Teen Tech Week

I got a link to this article in my latest ALA Direct e-mail, and thought it was especially fitting for our topics! From In the Library With the Lead Pipe (a blog I've just discovered but am looking forward to browsing through a bit more!):

"One of the newest national initiatives, Teen Tech Week has been celebrated by ALA’s Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) since 2007. This year, Teen Tech Week is March 7–13. According to the YALSA website, “The purpose of the initiative is to ensure that teens are competent and ethical users of technologies, especially those that are offered through libraries such as DVDs, databases, audiobooks, and videogames. Teen Tech Week encourages teens to use libraries’ nonprint resources for education and recreation, and to recognize that librarians are qualified, trusted professionals in the field of information technology.”^1"

Teen Tech Week is held from March 7-13 this year. For those of you who haven't held or participated in this event (myself included), and are planning on working with youth, it might be worth a gander at the ALA/YALSA site for the week (that's the link under TTW up there). There are program ideas and resources,  publicity tools, and a wiki, among other things.

And as Robyn Vittek, the author of the article, says, there is little to criticize about Teen Tech Week. It's an initiative to get teens into the library in an interactive way, as well as a push for librarians to find new and exciting ways to integrate technology into their youth programs. Ideally, a YA librarian would be doing this anyway, but especially in libraries with smaller staffs and budgets, it can be difficult. This initiative is

From her conclusion:

"The exciting thing about Teen Tech Week is that it gives us an opportunity to explore and learn to use all of the websites, gadgets, and formats that our library is purchasing, our teens are bringing into the building, and we are reading about in professional journals and magazines. It is a chance to let the teens know that libraries and librarians are not all about books. We are interested in learning about and sharing all types of information resources, and prove entertaining and cutting edge programming and services that occasionally dip into the philanthropic or even (gasp!) educational arenas. When you choose to participate in Teen Tech Week, it’s not only the teens who “Create, Share and Learn @ your Library.” The staff will as well."