 Wonderful. Hello everybody. I know we've just got a couple of minutes to make sure everyone can come into our cool meeting space and get themselves acclimated, but just wanted to say a big warm welcome to all of you. We've had such great conversations these past two days already and really provocative and helpful content. And good questions. So we're just going to be continuing on a roll. We're going to continue to be on a roll for this last day and get a lot more engagement going on as well. So thank you all for for joining us and for those who may not have been tracking this earlier because I know when you're in the meetings it's harder to kind of tell how many people are there and who's coming from where, although I'm really happy that people have been using the chat to introduce themselves and say hello to each other. But we had nearly 200 on the first day and over 100 people yesterday and I'm really just so heartened by that because I think there's just such interest in this topic. But what's most amazing to me about it is that people who have incredibly busy lives right now are librarians and our teachers who are dealing with so much because they're dealing with the public or they're dealing with all these students and all these parents are taking some time out to be here with us. And I just want to say a big thank you to those of you who have found some time in your lives for this. And I really do hope that it's going to make things easier for 2021 just to be able to have this cohort of people who that you can lean on and who are we're in it we're in it together in terms of trying to find ways to make it all work so. Thank you. I have a couple of things I'm going to say to get us started, and then I'll be turning it over to various speakers and you can follow along in our, the agenda that that is posted online and will, and Angela may have been going to put in the chat for you so you can quickly. Yeah, there it is. Thank you so much, Angela. Angela Speedolette has been amazing throughout this process. She is our behind the scenes. Our events coordinator for all things New America, but she's been spending a lot of time with me over these past three days on this forum and I just have to say a big thank you Angela and so she'll be putting links in the chat. Another person I want to call out at New America has been incredibly helpful is I mean also behind the scenes as Fabio Mergia who is one of our communications interns who's been doing a fantastic job on Twitter. And so maybe many of you have seen some of the, the conversation there, and you can follow along. I'll just go ahead and put the hashtag in here for you can follow on on Twitter that way after the fact, or you can multitask and do it all. Right now. And then Jason Stewart and Riker. Pastor Keyletch at our New America offices have been wonderful to so really happy to see everybody coming in we've got over 40 people here which is fantastic. We're going to be sharing some things on screen but trying to do as much as we can and gallery view. So I wanted to note, when we do have people speaking together as we've shown on the agenda there we have these kind of conversations set up to prime the pump before we go into workshops, feel free to use the view that's not gallery view but to use speaker view or you might have already set that already but it's helpful, but I've found in in webinars, I mean in meetings like this, when there's going to be one or two people talking to use speaker view. And then you can kind of zoom in on that person. There will be some times when we're sharing screens we're going to have a Google Doc that we're all working in a little bit later today. And before I get to a little bit more about what's going to happen later today I do just want to call out a couple of things that I want to make sure to mention before we're done with our moments together. One of the great things about those surveys and a big thank you to so many of you who have been filling out our surveys is that we can get a sense of some questions that didn't, we didn't have time to answer and some different things that we need to make sure that we raise. I have a question that came in yesterday that was. Are you going to see me moving around because that noise is my dog knocking on the door. So, yes, of course my dog. So one of the things that came up yesterday that we didn't have time to get to is, somebody asked about the focus groups, actually was Daria from Harvard County in Maryland to asked about those focus groups and what we knew about the effects of those focus groups. And it was a really good question in Deborah didn't have a chance to get to that but I did want you to know that we in designing those focus groups in Chicago and Skokie and Schomburg. We tried to do recruitment in such a way that we could get a diversity of income, race and ethnicity among the parents and educators who are coming to those focus groups. And as many of you may know who we do that kind of research is it's not so easy to do in the world of COVID-19 and having to do things virtually. And we'll have more data on the demographics when we are able to report back more formally on this, but we did have through our library sites. We did have distribution of flyers through food distribution areas in school districts and public libraries, and through various kind of early learning groups that help low income families. So, our hope is that we have a diversity of income levels represented so just wanted you guys to know that it's a really important question to be asking in terms of kind of what parent feedback we're getting it's like what, what do we know about the parents. And one other thing I wanted to note and a minute maybe just quickly share my screen here to show it to you all is that there's a resource that we haven't mentioned yet, but that is incredibly valuable. I'm so sorry. Okay, hold on one second. I don't have it quite up yet. And that is, it's called the peer coaching media mentorship toolkit, and it was created two years ago by Hartford County Public Library in Maryland, along with the other Carol County and Baltimore County. And it could be something that you use in your work in the future as well, especially if you're interested in doing some more professional learning with your, your own staff or with your peers. So I just I'm putting it up here on screen so you can see this see what it looks like there's all sorts of information on how to do parent discussion groups like what we've been trying to do in Chicago, how to do some of the evaluations and surveys that we're doing with this kind of work, etc. So I'll stop sharing my screen but I just wanted to show you that really quickly. And let me just make sure there's not something else that I'm forgetting to tell you before I tell you about the breakout groups and we get into our, our next, our next speakers here. I know the sessions are recorded. And many people have been asking if we will have them available for review and watching later absolutely that's one of the amazing things that Angela and Jason do for us though, processing all this video and it will be up on our events web page by the end of this week if not early next week and we'll also send a follow up email to everybody who's come so that you have a easy way a link to all of these, these videos. And not however be recording the breakout session so don't have to worry about that the recording doesn't doesn't work in the breakouts. Lastly, if anyone needs closed captioning feel free to use that of course