How to use this Page

By Cynthia Leitich Smith
for Cynsations

Christian McKay Heidicker is the first-time author of Cure for the Common Universe (Simon & Schuster, 2016). From the promotional copy:

Sixteen-year-old Jaxon is being committed to video game rehab...ten minutes after he met a girl. A living, breathing girl named Serena, who not only laughed at his jokes but actually kinda sorta seemed excited when she agreed to go out with him.

Jaxon's first date. Ever.

In rehab, he can't blast his way through galaxies to reach her. He can't slash through armies to kiss her sweet lips. Instead, he has just four days to earn one million points by learning real-life skills. And he'll do whatever it takes—lie, cheat, steal, even learn how to cross-stitch—in order to make it to his date.

If all else fails, Jaxon will have to bare his soul to the other teens in treatment, confront his mother's absence, and maybe admit that it's more than video games that stand in the way of a real connection.

Prepare to be cured.

How did you approach the research process for your story? What resources did you turn to? What roadblocks did you run into? How did you overcome them? What was your greatest coup, and how did it inform your manuscript?

John Cusick

This all began when I told my agent, John Cusick, that I’d write a YA book about a kid committed to video game rehab. His excitement was infectious, and I got that fluttery feeling of embarking on a new adventure. Of darkness unlit. Of stones unturned. Of all the little surprises that come with blindly slashing out with my pen and hoping for the bloody best.

That fluttery feeling vanished when I realized I hadn’t played video games for years, let alone had any clue what it was like to be addicted to them.

In order to survive as a freelance writer, my entire life had become carefully structured to eliminate time-wasters. I worked all possible hours, filled my downtime with reading, exercising, eating healthily, and not buying expensive things like the next generation of PlayStation or Xbox. I had become completely unversed in the world of video games and unhealthy amounts of playing.

I realized if I tried to write a book about video games, I’d out myself as a fraud. I’d make out-of-date gaming references, the community would eat me for breakfast, and I’d become next on Gamergate’s death list. (Now that I know a thing or two, I can confidently say that many gaming references do not go out of fashion, and that being on Gamergate’s threat list is actually a good thing.)

Let’s face it. As novelists we’re all impostors. We don’t really remember what it’s like to have that first kiss. We’ve never reached to the back of the wardrobe and in place of fur felt pine needles. Our goal is to seem the least impostery as possible. To convince the reader that this stuff is legit.

Christian's office & Lucifer Morningstar Birchaus (aka writer cat)

Still, the idea was good. Video game rehab? I’d never seen that before, and that’s a rare thing in any medium. So I needed a plan. My plan was this: get addicted to video games.*

So out with work!

Sod off, schedules!

Be gone, exercise routines!

Forget healthy eating and gluten intolerance. Forget that coffee turns me into an absolute monster and dairy turns my insides into the Bog of Eternal Stench!

I bought myself a month and turned my life into that of a sixteen-year-old video game addict on summer vacation. I drank coffee from noon (when I woke up) until three in the morning when I went to sleep. (My character drinks energy drinks, but one can only go so far, dear reader.) I slept too much. I didn’t exercise. Sometimes I put whiskey in my morning coffee. I only read gaming news, but only if I really felt like it and only if I had to wait for a game to download.

Mostly, I played video games. I played a lot of video games. I continued to play throughout the duration of writing the book, but in October 2012, I played so much it would have made the characters in my book quirk their eyebrows.

I was trying to get addicted. All of my dopamine release came from beating levels, leveling up characters, downloading DLCs. When I went to the bathroom, I brought my iPad with me and played Candy Crush. (Considering what my new and worsened diet was doing to my digestion, I played a lot of Candy Crush.)

I beat Dark Souls. I beat Sword & Sworcery. I played Starcraft and Hearthstone and Diablo III. I bought a Nintendo 3DS and played through all the Mario and Zelda games I’d missed out over all the years. (Definitely the highlight.) I got lost in world after world, and adulthood as I knew it became a faint haze around an ever-glowing screen.

And guess what? It was hard.

You’d think it would be easy doing as little as humanly possible, only filling one’s time with video games.

Video games are fun. Many are designed to keep you falling into them again and again, to captivate you enough to stick around for hours on end. But I had so carefully trained myself to not be that way so I could write.

During this indulgent month of October, I felt lazy. I felt sick. I felt jittery and uncomfortable in my skin and a little voice inside my head kept saying, “No, no, no. Stop doing nothing. You’re dying.”

I was disgusted with myself. I liked the games I was playing, but they didn’t bring the same satisfaction of selling a short story.

Like I said, it was really hard. But it was nothing compared to what I was going to embark on next.

I ended my month of terror with a bang. On Halloween night, at 11:56 p.m., I drank four shots of whiskey and became a vomiting sprinkler on my friends’ front lawn. (Apologies, Alan and Alan).

My girlfriend at the time drove me home and poured me into bed. I slept for thirteen hours. . . and when I awoke late afternoon on Nov. 1, I began something new. I didn’t put on the coffee pot. I didn’t boot up the PlayStation to see if any system updates needed downloading. I didn’t bring the iPad to the bathroom.

Instead, I entered Phase 2 of my research.

The character in my book was going to rehab, where all creature comforts would be taken away from him. And so I spent the entirety of November without sugar, caffeine, music, phone, books*, internet*, or of course, video games.

I called it my no-nothing November.

