Teen TECH Week (TTW) Begins

As usual, I have overbooked myself, but it sure makes the library a busy and exciting part of the school. On Monday, we kicked off TTW 13 with movie day. I popped some popcorn and showed several Oscar nominated animated shorts at lunch. I think that the Paperman, which won the Oscar this year, was the students' favorite. 

Scene from Paperman by Disney

Students enjoying popcorn and the show
Everyday during TTW, the students are emailed what I call a Research Riddle. I have been doing this for years. They must find the answer by conducting research electronically. For the last couple of years, I have used aGoogleaday to help me design the riddles. The students then fill out a form with the correct answer, bring it to me in the library, so that they can get a candy as a prize. Then every form is placed into a large jar, one for high school and one for middle school. At the end of the week there will be a grand prize winner for each level who will receive a $15 iTunes card for TTW. 

Playing in the Wikipedia Race
Today we had two events. One was an author visit with Aimee Agresti. I will make a special blog post just on her visit. The other event was the Wikipedia Races that were held at lunch. For this game two students face off in each race, they both start at the same article on Wikipedia like Hunger Games. Then they are given an ending point like filet mignon which is totally unrelated to the starting point. They can only travel through Wikipedia by clicking on links; they are not allowed to use the search bar or control f. I had never done this activity before, so I didn't know if it would work. It did work because the kids had a good time, but the laptops seemed to lag so much on the wifi as each new page was loaded that it was difficult to name the winner of each match. We are going to try and play again next week and use the desktops that are hardwired. 

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