really wonderful outreach lecture program. I picked this program to tie in with the summer theme of Express Yourself, and 12 brave teens came out to learn how to dance like an Egyptian villager. Habiba teaches dance at her studio in Philadelphia, so you could even take another class with her sometime! I personally had a great time dancing in this style and would love to do it more often.

Habiba tied a traditional turban on this guy, but he was too tall to wear the clothes that went with it!

To set the tone, Habiba dressed up two teens in some traditional Egyptian clothing.

Habiba taught us about the arm movements immortalized in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. They are much more fluid than the stone carving style would lead you to believe.

In addition to teaching us, Habiba did a demonstration dance.



Something new on our blog...I took a little dance video! This is a dance movement based on the idea of greeting.



Here's another video of the group doing some movements in a circle.

So Yesterday Book Discussion

Today, 11 teens attended our special book discussion of So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld as part of our "Passion for Fashion" block of summer programs. The group was a good mix of people, with some members of our Read & Rant and Book Grub book groups attending, as well as some people who are not book group members.

We talked a little bit about the plot, but the book discussion really centered on ideas of fads, consumerism, and why we dress the way we do. We also talked about how photos of both people and foods are manipulated in advertising. And if you think the cool-hunters and corporations in So Yesterday are far in the future, think again. Go watch The Merchants of Cool from the PBS show Frontline right now.

As an homage to the book character Jen, an Innovator, we also did Sharpie tie-dying on some shoelaces. Now, check out Ian's Shoelace Site to find a creative new way to use those laces!

More Love

Today, 17 more letters were turned in by teens for our state legislators! About half were from people who came to the event yesterday. The rest were written during Anime Club this afternoon. Instead of our usual thematic drawing contest, we had a letter-writing contest while we watched anime. At the end, though, I decided that everyone who wrote a letter should get a prize, so I have to round up more prizes!! Anyway, that makes a total of exactly 29 letters from teen library users making their way to Harrisburg. Thanks everyone!

If you haven't written yet, take time to handwrite or email a note of library appreciation to your legislators. Look them up on the Pennsylvania General Assembly website.

Library Love

Yesterday, 8 teens came out to write letters to our state legislators to support library funding during the state budget process. Five members of the Teen Advisory Board and three other teens made a great effort. During the program, we wrote 12 letters, and everyone took home extra supplies to keep writing! If you love our library and the services it offers, please take a minute to write, call, or email our representatives. Just go to the webpage for the Pennsylvania General Assembly, and use the box in the upper right to look them up.

New Mental Health Books

We just cataloged a new set of books dealing with various mental health issues for the teen nonfiction section. These are not your typical reference books for school reports, though. They are memoirs combined with information, and are presented in such a way that you can actually read them cover-to-cover. Read these books if someone you know is experiencing a mental health issue or if you are just curious about how someone else dealt with their problems.

• Next to Nothing: A Firsthand Account of One Teenager's Experience with an Eating Disorder by Carrie Arnold
• What You Must Think of Me: A Firsthand Account of One Teenager's Experience with Social Anxiety Disorder by Emily Ford
• Monochrome Days: A Firsthand Account of One Teenager's Experience with Depression by Cait Irwin
• Mind Race: A First-Hand Account of One Teenager's Experience with Bipolar Disorder by Patrick E. Jamieson
• The Thought that Counts: A Firsthand Account of One Teenager's Experience with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder by Jared Douglas Kant
• Chasing the High: A Firsthand Account of One Young Person's Experience with Substance Abuse by Kyle Keegan
• Eight Stories Up: An Adolescent Chooses Hope Over Suicide by DeQuincy A. Lezine
• Me, Myself, and Them: A Firsthand Account of One Young Person's Experience with Schizophrenia by Kurt Snyder

These books were published by the Adolescent Mental Health Intiative of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands. Visit their teen mental health website at http://copecaredeal.org/

TTW Contest Winner!

Today at Gaming Club, I had one teen draw out the name of the Teen Tech Week Favorite Websites Contest winner...and it's Nitha V.! Nitha recommends http://www.dictionary.com, asking "Isn't it great to have an online dictionary? Plus, it wows the teacher when you put in 'smart people' vocabulary." Nitha wins a $10 gift card to Best Buy to get something techie, even if it's just a CD. Congrats!