it's part of our zoom set system here but it's also something that we want to make sure is available to those if you do in a breakout session need closed captioning. And note if you can to Angela or to New America events, aka Angela, and she can make sure that you're put in a breakout room that's in the main meeting space where we do have closed captioning for you. So, okay. Now, just one last housekeeping note, we are going to be doing breakouts obviously. And so the way we're going to set these up is we want to make sure that people can mix it up and meet each other but we also have some worksheet kind of session work, essentially for you to do fun work but but a little bit of work, and we're trying to make sure that you're grouped in in with people who have some of the same interests. So what we'd like you to do right now. Over the next couple of minutes is choose your topic for your breakout rooms, you can get into this Google doc. If you can fill it out in the next couple of minutes, that would be helpful. And Angela will start making assignments as our speakers are talking over the next 30 minutes or so, so that everybody is put into a breakout room that matches with an interest area we have broken things out into three potential interest areas and trying to keep them as broad as possible. One is just on outreach and inclusion. Another is on how you might integrate some of the ideas that you've learned over the, or innovations that you've heard about over the past couple of days and integrate them and things you're already doing. And then a third topic is to really dive into media literacy specifically and how you might do that. So, you can figure out where you want to be we have amazing facilitators who will be with you in these rooms to kind of talk you through the, the worksheet that we'll put up later, but take a minute to choose your topic. Alright, so, I think I've covered it in terms of our housekeeping I'm really thrilled to introduce our, our next two speakers for what we've built as a conversation on computational thinking, medium internship and on the ground learning with double Dutch, which is going to be just a really fun we have with us Claudia Haynes, who you've introduced her before and you heard her as a speaker with me on the first day, who is a librarian at the home or public library in Alaska, and co author of the book becoming a media mentor. And we're so thrilled that she can be here with us again, along with Shamir Williams, who's the founder of CC busy and stem is beautiful and also is an amazing entrepreneur and early childhood specialist in the Pittsburgh area. Shamir has been a fantastic resource for me over the years as I'm getting to know both things happening in Pittsburgh Pittsburgh because we've done some projects there, but also kind of thinking innovatively about the intersection of technology and young children. So, I'm going to pass it over to the two of you, I'd love it if you guys could start though, by just telling me how you guys met because I know that Claudia and Shamir have also intersected in many ways over the past couple years. And I think it'd be fun for our group to hear that story. If you want to start. Sure. Hello everyone. Claudia met through the front Roger center. Tonya Smith was working on a project to put library kits together for that community and she wanted to add technology to the kids that's when Ellie was first coming out. I think it's a key off system that the front Roger center had for families and providers to be able to use for new technology with young children so that is actually how I met Claudia and we didn't meet face to face till I think a few years later at tech center. What is important to note about our friendship and our work together is, is, you know, Lisa pointed out that you're in Pittsburgh and may have realized that I'm all the way across the country in a very different community and the real community of Homer Alaska about 5200 people and I, I think that's important to note because, you know, on Tuesday I was talking about like inside the ideas and the community around media mentorship there's been people in libraries, you know, people, educators early childhood people researchers public policy and people in all kinds of communities and we've all kind of found common challenges to work around for our community and I and I think it's, you're not the experience you and I have had in our communities is, I think, interesting and fun as we kind of go forward in our conversation. Yes, because I live in the city of Pittsburgh and actually with the Fred Roger Center is about 45 minutes away which is not in the city of Pittsburgh so, you know, we've, we've just made this, we've made three different communities or four different communities intersect and connect around technology and young Exactly. So, I'm going to ask the first question. How, how does media literacy given we're talking about Fred Rogers and talking about your work in early childhood. How does media literacy play out in your work with young children and really childhood educators So with young children, I will say as a designer. It is important for me to make sure that young children are a part of my product testing process right. I want to know how they are experiencing technologies and how they are experiencing the media and what impact does it have on them. So CC busy was is about child care providers being able to use an Alexa or Google Assistant to log their daily interactions. And while the device in the program was designed for adults to use the technology. My first question was what kind of impact is that going to have on the children in the environment right so that's a media issue right because they are constantly hearing that adult talk and in early childhood we know that that is essential right they're learning their names in that format. They're learning how to have a conversation right and if it's a conversational. It's called conversational computation. The next question is, we don't want to brand kids I didn't want to hear kids saying Alexa all day or okay Google right because that was the first thing that a child was going to mimic right. We've seen the Alexa the baby shark video right. The next question was okay well I can use the invocation of computer, but this is not actually a computer so that wouldn't be the right term to teach kids and then echo was the best word though right and so I spent a lot of time observing how our kids interacting with the adult as they use that device so that's one way I will say that I work with young children. I'm working for a public art project to build an interactive table for children. So it was important for me to make sure that I was able to observe. How would our children interacting with the table when we designed it. The table is designed that children tap the top of the table. They have to match the cards to the table top that's illustrated and when they do. They hear stories from community members that they would see all the time in that community and so for me it was one. How do we select the community members. To tell their story what kind of stories should they be telling children. How often do we need this story to change how relatable does this story need to be to a child and the adult that is interacting with them and so that's where my work is with young children directly. In regards to early childhood educators. I really like to focus on doing professional development to help them think about the multitude of media they can use right my walls have