 Good morning everyone. This is Michael Sowers, your guest guest host for this week's edition of Encompass Live, our weekly online show that we've been doing for the better part of, I think we're in our fifth year now here from the Nebraska Library Commission in the currently cool but sunny downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. Encompass Live is a weekly online show that we do covering topics of all sorts of interest to librarians of all types. Sometimes we have guest speakers come in, we have commission staff do things, I do a monthly tech talk episode where we bring in guest speakers and sometimes I do a presentation. And all of these events are recorded for posterity so if you haven't been able to join us live you can go through our complete archive or re-watch your favorite episodes. This week's session I will introduce our guest speaker in just a moment there. You can see her name and title there on the screen. I just want to let everybody know if you have questions during the session our speaker has told me, Amanda, that there will be several points at which you will happily take questions and has left plenty of time for them at the end. So there is a question and answers interface in your GoToWebinar software. Just go ahead and type your question in there and I will pay attention to those and pass those along to Amanda. Also if you have a microphone everybody is muted by default however if you have a mic feel free to type into the questions area, hey I have a mic, unmute me or something to that effect and we will happily turn your mic on for you and let us hear your dulcet tones, ask your question instead of just me repeating what you've typed. So with that I would like to introduce Amanda Roberson, the Youth Coordinator for Children and Teen Services at the Hartford County Library in Maryland and she's here to talk about the STEM programs that she is doing at the library and actually if you don't know what STEM is I'm sure she's going to fill us in on that. So good morning Amanda and what you got going on. Good morning everyone. Okay well this morning we're going to talk about STEM programs and STEM kits that Hartford County has put into place for our youngest learners all the way through to 8th graders. So I'll talk a little bit about Leap Sciences Fund, Little Leapers and Little Leapers 3.5. We have a lot of leaping happening in Hartford County. As I go through the slides if you have any questions you can feel free to ask them at the time but as I talk about each of the programs I'm going to pause afterward to take any questions that might be specific to your needs and I've built plenty of time in for that. So as you have questions you can ask them but I'm going to kind of wait to answer them until the end of each segment and then at the end I'll take general questions as well. So we have three different types of STEM kits or STEM programs within Hartford County. Leap Sciences Fund was launched in 2007 and it has a target age group of third to eighth grade children. Little Leapers is an extension of the Leap program but we wanted to gear that same STEM learning which is science, technology, engineering and mathematics for those of you who are not familiar with STEM yet. And you can also throw steam in there now and add arts into the mix. But we wanted to expand the same science learning that was happening with the Leap programs and extended to our younger learners. So these kits are geared for children ages birth to five and you can see a little one there in the picture actually checked out our I'm an entomologist kit and went to the zoo and was looking at bugs in one of the exhibits there. And then we also have our newest addition to our STEM kits and programming which is Little Leapers 3.5 which is a unique program that engages young children in digital literacy to the use of iPad minis. Apps that are geared towards stream topics and stream is when you add in pretty much everything that education is. So you can see that STEM just keeps on growing from STEM to steam to stream. And through their engagement with these apps they're becoming familiar with digital technology that they'll need to use and be productive with as they enter school and as they go throughout their lives. So Leap Science is fun. They are the Leap kits are boxed sets and they're all themed within each box. There is different materials to help children explore the science topics. They include books, DVDs, posters. Some of them have microscopes and there's all kinds of different things that everything that they need in order to conduct the experiments even consumable products are within these kits. So they can be checked out and the parents and children can explore everything from astronomy through zoology. And I'll take you to a listing of all of those so I can talk about that. Just a little let me switch my screen over here. Okay, this is our website so you can see that there is a listing of the Leap kits on our website. Again, all the way from A to Z you can check out something to work with snap circuits, even birds and fossils. We even have some that encourage kids to explore aquatic life and some of those kits do come back a little wet and I'll talk about how that kind of dealt with. But there's lots of different kits available and as you click on each of the links it'll show you the different materials that are in each kit. Along with each kit you'll see that there's a student guide and a teacher guide. The student guide and teacher guide just gives recommended activities for the kit and I'll click on a couple of different ones so you can see the difference. So there can be things that are as simple as binoculars and how to engage with the binoculars within a science setting and it'll give suggestions for use as well as books that coincide with the theme. So lots of different, see this is one of our really neat ones, it actually has a human body in it, like a model of a human body. So you can actually explore the different parts of the body and there are materials to go along with that. Each Leap kit has several different science experiments to go along with these activities. If you go back to our website you can see that these can be reserved online which is great for them to be transported from branch to branch so that people can get the actual topic that they are looking for at the time they are looking for. So one of the first questions I typically get about these kits is how much do they cost and