Students Enthralled with Cory Doctorow


Cory Doctorow traveled straight from the airport to PFTSTA today to speak to the 135 members of the high school. I was thrilled to have an author who would be interesting to the boys. He has a wonderful talk that he has given at all the previous stops on his tour, but that did not deter him from letting the students see how passionate he is about technology, privacy, freedom of information access and a whole slew of Internet issues that weren't even in our consciousness twenty years ago.


Some of the students said that he really didn't talk about his books. In essence he did. All the issues that are real to him including his stories of schools that issued laptops to students then spied on those students at home, companies that rented laptops then spied on their customers in compromising positions, and the US government prosecuting citizens who violate the computer fraud and abuse act are all included in his fictional novels about Marcus Yallow in some way. His books are set in the near future, and some of the technologies described in the books are definitely available now but others are not but could be soon.


He also talked about his friend Aaron Swartz who was an Internet activist. Aaron was indicted for downloading journal articles by the millions from JSTOR from the servers at MIT. Aaron thought this information should be available for free. Aaron, only 26, killed himself in January of 2013, two years after his initial arrest. Cory wanted the students to know that suicide does not solve your problems and that no matter how depressed you get, it is important to seek help. He explained that he is using this book tour to talk about suicide and the need for prevention.


Cory does not talk down to the students at all, and some of what he said was over my head, but the students really seemed to get it. So many of them clamored to talk to him when it was over and bought a book for him to sign. You can hear more from Cory and about his books by listening to this interview by Susan Larson on The Reading Life from WWNO. If you want to read his books online for free, you can find Little Brother here and you can find Homeland here. Craphound is Cory's website, and he is editor of the blog, Boing Boing. You can watch a talk that he gave at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC a few days before he was in New Orleans. Look for more pictures of this visit on the PFTSTA library website. 

We would like to thank Judith and Tom at Octavia Books and the people at MacMillan for making this visit possible.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Holidays from BRiMS and Bookmarked

I run two book groups at Patrick Taylor. My high school book group, Bookmarked , was created in the fall of 2007 which was my second year as librarian at the school. The students really wanted a library club, but the square footage of the library was so small that I could not imagine how any students could do any actual library work. Instead I created a book discussion group. Not only did we meet to talk books, but I tapped these students to help me with fundraisers and special programming like Teen Read Week. Helping me with these special activities seemed to appease the members. I waited until February of 2009 to institute a book discussion group for my middle school students called BRiMS, or Books Rule in Middle School . Both of the groups meet during lunch, and this year, the school added a third lunch. Now BRiMS is made up of only 6th and 7th graders. Bookmarked has 8th-12th grade students. This has actually worked well because in 2014 and 2015, Bookmarked lost a lot of members w...
Read more

Banned Book Week: Students Make Comments Pro & Con Censorship

Image
This blog post is being designed as a lesson for the English I students at PFTSTA. The teachers and I have collaborated on an activity to celebrate Banned Book Week (BBW). Many times in the past during BBW, I have invited the 8th graders into the library to discuss the banning and challenging of books in schools and libraries. I usually show some videos and share books owned by our library that have been banned or challenged somewhere in the US. This activity always spurs great discussion among the students and teachers. This year we wanted the students to create a written response to the presentation. We thought there was a real world connection if we had the students post their opinion online as a comment to someone writing about censorship in schools. The teachers and I want the students to learn how to compose a well thought out comment that is supported by evidence and concrete details. How more real world could it be than having the students comment directly on their librar...
Read more

Students Weigh in on Banned Books and the Freedom to Read

Image
Every year, for Banned Book Week, I prepare a lesson for our 8th graders. It was always teacher directed with discussion until last year . The English I teachers and I created a lesson for the students that included research and writing. I pulled the materials that I wanted them to read, and the students would write a very short essay declaring their belief in the need for teens to be able to exercise their freedom to read what they want to or the need for certain books to be taken off the shelves of the library or pulled from the English curriculum.  Above is the slide presentation that I have made for the students. Included in the slides are several videos that I thought would get the students thinking. There are slides with links to specific articles that we want the students to read and use for the concrete evidence to support their stance. A rubric is included at the end so the students know exactly what is expected. The teachers and I want the writing to have a...
Read more