magnetic primer on them right. There's an abstraction built into my wall kids can play all the time for problem solving. And so it's how do we help providers think about other ways to integrate different things into their environment where they may say like I don't have space to do still more I don't have space to do computational thinking I don't have you know I don't have access to technology but there are other ways to start those. Thinkings and interactions with children without actually meeting a piece of technology at first. So that's how I'll say that it you know that's where my work is but. I will ask you now. What is computational thinking. I know you're just throwing that phrase around. And you know I I assume that there are people participating who are either thinking what does that even mean or. Oh, I must mean computer science and how is that fit with young kids and I think it's important to kind of talk about what computational thinking or CT is and while there's not a universally agreed upon definition. Most people researchers or practitioners think of it as an kind of an expressive or creative process that helps children and adults as Shamira was just talking about design high and low tech solutions to say a problem or a slate of tasks that can be replicated by others. And I think it's important to talk about kids and adults in there and the low tech and high tech solutions which I think this is a perfect example of media mentorship and action. And as I said often computational thinking or CT as I like to call it is associated with computers and making digital content. But it's really used in a lot of different types of fields and they're related but not exactly the same. And so CT includes kind of two parts one is a set of skills that include logic evaluation decomposition pattern recognition, which those of you involved in early literacy might recognize those two ideas. And then there's algorithm design and abstraction, but then there's this whole other part of CT that's kind of the CT mindset part. And that includes dispositions, some people call those soft skills but they're absolutely essential for 21st century thinking so I feel like soft is not the right term. But those include collaboration or working with others to achieve a goal, confidence in dealing with complexity, persistence and working through challenging problems, tolerance for ambiguity with lots of ambiguity in the world right ability to deal with the open ended problems, creative expression, and then questioning concepts and ideas taken for granted. In your paper, why did you focus on young children. So, Shamir is talking about a paper that we published in August, and Shamir was on the advisory board that looked at the paper that's talking about computational thinking and young children and early learning in libraries. I'll kind of backtrack a little bit because several years ago, I started looking at CT computational thinking in the library environment more closely as part of the American library associations libraries ready to code project. And, like, like some of you, my, my community and kids in my community had really limited access to computer science learning. At the time there were no computer science classes at the high school, and really limited experiences for younger kids, even with what I could offer at the library and so I started wondering. In my little community, how could, how could I help kids be prepared to create digital content, not just consume it, and, and really use their voice to participate in local and national dialogue, even if they didn't live near Silicon Valley, or Pittsburgh, or really any sort of tech hub. There's, I mean there's minimal tech happening in my community right. So I started looking at kind of deeper into providing CT experiences with low and high tech tools right, especially with girls who I recognize were underrepresented in any sort of robotics club. There were no girls in the time at the time, or even in the library stem program so I thought about what's the missing what's the gap there. I started kind of diving deeper and deeper and looking at how some of these skills and dispositions could actually be introduced with young children, particularly preschoolers with this idea that, you know we could build a foundation just like we do with early literacy or early math, so that they would be ready to delve into these kind of bigger ideas when the tech experiences were more available or when their interest started to queue in and so I started kind of talking to other people and realized, oh my gosh, wow, other people are thinking about these same ideas, particularly Paula, Paula Langsam at the DC Public Library, Katie Campana and Jackie Kosebuk at the Kent State School. And we kind of started thinking about, oh wait you know decomposition happens with preschoolers when they're sounding out words like when they're playing with the app Miximal by Yadda toy or they're using abstraction to retell stories they've heard using finger puppets or building stories using algorithm design with scratch junior. And so all these things kind of started to play out and of course Shamira, you and I have talked a lot about CT and particularly CT infused activities that kids and families are already doing and how to kind of tease out those strands and draw attention to them and kind of use low tech so I'm wondering maybe you could chime in and talk about some of your examples of that. So my favorite example that actually showcased I think at the tech center in 2008 was jump rope. Right, so jump rope got me thinking because it was simple. I was actually asked to talk about some things that would you could provide in community for low tech that you know can start thinking about technology I think it was in a pre is the event that was that I was at. And so I thought a jump rope was perfect. Jump ropes are easy to you know easily accessible, you know, diverse, nobody has like not heard of a jump rope and they were really low cost right I went to Home Depot and just actually had them cut a piece of rope to make me a jump rope and it cost me what $1.02 because it's like 22 cents. But then I remember teaching kids how to jump rope in preschool and it's hard. It's harder than you think because you're like no just jump rope and he's like, No, you actually have to teach them the skill of jumping over the road. Jump rope first like jump left, jump right, jump left, jump right. Okay, let's get that rhythm going. And then I remember Akilah the beat. Okay, well, that's a great movie but in that movie we seen her spell words out multiple times and I was like, Oh, that's just like the drum. You know, in early literacy when they say your name. And then I got this. I watched a TEDx video by Karen Kara gaunt and it was about double Dutch. And it was about the small group. It was a big idea. Ted talk and she talked about how the jump rope in this in the sound in the tic-tac sound and I was like, Oh, the pattern. Right, you have to if you do double Dutch. It is a complex activity, the the choreograph and choreography that is required for the three people that actually double Dutch right because double Dutch requires two ropes. And there's two turners. Those two turners are the most quintessential part of double Dutch right they turn the rope they set the rhythm they set the pace so that people the other person can jump inside that space. But then I realized, Oh, jump rope was a competition and it had timing that needed to be done so there was data collection that parents