it is a pricey collection. Kits can range in price from anywhere under $100 to a little over $400. They come with materials that are intended for school use. So we buy from a lot of school supply distributors and we look for very durable items because we do know that they are going to be checked out by a lot of people and have multiple uses and possibly multiple groups. So children even in one checkout. So we don't typically purchase from the toy market which expects probably just one family will use it. We purchase from vendors that are more geared towards school supplies and reused durable items. Because the kits are pricey we have two different ways that this collection has been funded. One is through an LSTA grant. This grant was what helped to launch this collection in 2008. And then we also have our library foundation which allows people to sponsor kits. And that has happened for a couple of different kits where different groups in the community have made decisions to sponsor a kit that may connect with their mission or their goal. And you can see over here on the website that right here on the LEAP page you can click on sponsor a LEAP kit. And then there will be information on how you can contact our foundation director to talk about how you want to sponsor that kit and how many kits you'd like to sponsor and where your logo will be placed on the kit. You can see in the picture here that these are some of the kits. They're all different shapes and sizes. We typically try to go with these more durable cases now. We found that they are best for circulation. They are sealed after everything is checked in with circulation and all the pieces are in them. There is a side shut so that the pieces do not come out in the branch so that they only come out as families are using them at home or teachers are using them. So a few more questions that I typically get. What happens if something goes missing? To be honest with you a lot of things really don't go missing. Sometimes you might miss some small parts that can easily be replaced and we do have a LEAP hospital that if something is missing they can go there to be replaced. If it's something that really doesn't need to be replaced because there's lots of these little pegs within it and there's just a few that are missing but it doesn't change the functioning of the kit then we may choose not to replace those and not to charge for them. But if it's larger pieces, the circulation staff that checks them can cause the last bar and see if possibly these items can be recovered or if they can be located and then if not we will ask that borrower to pay a replacement cost and a processing fee for whatever the item is. Some other circulation details is that LEAP kits can be checked out for a week at a time. They do have a $2 per day overdue fee and that is consistent with our overdue fees for other special items within our collection. And again in this picture you can see a display in a library where all of the LEAP kits are stored and available for a checkout. Along with LEAP kits we made the decision to, within the grant, provide programming to go along with the STEM education and this excitement around science learning. So there are three different types of programs that were originally put into place. One is school year programs and they revolved around eight different themes, electricity, chemistry, earth science, medicine, inventions, uology, archeology and codes. And you can see some children here in this picture engaging in one of those programs. We also incorporated summer programming that was more non-traditional science programs so we brought in different presenters that would present on science topics and sometimes they even incorporated kind of really fun juggling illusion and different things like that in order to demonstrate science for the children. And then there is a fair that we had in 2009 called the Future's Mind and it was a Science and Technology Career Day. So there were different exhibitors and presenters that provided an overview of careers within science and technology and were able to chat with the kids about their particular field. We continue that programming throughout the year now. We continue that programming throughout the year now and there are STEM programs offered throughout the summer, throughout the school year as branches see fit to put it in. So with that, that is kind of an introduction to our LEAP kits. I'm going to come back here to our website and give you guys an opportunity to let me know what or do you want to know about LEAP kits and how they function within the Harvard County Library System. Okay everyone, for those of us who have joined us, I was just going to remind everybody that you can type your questions in the Q&A or if you have a microphone, let us know and I'll turn it on for you. But we already have a question coming through from Chris. Do you see much teen use of the LEAP kits or mainly kits? We don't really know exactly who's checking out the LEAP kits as far as within ages because it's just their library cards. All of the kits kind of have a different feel to them for what age groups they might attract. So a lot of the more complicated kits are going to attract our middle school tweens but I don't have any data on whether teens are actually checking them out. And I had a question that came up that kind of ties into that. Do you have any ideas on the ratio or amount of homeschooler use versus general, I guess, non-homeschooler would be the other term? I could really just speak to what our branches have a feel for and they are noticing that our homeschool populations are using these kits. In fact, one of our branches, even when it's hard to start offering a program called Homeschool Rocks where they have science programming during the day for specifically homeschool groups because there was such an interest. And the one other question that I came up with was the child in the first slide who had taken the kit to the zoo made me wonder have you officially partnered or approached anybody like the zoo or local science museum or something to say, hey, we have these kits, can we make something work together or is it pretty much this is the library's thing at the moment? We haven't partnered with any organizations like the zoo or the science center. Most of our partnerships and our sponsorships for these kits are coming from actual science and technology professions. So for instance, we are in an area that has an