Ideabook: Libraries for Families

The IDEABOOK is a research-based framework to guide and broaden family engagement in libraries.The framework helps libraries move beyond thinking of family engagement as random, individual activities or programs, but rather as a system where library leadership, activities, and resources that are linked to goals. The framework represents a theory of change that begins with a set of elements—leadership, engagement, and support services—that build a pathway for meaningful family engagement beginning in the early childhood years and extending through young adulthood.This IDEABOOK was developed for anyone who works in a library setting—from library directors and children's and youth librarians, to volunteers and support staff—and shares many innovative ways that libraries support and guide families in children's learning and development

Evaluation Report of Prospero’s Island: an Immersive Approach to Literacy at Key Stage 3.

Prospero's Island is an immersive theatre project created by Punchdrunk Enrichment and sponsored by Learning Partner, London Borough of Hackney (Hackney Learning Trust). The project sought to inspire and motivate students’ engagement with the English curriculum, and to develop an immersive approach to teaching literacy that would improve students’ learning. Prospero’s Island took place in a secondary academy in Hackney, London over two school terms (autumn 2014-spring 2015). The project was embedded in existing schemes of work, and included the following elements: • An immersive theatre installation for Year 7-8 students (aged 11-13 years); this took the form of an interactive game based on The Tempest; over a two-week period groups of students participated in this experience for a morning or afternoon (autumn term); • A Teaching and Learning Day (TALD) and eight twilight CPD sessions on immersive learning techniques for school staff and teachers across London (autumn term); • A return to the installation for one lesson, led by English teachers (autumn term); • Follow-on work by teachers to develop immersive learning in English lessons (spring term); • An independent evaluation of the project (autumn and spring terms)

A survey of comics research in computer science

Graphical novels such as comics and mangas are well known all over the world. The digital transition started to change the way people are reading comics, more and more on smartphones and tablets and less and less on paper. In the recent years, a wide variety of research about comics has been proposed and might change the way comics are created, distributed and read in future years. Early work focuses on low level document image analysis: indeed comic books are complex, they contains text, drawings, balloon, panels, onomatopoeia, etc. Different fields of computer science covered research about user interaction and content generation such as multimedia, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, etc. with different sets of values. We propose in this paper to review the previous research about comics in computer science, to state what have been done and to give some insights about the main outlooks

Getting In On the Act: How Arts Groups are Creating Opportunities for Active Participation

Arts participation is being redefined as people increasingly choose to engage with art in new, more active and expressive ways. This movement carries profound implications, and fresh opportunities, for the nonprofit arts sector.We are in the midst of a seismic shift in cultural production, moving from a "sit-back-and-be-told culture" to a "making-and-doing-culture." Active or participatory arts practices are emerging from the fringes of the Western cultural tradition to capture the collective imagination. Many forces have conspired to lead us to this point. The sustained economic downturn that began in 2008, rising ticket prices, the pervasiveness of social media, the roliferation of digital content and rising expectations for self-guided, on-demand, customized experiences have all contributed to a cultural environment primed for active arts practice. This shift calls for a new equilibrium in the arts ecology and a new generation of arts leaders ready to accept, integrate and celebrate all forms of cultural practice. This is, perhaps, the defining challenge of our time for artists, arts organizations and their supporters -- to embrace a more holistic view of the cultural ecology and identify new possibilities for Americans to engage with the arts.How can arts institutions adapt to this new environment?Is participatory practice contradictory to, or complementary to, a business model that relies on professional production and consumption?How can arts organizations enter this new territory without compromising their values r artistic ideals?This report aims to illuminate a growing body of practice around participatory engagement (with various illustrative case studies profiled at the end) and dispel some of the anxiety surrounding this sphere of activity

PlanetOnto: from news publishing to integrated knowledge management support

Given a scenario in which members of an academic community collaboratively construct and share an archive of news items, several knowledge management challenges arise. The authors' integrated suite of tools, called PlanetOnto, supports a speedy but high quality publishing process, allows ontology-driven document formalization and augments standard browsing and search facilities with deductive knowledge retrieva

Afterschool in Action: Innovative Afterschool Programs Supporting Middle School Youth

This report, released by Afterschool Alliance in partnership with MetLife Foundation, highlights the work of quality afterschool programs that support children, families and communities across the nation.This compendium is a compilation of four issue briefs examining critical issues facing middle school youth and the vital role afterschool programs play in addressing these issues. This series explores afterschool and: arts enrichment, parent engagement, school improvement and digital learning. The compendium also includes in-depth profiles of the 2012 Afterschool Innovator Award winners, as well as highlights from 2008-2011 award winners.The 2012 MetLife Foundation Afterschool Award winners are:The Wooden Floor, Santa Ana, CALatino Arts Strings & Mariachi Juvenil, Milwaukee, WIKid Power Inc., The VeggieTime Project, Washington, D.C.Parma Learning Center, Parma, IDGreen Energy Technologies in the City, Lansing, M

Vol. 6, issue 2

New HELIN Catalog Features Collection Management & Digital Services Libraries and Financial Literacy Leisure Reading For Your Pleasure The Moving Legacy of Bryant University\u27s Douglas & Judith Krupp Library Hey, Over Here......it\u27s our NEW BOOKS! Summer is Leisure Reading Time Collections, Displays & Exhibit

Feeling good about myself : real-time hermeneutics and its consequences

Questions concerning the way in which digital games produce meaning and the possibility that their reconfigurability influences the process of interpretation have been debated since the very beginning of contemporary game studies. Based on general agreement between scholars, two areas of inquiry have been distinguished: the story produced by a game, and game mechanics, or rather all the information necessary to operate within them. The so-called "Game vs. Story division" has been analysed from multiple perspectives and theoretical standpoints. Among the scholars adopting the hermeneutical angle, there seems to be a consensus regarding the two distinct interpretative processes that occur while a game is played, although they do not agree about which should be considered the primary one. Scholars arguing for the unique character of digital games tend to focus on the interpretation created while the game is played that relates to aspects of gameplay. They stress the importance of so-called "real-time hermeneutics", as this is unprecedented in other media. In turn, researchers questioning the specificity of games as a medium claim that a proper interpretation should concern itself with the stories produced through playing, rendering such interpretation similar to every other hermeneutical process. Therefore, the process of understanding a game could be explained within the existing hermeneutical framework without any need to introduce media-specific interventions. In this paper, I will investigate the process of understanding video games, following the detailed, step-by-step description of interpretation provided by Paul Ricoeur in his American lectures. In doing so, I will supplement the concept of "real life hermeneutics" by narrowing the gap between interpreting game stories and gameplay situations. While such a perspective will bring me closer to a stance which denies any specificity to video games (at least regarding interpretation), I will also describe the key difference between understanding a video game and a traditional text, and briefly point towards its possible consequences, building upon Charles Taylor’s concept of ethics of authenticity