can do how much faster can you get by doing this work. And I was like, Oh, well there's decomposition right in there. And then there was a little bit of abstraction because what happens when you're just don't bring rope, and you need to think about it. Right. You need to, you need to just move on the dime. You never jump rope you know that feeling or, when is it time to go, but at the most simple part, it was jump rope head if then statements in the songs. Right. Everybody knows the jump rope for the classic jump rope when I call your birthday. Please jump in. If it's not your birthday, you cannot jump in. Which is a great way to start talking about an if then statement. Let's talk about the other constraints that jump rope can offer you what happens when there's only two people that went to jump rope. You can either take turns by using that one group, or how many people have. What do you do with the other end of the rope when there's only two people. You tie it, yes, you tie it to something else, so that the two of you can play. Now, how many of us have met up with our cousins in the summertime, and we're all going to sing the jump rope song right. But soon as you start Miss Mary Max, Max, every neighborhood, every community has their own version of that song. Right. And so now we were having this whole conversation about both jump rope head media literacy and automatically all the songs we saying the songs head instruction in them. The game offered the game offers its own complexity and creativity, all at one time. And it was a space that was typically for girls doesn't have to be only for girls, but it was a space that was typically for girls and then I got Karen Gaunt's the girls black girls play and it says learning the ropes from double Dutch to hip hop. If you haven't had a chance to watch the video her 10 talk video I'll drop the link, because it's a great five minute exploration of how jump rope turns into double Dutch turns into music and hip hop. And I think of music is the only language that you, you know, like math is both auditory and sound. And that that it is kinetic orality and that's what she really talks about in this book and that's what was interesting to me about computational I mean about jump rope and double Dutch as a way to think about it. It's also something that you only can learn by another human teaching you there's no written instructions for double Dutch. It is something that is intergenerational that you have to do with someone else. So your aunt teaches you or your mother teaches you are the older girls on the block teach you it's not something that you learn alone. You know, I think that is a really, really valuable part of what you're talking about because I think, you know, when I was started seeing more and more of these ideas like this and kind of integrating them into say story time where it was kind of a captive audience enthusiastic audience, but a place where we had young kids and their grown ups. And so introducing CT to both generations at the same time so they could take them home and explore these really accessible examples. But I think one of the biggest moments that I think these kind of ideas typify is, is that it, it makes the idea of how computers work, and who programs computers, really human centered, and for grown ups to suddenly see. Oh, I understand how algorithm design works or abstraction works or decomposition. And they said, Oh, it's just like, you know, reading a sentence or it brings this human element to computers and for people who don't necessarily think about how computers work. It's like, Oh, right, there are people who use these experiences to develop these ways of programming, right, instead of just the computer magically learning how to program on its own right and so I think it's that a great, great strand to pull out there that real human connection. And so I got to ask for those who might be at this point thinking, so what is CT have to do with media literacy. I'll say that first, both are a mindset, right. A mindset that requires you to shift from being a consumer driven base to produce production base right. If you want to be a media mentor, you need to make media. If you want to participate in computational thinking, you actually have to do some problem solving right you got to you got to get in the muck of that and figure it out. Both require you to be creative and create, but that's not enough. Right. We've all created something or some form of media. It's the sharing. It's the vulnerability of sharing it that actually changes it right creativity takes courage and bone, and that's a Henry Matisse quote right. So it's a, it's a thing that you actually not only need to have the confidence to create it, but you have to have the confidence to share it because in the vulnerability right because the vulnerability is the sound of the truth in the feelings like courage, truth and courage aren't always comfortable. And they're never weakness and that was that's Breon Brown and at that point, vulnerability is like any other social you know it requires somebody else to have an opinion on your work and can they assist. And can they give feedback and exchange feedback. And that's what it is. It's not like it's my ideas great to me everybody loves their own idea it's when you exchange it with somebody else and can accept the feedback and be willing to refine it, or be willing to have enough confidence to say, I don't want to refine it it is intentionally designed this way so that these people can use it that way, and having an understanding of it. So those two things are the same right that goes for media to when people design media, whether it's posters, images, songs, it is designed for it to be used in a certain way, and felt in a certain way and when people design their algorithms is same thing. And that's why some people can say, you can tell someone's code, by the way they wrote it right, because you're still writing, you are still producing something. And once you become a designer and a producer and a creator or something. That thread comes through all of your work. All the time, and I think it is that soft skill, which is really not a soft skill. Because the world can be cool. You can think all my design was awesome. And people are like no, or they're like, I don't really get it, or it doesn't relate. And so you always have to be willing to refine it and in shift it and understand where it stands. And that is in media and computational thinking. And so it is much more the dispositions that you have to have in both of those fields, in order to push through. Yeah, I think kind of wrapping it up I think one of the things that you're talking about that, you know connects then to media mentorship is this idea of, of whose voice matters and how we decide who gets to create and I and I think that kind of what we have talked about and done is, is introduce these very accessible computational thinking moments to kind of expand and broaden the idea of whose voice matters and and help creators actually kind of design and create these high quality media artifacts and ideas. So, I think we kind of have to move on but thank you Shamira for sharing all of your, your great insights it's really good to see you. Oh my gosh. Yes, and body as well. What a fascinating conversation it's kind of mind blowing, I think for a lot of us, it's really exciting and interesting and finding those connections between things. So I'm going to move us now into a really another incredibly kind of innovation oriented but also