If you get kids to a library by offering them email and video games - might you be able to move them over to the shelves, and then to the issues desk?
A recent article by Lora Pabst on StarTribune.com looks at an afterschool programme being run at a public library in Hennepin County, Minnesota with this goal in mind.
Lora Pabst, 'A dance, dance revolution? If they get, get education' - StarTribune.com
Called 'Teens, Tech, Youth and Learning', the staff hope that the programme, which brings together video games, computers, tutors and books
"will attract teens who often socialize at the library and expose them to technology - including how to e-mail and use a digital camera - that they might not have at home. And while they're at the library, the hope is that maybe they'll pick up a book or two."
We often talk about digital natives - the 'new generation' (which usually seems to mean 'people younger than the people I'm having this conversation with') who have never experienced life without internet, mobile phones etc (see for example the stats in yesterday's post, from an Ofcom survey of British communications market ). Yet this programme is targeted at kids who don't have access to these things - it's an important gap that we can help fill.
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