We're excited to have with us from the Kitsap Regional Library System Shannon Peterson and Seth Ciotti and I realize I forgot to ask you how to pronounce your name but they are here to talk to us today about their excellent work in supporting the youth in their community and I'm going to pass it on over and let Shannon get us started. Welcome. >> Thank you so much Jennifer. I can't believe how supportive WebJunction is in getting everyone started and all the help that you've provide to us to do this today so we really appreciate that and thank you. And a huge welcome to everyone. I'm so pumped to see all those locations all over the country come up in the chat box. Thank you so much for adding that. I am so excited to hang out with you for the next hour and talk about some of the work that we've been doing. It's really exciting. So as Jennifer mentioned, I am the youth services manager for Kitsap regional library and I will give brownie points to anyone who can tell me where Kitsap regional library is located. Anyone know? You can put it in the chat box if you do. I'm not going to wait too long -- there's a hint! Ooh, Washington. That's right! You got it, robin. We are in Washington state. We'll get a little bit more into exactly where we're located in a bit but we are sort of a semirural library system just across the water from Seattle. So my partner in crime on this project and in this webinar is Seth Ciotti and Seth, I'll turn it over to you for a moment. >> Yeah, so hello, everyone. My name is Seth Ciotti and I'm the digital media and learning librarian here at Kitsap regional library. I'm in the midst of a cold so I apologize in advance for any coughing or sneezing you might hear through the presentation. We're really excited about this and let's get started. >> Okay. Thanks, Seth. We've separated ourselves so hopefully, you won't hear echo coughing. I appreciate Seth struggling along with us today. So we're really excited to be here again. We're today talking about an IMLS project that we've been working on for the past year called make do share, getting started with STEM in a box. Our goal today is to really get you excited and to give you some ideas for getting started with awesome STEM programs in your library. So as we get started, Jennifer is going to introduce a fun little tool we have to get a pulse on why you're here today. We're curious about what brought you to this point so we can tailor what we're talking about to fit your needs. >> Excellent. Thanks so much. So those of you who are maybe seasoned WebJunction webinar attendees know that we do like to share annotation tools on occasion. So if you want to be sure and get your tools ready, click on the marker at the top left corner of the screen and go halfway down that menu option for the square. Within that menu, click on the checkmark and feel free to test here on the slide to let us know that you've found that checkmark. Excellent. And if you're on a mac, those annotation tools are at the bottom of your screen so feel free to seek those out and give it a little test. All right. It looks good. So now, I'm going to ask you to hold your tools, hold that checkmarking and we'll let Shannon move us on so that you can put those tools to work. >> Okay. Thank you. I'm sort of unreasonably excited about the checkmarks. I want to use them on every slide! But I probably shouldn't. So we're going to use them on this one, though. Okay so what brought you here today? STEM is terrifying. My boss told me to. All the cool kids are doing it or I love, love, love STEM! And you might need to put a check in multiple boxes, I get that. So if you need to do that, that's a-okay. Okay. A little bit of terrifying. A little bit of boss telling you to. But I see lots of -- there's a giant check, maybe that's three boxes. It looks like there's some kind of appreciation of what's going on with libraries and stem throughout the country so you see other libraries doing this, maybe you're super into STEM and you want to get some tips. It looks like we're weighing to that side so that's really great to hear. Hopefully, we'll have something to suit all four of these categories but that's great to see so thank you. Okay. So our plan today is to start with a little bit of context about the work that we've been doing. And talk a little bit about how we've gotten to that because I think we've made some valuable progress and learned a lot over the last couple of years, and I think it will be helpful to talk about that. We're also going to go over what we're calling the road map, which is really a planning and reflection process that we highly recommend to do or get started with great STEM programs. And then Seth is going to move on to what we're calling our playbook which outlines the ingredients that you need for implementation and some great ideas to help you get started. So we'll have plenty of time throughout for questions, but I also know we have a huge awesome audience today and you guys are going crazy with your chat and the checkmarks. So as Jennifer mentioned in the overview before we got started please feel free to add questions to the group. I'm sure there's a lot of rich experience and perspective from all of you here so definitely use that tool, that will be really helpful as we move along. I will also put in a quick plug to let you know that we are putting the finishing touches on a resource guide that we've created that talks about most of what we're going to talk about today in much greater detail. So that guide is sort of the fruits of this year long process that we've gone through to design this model. It's slated to be released at the end of June so we'll update the WebJunction archive for this course with that information and you can free to get in touch with us either via e-mail, Twitter or on our website to get a copy when that comes out and we'll make sure to have our contact information on the last slide for you. But that said, you know, that resource guide will be great and we hope you check it out but we have a ton of resources to share with you today so hopefully there will be something that you feel like you can dig into right away. All right. So let's start with a little bit of context. So in 2012, we received a grant from the Paul allen family foundation to create a program that we call Bibliotec. And the vision of this project was to partner with a local organization devoted to homeless and at risk youth to offer digital media and technology