Professional Activity 3 - Observe and document a program delivered for children or young adults at a local library. Reflect on the experience. Theme – digital materials and emerging technologies

Activity - LEGOMATION

The flier said come along to build some scenes in LEGO and with some photographic an App magic, we’ll show you how to make your own comic strip. So I went along to LegoMation  with some ideas for stories and was ready to build.

LegoMation was targeted at children years 3-6 as a January school holiday event.

Were any gaps in your knowledge revealed?

I have recently had a little experience with the Samsung Galaxy Tablet as we have just introduced it at Kogarah Library as our roving tool. But no experience with the Comic Strip it! App. The Children’s Librarian facilitating confessed at only having mastered the app herself the night before.

Being a librarian for 0-5 age group is advantageous in the sense that I get to focus on one demographic, however it does also mean that I miss out on working with youth and primary aged children very often and finding work time to learn new technologies can be hard.

How might those gaps be filled?

Exposure to new technologies and accepting any training opportunities will help me gain experience and keep abreast of evolving trends in children’s programs. Partaking in this event gave me confidence and showed me what a great result I could get with a little step outside my comfort zone.

How was the activity relevant to your professional practice?

The activity was important in addressing the imbalance in my role and to keep up with the way Public Libraries changing in order to stay relevant. The latest advances in technology for children and young people are bringing new opportunities to target groups. Media rich software brings new challenges and patrons. (Juan Suarez, 2010, p 34).  LEGO programs in Public Libraries have succeeded in fostering inclusion and bringing in an unusually diverse range of children. Many have introduced LEGO with a mindset for engaging children in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills in young people (Wolf, 2013, p 15).

Kogarah Library has created a number of innovative LEGO programmes in particular Olympic type events based on three different tasks run in heats and then a final. There are also free-play events for younger K-2. The LegoMation events target an older group who at the “beginning of independent academic and complex reasoning, and are ready for a full range of library programs” (Cerney, Markey & Williams, 2006).

What did you learn?

The Children’s Librarian first talked first about story -building as a concept and showed us examples of previous children’s attempts. We then all got a base boards or mat and made a scene. We could make a specific scene or let the creative process evolve with what we found in the LEGO pit. There were books on display such as storyboarding and comic books as well as general LEGO construction books.

Once we had built our scene, one of the two librarians came to show us how to use the app. There were 6 tablets to 15 children (me included). This part was interesting as it showed more experienced and confident children helping others. This demonstrated to me the importance of social roles in learning development. Social skills are equally important as academic endeavours “that will help them initiate, understand, and maintain positive relationships with other children and adults” (Pound, 2012). The event had recreational and educational value.

We took photos of our scene with the tablet and then used the app to create our comic strips. Many of the kids found it intuitive. We opened the app, gave the storyboard a title, and took the photos, added new frames, manipulating the picture before we set it as a frame. When then chose a layout plan. There were special FX, but we didn’t use them. We then put captains on the bottom and gave them speech, thought, whisper and scream balloons. Lastly we added POW feature which gave   colours and styles for fancy text. We then save it and view our finished product.

 The process was creative and hands on. Piaget’s theories of development in the concrete operational stage suggest that logical thought develops when working with tangible items (such as Lego bricks and computers.) Activities such as the LegoMation event I attended encouraged such independent construction of knowledge (Pound, 2012).

References:

Cerney, R., Markey., & Williams, A. (2006). Outstanding Library Services to Children: Putting the 
       core competencies to work. Retrieved from Ebook Library.
Pound, L. (2006). How Children Learn: From Montessori to Vygosky- Educational Theories and 
         Approaches Made Easy. London: Andrews UK. Retrieved from Ebook Library.
Romero, J.S. (2010). Library Programming with Lego Mindstorms, Scratch And Pico Cricket: Analysis of
          best practices for Public Libraries. Computers in Libraries. 30(1).
Wolf, S. (2013). East lake Community Library Uses Lego to support life skills of young patrons. Florida 
          Libraries. 56(1).