(Er, no stimulants, at least. But that isn’t quite as catchy.)

After surviving a two-day hangover unaided by stimulants of any sort, I crawled out of bed . . . and I went out into the world. I ran in the morning. I talked to people at coffee shops while sipping herbal tea. I took ukulele lessons. I learned how to cross-stitch. I cleaned Alan’s and Alan’s puke-covered lawn (just kidding I didn’t; I just realized this would have been a nice thing to have done (sorry again, Alans)). I studied life without my nose buried in a book.*

And mostly, I wrote. I wrote about a kid who had all of his comforts taken away and was forced to earn points through a sort of gamified therapy. I don’t know if any of this actually worked or not . . . I’m not sure if it really added anything to the book.

So, um, take that into consideration before flying off the rails for your own book.

*I use the term "addicted" lightly. Read Cure for the Common Universe for a full explanation.

**The most difficult, by far.

***I also didn’t surf the internet, save my email—for emergencies and so I wasn’t fired from my job.

****Ug, this is starting to sound like some sort of new age instruction manual, which I swear it is not; I just wanted to see what it would be like to be the character in my book.

As a contemporary fiction writer, how did you deal with the pervasiveness of rapidly changing technologies? Did you worry about dating your manuscript? Did you worry about it seeming inauthentic if you didn't address these factors? Why or why not?

@cmheidicker on Twitter

Video games are the fastest growing medium in the world, so it’s pretty difficult to remain relevant when writing about current games. Fortunately, there’s a persistent spine in gaming (your Blizzards, your Nintendos, your Easter eggs). I tried to focus on those mainstays and accept the fact that no matter what I did I would probably piss off and please an equal number of gamers.

If I had attempted to copy the language of gamers verbatim, I would have set myself up for failure. (Although having a game-addicted roommate during the edits of this book definitely helped me sprinkle in some legit jargon.) That’s why I like to follow the Joss Whedon rule of leading the charge on language instead of attempting to copy it.

For the dialogue, I ended up stealing a lot of hilarious lines from my friends—truly iconic things that I lifted straight out of real-life conversations and put into the text. During a rousing game of racquetball, a friend aced me, stuck his racquet in my face, and screamed, “Nobody puts princess in a castle!” A barista once mentioned how stepping on a LEGO was a lot more rage inducing than playing Grand Theft Auto. And a previous student told me about a—ahem—particular sensory combination involving Nutella. I blushed . . . and then I stole it.

I stole all of these with everyone’s permission, of course.

Add a Comment

Record-breaking mobile app Pokémon Go has been downloaded over 75 million times worldwide, a number set only to increase as the game is released in more territories. What five common crimes have police officers had to attend to as a result of this craze taking off?

The post Five crimes being committed by Pokémon Go players appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

Galactic Hot Dogs, that is! Cosmoe’s Weiner Getaway is the first book in a three part series written by Max Brallier and published by Aladdin, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

The book has taken off on Funbrain.com, a popular gaming website for children that has been a launch pad for some of the biggest blockbuster hits in children’s book publishing. Jeff Kinney’s ever popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid got its start there as a free book in 2004 and now has over 150 million copies in print.

Other titles such as Rachel Renee Russell’s Dork Diaries series, Lincoln Pierce’s Big Nate and Brandon Mull’s best-selling fantasy series The Beyonders all of gaining wider audiences due to their popularity on Funbrain and its sister site Poptropica.

Galactic Hot Dogs seems to be destined for the same success. More than six million children have read the book on Funbrain since its debut in the fall of 2013 when individual chapters were posted. What sets this apart is that more than a million children have played the story-based Galactic Hot Dogs game that went live on Poptropica two months ago. Like many books that are popular on the site, it appeals to 8- to 12-year-olds who appreciate its kooky hero, Cosmoe, and its humorous, comic-strip-style illustrations.

Recently, multiplatform books with online gaming components have become essential tools in the children’s book publishing industry. They are clearly seeking to reach young readers who are migrating to digital and mobile reading. Sixty-seven percent of children between the ages of 2 and 13 read e-books, according to a report released in January by Digital Book World and PlayCollective, up from 54 percent in 2012.

While many fear that sites such as Poptropica and Funbrain might detract from reading time, authors and publishers clearly seem to think differently. Some publishers have found that interactive games can increase print sales rather than erode them. Scholastic’s multiplatform game and book series, 39 Clues, which started in 2008, has more than 17 million copies in print.

Clearly there is core audience for this new books to gaming crossover market and they are buying the print books. I think this is definitely the next “big” thing in the children’s digital world.

Allison Santos

ALSC Digital Task Force

Director, Princeton Children’s Book Festival

Princeton Public Library, NJ

The post Hot Dogs, get your Hot Dogs appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Add a Comment

One thing many of my teens enjoy is competition. Whether they play for bragging rights or a gift card, they enjoy being the master or best in their favorite games. Over the years I've learned that hosting tournaments is an easy program that can gets my teens really excited and involved in the planning.

 

The first few tournaments I hosted were single elimination. Much like the Final Four once someone loses a match they were out for the rest of the program. This wasn’t always fair to the teens who didn't have as much experience as their peers and often meant that the skills players would be the only ones playing each round.