army base nearby and so there are lots of engineers and scientists working in the area at places like SAIC and things like that. So those types of groups are more the partners and the sponsors that are working with us in these groups. Cool. Okay. At this point, I'm not seeing any other questions coming in from the audience. Oh, one more. Okay. Sorry. I always say that then one more comes in. Molly is asking, could you tell us more about getting the sponsors you have to which I'll maybe interpret. Are you doing more than just having that page on the website? Are you actively trying to get sponsors? At the start of this program, we did seek out sponsors more actively, but our foundation handles that and the foundation director seeks out those sponsorships. And so the foundation will ask for sponsors through different interactions that they have with community members. A lot of times these community members are seeing the kits within the branches and make that decision. They also will hold different fundraising events throughout the year at which people can specifically gear their donation towards the OBEAP program. So all of that individual fundraising happens through their promotion of this program and their sponsorship of it. And Chris is adding, we have a similar program where most of our funding came from our grants, which makes me ask is, you've got this list here. How many were from the original grant? How many are sponsored? Can you give us a rough breakdown on that? Let me see if I have that data in front of me, let's see. I actually don't know specifically which ones are funded through the grant and which ones are funded through sponsorship because some of the individual kits while they have a theme, there may be 10 of them out there. And part of that particular group would be sponsored by the original grant and then another section of those might be sponsored by a sponsorship. So just even the topics listed here, you might have multiple copies of the same one too. Yes, we do have multiple copies of the same one. It's not just these that are out there, there are lots of each of these kits throughout our branches. And we've got a couple, a comment and a question coming, oh now they're coming in fast and furious here, so bear with me folks. First of all, okay, Lisa says, first of all, awesome, I'm from Cobb County Public Library System in Georgia and we're so impressed with Hartford STEM kits that we have decided to create similar kits here. And she's spoken to a Shelly Dolan who has been super helpful in helping them get started, yay Shelly. The next question for Molly is, are patrons able to put these on hold if they are checked out? Yes, the LEAP kits are holdable for many different reasons, one if they're checked out. And I know I really want a certain topic, I can put it on hold so that when it comes back I can get it. Or if I am at a branch that doesn't have a dinosaur kit on the shelf right now but it's on the shelf at a branch in the south end of the county, then I can go ahead and put that on hold and get it sent to my branch so that I have it. Also speaking to the librarian in Georgia that is recreating these, yay that's exciting, Shelly is amazing, she is our LEAP kit guru. She was the one that found the containers to circulate these in. And we do share all of these kits so if you are looking to recreate these you can actually give the information on our website. We just redesigned so I want to make sure I am telling you the right place to go. You can actually get LEAP information right here. If you go to for you and then kids, it's at the top, you click on LEAP, there is a list of LEAP kits, frequently asked questions. And through that you can get lots of information on different suppliers that we use and there is also a link to putting these kits together yourself. So we do share that information with anyone that is looking to recreate. And I would think the home schoolers might want to schedule to have a certain kit at a certain time to go with their curriculum and things like that. Yeah and they are holdable for that. And Lisa says, yes she has found those and thank you so much for sharing the binders also. Yes the binders are also available for people to recreate, we just asked you to give us a little nod. Yeah that's always fair, cite your sources that's what we do. And Lisa from Georgia has one more question and this is kind of a big one so I will let you answer it to how you want. I think at that point we'll let you move on to your next topic. She says she's curious about the kits that include the iPads. There's conflicting research opinions and research regarding how much screen time the children under the age of five should have daily. I wonder if parents may actually appreciate the puzzles and activities over the iPads. She's also wondered if it's best to include them with the kits or offer them as an additional option. Okay that question is actually very relevant to my next two portions because the LEAP kits as we are talking about them now. These particular kits that I've overviewed are intended for grades three to eight and they do not have any iPads in them. The iPad program is actually called Little Leapers 3.5 and that's the third segment so let's hold that question and talk about that then. Alright sounds good. Okay great. Alright so our next after the success of LEAP we made the decision to expand the same idea of providing STEM kits to a younger audience. So we wanted to provide kits for birth through five. So the Little Leapers kits are just like the LEAP kits and that they are box sets. They contain books that are science and math based fiction and nonfiction. They have toys, music CDs, science tools, different science experiments that they can engage in. They also come with binders that have three to five, sometimes even more activities that they can engage in with the materials that are in the kit. But they're also linked to the five early literacy practices from every child ready to read, reading, writing, singing, talking. So they're again geared for that younger audience and you can see the list of them here. All about me, baby animals, colors, shapes and numbers and my senses are all geared towards a younger audience. So they're geared towards your baby toddler audience because they're those very simple science topics that young children are learning and exploring at that time. So all of the items within those kits are safe to be chewed and not and all that kind