concrete conversation with Amber Krieger and Elena Lopez I'm so thrilled there with us today and I'm going to briefly introduce them and then hand it over to Amber. Amber Krieger, sorry, Amber Krieger is the services director at Schomburg Township District Library and I do want to say a special thanks to Amber before I go on because this whole project that we're doing with the Illinois media mentorship project with Illinois libraries would not have happened. If it wasn't for Amber, she was gracious enough to have lunch with me after an ALA session way back in June of 2019. Or maybe it was dinner, I can't remember there was so much going on and I said I really want to do this project and I think we might be able to get some funding but I need introductions to librarians and do you mind giving this a shot and she had so many good ideas and really made it happen so big, big thanks Amber to you for that. So Amber is going to be talking with Elena Lopez, who is an amazing person in her own right and has written in many forums around about family engagement. She'll be talking about the idea book. I'm sure she'll be introducing in their conversation. She's the founder of the global family. I have it right in front of me and I'm suddenly blanking. Yes, global family engagement project and co editor of the idea book. So, thank you so much for joining us for this and I'm going to pass it over to both of you now. Thank you. Great, thank you Lisa. It's really exciting to be here today. And to be, I get to talk to Elena Lopez so that's really exciting. Yay. I want to let everybody know that during this conversation we want to invite you guys to participate in the dialogue as well. So, Elena are going to talk back and forth and then there's going to be cues that I'm going to ask for your input, but you know of course it's chat so you can always input whenever you want, but we're going to have specific questions for you. Okay. So, with COVID-19 pandemic, what we've noticed is, and it was really been brought to the forefront is the role of parents and other family members in children's learning, both in school and at home. So Elena, what have you learned from your research about family engagement and public libraries. First of all, I'd like to thank Lisa for the opportunity to share my research and documentation about family engagement in public libraries with this audience. So let me start with family engagement. What is it? Family engagement refers to the shared roles of families, schools and communities to promote children's learning. And for families, that means communicating the value of education through their beliefs, their attitudes and their behaviors. And for public libraries, it's providing opportunities including media mentorship to families so that they can support their children's learning. Family engagement is integral to educational equity. Family is central in the lives of many immigrant families and people of color. Our research showed that libraries provide opportunities for families to learn together, strengthen the parent and child bond, to access lifelong learning opportunities for adult family members, as well as for children and youth, and to promote social connections among parents and build community. So family engagement today, as Amber mentioned, is really on the forefront of educational arena. And for families that means not only motivating their children to learn in a virtual environment, but also reversing learning loss. And I think that libraries offer enriching experiences that can, you know, be part of the effort to revert learning loss. Libraries can also support families so that families feel less pressured and we know that families today face a lot of challenges trying to balance work and family life. Okay, so it's, you know, what, what are the possibilities then for libraries to innovate during this period. So as to address the two contexts as you just mentioned. Okay, so let me talk first about what I understand about innovation. So innovation is a novel way of addressing a problem, which is different from being original something that nobody else has striped before it were the first one to do with. Innovation in your library might be taking several of the ideas that you've learned over the past two days and adapting them to your library situation. That's an innovation. So a research, and Lisa mentioned the idea book. We have in that idea book what we found out to be five ways in which libraries have tried to engage families and have been successful in their efforts. So the first two I would put together are reach out and raise up family voices and yesterday struck me in that word cloud. The words that came out were access and empowering and that is what reaching out and raising up really means access, reaching out to families and asking questions, listening to them. But more importantly, I think is raising up their voices and that is empowering when families are one of the many drivers that shape library services and programming. So let me give you one example. In our forthcoming book, librarians guide family engagement in learning, we asked a couple of librarians in rural Pennsylvania to write an article. And what they wrote about was reaching out and listening to families, families used to tell librarians, you know, you're programming for children is so confusing, I want to bring my kid there. The other sibling wants to come but he's either too young or too old to participate in the program. So the librarian said, well, ages but a number. And what's so interesting is that the adult services librarian and the youth services librarian got together and formed a family program open to all members of the family so that they could learn and have fun together. So that's one example probably to hear more from you. I'm going to say during COVID, you know, this has been for me, it's been a real great opportunity to be innovative. And, you know, listen to my peers around Illinois and steal I'm going to say innovative is another word for steal sometimes, because we like to borrow and bring those ideas back to our neighborhood. I mean, back to our neighborhood. Yes. So what I want to ask everybody out there is, how are you doing this time of COVID is particularly hard to actually make contact with our families engage with them. So how are you actually going about finding out what are the needs and the interest of your families during this time. And I think this is I, I'm curious to see what other people are doing because it's really hard because we're not seeing them face to face and that's how we relied on them before and remember from Devora yesterday, talking about some families didn't even realize the library was open, or some families didn't only recognize us for books so how are we reaching out to our families and finding out what their needs are and then how are we meeting them or what even other interest, does anybody chat. I'm going to sit here. Oh, so people are joining Facebook group for virtual school parents that's a great idea. Definitely. It was interesting when Devora also pointed out that a lot of people were turning for advice right in media mentorship to Facebook and social media so we should be there too that's a definite yes. Great idea. The part of me is like sometimes on those community groups like some of the things that people say anyways. Our school librarian at the high school has noted that public libraries are available for book clubs, partnerships, definitely email lists have been really key. So they're going to start