Even though I didn’t like tournaments, my teens continued to ask for them. I learned that there are several ways to hold a tournament and that really it can be broken into two parts. First is the format used to pair for a match. Single elimination would pair winners vs winners when you have an even number of competitors. Sometimes there can be a qualifying round to ensure the matches are fair, or you can randomize the initial match. The second part is agreeing to the rules of what will happen in a match. For basketball and the Final Four a match consists of one game between two teams, whoever has the most points wins and moves to the next round. For Magic the Gathering a match can between two players. Often when doing Magic the Gathering a match is best two out of three within 20 minutes.

I’ve learned different ways to format matches over the years. My teens have brought games they want to play and challenge their friends. These programs have been my most successful and versatile. Since I’ve learned how to run a tournament, it doesn’t matter what the teens want to play, now the teens work to set rules and agreement for what happens in a match and I just tell them who to play next.

Since I’m not fond of single elimination, I’ve started to use a points system instead. Similar to Swiss style Tournaments I use notecards to track each participant with one name on a card and then record who they played against and how many points they’ve earned. I give 3 points for winning a match, 2 points for being the odd in a pair (buy) and sitting out, and 1 point to each if they tie. After each round I can move the cards and create new pairs matching the points they’ve earned. It is a simple system and easily scales. When doing this I spend just a little bit of time watching the clock to tell them how much time is left in a round, and the program runs itself mostly.

We hosted a Pokemon tournament using a new format, round robin. I created a chart that listed all participants both horizontally and vertically. I told teens to find their own matches and whoever lost would report it to me. I would mark who won and who lost on the chart. For example if Player A lost against Player C, I would add an L to the 3rd column for Player A and a W to the first column in Player C. The rules were simple: You can only play each person once, and whoever had the most wins at the end got the prize. While it would seem this would be chaos, the Teens loved it, and request the format for other games.

Lastly I tried a tournament style that created two brackets. After the initial round the group was split in half. We had all of the winners competing against each other in single elimination style, and the ones that lost competed to see who could be the player in last place. This added a lot of humor to the tournament as many good players had to switch their strategies for the favorite game to find ways not to win. Since both were happening simultaneously everyone in the room was involved and rooting for both winners and losers.

There are likely other ways to run tournaments but these four ways have been versatile in serving my teens no matter what they are interested in doing.

Add a Comment

Title: Aa

Platform: iOS and Android

Cost: Free, with in-app purchases

I discovered this addictive "waiting game" after watching our students staring, seemingly blankly, at their iPads, ready to spring when they see an opening. It might look like something out of The Manchurian Candidate, but while the central wheel twirls around, the player must gauge the perfect moment to add another spoke in the spaces remaining without knocking any of the existing elements. Any error sends you back to the adding all of the elements all over again.

Like Dots, the underlying gaming concept behind Aa couldn't be simpler. Any gesture on the screen inserts a spoke at the bottom of the spinning radius. But, by adding an element as you advance through each level, it quickly builds into a challenge as it becomes more difficult to insert a new one given the scant room available. Avoiding the impulse to "fire" spokes in a rapid-fire manner is the real test of patience and hand-eye coordination.

Aa is free, but the ability to skip and unlock levels are available as in-app purchases, as is a nominal charge to remove ads, which appear every few levels (just when a break can be welcome). The highest level you've mastered appears numerically in the center of the wheel, providing an immediate talking point based on skill.

General Adaptive Apps has a range of similar games using different shapes and objectives, but this seems to be their most popular incarnation. I think it might appeal to novice gamers getting new devices over the holiday, too.

For more apps for teens and the librarians who serve them, check out the App of the Week archive. Have a suggestion for an App of the Week? Let us know.

Add a Comment

A conversation about Online Harassment.

For many teens, online is one of their 3rd places where they can find community and celebrate their various interests. These were safe places where they could find support outside of their physical community, especially if they were being harassed by peers.

Lately though many female content creators have been sharing their experiences which aren’t positive. Female YouTube personalities have sexually suggestive comments posted. Many women in the gaming industry have come under attack, with their personal information being released publicly, forcing at least 3 to have to leave their homes. A female researcher’s survey about sexism was corrupted by false data .We must also not forget the hundreds of celebrity photos that were released earlier this year.

Sadly, harassment isn’t anything new, but according to a new report from Pew Reserach Center

“Young adults, those 18-29, are more likely than any other demographic group to experience online harassment, and Young women, those 18-24, experience certain severe types of harassment at disproportionately high levels: 26% of these young women have been stalked online, and 25% were the target of online sexual harassment.”

The survey only included adults, so we have no data for teens, but even this information is concerning. Online harassment fell into one of two categories: personal attacks from someone you know and anonymous people on the internet (aka trolls).

There is a saying online don’t feed the trolls, but what do you do when they release your personal information as a way to silence you?

I decided to have a conversation with the teens at my regular programs about online harassment, and discovered that no one else was talking to them about this subject.

We talked mostly about GamerGate, and how this group is attacking women gamers and critics. GamerGate claims that they are doing this because they want ethics in games journalism, yet they don’t seem to be targeting men who speak out against them, or talking to the largest review websites in gaming journalism.

It allowed us to talk about censorship, how to properly argue, and gender equality. We discussed why someone would try to prevent someone from posting opinions online, and why arguments become personal attacks. We also discussed the wrong ways to convince someone that you are right. Specifically does attacking women improve ethics in games journalism, and what could GamerGate supporters do instead? One of my teens pointed out these excellent videos about common fallacies created by PBS Idea Channel’s Mike Rugnetta. We took a moment to watch them, and a few of the teens decided to take a break from gaming and were talking about Ad Hominem and trying to figure out whether you can separate a person from what they believe.

