Scratch Day @ CLP Main- Teen: Saturday 5/19 from 1 to 4

IMAGINE + PROGRAM + SHARE Are you interested in creating digital videos, games, and animation?  Do you have a vision and passion for digital art, but lack the technical skills?  If you answered yes, then  Scratch is the perfect programming language for you.  Scratch is a visual programming language that was developed by MIT students in [...]

Teen Sells Kidney for iPad—Would You?

You want an iPad.  What would you do to get one?  Many teens would get a part-time job: walking dogs, babysitting, working in a restaurant.  Reasonable, socially acceptable options.  Conversely, a 17-year-old in China recently sold his kidney to purchase an iPhone and iPad.  In exchange for his kidney, he received about $3,500—enough to purchase [...]

From Blogs to Books

Around  the library, all my colleagues seem to want to talk about are eBooks.  “Will eBooks replace printed materials?  If so, what will the future of libraries look like?  Are we librarians doomed?!?”  Not so, says I.  The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is currently expanding our collection of popular teen eBooks and making them available [...]

The Birth of Your Apple Product – A Correction

If you read this post from about a month ago, about the This American Life piece about “Mike Daisey, [who] wrote a theatrical monologue that paints an awful grim picture of what he learned there regarding worker’s rights (or lack there of) and just how much that iPhone in your pocket cost – in terms [...]

The Birth of Your Apple Product

A few months ago, Corey blogged about an iphone app game that details the beginnings of an iphone, complete with “NES-style graphics, mini games, slave labor, and suicide”. Lately, there has been a lot more talk and news coming out regarding Apple’s labor practices, particularly in China. After visiting the country and interviewing workers at [...]

Madden, Skrillex, Cupstacking, and reCAPTCHA: A (Surprisingly) Literary Journey

On August 30th, like a lot of people, I walked down to my local video game store over my lunch break and forked over some change for the next iteration of EA Sport’s Madden NFL, which we now have available at the Main library for any of our gaming programs! I turned it on, ready [...]

So many choices, what’s a consumer to do?

So, you just got a gift card for your birthday, or you won one for Teen Summer Reading this year, and you need a new MP3 Player, or your laptop just passed on to the land of useless hunks of metal – just in time for back to school, of course. With all of the [...]

Create Your Own Digital Story

Everyone has a story to tell. But not everyone feels confident with writing or illustrating. In fact, you might be a lot more comfortable playing with images, music, and video clips on the computer. If digital media is more your style, try experimenting with digital storytelling as a way to create and share your stories. [...]

My belated holiday gift to you:

TED Talks. Technology. Entertainment. Design. The mission?  To Spread Ideas. It all started in 1984 and is now an annual conference, bringing together the world’s most innovative creative thinkers, who have 18 minutes to tell you about their idea.  Available for Talks are free at ted.com Down with some… Beatbox? No?  How about…. Skiing to [...]

A Few Random Thoughts on Teen Tech Week

This being Teen Tech Week, I thought I’d get my teens to write this blog entry but since I was sick on Tuesday when we were supposed to meet, I’m writing my blog entry myself. I know Carnegie Libraryof Pittsburgh -Main  is having an old school day of all the ancient technology I grew up with. It [...]