Get Tech

It's Teen Tech Week! Learn, Create, & Share your techno skills in the YA room all week long. Take part in these techie programs just for teens grades 7-12:

Robot Workshop: Join students from SKC who will show us the amazing robots they've designed, and share some tips on building your own. Wednesday, March 10, 3:30 p.m.

Book Soundtracks: Make the perfect play list to go along with your favorite title, and share your list in the YA room.

Media Clips: Screen short videos created by our own Teen Media Lab. Think you'd like to make a video of your own? Join the lab, it meets every Wednesday at 4 p.m. Our MCAT volunteer will show you how to get started.

Teens Only Movie: Come to a free after-hours new release movie Saturday, March 13, at 7 p.m. Sponsored by Teens Only, our teen advisory board. If you'd like to help with library programs and other projects, join Teens Only at our monthly meetings.

PLUS we're visiting St. Joe's, Washington Middle School, and Meadowhill Middle School this week to show off our tech-savvy. The library is the place to be for Teen Tech Week!

You Can Has Remix: Creative Commons

So, you want to make the next viral video but you don't really have a camera besides the one on your cell phone. Or maybe you want music, but you're sick of using public old public domain stuff. Never fear, Creative Commons is here!

(Image by Flickr user Jayel Aheram. Some Rights Reserved)

The concept is simple. Authors, musicians, film makers, really anyone who creates content of any kind retain their "copyright" on their work, but they allow it to be used by other people to create remixes, mash-ups, or just use it. (like I did with the picture in this post!) They get to decide.

What can you allow or disallow on works you create?

1. Attribution - Anyone using your work has to give YOU credit.
2. Share-Alike - Keep the circle of life spinning. Anyone who creates a work based on your has to share it under the same rules you did.
3. Non-Commercial - Anyone using your work can't use it to profit.
4. No Derivatives - Anyone can make copies and share your work, but they cannot modify it in any way.

Content becomes free! How does this help you in making your video? Well, you could go to one of the many places offering stock video under a Creative Commons license and use those as your video source. Then check out the creative commons page for audio sources. If you need a single image? Go to Flickr and look at their HUGE Creative Commons pool. Now you've got lots and lots of places to get footage.

Be sure to follow the rules they lay down, they are giving it to you for free, and share your own content for everyone else.

Think Creative Commons is just for kids or the small time? Check out this awesome animation released under a Creative Commons Attribution license from the Blender Foundation.



Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.

Teen Tech Jewelry

As part of our ongoing Teen Tech Week madness, the teens are upstairs today watching online videos and making "techno" jewelry. They're using old CDs, amongst other things, to make some bling. Linette, our head teen librarian, decided it would be a good idea to put some CDs in the microwave to create some neat designs. I decided it would be a good idea to record her doing it. Don't try this if it is not your microwave or you don't have permission. BE SAFE!



Instructions for making your own jewelry from CDs can be found all over the Internet:

Crafting Green World

Crafty Crafty

Thrifty Fun

Retro-Tech: Steampunk

Steampunk. It's all about technology, but technology from the past. Think bowler caps and monocles, now you're in the right mindset.

Here's a steampunk mechanical tiger.



And a steampunk computer mouse made by Jake of all Trades:



Here's how he made it.

If this is the kind of stuff you're into, be sure to check out the Steampunk Archives on Boingboing.net.

Wii Would Like to Do Something Different

The Nintendo Wii can be a fun way to play some games, but some people are taking it to a whole new level.

These guys from Germany are using the Wii balance board to "surf" through Google Earth.



In Japan, a guy figured out how to control his Roomba with the Balance board.



And then the king of Wii hacking - Johnny Lee.

Teen Tech Review: Little Brother

In his novel Little Brother, Cory Doctorow envisions a time in the not-so-distant future where the power of the police and military branches of the government are usurped by the Department of Homeland Security after a devastating terrorist attack on San Francisco. The protagonist, a teenage boy, is taken into custody without arrest, interrogated and released days later with an explicit warning to not tell anyone about his ordeal unless he wants to "disappear." Throughout the course of the book, the protagonist creates a network of like-minded teens, using currently available technology, to act as a "Little Brother" to the Department of Homeland Security's "Big Brother."

The book deals with themes of free speech and censorship as it relates to technology. What do you have the right to chat about with your friends while online? What kinds of programs or operating systems are you allowed to install on your computer, or for that matter, what kinds of programs or operating systems are you allowed to author? It deals with the theme of a marginalized teenager whose father is quick to discount, instead taking the word handed down from the Department of Homeland Security as the ultimate truth, until it is almost too late. The book also deals with the paranoia of a town under siege from imaginary foes and the penchant of angry mobs of people looking for a scapegoat, in this case unruly teens they don't fully understand.

Little Brother is essentially a primer on the cutting edge technology available today and how to use that technology to preserve your right to free speech, freedom of association and freedom from unlawful imprisonment, and was by far the most important book published in 2008 for teens and adults alike.

Download Little Brother for free (from the author!) right here.

See Cory read a section from the novel.

The Truth Behind Facebook

The hottest social network out there is definitely Facebook. In honor of teen tech week, here are some Facebook parodies. Enjoy!

Teen Tech Week

It's that time again...today marks the beginning of Teen Tech Week! A week in which we provide teen programs for teens focusing on technology.

This week we'll be starting a teen media club, share some online videos, and learn how to make tech jewelry. Should be awesome. Check back here throughout this week for videos, book reviews and more - all related to Teens and Technology.