Pew Research indicated that 70% of adults have witnessed harassment online. Talking with my teen group revealed that all of them had experienced or known someone who has experienced harassment. While you can talk to a parent, teacher, or an adult about bullying, they shared the difficulty in reporting and stopping anonymous comments. Even the Internet Safety resources from NetSmartz and Onguard online have few resources to help with the large volume of attacks that have been targeted at some woman from individuals of GamerGate.

While the actions of some members of the internet are negative, I hope we can take this opportunity to have a conversation about anonymous harassment, and help give teens the tools to civilly interact online. As Emma Watson recently pointed out in a speech to the UN, equality for women is an important issue for EVERYone!

Add a Comment

This summer at the Fayetteville Free Library in Fayetteville, NY we piloted our first ever week long summer camp during Summer Reading. The Fayetteville Free Library Geek Girl Camp is a camp for girls in grades 3 through 5 introducing them to hands on STEM skills and to female role models. Months of work went into planning this camp fulfilling a need in our greater community.  According to the Girl Scout Research Institute,  “Research shows that girls start losing interest in math and science during middle school. Girls are typically more interested in careers where they can help others (e.g., teaching, child care, working with animals) and make the world a better place. Recent surveys have shown that girls and young women are much less interested than boys and young men in math and science.”[1]

We had 44 girls attend the FFL Geek Girl Camp from all over the greater Syracuse, NY area. We had over 10 girls on the waiting list and charged $25.00 for the camp to supplement the cost of food, t-shirts and supplies. We also offered four scholarship opportunities for those who might not be able to afford the cost of the camp. In addition to the 44 girls who came to the camp we had 9 speakers from across the country join us in person or via Skype. Speakers included students from Virginia Commonwealth University, Cornell University, Syracuse University and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Other speakers included women who worked for Facebook, the Air Force, a pharmaceutical research facility, and from national organizations, Girls in Tech and Girl Develop IT. Each day we heard from one or more speakers who talked about what they do at their jobs or in school and how important it is to have women working in these fields! They all made sure to relate to the girls in attendance and campers had great questions afterwards.

Throughout the week we had a great array of activities. We rented a cement mixer and made an oobleck pool for kids to run across after learning about density and viscosity, shot off model rockets, chucked books, apples and water balloons with a trebuchet after learning about projectiles, force, gravity and more.  Girls learned about fractals, made mini catapults, 3D printed, used littlebits kits, Snap Circuits and computer programmed with Scratch and much more.

The camp was a huge success that the parents of those who attended were above and beyond appreciative and wanted to already sign up for next year. We learned from this particular camp that we created something valuable for our community and that we need to transition into this camp model for future Summer Reading programs. We were asked, “When are you having a camp for boys”? We will not only have camp for boys and girls but of different ages as well. Planning FFL Geek Girl Camp did take a lot of time; however the outcome of the camp was far beyond what we expected and worth the time spent planning for the impact it had on our community. Camps offer children an opportunity to learn more and make stronger relationships over a short period of time.  Like camp as a kid it was a place to learn new things and meet new friends and create memories that last a lifetime.

The first day of FFL Geek Girl, the campers were a little shy but after just the second day the girls couldn’t stop talking and working together. We run bimonthly programs where kids come in every other week to work on projects but having children in the library everyday for a week gives you an opportunity to teach kids a skill and not have to worry about rushing or not being able to complete the task, plus you have an opportunity to do projects or lessons that take longer and are more complex. Camps also give us a great opportunity to get to know our patrons. Girls come in and out of the library now looking for their camp counselors to say hi! Cost is also a huge factor in running a camp at a library versus a different venue. We had materials donated to the camp and used many of the resources we already owned including our own staff to run and plan the program. Most science camps can range in price anywhere from $75-$600. We decided that $25 was not only affordable but fit into our budget for the camp as well to make it run successfully.

We think that camps are the future of Summer Reading. It gives us and the community an opportunity to focus on important topics like STEAM and produce content that is beneficial and influential. At the end of the week our campers said they wanted to be inventors, work at Google, become web developers and physicists. If it wasn’t for the atmosphere we created at the library and the week long camp we would have never saw these results and impact on our community.

Please check out our website for more information about the FFL Geek Girl Camp, our Flickr page and hashtag #geekgirl14 on Twitter and Instagram.

[1]Modi, K. (2012). “Generation STEM: What girls Say about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math” Girl Scout Research Institute. http://www.girlscouts.org/research/pdf/generation_stem_full_report.pdf

Meredith Levine is the Director of Family Engagement at the Fayetteville Free Library. Meredith is a member of the ALSC School Age Programs and Services Committee. Find out more at www.fflib.org or email Meredith at [email protected]

Add a Comment

A new survey from the Games and Learning Publishing Council sheds light on just how commonplace games have become in today’s classrooms. Among the findings:

• Among K-8 teachers surveyed who use digital games in teaching, 55% have students play games at least weekly
• 72% typically use a desktop or laptop computer for gaming
• Nearly half believe that low-performing students benefit the most from digital games
• Word of mouth is the biggest influence when selecting games

So what can librarians take away from this data?

