Home  Teen Tech Week 2009 | Plan Your Event

Plan Your Event

Activity Ideas | Booklists

Activity Ideas

Try the following activity ideas, suggested by the Teen Tech Week committee! Have a great idea you want to share? Add it to our list on the YALSA Wiki.

School Friendly Tech

Internet Scavenger Hunt: Have teens complete an internet scavenger hunt, in which they use a combination of suggested resources and open searching to answer a series of reference questions. Create questions that introduce teens to recreational and educational websites and databases, and for open search questions you can gather information about their favorite ways to search online. Hand out raffle tickets for correct answers, and at the end use the scavenger hunt to impart searching strategies they could have used to find the answers more efficiently.

Literary Remix: Print first paragraphs from teen books onto printable magnet sheets and cut them into individual words. Challenge teens to create new works from the old, but without having a single word left over.

Poster Polls: Put up posterboards with open questions and let teens respond to them. Create questions that make teens think about the role of technology in their lives (e.g., "How do you listen to music?," "What is your favorite online game?," "Who is your favorite game character?," or "What are the best movie adaptions?") or give teens the opportunity to create posters asking their own tech-specifici questions. You can also add online polls to your website through Snappoll.com or Pollpub.com.

Procrastinator's Toolkit: Do you have a lot of teens waiting until the last minute to do their homework? Show off your "open 24 hours" web resources with a folder full of flyers that highlight the databases and online resources most useful for teens. Market it as the "procrastinator's toolkit" and add blank pages with a template for teens to add their own favorite resources.

Book Trailers: With your free video software of choice and Flickr's Creative Commons library, your teens can promote their book of choice (for an example, see the book trailer for Meg Cabot's Airhead). Add a cheap microphone and access to such sites as SoundSnap and the Freesound database, and all your sound needs will be met!

Image Contests: Using Photoshop or Photo Booth, ask your teens manipulate photos they've taken. A committee of teachers, peers, or the librarian can choose the winner. Or, download the Spore Creature Creator and have students create and enter their creatures in a contest. Use categories like "scariest," "funniest," etc.

Tried-and-True Approaches

Host a Gaming Event: Hold a video game tournament, meet-up, or free play session for teens. Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Halo, and the Madden football series are popular choices for tournaments. If portable gaming systems are popular in your area, encourage teens to play against each other on their Sony PSP or Nintendo DS handhelds. For more information on tournament play, listen to Eli Neiburger's presentation from the 2007 Gaming in Libraries Symposium, "Tournament Games for Any Occasion: Choosing the Right Games for Your Audience."

Custom MySpace Workshop: Provide an opportunity for teens to decorate their spaces using templates from various online resources, such as Create a Blog or Killer Kiwi, or—for the more advanced teens—completely from scratch thanks to tutorials from Squidoo or the book Amp Your MySpace Page, by Eric Butow and Michael Bellomo (2007). Follow up with a MySpace Fashion Show where teens show off their decorated spaces. Invite parents to attend the event and use the workshop to teach Internet safety skills.

Revamp Your Web Site: Gather some teens and get their input on how to bring your library’s website up-to-date through free embeddable services. Add a Flickr badge, include RSS feeds for new books through LibraryThing, implement easy podcasting with Gcast or library videos on Youtube, Vimeo, and Blip.TV, or poll teen interests with online polls. Incorporate teens in creating the new content, and ask them for their favorite gaming sites, online comics, and more to help bolster your links.

Tech on a Budget

Game Design Workshops: With the help of such free programs as 3D Adventure Studio, Game Maker, and RPG Maker XP, turn your teens into game designers without spending a dime! Let their imagination run wild or challenge them to create a game that utilizes library and information-seeking skills.

Computers Inside Out: Partner with a local custom computer or computer repair business to give teens a look inside a computer. Teens can learn the different parts that make up a computer and build one hands-on with donated materials solicited through services like Craigslist or Freecycle. You can then donate your created computers to local teen shelters and detention centers.

Tech Partners: Contact your local news and radio stations, local organizations, or even school technology clubs to bring their equipment and expertise to your library. Your local news stations may be interested in teaching teens about filming and editing. Your local radio station can teach teens how to deejay. Local clubs and tech-based organizations can have teens participate in their most recent projects. Many of these organizations will happily bring their programs to your library for in-kind promotion.

