Re: OK, =?iso-8859-1?Q?Bill=8A?= keeping it going
sybilb@sfpl.lib.ca.us
Wed, 2 Apr 1997 09:22:42 -0800
Here at San Francisco Public Library we are collaborating with the school
district and really, the whole community in a manner of speaking. We built
a "children's Electronic Discovery Center in our new main library which
ed last April. We have trained over 100 teenagers, mostly from the school
district to help the younger children learn to use the multimedia computers.
Collaborations have included working with community arts groups to teach
children how to create art on the computers,and other such programs which are
in the development stages to give children experience with higher end uses of
computers. Our most successful collaboration has been our Civic Conference
project with five high schools and City Officiails.
After working on curriculum integration with teachers, we organized an online
forum between the students and the Mayor, and later the Chief of Police.
Computer Science students from SF State University were on site with the
highschool students and teachers to help them access the conference on the
first day. After that, the conversation was ongoing for a few weeks, and
students had the chance to interact at the highest levels of policy making
in the community and let their concerns be known and get their questions
answered. Teachers reported they had never seen some of the kids so engaged.
The content was so compelling, that they were willing to deal patiently with
problems such as jamming the network when too many students tried to log on
at once. We will be expanding this program in the near future. O
O
Sybil Boutilier, SF Public Library, PI,Electronic Library Project