First, it’s important to think about what’s not in the report. The survey only included K-8 teachers, but gaming is a huge part of many teens’ lives. As the YALSABlog reported in 2008, a Pew Research Internet Project report found that fully 97% of teens ages 12-17 play digital games. Those teens were using computers, but nearly half were also using a mobile device.

As schools relax restrictions on mobile devices in classrooms and laptops and tablets become as common as calculators and pencils, how can librarians support the gaming needs of teachers and students? Whether we’re in school libraries or programming for teens at public libraries, where does gaming fit into library services?

The Games and Learning report reveals that many teachers let their own gaming experiences and preferences guide them when it comes to using digital games with students. I can certainly attest to that; when I first introduced gaming nights at my high school, I brought my own consoles and games, then joined forces with another teacher to expand our selections. If you’re new to gaming with teens, you may be more comfortable starting with a familiar game or selection of games.

Erin Daly, Youth Services Coordinator at Chicopee Public Library, puts it this way: “We probably need to spend some time playing games ourselves and thinking about how to incorporate games into our classrooms and libraries. We really don’t know what works until we play.”

“Gaming, like everything, requires curation: we need to pick the best, most interesting things to share. Good thing that’s pretty much what librarians do best. (Gamers’ advisory, if you will). In a classroom, ‘the best’ includes the way in which the game is relevant to the curriculum standards. In the public library ‘the best’ is the game that engages the player’s interest and makes them think.”

Add a Comment

I was having a serious Cady-with-a-d Mean Girls moment two weeks ago as I walked into my first day in a new Teen Librarian position. Would the teens like me? Would they pity laugh at my jokes like the kids at my old job did? Or would I be just another crusty shushing-machine to them? It’s the time of year when teens across the country make that same terrifying walk into new schools, new grades, and new hormone-fueled social challenges, so let’s give them some extra special love from the library this week.

As for me at my new job, I discovered that a level 50 in Skyrim and knowing the lyrics to “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark” can get you a long way. Sometimes all you need is to know a little bit about one thing that interests a teen and you can spark a relationship. Learn a little more, and pretty soon they’ll be saying “hi” to you by name. Keep at it, and they might start liking you enough to actually take your reader’s advisory suggestions.

It’s good to be in the know. Here’s some stuff teens are talking about in August 2014.

The band Five Seconds of Summer, or 5SOS (pronounced “5 sauce”), is currently touring the U.S. with One Direction and gaining popularity. The band, comprised of 4 Australian teenage boys, is often compared to their British your-mates, though they seem to be attempting a more punk rock image. (Attempting is a key word here.) Their self-titled debut studio album was released in the U.S. on July 22, and hit number one on the Billboard 200. Learn more about them here.

The 2014 Teen Choice Awards aired on August 10. Big winners were The Fault in Our Stars, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and Divergent (films); Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort (actors); Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, and One Direction (musicians); Pretty Little Liars, The Vampire Diaries, and The Voice (TV). Selena Gomez received the Ultimate Choice Award. The show also introduced a new set of web awards honoring a new breed of YouTube and social media stars. See the full list of nominees and winners here.

By now you’re not going to impress any teens by knowing what the Ice Bucket Challenge is, but you might earn some cool points by pointing out a few of the best examples of the fad. Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch gets naked in his (don’t worry, it’s safe for library viewing). Oprah Winfrey’s will appeal to those who enjoy a little schadenfreude, and Bill Gates works some STEM into his challenge. The Old Spice Guy, Homer Simpson, and Tina Fey are other winners. My personal favorite is Kermit the Frog. According to their website, donations to the ALS Association are at $94.3 million as of August 27. Looking for a research opportunity? Ask kids to find out how the Ice Bucket Challenge started; there’s plenty of info available online from reputable news sources.

The eighth season of the rebooted Doctor Who premiered on August 23, and was the first full episode in the run of the new Twelfth Doctor played by Peter Capaldi. Despite being “really old” (56) and less crushable than Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith, most fans are optimistic about the well-respected actor’s prospects in the role. The jury’s still out on whether good acting will attract as much teen attention as good looks did.

On August 18 Taylor Swift premiered her new single “Shake It Off.” The song abandons her country roots in favor of a power pop piece about how “haters gonna hate.” (That’s an old web adage that means roughly, “People are going to criticize you no matter what, so just ignore them.”) Swift also announced a new album called 1989, set to release on October 27. You can view the video for “Shake It Off” here.

Two of the YA lit-inspired movies of the summer, If I Stay and The Giver, premiered this month, both to lukewarm reviews and box office numbers. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is the top movie of the month and has rocketed leading man Chris Pratt to fame (building on his recent success as Andy Dwyer on Parks & Recreation and as the voice of Emmet in The Lego Movie). Ninja Turtles is also going strong despite mostly bad reviews. Check out www.boxofficemojo.com for box office info.

Fans are gearing up for the release of The Sims 4 for the PC on September 2. The newest installment in the classic life simulation game comes 5 years after the release of the vanilla (that is, the original, expansion-free) version of The Sims 3. The new title will have to work hard to win over players, as there has already been outcry over the exclusion of several of the former titles’ features from the new game (most notably, toddlers and swimming pools). No OSX release date has been announced. Read more about the unhappy fans here.

Translation time: the slang of the month is “shade” or “throw shade” (verb), which means to criticize someone in an underhanded of passive-aggressive manner. This term has existed for a long time in LGBT communities but came into wider use apparently about a year ago (although I didn’t hear it until this month). It was recently added to Oxford Dictionaries (the online database, not the hoity-toity print version). For a list of recently-added words and, through it, a remarkably comprehensive overview of modern culture, check out this article.