Tech in the Stacks: Put up a book display of different books with tech themes. Keep your display stocked and attractive by printing out covers of checked-out books with a note that says "This book has been snatched by another reader, ask the librarian about placing a hold on this title." You can also use our downloadable template to create bookmarks highlighting the books on display, and for further inspiration search Flickr for "Teen Tech Week display." To go the extra mile, challenge teens to create their own projects based on those of the books and highlight them as part of the display.

Learn to Use GIMP: Teach teen patrons to use GIMP, a free and open source Photoshop alternative for PCs. Teens can create promotional posters for library events, or just learn to manipulate their own photographs inexpensively. Other good quality alternatives available for download include Paint.net, Krita, and CinePaint

Techno Jewelry: Use discarded computer parts (ask around in your community—schools, businesses, etc.) to make jewelry. Cut-up circuit boards and keyboard keys work especially well. Pieces can be strung together to make bracelets, glued to pins to make brooches, or attached to earring hooks. Provide a drill, glue, jewelry wire or string, and fasteners.

Texting Contest: Teens use their own phones to compete to see who is the fastest text messager. Put teens in small groups of 3 or 4 with a referee at each group. The members of the group program the referee's number into their phone. Then, a phrase is announced to the contestants, who text the phrase to their referee. The fastest texter in each group (the phrase must be texted correctly, as well) then advances to the next round.

Beyond Basics

Teen Electronics Recyclery: Work with teens to recycle old electronics and other junk from the around the house into a "junkbot," through the skills found in the book JunkBots, Bugbots, and Bots on Wheels: Building Simple Robots With BEAM Technology, by David Hrynkiw and Mark Tiden. Or, though the magic of circuit bending, turn old toys into strange new instruments.

Online Game Tournaments: Take your game tournaments to the next level by playing online against other libraries. Just like with regular tournaments, games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, Halo, and Madden 2009 make for great interlibrary play. Wii and Playstation 3 play online for free, while Xbox 360 charges a fee for its more robust Xbox Live service. Check out the Ann Arbor District Library's free GT System software to develop a thriving web presence centered around your interlibrary play.

"Real World" Games: Through the magic of GeoCaching, develop a real-world treasure hunt in your community. Or you can let your imagination soar with a massive, real-world urban game or alternate reality game featuring cell phone, text messages, e-mails from librarians, GPS coordinates, research skills, digital photography, and more! Through these "real world" games, you can take teens on a wild ride through many different media and lead them on adventures in their own backyard.

72-Hour Film Festival: The 72 hour film festival asks teens to incorporate a single common prop, phrase, location, and/or theme in a short video. The trick is that the that the video must be written, filmed, and edited within 72 hours. This is an ideal program for Spring Break or long weekends, as most contests start on Thursday evening and debut the films on Sunday night. Look for notable judges in your community and show off the films in style with a well-decorated exhibition.

Teen Tech Tutors: Do you have teens who need community service hours or just love to help the librarian? Consider using them as technology tutors for senior citizens or for elementary school students. Set up a dedicated time or use screen capture software to have teens create how to videos and printable tip sheets for using your catalog, accessing databases, using software, social networking, setting up an email account, or any other assistance the members of your community may need.

e-Zine: During Teen Tech Week, hold the inaugural meeting of your library's e-zine committee. One teen should be in charge of written content, another art, another the website itself. If you have enough participants, one teen could be responsible for publicizing the blog. Give the teens carte blanche to gather submissions from their peers: comics, poems, drawings, short stories, photographs, and more.

Booklists

Looking for books to encourage your teens to press play? Check out these lists:

Get Active: Move Your Body (Nonfiction)

Get Active: Move Your Body (Fiction)

Anyone Can Play (PPYA 2008)

Books about Music (includes books from BBYA, PPYA and Quick Picks)

Books about Movies or TV (includes books from BBYA, PPYA and Quick Picks)

 List your own suggestions for books that encourage teens to Press Play @ your library on the YALSA Wiki!