of stuff. They have board books within them instead of your typical, you know, paged books. So they're a little bit more durable and really all the toys are geared towards that younger audience. We're still seeing your web browser, not your slides, so I don't know if you want to just go back. That's all right. Thank you. You're welcome. There we go. Are you seeing the screen now? Yes, you should be. Okay, the rest of the list I'm an architect through. I'm a paleontologist. Those are all geared towards preschoolers. So you're three, four and five year olds. So they have a little more intricate pieces and they're intended to engage children and families together seeking out these different careers. We also have recently added I'm a mechanical engineer and we are working on a kit. I'm an ornithologist, the study of birds. So currently growing this collection as well. So again, it's the same concept as the regular leap sciences fun kits. However, just geared towards that younger audience. Again, I like to address the question, how much does this cost? These kits may range anywhere from $200 to $300. Again, depending on the content of each kit. We were really fortunate to receive private funding to cover all the cost of the materials as well as the plastic containers for this. And again, not something that our foundation worked on. There is a list of vendors that we use for these because these do incorporate some toys within them. But every vendor that supplies materials for these kits has to be able to give us a Cispia regulation certificate that they're compliant. So and we keep that on file here at our admin office. So in order to purchase from companies and in order to purchase specific things, they have to be able to provide us with. We do have some consumable items within the kits. And those are things that can be replaced very easily. If there is any other wear and tear, they can come to the leap hospital and get fixed. If any books or materials need updated, the materials management folks go ahead and take care of the ordering of that. And technical services goes to how to add refreshes. We just finished calling back our little leapers kits, a subject at a time to be refreshed. So someone took a look at each of them to make sure that the contents were still worth circulating and weren't damaged. And anything that needed replaced got replaced as a whole so that all of the materials are fresh within the kits. Again, circulation questions, how long do they circulate. They can also be checked out for a week. They have a renewal period for another week as long as there's no hold requests on any of them. They have the same $2 per day over new fee that the week have. And same process, if something is missing, the circulation staff person that checks it in is going to try to work with the borrower to find that missing item. But if they can't find it, then they're going to be asked to pay for the replacement cost of the item. Again, with funding, all of our kit, all of the actual plastic kits were purchased by a private funder. And the title sponsorship for these, the set of kits is Celebri Learning Centers. And then we had some additional funds come from SEIC, M&T Bank, and Heart to Heart Transportation. So the library foundation is the, again, the coordinator of all these funds and reached out to these organizations for the funding of these particular kits. So different funding from the week kits. We're growing this collection. This is a collection that we, I said we're adding additional kits. We added, I'm a mechanical engineer, and we're adding, I'm a hornythologist. And we have a team that develops additional kits, and they work to identify the materials that need to go in there and to write the curriculum that goes along with it. We started out just having little leapers kits available at certain branches, and they are being extended to additional branches as well so that more branches actually have them on the shelves. Again, like the LEAP kits, no matter what branch you're at, you can place a hold to have your kit sent to that branch. And then finally, we noticed that while our LEAP kits focus on ages, on grades three and up, or four and up, or three to four and up to eight, and our little leapers kits focus on birth to kindergarten, that we were leaving out our first, second, and some of our third grade customers. So we are looking to expand the little leapers and the LEAP programs to cover those additional grades and to add some early reader materials and materials that fit for that age group specifically. So this program is growing as well. And then I'll go ahead and switch you over to my other screen so that you can look at our web resources for this one. All right, so from our website, if you go to For You and Early Literacy, you can see that Little Leapers has a link there. And with a nod to our funders, you can also find some media coverage that we have had for these kits, as well as some pictures of kids engaged with the kits with one another. And then just like the other ones, you can click on the kit and you'll get a list of materials that are inside and the toys that are inside as well. And then the actual binders with activities are located within the kits for people to use as they go through. So if that was, I'm an architect and you can see if you click on All About Me, you can see how the toys are geared towards a lot younger learners. And we put the recommended pages on there. We have the nice little tip. A good scientist always leaves equipment and tools clean for the next person. And we have, that specifically can apply to this one here, that I'm a marine biologist, because some of these items go very nicely into the bathtub, like the swim goggles, into the pool. And sometimes this kit comes back a little drippy and has to be dried off. So we're actually looking at how we may not want to focus on water-based science for many more of our kits just because it just doesn't go well with the books and other materials. Just like the LeapKits, you can create your own little leapers. We just ask that you give us a nod. And there is a Frequently Asked Questions section, as well as the Activity Binder and Kit content for each kit that's available. You can see that it goes through several different observations and activities that these learners can engage in. Okay, so that is the Little Leapers kits. Again, much like the LeapKits just designed for a younger age group. Does anybody have any questions