Add a Comment

By Daniel Romer

Now that the Internet has been with us for over 25 years, what are we to make of all the concerns about how this new medium is affecting us, especially the young digital natives who know more about how to maneuver in this space than most adults?

Although it is true that various novel media platforms have invaded households in the United States, many researchers still focus on the harms that the “old” media of television and movies still have on youth. The effects of advertising on promoting the obesity epidemic highlight how so much of those messages are directed to children and adolescents. Jennifer Harris noted that children ages 2 to 11 get nearly 13 food and beverage ads every day while watching TV, and adolescents get even more. Needless to say, many of these ads promote high-calorie, low-nutrition foods. Beer is still heavily promoted on TV with little concern about who is watching, and sexual messages are rampant across both TV and movie screens. None of this is new, but the fact that these influences remain so dominant today despite the powerful presence of new media is testament enough that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

When it comes to the new media, researchers are more balanced. Sonia Livingston from the UK reported on a massive study done in Europe that found a lot of variation in how countries are dealing with the potential harms on children. But when all was said and done, she concluded that the risks there were no more prevalent than those that kids have confronted in their daily lives offline. What has changed there is the talk about the “risks,” without much delving into whether those risks actually materialize into harms. Many kids are exposed to hurtful content in this new digital space, but many also learned how to cope with them.

The perhaps most contentious of the new media influences is the emergence of video gaming, either via the Internet or on home consoles. The new DSM-5, which identifies mental disorders for psychiatrists, suggests that these gaming activities can become addictive. Research summarized by Sara Prot and colleagues suggests that about 8% of young people exhibit symptoms of this potential disorder. At the same time, we still don’t know whether gaming leads to the symptoms or is just a manifestation of other problems that would emerge anyway.

Aside from the potential addictive properties of video games, there is considerable concern about games that invite players to shoot and destroy imaginary attackers. Many young men play these violent video games and some of them are actually used by the military to prepare soldiers for battle. One could imagine that a young man with intense resentment toward others could see these games as a release or even worse as practice for potential harmdoing. The rise in school shootings in recent years only adds to the concern. The research reviewed by Prot is quite clear that playing the games can increase aggressive thoughts and behavior in laboratory settings. What remains contentious is how much influence this has on actual violence outside the lab.

On the positive side, other researchers have noted how much good both the old and new media can provide to educators and to health promoters. It is helpful to keep in mind that many of the concerns about the new media may merely reflect the age old wariness that adults have displayed regarding the role of media in their children’s behavior. In a recent review of the effects of Internet use on the brain, Kathryn Mills of University College London pointed out that even Socrates was skeptical of children learning to write because it would reduce their need to develop memory skills. Here again, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Daniel Romer is the Director of the Adolescent Communication and Health Institutes of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. He directs research on the social and cognitive development of adolescents with particular focus on the promotion of mental and behavioral health. His research is currently funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He regularly serves on review panels for NIH and NSF and consults on federal panels regarding media guidelines for coverage of adolescent mental health problems, such as suicide and bullying. He is the author of Media and the Well-Being of Children and Adolescents.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only psychology articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Youth and the new media: what next? appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

Title: Cargo-Bot
Platforms: iOS
Cost: Free

Learning to code is a big topic of conversation these days with a lot of discussion about the importance of teaching young people coding and programming skills. Why is this such a big topic of conversation? Because when anyone learns to code/program they have the chance to spend time critically thinking, problem solving, and troubleshooting. All important skills to have in the 21st century.

Acquiring these skills is definitely a part of Cargo-Bot, an app that uses game-play to teach the ideas behind coding and programming. Playing Cargo-Bot requires programming each game in order to achieve a a particular goal. All goals require moving boxes of cargo across or down the screen. And, while the first goals are pretty simple it doesn’t take too long for the game to become more complex and require that players think about not just left, right, up, and down but the order of those moves, looping moves, and specifying when and when not to actually make a move.

You can see how it all works in the screencast below.

Cargo-Bot is a great app for teens and library staff that are interested in learning about the basic type of thinking required in order to start programming. Anyone who plays won’t end up creating an app or website, but they will end up with a good sense of computational thinking and the kinds of things required to program and instruct a computer or device how to achieve specific goals.

Have a suggestion for the YALSA App of the Week? Let us know. And check out past Apps of the Week in the Archive.

Add a Comment

Title: Monument Valley
Cost: $3.99
Platform: iOS (with Android coming soon)

After hearing great reviews of Monument Valley, I decided to give it a try and I am so glad that I did! Players take control of a small, silent princess named Ida, helping her to navigate through a world filled with beautiful but surreal architecture. To succeed, you must solve puzzles and redesign Ida’s world to help her along on her journey. The pastel artwork appears simple at first glance but is deceptively complex, a fact that becomes very clear as you try to find the correct configuration to allow Ida to reach her destination. As you manipulate the architecture of each level, the music changes as well, making a very cohesive and immersive experience.

The game’s world immediately put me in mind of M.C. Escher’s drawings, which is part of what drew me in, but the engaging gameplay is what kept me playing. The puzzles in each level build on one another growing more complex and adding new elements as you move through the game. If you enjoy puzzlers or simply appreciate beautifully designed games, Monument Valley will not disappoint! Check out the trailer for the game below.