training. So this was really our first systemwide foray into STEM and technology and I felt like it was important to bring this up because we learned some really huge and essential lessons that sort of brought us to where we are today. Number one, the tools and the technology were nowhere near as important as the learning. We spent a ton of time and energy selecting, being nervous and getting excited about tools and technology and what we learned was that while the tools were important, what the participants wanted to work on and the process of them learning the tools with us was way more important than us being sort of experts on 3D printers or whatever it was that we were working on. First big important lesson. The second was that learning could only happen well when youth felt comfortable and connected and that's not a surprise to any of you. I know a lot of you come here today with a background in youth programming. So I think with STEM programs, it's easy to get really focused on the stem and kind of spend less time planning for the community building and connections with the kids. So once we kind of got over that, we made sure to be intentional about creating an environment where youth felt really engaged, comfortable to take risks and try things out, fail a little bit maybe and maybe more importantly participate in that peer learning and collaboration. So once we were more intentional about that, our programs just got a million times more impactful than they had before. So lesson learned. And then our third big takeaway from that process was that we had a few people doing sort of intermittent programs around our system and it just was not enough to sustain the level of interest that we had from families and potential partners. So these were a few amazing people that were working so hard to really engage youth, establish partnerships, but the need in our community for this type of work was just overwhelming. So we realize that doing this on a much more grassroots level with front line staff being engaged was really important for us to sort of feed those daily relationships in a much more sustainable way than what we had been doing. So we learned a lot of great stuff. And we're really excited to work on our new project, which is make do share, which is our IMLS project which we're in the midst of now. So with IMLS in this project, we've been able to take some of those mistakes that we've made and create a new model for our system and hopefully other libraries like us. So here's a map of our county as promised. We're Kitsap peninsula, just across the Puget sound from Seattle, and we're a nine branch library system divided by water from a very, very large metropolis. So that water kind of creates some fascinating differences for us in our county. We have two tribal reservations in our service area, a very high poverty urban area in Bremerton, Cambridge island is a suburban community, we have sleepy waterfront villages and a large volume of highly rural areas. We have this fascinating ecosystem of different library types that kind of help us think about how to adapt what we're doing to different situations. So the work that we're doing, we're really focused on creating something that suits diverse library and community types, that suits the changing needs of youth in those diverse communities and we all know how quickly those needs can change and also adapting to various staff comfort levels and skill sets. So the first thing I want to get started with is something that I think is really, really important, especially to those of you that were honest enough to talk about your secret terror of STEM is to remember why STEM learning is important and to have your elevator speech ready. So this is all stuff you've probably seen and that is highly visible out there but, of course, job growth is massive with STEM. So STEM careers are going at three times the rate of non-STEM careers. We're also seeing STEM relevant job skills pop up in a lot of new areas so in areas that you wouldn't necessarily think hey, that's a STEM job, those skills are really becoming relevant in many new areas. There's also, of course, with the rapid changes in technology those STEM and 21st century job skills have the capacity to serve as building blocks for those jobs that don't even exist yet. If you look at the economic landscape of the last even 10 years, there's careers that my parents probably would never imagine so it's really important to think about those basic skills that kids will need to be successful, no matter what that future landscape looks like. So again, you probably already know U.S. students in schools are struggling to build skills and compete with global counterparts so that pipeline from school and formal education to the job landscape is becoming increasingly problematic. So the really good news not to be too Debbie downer, libraries can have an important role in changing that. So this graph shows the number of waking hours that anyone spends in formal learning environments throughout their lifetime so you'll see at the bottom of that graph, the grades 1 through 12, that age demographic actually only spends 18.5% of their time in formal learning. So the first time I saw this graph I was just blown away. I think the implications are so huge when you look at that giant sea of blue and imagining what's happening in that time. So that sea of blue represents waking hours that kids are spending doing other stuff besides school. So you know, we can have a huge impact in sort of solidifying these important skills in that time. So as you can probably imagine, a lot of learning happening in that sea of blue is very interest based and highly social. So I think that's really where libraries can capitalize can come in and build on those interests. So of course, we have built-in capacity to support informal longer already through our collections and staffing. We're able to serve really diverse audiences and underserved populations and as you know, this is also increasingly important in the STEM field as we push to get more women and minorities in STEM. And we're also able to show a low stakes or we're also able to present a low-stakes hands-on environment for kids to kind of dig in and explore without the constraints of time and testing and all those things that schools need to deal with. All right. So I think it's really, really important as we begin our work with STEM to think about growth mind set. This is definitely