about Little Leapers? Yeah, we have a couple of questions and comments come in, and I've got a couple myself, if nobody else comes up with them. We do have Chris from Omaha Public here did share her link to their science kits, and we'll put those in the show notes after the fact. Molly is asking, when expanding did you start by having all the kits at one library or distributing different kits to different branches? There we go. When we started the launch of each of these programs, it was decided which branches would house them. And a lot of those decisions were made with space in mind. Does the branch have shelving that can accommodate? I'll go back to the presentation. We go back, you can see that on a shelf, they can be quite bulky. So each branch made that decision independently, looked at what other special collections they might have, and made the decisions that way. So not every branch has these actually on their shelves in their branch. But again, you can request. And actually for one of my questions, if you just stay right there on that picture. When I saw that picture, and earlier with the other kids who had mentioned something about sealing them, I saw that picture and I thought, well, what happens if somebody just starts using it right then and there in the library and all the pieces and the parts? Are they able to do that? Is there some sort of controls? How does that work? We used to allow that. And the decision was made just recently in the last four or five months that we were going to seal them. So you can see where the handles come up over the lid of the kit. After all of the items are accounted for by the simulation staff person, they zip tie them shut. So if someone is going to bust these things open in the branch, they're going to have to have a knife or scissors on them. And we don't encourage that. We encourage that little leapers kits are used at home. And we do have lots of other collections that can be used in the branches. So we kind of direct people if you'd like to play with something. Like in this picture, actually, you can see with the very back of the picture, we have our learning and sharing collection in orange bags, which is a collection of puzzles, games and toys and puppets. So we'll kind of direct people towards those if they want to play with something in the branch. And then each branch also has learning activities within the branch. So that's kind of the line we walk up on. Sure. And the other question I had, and I have a feeling I know the answer, but I will ask the question anyways. How well do some of the different kits work with multiple kids versus an individual kid? I guess, you know, if you've got, you know, I guess home school or you've got three kids all over, you know, the same relative age. How well do they work? And I'm thinking the answer is it depends on the kit, really. It does depend on the kit. Like for instance, all about me, my senses, baby animals, color shapes and numbers. You're probably only going to have maybe one to two kids being engaged with that at one time. But if you look at, like if I pull up, let's do, I'm a bonus. And you can see that there are, like in this first one, I need to switch you over to mine. Yep. I was just going to mention that. There we go. So we have, I'm a botanist, and one of the activities is to explore the connection between seeds and food we eat by looking around the kitchen for edible seeds. So this is something that would be really fun with a lot of kids because they can kind of go on a scavenger hunt to investigate, you know, the different types of seeds that they might find. And then there's a great little conversation piece built in to talk about the seeds and how they're different and how they're alike and then by, you know, exploring them even further. So there are, you know, lots of ways that many children could engage with that very well. Sure. So it just kind of all depends on the activity and how you lead it. Great. Okay. I'm not seeing any other questions coming in from the audience on this one, so I think maybe we could take a look at the iPad. Okay. That's the one that will get lots of questions on, I'm sure. All right. So moving along, our third one is Little Leapers 3.5. And 3.5 is a cute kind of way to put it because it nods to it being digital, but also it describes the age ranges that we're focusing on, which is three to five-year-olds. So this program, Little Leapers 3.5, engages children and parents together within the library on digital devices, iPad minis to be specific, and each of the iPad minis with it, oh, sorry about that. So all of the iPad minis are loaded with apps that have been researched and selected by Hartford County librarians to not only meet early literacy needs, but also to focus in on digital literacy skills, swipe technology, and dream topics. So we're also looking for creativity and just that they're able to explore that tablet technology. One of the main focal points for this program is that digital awareness piece. A lot of kids are in a digital divide when they start school, where they are expected to be able to navigate a computer or a tablet, and they don't have those resources at home. So when they get to school, they're having that hurdle to jump over. So we really wanted to bridge that digital divide for those children and those families by providing the opportunity within the branches for families to explore together. I'm going to play for you a video of the rollout of this. The local news station came out and covered the launch of this program, and it is a really good overview because you actually see the families engaging together. And there's a few interviews with some parents and so on and so forth. The way that it's going to work within the webinar system is I have my volume up as loud as it can be, and it's still a little muted for you. So if you could also turn your volume all the way up, then you should be able to hear just fine. I'm also going to keep it small on the screen because when I played it larger earlier, it didn't seem to come across as well. And then I also provided the link for you so that if you would like to watch it on your own later, you can do that. All right, so go ahead and turn up your volume. I will double check that my volume is up just the same, and we're ready to go. So that's just a little overview from the news program. Along with this initiative, we obviously have the minis within the branches and on our bookmobile. We