For more app recommendations visit the YALSA App of the Week Archive. If you have an app you think we should review, let us know!

Add a Comment

“You play Minecraft at work?” Sometimes my friends get jealous, so I explain: “Yeah, I play Minecraft at work, but I’m usually running around the lab helping people, and there’s more to it than just playing the game – it’s about building community.” Playing Minecraft at the library is a way to get kids in the door and create connections. That I’m a fan of Minecraft outside of work serves as another layer of common ground.

I’ve been playing Minecraft in our computer lab with groups of kids and teens for about two years now. We’ve done a lot of different things with the game: free play, adventure maps, working together to survive, player vs. player battles, redstone circuits, pixel art. At times we’ve played every other week, sometimes once a month, sometimes once over the summer. I’ve gotten to know my Minecraft kids pretty well. I know that they are creative and knowledgeable about the details of the game. I know who loves to explore, who is a fearless monster fighter, who can give me a porkchop when my food meter is low, and who knows how to build a shelter where no zombie will ever find us. And they know me this way as well. They know I probably have a secret shelter hidden somewhere, that if they need a place to hide they can come in, and that my avatar is probably standing there doing nothing because I left myself logged in while I got up to help someone at their computer.

By providing a space for kids to play, we have explored building communities in the game, and we have created a community outside the game based on our shared interest.

I hear a lot of talk about how Minecraft can be used educationally to teach STEAM skills, executive functioning skills and social skills like sharing and cooperation. I agree that all of these opportunities are available with the game, but the truth is that sometimes in the middle of a program, things can get pretty chaotic. Sometimes I’m just running around the lab trying to help kids learn crafting recipes, or mediating between disputes. I knew I had strong connections with a lot of kids because I know them from Minecraft, but I wasn’t thinking about the way that these connections might go beyond the computer lab until recently.

The other day a couple of my regulars, twin brothers, came in to the Children’s room. I marveled at how tall they were getting. They signed up for the next Minecraft program, next month, near their birthday. They will be 11. I have known them for over a year. In addition to wondering when the next Minecraft program was, they were also looking for books for school. They had reports to write. The topics: roller coasters and locksmiths. We looked for books and I walked them back to the stacks to show them how Dewey Decimal call numbers work. We found some books, but we had to put others on hold from libraries in our consortium. I explained that with a little notice, we could get books that they could use for their projects from libraries across the state. Then, I showed them around the databases.

It turns out roller coaster is two words and locksmith is one. This is something I wasn’t entirely sure about when I went to type in search terms and it gave me a concrete example to show that database searching is specific and you need to try rephrasing your terms when you aren’t finding the information you’re looking for.

I explained how they could access the databases from home and told them they could always call the Children’s Room or send me an email to if they needed more help.

This ten or fifteen minute interaction had a lot of positive outcomes: The twins got the resources they need for their projects as well as an in-depth reference interview from a librarian they know cares about them. I got to see two enthusiastic Minecraft adventurers in the context of fifth grade students. I also got a feeling of satisfaction along the lines of that quote from Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.” Connections made by gaming translated into a connection to the more traditional resources the library has to offer. So, not only do these two kids know I’ve got their backs when there’s a zombie, they know that the library will support their information needs for school projects with a variety of resources.

It was a moment I wanted to share.

Do you have an anecdote about making connections in your library? Share it in the comments!

YALSA Blogger Erin Daly works with babies, teens and every kid in between as the Youth Services Coordinator at the Chicopee Public Library in Western Massachusetts. You can follow her tales of library life and the occasional cat picture on Twitter @ErinCerulean

Are you interested in reading more tween-related posts?  The YALSA Blog and the ALSC Blog both offer information of interest to librarians who work with tweens.

Add a Comment

Across all age groups, spies seem to be universally loved, so we split this program into two sessions, one for kids and one for teens. Some adults did stop by and were encouraged to try the different stations as well.

This program was highly inspired by Rachel Moani’s Spy Training Academy program at Lacey Timberland Library.

For the program, we created Spy Games cards so everyone could assume an identity and check off every station they completed. All of the spy games are actually Secret Service code names for presidential family members or presidential nominee family members.

  

We broke the event into four missions.

1) Invisible Ink: Everyone wrote a message in invisible ink. Some recipes can be found here and here. We started everyone with this so the paper would have time to dry. It, however, did not provide the punch a first mission should have.

2) Catapult Construction and Launch: Participants constructed a simple catapult using popsicle sticks, rubber bands, glue dots, and a water bottle cap. The surprising element of this construction was that many boys found winding the rubber bands around the popsicle sticks a challenge. Apparently ponytail assembly has given many teenage girls an advantage on catapult construction. Ideas for construction can be found here and here.

Participants then needed to use their catapult to launch a pom pom into a frisbee to move on to the next mission.

3) Balloon Minefield: This was the favorite mission for the teens. Everyone got three chances to make it through the minefield. They were timed for each try and received penalties for every balloon that broke and any balloons that escaped the minefield. The person with the fastest time won rearview vision sunglasses.

4) Laser Field: Everyone had three attempts to move through the laser field. They received penalties for every time they touched the “laser” rafia. no teen made it through the laser field without touching the lasers so this was a mission teens would not have been able to complete without the penalties clause (at least not with our course). The person with the fastest time won rearview vision sunglasses for this mission as well.