where my team started and something that comes up a lot and that we think about a lot. So I don't know if folks are familiar with growth mindset. But the basic premise and you can check out some really amazing TED talks with one of its champions, carol dweck is that success or talent is not the result of fixed characteristics. So what that means is with effort and persistance, it's possible to address and overcome challenges. So rather than thinking I'm X or Y and it is what it is, this opens the door to new opportunities. So as you can see from this chart, this shift in thinking can really fundamentally change the way that you approach new tasks or challenges, I think. It's all about continuous learning and improvement over settling on what feels inevitable or fixed. So with that kind of brief overview there, can anyone share some reasons why starting with growth mindset might be particularly important for STEM programs in libraries? And you can put that in the chat box there. So why would focusing on this be important for STEM programs? And staff supporting STEM programs? So go ahead and push some ideas out there in the text box and we'll see -- yeah trial and error. That's a huge piece of STEM and showing that. Anyone can learn, experimentation. Yeah, and that's a good point there sometimes staff may need to adopt a growth mindset, really good point. Learning by doing. Yeah, and talking to the parents about how to teach and play. That's huge. Thanks Molly. This is awesome. I love all these ideas, guys. Thank you. Yeah, so all of these things. These are huge. So it's really about how we coach and communicate with kids and with their families as well as the kind of modeling that we can show during our programs. So really modeling the learning that needs to happen rather than just thinking about how we talk to kids. And there's some really great resources, too, if you're neuroto growth mindset. Carol has a book on this but there's some great resources out there to help you think about how to kind of tailor your communication with kids and families to reflect that growth mindset so one example would be instead of saying wow you're a great artist, you're amazing, you would say wow you really have been practicing your drawing and I can see how you improved in this specific way. So it really changes -- shifts the way that you communicate with kids and families and it can shift as we saw from some of your great examples how you approach your work in these fields. Okay so we're going to get started on road mapping and I hope you won't have to flex your newfound growth mindset muscles as we talk about this process but we did start with this, with growth mindset because I think the road map ideas are all about continuous learning and we think continuous learning is really, really important in this process. So carving out that time if you're beginning a new initiative or looking to revamp what you're already doing is so essential and I realize that it can seem like a lot of time to do some of this preplanning and reflection especially in a busy short staff library which I'm sure many of you are but I would encourage you and this is what we've been talking about in our system to take the time that you would have spent doing a new program to hold back for a little while and do some of this prework first. I really believe that this prework will help you be more connected to your community needs and be able to achieve greater impact with less effort so take the time, it's worth it, I promise. And I bet some of you are doing this already. Okay. So first step, discover your community. And I would preface this section to say that I know how deeply involved libraries already are in this, especially small and rural libraries that are often, you know, very much the heart of their community already, you serve a lot of people, you're really busy every day. But that said, I think even essentially when you're that busy and I'm thinking back to my own practice as a front line staff member, it can be really easy to overlook populations that aren't coming in the door so you know, I would say just make a point to test your assumptions and remember that it doesn't have to be -- none of this community discover process has to be overly formal. It just has to be something that you make time for on an ongoing basis. Of so, for example, there might be a new population of nonnative speakers that you weren't aware of. You might have a group of school-aged kids that aren't able to travel to the library because of lack of transportation and that would be an easy thing to miss. There might be a hangout for teens that you weren't aware of so you know, I would really encourage you to big into your data and find out. See what story that tells. So, of course, the easiest way to do this is to start with your demographic data and there's obviously a lot of great sources for this which I'm sure you're already an expert at locating for your patrons. School district websites, the NEKC foundation, probably your state education. So take time to dig into that data and reflect on how you might cater programs and services based on what you might learn there. You can also get to know your community through mapping. This could be social mapping which could be as simple as asking people where they spend their time or this could be -- this could be community mapping, which would involve taking stock of agencies and organizations that serve youth, places where youth hang out, after-school clubs and things like that. So I know this is something that libraries have been thinking a lot about and this has come up a lot in library world lately so do folks have ideas about ways that they discover their community? This could be, you know, just simply talking with patrons when you're thinking of a new initiative or program, doing focus groups or surveys. Could anyone share some ideas that they've done or that they've thought about doing to kind of get out there and understand their community? Meet up groups, that's a good one. Especially for that interest-based learning, that would be a really good way to see what kind of popular things are happening. A whiteboard with Post-Its to answer questions, that's great. I like that non-user survey. I'm curious of how you got that out there. We've been thinking about that, too. So how to reach those non-users through a survey is always on my mind. Visiting businesses and chambers, that's great. Yeah, I think that came