actually have them on both of our bookmobiles. Our rolling reader, which is intended for children, and our silver reader, which is intended for seniors. In hopes that possibly the Little Leapers 3.5 minis can help older customers and seniors to familiarize themselves with the digital technology and be able to engage with their possible grandchildren with the devices and the apps. The implementation of actual minis within the branches took a lot of coordination from selecting the apps to loading the apps to determining how they would be tethered to looking at cases that would hold the minis, locations for them, furniture, seating. All of that was taken into consideration as this program was launched. Also, as you saw within the news video, there is programming that is happening where librarians are using the minis within programs, within story times to promote digital literacy to families. We also provide an app list for families, and that app list is located on our website. Switch over to my website monitor again, and it looks like this. And so it has the title of the app as well as the creator and the cost. You can see that we really tried to keep most all of the apps either free or very low cost. A couple of them do hit the 499, 399 range, but we tried to keep them affordable for families that if they have phones or tablets at home, they're able to also get the apps so they don't just use them at the branch. This is the first app list that was created. This app list is the one that is currently in use in all of the branches, and we are currently developing a second list of recommendations. Because as this technology grows and as new apps are being developed, we want to stay current just as we would with our collections. There are also staff members that check these apps for updates because sometimes an app can drastically change with a new update. So we want to take a look at that, and we want to make sure that they are still achieving the goal of the program. Again, this list is available as well as a new list that is soon to be coming. We also have an app of the month feature with Little Leapers 3.5 where we recommend a different app each month for children. Again, these are library-intested. They have a range of steps and checks that they go through when looking at an app to verify that it is something that, yes, we do want to endorse for our customers. We also promote the app each month on our Facebook pages as well. This is a big question I always get is, how did you fund this? This project is funded actually by one sponsored donor as well as additional funding from our library foundation and the actual public library itself. So the purchase of the iPad Minis, the apps, the tables and chairs that went along with this was all sponsored by a group called Morrissey Mechanic Foundation and the upkeep of the project and the additional costs that are accrued and the rest of the project was funded through the library. Along with this, something to think about within funding is as we are adding new apps, there is additional funding required so branches are getting app budgets because not only do they need to purchase the apps to go on the Minis, but they need to purchase apps that might not end up on the Minis. That we may try out and might not be something that we want to move forward with. So something to think about when moving forward with a project like this. Before I go to that, let's see if there is anything else that I did not share. Oh, we are expanding this project. We started out with our Minis only at a few branches. They were at the Aberdeen, Abington, Edgewood branches and then our two bookmobiles. And we have since expanded that to adding four more branches this year. All ten iPad Minis that were mentioned in the news report were not being used on the floor, like being tethered and out at all times. And we are finding the ones that we were allowing for checkout weren't being checked out. So we have been able to expand the original purchase of the Minis to additional branches. So there wasn't any additional funding. We are just reallocating some of the Minis so that they can be in different branches within the system. So that expansion is happening. There is also additional expansion for this program to add a lot more education to this. And this kind of feeds into the question that I got earlier, that, you know, what are we doing with, you know, there's a lot of conflicting research out there about how technology should be used with this age group and is screen time appropriate and how much is and stuff like that. And there's been so much research that has gone back and forth with and so many statements by different organizations that the library is taking the position that we are going to try to help our community clear the air somewhat with that and understand what is current. So we are actually bringing in two speakers in April to celebrate the month of the young child. We're bringing in Tanya Smith from the Fred Rogers Institute, as well as Claudia Haynes from Little Elit to have a digital literacy symposium. And we're calling it Welcome to the Digital Neighborhood. And it's going to be a really neat symposium in that parents and children are going to be welcome and they will have the librarians pull the children out for a digital storytime while the parents and families can be tuned in to our speakers. The speakers are not just going to present research but also fun and in meaningful ways to engage in this technology with young children and then the kids we brought back in so that the families can interact together with the experts on hand. We're also going to be launching at that same time Little Leapers 3.5 Digital Camp and this has six classes as a part of it, three that are PC specific and three that are tablet specific. And you can see the class offerings there. So we're hoping to again be the leaders and being good advocates for excellent use of digital media and digital technology with this age group. And we've been fairly successful and when I say fairly successful we've been recognized here in Hartford County for two years in a row as innovator of the year. In 2013 the Little Leapers kits won the Innovator of the Year award and just this year in 2014 Little Leapers 3.5 also won the Innovator of the Year award. This is a really exciting award for us to win because other organizations that are recognized by this award are those that are in the medical profession and scientific fields