to flow in really fast. Facebook parent discussion group. There's surveys calling and asking what they're interested in, and then reaching out to kids so they can ask for advice and materials. Email and are calling parents and having conversations with them. So this is all great. So I think we're going to move on to the next R. Yeah, sure. And the third R is reinforcing educational values. All families want their children to learn and to succeed. But I think the challenge for libraries is how do you create a joyful learning experience through your collections and your programs. So family engagement is important from early childhood all the way through young adulthood. And I'm going to give some examples of how, you know, one library and another one would be a group of parents trying to create this joyful learning experiences but therefore older kids and I think it's important to think about, you know, what happens after the kids enter kindergarten. There was a study done by Scholastic that shows that reading tends to decline once kids are reach about the age nine. And that's such an important transition in the lives of children because they're moving from learning to read to reading to learn. And so you have to have that motivation to become an avid reader. And so, um, one of the things that we found out through our documentation is that it's important to include families and give them teaching roles over the summer. My local library had a civic kids program that involved a father and his fourth grade daughter and what they did was virtually to give, you know, civics education and included a virtual field trip to the police department and to the courthouse and interviewing the police officer and one of the judges. One of the things that we found out in our research, and Lisa is part of the one of the contributors to our forthcoming book where she pointed out the same thing too, is that make learning fun as you design your programs for the whole family. And so the example I'm going to give is from my daughter and two other mothers, they live overseas, and what they did over the summer was to create bibliotech, which is a virtual book club for kids seven to 11 years of age. They read one book over a period of one month, and they meet four times to discuss the book chapter. But in between the meetings, the kids have activities. And so it's an expansion of the digital world into the real world in which they live and they use crafts and arts materials to any number of things that they've created a zoological diary using crayons and pens and paper. They've created finger puppets to represent the characters in the story. They use old boxes to create the settings of the story. And for me, what was most interesting was that they interviewed parents and grandparents to find out what their stories were that related to the theme of the book. And on the last day of their meeting, fourth meeting, they all had a celebration with dancing, singing, laughter, and bringing the family together. And I think when children are happy and engage, this relieves the pressure that families face. So this program is run by three mothers, and together they reached about 20 children mobile the summer. And I was thinking this might be something of an idea for libraries that they can do with their literacy volunteers, and even with interns who are pursuing their master's degree in library sciences and want to work with children and youth. I can't agree with you more. It's so important to make your programs fun. And, you know, a real focus that our library has been to make them multi-generational, right, so that it's a learning experience that's fun for everybody. So I guess my question is to all the librarians. How are you doing these types of programming at your library? So how are you building upon and enriching the learning experiences for children, teens, your adult families? Everybody, how are you doing this? So I'm trying to read and this is, I can't read and speak at the same time. I'm just going to tell you this. I'm trying, folks. But I feel like all of a sudden I've become a little bit dyslexic, if that makes any sense. So Eti has an amazing joyful program at their library for families where people share their pets and stuffed animals. Oh, I love this idea. So it's like you bring them on and then everybody goes to, oh, that would be totally joyful because what kid doesn't love their stuffed animal and want to share them, right? So Kristen, there's scaffolding activities. So there are easy activities for the youngest participants and more self-driven activities for the older children and adults. Definitely also like it when you are able to make the child, the teacher in the situation, right? And trying to get to flip that role so you give the youth some agency. I think that's really cool when you can do that. Like, for example, I don't make examples of crafts when I have programs because sometimes I have parents that take over that craft if they're like, it's supposed to look this way. We all know there's no, you know, it doesn't have to look that way. In non-COVID times, Lori says they had success with family engineering challenge programs. So giving them a challenge and having the family work together, I'm assuming, is what that probably looks like. Lori is virtual STEM programs for first, second, third graders with their parents working together. And then Maria, we have virtual component to our take and make bags for teens. Our tag teens take on learning the craft ahead of time to be instructors of the program. Do the teens then also create the craft? I mean, so they're the instructors, but do they come up with a program, Maria? I just wonder. Because that's cool. Sometimes. All right. Yeah, cool. So I'm going to move on. I think we have time for our last hours. We have a couple more hours in our five. We've only gotten three, is that correct? So the last two are relate and reimagine library services, especially now during the period of the pandemic as well as, you know, larger issues that have to do with social justice. So really refers to the connections among parents and families. And there's just a ton of research that shows that it's important for families to have peer connections and acquaintances. Because it relieves some of the, it provides support and relieves some of the pressure on them. So it is a larger context then of creating a home environment that is conducive to learning. And I know now that you have joined Facebook groups. There are parent groups that you can form through your library and not meet all the time beyond parenting, but on other interests that families have. The next one is on reimagine library services. And again, I go back to the word cloud that we had yesterday and collaborate was one of the key terms that appeared. So reimagining library services often involves collaboration, especially when it comes to reaching underserved families. And I like this example of what the Boston public library has done. It partnered with local bookstores and bought books from the local bookstores and the bookstores then were responsible for bringing them to about seven or eight pre identified and vetted nonprofit organizations that deal directly with underserved populations, the jobless, the homeless, those without internet access. And the nonprofit organizations provided the library, Boston public library with, you know, the types of unraised that would appeal to their customers and it covered, you know, adult books, themes as well as children. So I think this is a