Spy Games was highly enjoyed by all who participated with most taking extra turns. We will likely repeat this program in the future, although we will probably link it to a movie release a la Spy Kids. We also promoted our spy books at the event to tie the event into our collection.

Add a Comment

Title: The Nightjar
Cost: $4.99
Platform: iOS

The Nightjar is a game unlike any other I have ever played. It is set on a spaceship that has experienced a catastrophic failure and is slowly drifting into a black hole. Alone on the ship in the pitch black, you (known as “The Passenger”) must try to navigate through this darkened environment on the basis of nothing more than the sounds around you. You are guided by two voices, one is the voice of the ship’s computer and the other is the voice of a man who says he is part of the team on the way to rescue you. But, who should you trust? And, how long will you be alone?

Despite its understated graphics (you really only see bars of light representing your footsteps and an arc of light that you can swipe to turn to the left or right), the game manages to be extremely engaging and creepy. As is befitting of a game that makes use almost exclusively of sound, the sound effects are quite impressive. The game requires headphones and once you have put yours on you will understand why as the sounds appear to surround you. Listen to your own footsteps change as you traverse different surfaces and build a mental image of your surroundings as you hear doors open ahead of you and close behind you. It is hard to believe how much imagery the game designers have been able to pack into these 3D sound effects and it is definitely the most impressive part of the game.

Beyond these unique gameplay elements, this app also offers a lot for genre fans, from the science fiction concept of trying to escape a dying spacecraft, the horror elements inherent in creeping through a pitch black and possibly hostile environment, to more specific references to pop culture. Fans of the Portal series will almost certainly see echoes of GLaDOS in the voice of the ship’s computer which frequently points out facts that you may prefer to ignore (such as how cold it is in space and how you shouldn’t trust what you hear) and fans of the BBC’s Sherlock may be excited to discover that the mysterious figure who may or may not be trying to help you escape from the ship is voiced by none other than Benedict Cumberbatch.

Nightjar is one of the most unique games I have found for mobile devices; I found it both interesting and entertaining. I’ve tried the game on both an iPad and an iPhone 5 and while it works on both, it is actually quite a bit better on an iPhone (at least on my iPad it occasionally crashed between levels). I am typically hesitant to try apps that aren’t free and even more hesitant to recommend them here, but if you are gamer who is always looking for games that make use of new and unique elements, Nightjar is definitely worth its $4.99 price tag. Check out the game trailer below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fubjCBrXBok

For more app recommendations visit the YALSA App of the Week Archive. If you have an app you think we should review, let us know!

Add a Comment

5 stars Bible Detective: A Puzzle Search Book Peter Martin Lion Children's Books 48 Pages   Ages: 4+ .............. ……………………. Are  you a super sleuth? Have you got an eagle eye?  Back Cover:  This book is a treasure trove of fabulously detailed pictures from the world of the Bible. You’ll have hours of fun trying to [...]

Add a Comment

As the school year winds down for me, it’s easy to get caught up in the last minute whirlwind of final exams, papers, coercing materials returns, and talking my wonderful faculty off the proverbial ledge.

But when I’m really on my game, I begin thinking about the first couple of months of the next school year and cataloging what, if anything, I need to do to lay a foundation for successful programming. Teen Read Week is always an event that sneaks up on me (and I’m on the committee, for goodness sake!) since it usually happens mid to late October and I’m in full project swing by then.

After over a decade of being a school librarian, I can chalk up my success to that much-overused word, collaboration. For me, collaboration just means using the network of relationships I already have with my teachers and students and searching for any new relationships in my community that will help me do my job which, in the case of Teen Read Week, is promoting recreational reading.

My Library Advisory Board and I have already tackled some preliminary brainstorming. Teachers have already been approached for posing with their favorite horror books and these will advertise our offerings and be showcased on the school website. We are going to have a community poll with various horror movies listed and the top two winners will be a “Creature Double Feature” complete with popcorn and blankets to make our own picnic style movie night.

We are also going to produce a short library video (showcased on the library website and the school website, and shown during an assembly to promote our programming that week) interviewing two of our English teachers who teach related classes, Science and Society and Novel to Film, about the meaning and importance of the horror genre. My LAB came up with the idea of also interviewing dedicated gamers who can speak about what they find so appealing about the recent trends in zombie or other horror games. A few book covers and promotion snippets about programming and we’ll have an interesting vehicle for TRW.

When we had our amazingly successful Hunger Games movie premiere party, the most popular stations were the ones where student volunteers taught flame nail polish effects and did Capitol-style makeup on participants. With that in mind, we will be offering a session prior to our horror movie double feature instructing students in horror movie makeup, complete with faux vampire bites, zombie face makeup and gory wounds. My theater faculty have friends in the local community and university theaters who are proficient in these areas and have expressed an eagerness to come and instruct. I imagine we are going to get some great pictures from this instruction!

If you can, begin talking up possible connections with teachers and students so everyone will be ready to leap into the fray of the school year. Join the Teen Read Week 2012 Ning and peruse the ALA Store items with them to help with brainstorming. You can be sure that in October it will be something great that “Came from Your Library!”

– Courtney Lewis, Director of Libraries, Wyomin

Add a Comment

Today we bring you another installment of the latest youth research available for sale or download. Remember if your company has comprehensive research for sale that focuses on youth between the ages of 8 and 24, email us to be included in the next... Read the rest of this post

Add a Comment

View Next 25 Posts