where people's lives are being saved by some of the inventions that are recognized by innovator of the year and we think it's really great that they would choose to recognize the library for their efforts within STEM and literacy. So we're very excited about that. So at this point I'll take what is probably a bunch of questions. I know I'm coming right up on my time. We started 10 minutes late and I think it is currently exactly 12.10. So I don't know how you want to work that. I'll let you make that decision. I can take questions now. I'm fine with that or people can feel free to get in touch with me if they have further questions, however you want to work it. No, we're good. We do not get cut off at the hour. So we will, as long as people have questions, we'll keep going as long as you are willing to. So I've got a couple short questions that I came up with. We've got at least one question from the audience coming in. Anybody else have questions? Go ahead and type them in. Also if you have a microphone we'll turn it on for you. My first question, short one, and if I missed this I apologize at the beginning. I know what STEM is. I know what STEAM is. Stream is new to me. What's the R stand for? Stream, let's see, I have to go through it. Technology, reading. Reading, okay. Engineering, arts, and mathematics. Okay, all right. I don't do the kid stuff all that often. So Stream was a new one to me. They just keep adding letters too. Oh, I know. There'll probably be another S in the end next or something. Hey, we should create that. There you go. Comments, and I'm going to completely come out of left field for this because I'm a big person about sharing and I don't know what permissions and what equipment you have, but is there any chance you're going to record any part of that symposium for other people to watch afterwards? And if not, maybe if I could just encourage you to invest in it. I hadn't considered that. That's something that's still in development. And I'm sure I know that both Tanya and the folks at Little Elit are all about sharing. So next time we have a meeting, I'll bring that up. Yeah, at least like the presentations in the Q&A, obviously once you get to the hands-on and the individuals, that would be a lot more difficult. But I think a lot of our audience would be very interested in participating and they're not going to be there. So just a thought there. I can definitely bring that up. We're going to be training the day before that with those same speakers for our staff. Which leads us to the one question I have from the audience sitting there. That was perfect. Thank you. Molly is asking, can you tell us more about the training for your staff with either specifically the iPad Mini she's asking, but with any of this? With the iPad Minis, we do have, like I said, a selection criteria for apps and have, you know, educated the staff that are involved in selecting apps. But a lot of the other education pieces have come from staff interest and staff attending conference sessions, webinars, and just kind of finding what's out there and getting engaged. And so those staff members are the ones that are really leading the charge with this right now. And then additionally, you know, now we're bringing in, you know, the speakers from Fred Rogers and Digital Elit to really round out that training for all staff. So everyone that is involved within children's programming within our system will actually attend that training in April. Great. Lisa is asking just to clarify, because I think this is what you said, but I understand why she's asking. When you offered iPads for circulation, did you say that they were not checked out very often? We didn't offer them for circulation out of the building. So the idea was that every location, the three locations that have the Minis, would have half of them tethered someplace out on the floor to furniture and have seating with it. And then the other half of the Minis that was allocated to that branch would be located at the desk for checkout for use within the branch. So they could just go up to the information desk and say, can I get a Mini? And then it'd be checked out on their card. They can use it for a period of time, kind of like your computer use within your branch. And then they return it before they left. It wouldn't leave our building. And we found that having them behind the desk and having it so someone had to ask for it was a big barrier in people using them. So instead of having them all out, depending on the size of the branch, like for instance, Abington is a very large branch, so they made the decision, let's just go ahead and put the rest of our Minis out on the floor. So all of their Minis are available out on the floor and are tethered. Then the other two branches, they're the branches that we decided to reallocate some of the ones that were behind the desk at their branches so that other branches can be expanded to this service. Yes, when someone had to actually ask for it to come up and get it and use it, we found that it was not a checkout that was happening very often. Okay, all right. Other audience questions? I've got a couple more, so you've still got time if you've got questions to type those in. So I am assuming the choice of iPads is a platform. Whoops, that's... I'm being reminded of something. What we had to do, you're using the Apple, iPad management software and you're locking things down and you're only installing certain apps and they all match. Yes, within the... because you can link devices together within the Apple management, we are able to purchase an app once and have it go to 10 separate devices. So that's helpful. We also have Maraki on all of the devices, which helps us to maintain them and push updates and so on and so forth. A few hiccups with using Apple devices is that they're not intended for this purpose. They're intended to be someone's individual device. And so there's a lot of features that don't necessarily... that you can't necessarily turn off. And one of them is when the mini times out it will do so after four hours and it will require a password to log back in because we have turned off certain features that require a password. So what would happen is... parents and I think children as well were just kind of guessing at the password and just kind of putting in whatever and you can do that on an Apple device 10 times before it completely shuts itself off and a very lovely paperweight at that point. So what was happening is after that 10th time and it's not 10 consecutive, it's like just 10 times. 