good example of how you can reach out to your community, provide, you know, create these partnerships so that you are able to distribute books and other resources, especially to those that don't have internet access and can't zoom like us, what like what we're doing right now. Lastly, I just want to say that it's this is a period of experimentation, finding out what works and what doesn't work for different families. And so I think evaluation is an important part of the work that you are doing. There is a trend now towards equitable evaluation. And I think one question that you might consider asking as you create as you create programs as you develop your collections, especially around ebooks and resources is the question would be, to what extent does my library increase access representation and participation in the library's collections and especially for the underserved. Do I have a little more time or not? No, unfortunately, I'm going to have to say that we have to end this conversation, Elena. Thank you for all the great ideas. Everyone check out the idea book and with that, I'm going to turn this over to Lisa. Thank you again Elena. So, I love it. And, and thanks so much. Yeah, I'm going to move us along because, well I'm going to shorten the amount of time we have for this moment of reflection but it is an important moment. We're about to move into our breakout sessions but before we do that, we want to capture a little bit of what you have experienced all the participants here have experienced we're going to put a link in the chat to the survey. I think it's time right now to start filling out the survey because what we're thinking instead of having at the end, we want to give you a few minutes just reflect on what you've heard these amazing conversations, and think about them in terms of your own work in your spaces in your classrooms and your children's sections in your youth services programming and start imagining as you're filling out the survey, what this really means for you, and what this might lead you to be able to do next. It doesn't have to be anyone can be a little baby steps it doesn't have to be huge big new programs and we'll talk a little bit about that right before the breakouts, but we're going to just put on some music for a minute. We're just going to pause and reflect and take the survey back in like four minutes. Can start moving on feel free to keep filling it out we're also going to have a few minutes at the end, because I'm sure you weren't able to get through it all right now. But there are just want to be actually to make a big shout out to Elaine Zarnackie are Zarnackie I'm sorry I just realized I probably mispronounced your last name you can correct me. You got it right. Finding these surveys and helping us throughout this whole project. They have really been helpful they're going to be provided. It's all anonymous of course but to provide it to the directors the libraries who are part of the project but also will be part of the way we are reporting on the insights from this generally and we hope they help you think about what they're doing so next breakouts. What we're going to do is have you go into the rooms Angela are amazing his Wizard of Oz in the background has been assigning everybody to their rooms based on the topics that you're interested in our facilitators are going to make kind of keep us on time but also lead you to introduce yourselves quickly and then answer a couple of questions in a shared document that all of us, all 49 of us are going to be in right now and we want to make sure of course that I've got my the correct permissions on this document before. So I'll try to make sure that once we get in there but want to get you guys into your breakout rooms right now. So that you can start working on this, this document, going to the section of the document that that refers to the topic area, you are interested in. So, Angela, feel free to get everyone assigned and we'll see you all back here in about 20 minutes. So thanks everybody, and have fun in your breakouts. It was just getting juicy. It's fun to see you Denise I'm so glad you're with us. Oh, thank you. I think I took a much time in the other group. I was so excited to see people, humans. It's very good. Yeah, it is. It is nice to see humans. So Denise will have to talk offline but my Australian relatives, one of my cousins is actually with me right now, the next three weeks waiting, trying to get back to Australia. So, I think they'll be there for a long time. She's waiting for a fight. So it's really good to see everyone coming back in. Great. Oh, I guess we still have another 15 people to join us here. Good. Hope that was a good guy was splitting in and out of some of the meeting rooms I wish I could have been in all of them just to hear all the good ideas. And I'm excited to see how many ideas were put down in that worksheet, you know, just to see all of that mind work happening, like in real time through the fingertips of various people all around the world at the same time is pretty amazing. So, okay, welcome back everybody. What we're going to do now is just quickly, you know, kind of one minute each just go through and have a little bit of a report back and some things that were shared during that time together I do hope that for those of you who kind of got to the point about concrete things you put wrote that down somewhere else for yourself or put a note in your calendar or on your to do list somewhere so that you can keep up with that. Just a big thanks to our facilitators for making that possible and I'm just going to go down the line in my own little internal list here and call on you all. I want to just give a one minute report back so I have Claudia at the top of my list so Claudia. What was your, your conversation like. Oh, we need to mute. No, sorry. I think a lot of us kind of connected with the idea of reaching out to parents and them being a key part of kind of this work around media mentorship right now. And in some cases the reluctance on parents part to kind of be mentors but that seemed to be kind of an idea that really resonated. And people kind of talked about some ideas that have been working in some that have not. We did touch on having better access to media that has diverse characters and diverse experiences and how to get that into the hands of families that are struggling with access to the library right now. But I, I heard parents brought up multiple times, which I think was kind of really, really telling about where we are and where we are in this discussion about screen time, and how it's affecting families access to information and learning right now. Amber, you're up next. Do you click a quick report back. Yeah, totally. So, a lot of our conversation really stemmed around inequities and how do you actually meet the needs of the people in your community. And so we talked about partnerships potential partnerships and how can you expand your reach out into the community when your doors are closed. So, we also talked about, you know, what we want to do in the future when the library does reopen, and I'm really finding ways to hear different people's voices within our community so that we can do better meet their needs. So, that was a quick wrap up. If I missed anything, anybody can go ahead and type it into the chat. Thanks. Oh yeah, that's a good idea, Amber. For those of you who might have an idea you want to share if we don't get to it please jump in that way and people can read it on the document to. So I'll go now