Today as I left Berkeley, I ended up stopping by the
San Francisco Public Library. There I meet with
Jon Worona, Digital Initiatives Manager. On his desk is a piece of equipment housed in what appears to be a wooden crate; a neon-green Yoda head lies in front of it. Jon explains to me that it is a 3D printer. At first I think he is joking, but then he explains that this printer can be used with
special software to create previously designed objects. What does this have to do with information literacy? For quite some time now, the San Francisco Public Library has been broadening its understanding of literacy and offers workshops that focus on various skills as well as promote technology literacy, environmental literacy, civic engagement and similar competencies. The driving idea behind this is the responsible citizen.
Jon Worona is involved in a major project for the future that aims to promote media literacy among young people in a very creative way. Sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation and in collaboration with the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), the California Academy of Sciences as well as a local radio station, the project will establish a real and a virtual room where young people can create media. Expertise in the fields of video, audio, programming, graphic design and information science comes from all of the institutions involved; the room will be located in the San Francisco Public Library. Right now everything is still in the planning and testing stage before the project is realized in summer 2013 at the earliest. Non-profit organizations are involved and even Twitter programmers took part in a testing workshop – after all, the company is only just across the street. Despite the big names behind it, the entire project has a very likeable, DIY nature about it that seems lively and contagious. The enthusiasm and openness to think about libraries in a completely different way reminds me of
Zukunftswerkstatt e.V. [Workshop for the Future], an organization in Germany that has been putting new items on libraries' agendas for several years now. Projects such as the German-American Gaming League [Deutsch-Amerikanische-Gaming-Liga] promote a similarly unconventional view of libraries' tasks.
For the San Francisco Public Library, this type of project also aims to give young people a new perspective of the library and show them that it is a place where their issues play a role and where they can spend their time creatively. I think this idea of appealing to young people in particular, who otherwise might not have any other place to discover their skills and abilities, is right on target. Jon Worona emphasizes that the library thus also fulfills its task of giving young people a "community feeling" and supporting them in being original and independent. Here the focus is not just on consuming and using media, but also producing it. Who knows, perhaps the future of information literacy is not "just" about helping people to write texts and papers, but more generally about supporting them in creatively producing various objects using media. Even if that happens to mean making a Yoda head with a 3D printer…
About the project
Today as I left Berkeley, I ended up stopping by the San Francisco Public Library. There I meet with Jon Worona, Digital Initiatives Manager. On his desk is a piece of equipment housed in what appears to be a wooden crate; a neon-green Yoda head lies in front of it. Jon explains to me that it is a 3D printer. At first I think he is joking, but then he explains that this printer can be used with special software to create previously designed objects. What does this have to do with information literacy? For quite some time now, the San Francisco Public Library has been broadening its understanding of literacy and offers workshops that focus on various skills as well as promote technology literacy, environmental literacy, civic engagement and similar competencies. The driving idea behind this is the responsible citizen.
Jon Worona is involved in a major project for the future that aims to promote media literacy among young people in a very creative way. Sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation and in collaboration with the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), the California Academy of Sciences as well as a local radio station, the project will establish a real and a virtual room where young people can create media. Expertise in the fields of video, audio, programming, graphic design and information science comes from all of the institutions involved; the room will be located in the San Francisco Public Library. Right now everything is still in the planning and testing stage before the project is realized in summer 2013 at the earliest. Non-profit organizations are involved and even Twitter programmers took part in a testing workshop – after all, the company is only just across the street. Despite the big names behind it, the entire project has a very likeable, DIY nature about it that seems lively and contagious. The enthusiasm and openness to think about libraries in a completely different way reminds me of Zukunftswerkstatt e.V. [Workshop for the Future], an organization in Germany that has been putting new items on libraries' agendas for several years now. Projects such as the German-American Gaming League [Deutsch-Amerikanische-Gaming-Liga] promote a similarly unconventional view of libraries' tasks. 
For the San Francisco Public Library, this type of project also aims to give young people a new perspective of the library and show them that it is a place where their issues play a role and where they can spend their time creatively. I think this idea of appealing to young people in particular, who otherwise might not have any other place to discover their skills and abilities, is right on target. Jon Worona emphasizes that the library thus also fulfills its task of giving young people a "community feeling" and supporting them in being original and independent. Here the focus is not just on consuming and using media, but also producing it. Who knows, perhaps the future of information literacy is not "just" about helping people to write texts and papers, but more generally about supporting them in creatively producing various objects using media. Even if that happens to mean making a Yoda head with a 3D printer…
Kommentare / Comments