10 bad choice for... oh wow. So after the 10th time, then that would become an unusable device. So it'd have to come back to our computer services department and they would have to recover the device which has many steps to go through because you have to recover the actual device. You have to recover the iCloud which is recovering all your apps and would take a bit of time. So a very, very easy fix for that. Quite simple in fact is that we just put some signage up. That said, if prompted for a password find a library staff person and then we also have at the branches that have the minis someone allocated every four hours which is only twice a day to go over and ensure that the password has been entered and the device is functional. And since doing that we haven't really seen dead ones come back to us. Yeah, okay. And so I just have to stick my hand up for the other platform and I will just ask one question regarding that. On your list of apps are you paying any attention to whether those apps are also available on Android for people who might want to use those apps at home but don't have iPads, Apple devices? This is something that our team is currently exploring. This situation with, and I give this question a lot about Apple versus Android and really it comes down to the approval process for an app. Apple has a strict approval process and they will go to an app developer and ask for revisions to be made to their apps until they meet Apple standards and there's a long approval process. However, to create an Android app anybody can do it. I can create one and get it up in the same way that I've created it and nobody is providing any checks and balances for me. So because of that you find that there are many more really great Apple apps than there are Android apps. However, some apps do, some app developers do create both. So in our next list of apps if there is an Android equivalent like if it has been published in both stores then there'll be a notation of that. Yeah, that's kind of what I was looking for. As much as I have my own personal opinions on the platforms I totally understand why you would go with Apple but just kind of that also available on Android I think might be of use to some people. The next list will have that kind of little symbol or maybe Android or something to allow people to know that hey, you can find this for other devices as well. And it looks like we have one last question from our audience from Lisa just looking for a clarification. When you say tethered do you use cases to keep them locked down? So I guess what technology are you using for the physical tethering? I don't know the actual technical names of them but we started with these arms that held the device and it was this very rigid material and it actually held the device up and they started as the kids were moving the arm and the device little metal shavings were coming out all over the place. Ooh, not good. Yeah, so we abandoned those and now the tether is more just like a almost like you see in Best Buy at their like phone bars and stuff like that where it's just the cable that's attached to the device and the device actually sits on a table and has one part of the tether on the back of it and the other part of the tether on the table and it's like a certain length cable. Sure, because somebody's asking I'll kind of say this to the audience and to you we usually get the slides and things from our presenters for show notes and any links that they mentioned we'll put in the show notes maybe if you could find what that is and like a link to wherever you buy them from if you can find that computer services. Yeah, we'll go ahead and put that in the show notes as we can in that way people can come back and look later. Well, I am not seeing any other questions having come in and because we have kind of gone a little long we've lost a couple of attendees people usually schedule out their time but I think at this point is there anything else you would like to mention that you haven't at this point before we wrap up? No, just like I said before if you have any questions you can feel free to shoot me an email I've said several times during the webinar that we are more than willing to share anything that we're doing and you can just shoot me an email and I'll be happy to answer. Yeah, well first of all I just want to say thank you this sounds like this program is going absolutely gangbusters and when I got the text message this morning saying well you run the show I was kind of like oh what's the topic and I was like oh kid stuff but I mean this was really interesting I've got to say not my general area but man some of those kids so like I'd like to play with them even without the technology just some of the I had that invisible person model when I was a little kid that you would piece together and we have a comment here thank you so much for sharing your ingenuity way to go Harford thank you so with that I'm going to take back control here for just a couple of minutes and wrap up our show for the day so give me just a moment here to do that I would like to thank everyone for attending and our session here today I'm going to back up a screen in my browser here we have some upcoming shows cool tools for you in your library next week that is Chris DeBerns our usual host doing that this is a session that she does at our state conference and just did it a couple of weeks ago when there was a standing room in the hallway only so if you didn't see that you're in Nebraska and now is your chance and if you're not in Nebraska hey come watch the show the week after that books and water don't mix or how we survive the water disaster that sounds like it could be fun and then at the end of the month I will be back with my tech talk with a gentleman talking about the Arduino platform so if you're kind of a hardware geek or looking for things to build with computers you can do that and like all of our episodes you're free to register for those and we also like to mention that Encompass Live is also on Facebook you are welcome to follow us there if you are one of those Facebook types and where we post information about upcoming shows when the shows are going live and when recordings are available so with that I would like to thank Amanda one more time and thank you all for attending this week's episode of Encompass Live and we will see you next week, bye bye