to Amy Puster. Yeah, so in our group we talked a lot about the piece that really resonated was how a lot of these concepts are already present and what we're doing. And we have a lot of intention around how do we make that more intentional so that it can be more impactful. So one of the big like within the next month pieces is revisiting all the resources in looking at what we've already got planned to deliver because we know kids and teens are going to be into that and integrate these pieces in a way that like is organic rather than trying to come up with something completely new. Interesting. Yeah, organic but also intentional at the same time right it's that combination. Yeah, I was just going to say that our groups were talking about some of the same things Amy and the word intentional definitely came up, certainly in thinking about the, like the accessibility of online programming and thinking about universal design and accessibility issues that are part of the what we do and really trying to think through some of the problems that face us with that but how we can overcome them. Also, just some of the practical things you know about small things that we can do by like including some media tips, like we would do our childhood asides in a story time for parents and also coming up with resources and things that we can share with our colleagues, as well as our patrons. So that they're not those huge beliefs but as Elena kind of talked about with what innovation is is just making small adjustments what you're already doing. So that's really something that we saw and that some of the same kinds of things looking at resources really getting more familiar with those so that we have greater confidence in that in the next month. And kind of thinking about plans, you know, like sharing things with our colleagues and and and expanding the message beyond just the people who are able to attend this. That's a really important question. You know, are the recordings going to be available. Yes, yes, of course, because we want to be able to share this with more people that couldn't necessarily attend live so that was great. Yeah, that's a really important way to extend it. So, Stuart, Stuart Griner for those who might not know is also the Chicago Public Library and thanks so much Stuart for joining us as a facilitator for this and also for being a big part of the reading chats back in August so over to you Stuart. Yeah, thank you. This was super fun. So we talked about using some people are using different kinds are trying to use different kinds of media mixing it up in like story time and that kind of thing. And we, someone mentioned that they feel like parents are paying attention now more than they maybe they would an in person story time because it is on camera. So being modeling for parents and that kind of thing. And then kind of our main thing though was like how can we not necessarily incorporate media into an existing program that use media to promote those existing program. So one thing someone mentioned was going back and talking to their colleagues about like what media, they're comfortable with what media can be used to promote to parents, like the family Facebook groups, you know we talked a little bit about that. And that's kind of the gist of what we talked about. Yeah, very smart flip there. I like Dorothy over to you. Yes. We had some great examples in terms of programs that are are already being conducted to maybe bring out some of this media literacy skills, such as looking at photos of impossible images and having a conversation around that. There are maps and games that middle schoolers, for example, might evaluate and also including different content areas social issues civics to to engage in in topics as well. We talked about making these programs fun so that it could be, for example, a cooking program but trying to interweave some of the media literacy skills into into that. Another example was be safe online, plus book history meets 3D so there there was a whole piece around promoting 3D printing, but interweaving that that safety online. But also in terms of evaluation, something quick and I think a lot of people are doing different kinds of easy ways to get some feedback somebody had mentioned flip grid, sort of like a little blog takeaway. And, but those anecdotes are really great. There's a team that said that one of the things he learned through through a gaming program was how important it is to speak up and be confident to speak up and be able to express himself, even when nobody else is saying anything, but he feels something needed to be said so that kind of impact we're looking for. And it's, we were saying it's a treasure when you can get that kind of feedback. And then over to Elaine I know we're getting short on time here but Elaine. Yes, well we had many of the same conversations and with media literacy we really talked about how libraries are doing so much with media literacy and their programs but making that connection more intentional, and maybe looking back at your programs that you're really doing and seeing where you're making those great connections. We also talked about all the wonderful resources that have been made available for these past three days and really taking some time to look at them, and see where those pieces can fit in before planning those next steps. Our participants had a new teen area and they were really connecting with the idea of how to reach teens without saying that you're talking to them about media literacy but how to get them excited about all the different things that they can do so. Fabulous. Really cool. I'm glad we could have those moments for people to talk together. So much expertise here in the room right I mean everyone's got really good ideas on how to do this. So we're going to wrap up now. I'm just incredibly grateful to all of you for spending the time for just kind of doing some of the deep thinking and the exciting kind of creative thinking around this. I'm going to quickly note a couple of things from the previous days that we want to make sure you know about there's the new guide to media mentorship that we published on Tuesday. That can be a starting point for any of you if there's somebody in your in your library or in your school district who doesn't really know what this is and was wondering what you're all about. I think it would be a way to get them used to the ideas here. We also want to note that we're going to be sending around links to the recordings of all of this so that you have it links to the resource sheets that we've created on the fly. So you'll be able to have access to that we also did a research seat like this back in August and we've made a version of that that can be available to all so we'll send that around to and just of course a big thanks to the McCormick foundation. It really wouldn't have been possible to do all this work without that funding. So we're really grateful that they were able to take a chance on this. This was not through their education program. This is through their democracy program. They just really are recognizing how important these issues are to protecting our democracy and ensuring that our citizenry feel empowered and connected to this kind of information. So we'll put the survey in the chat and feel free to chat to each other. Hello's and goodbyes and we'll meet again and just so happy to see you all and looking forward to hopefully someday being together in person but I'm sure I'll see you online as well. So thanks so much everybody.