up visiting school sites and we actually started our process with doing some focus groups with some classes that we were able to get into to talk about STEM and what STEM interests kids have, you can also observe programs at partner sites to see what those look like. So great, tons of good ideas, keep pushing those out there, those are awesome. As you do this community discovery, I would encourage you to keep track of what you're learning over time. I think this really helps you celebrate the progress that you've made as you progress and show a record of the ongoing changes in your community because, you know, as you know and one of the reasons libraries are so fascinating is, you know, we're constantly adapting and flexing to meet the changing needs of our community so that would be really interesting to track, as well. And we actually included a template to help you do this in one of the supporting documents on the course page for this. So just so you're aware. And this is also in the course page but these are some of the places that we've found very helpful for doing some of this community discovery. The NEKC foundation kids count data center is a total goldmine when it comes to information and there's some really amazing resources for mapping communities and programs ready by 21 has a great tool kit for program mapping and the university of Kansas has this insanely helpful website called community tool box where they have a number of different tool kits to help support nonprofit and community work, so definitely dig into that resource, it's so helpful. Okay. So you've gotten your sea legs with your community data, awesome conversations going, love it. Now, it's time to think about facilitation. So I think if there's one thing that I would hope would be your takeaway from today in this webinar is that facilitation is really king for doing this type of STEM ecosystem work. So as opposed to acting as sort of an information gatekeeper as library staff might have done in the past, providing relevant STEM programs with youth requires that you give up that control, which is hard to do, and really act as a colearner and codesigner with youth to do these programs and this will really, you know, giving up that control and giving youth more of a voice and higher engagement in your programs will help you model the learning that you need to be doing to support content or tools that are always going to be changing, right? So there's no way that you could be an expert on every new tool or technology or STEM topic that kids want to cover so you're really going to have to model some of that learning with your kids and it also will help create a positive dynamic and safe environment as you go. So what do you do to build those facilitation tools? I think it's really important to have a basic understanding of developmental ages and stages. So making sure for whatever age audience you're targeting towards, making sure that you're really abreast of trends and research in that area. Also think about how to build a community and encourage collaboration in your programs, even if it's just a one time event. So be really mindful of those group dynamics and comfort levels. Quickly welcome new participants and find ways to engage those youth that are holding back or participating less and relying on youth volunteers or long-time participants to help you with this can be really, really helpful. And on a related note to that I would say finding ways to integrate youth voice into every step of your program from early planning to post-program reflections is super important. So it might be having your group vote on activities that they would like to do or the programs you want to do, engage in the planning process together and kind of work out what that looks like or work with volunteers or interns to help codesign your programs. It's been especially effective for us to have teens and young adults have in planning programs for school-aged kids. That's been a huge success in our STEM program or something to think about. And Seth is going to talk a little bit more about the specific ways that we've built facilitation into our programming framework but we have seen -- we have a few sources that have been really helpful for us with our team and training. The David P. Weikart center for youth program quality has some amazing, amazing resources to help support training and professional development as well as assessment for any kind of youth program. So their youth works method series is amazing and I highly recommend their books and online materials. It's fee based but I think some of them -- the ones that we've used have been well worth it and a really helpful tool for our librarians to have. You may have seen this but the MIT media lab put out a family creative learning facilitation guide and that is a really, really fascinating tool that shows how to engage young families, young children and their parents in doing STEM and digital media programs together, and I think is a really helpful source for showing sort of the case study of what that looks like and how to go about that so I would highly recommend that, and then, of course, you're probably familiar with search institute, they do a ton of work on developmental assets and stages. They also have a site called parent further that really breaks this down in a simple way that's really accessible and easy to use. Okay. So you've got your data, you're thinking about facilitation and relationships, now it's time to really build those relationships with your community. And this has been hugely important for us. First and foremost, we realized we just don't have to operate in a silo and if we don't operate in a silo it's going to be way better. So by building relationships with schools, community stakeholders, or youth organizations, you'll really increase the impact that you're able to have and just make it easier and more fun. So in doing this, you can kind of work on this on a lot of levels. We like to refer to it as our local STEM ecosystem and we'll talk about that a little bit more in a second but this ecosystem can do a lot of things. It can help you create a community of practice so if you're really connected to maybe boys and girls club and what they're doing with STEM or 4h does incredible stuff with STEM, you can connect with those folks to share tips and resources. If you haven't looked at 4h's STEM resources, do it. They have so much great stuff. It's amazing. You can also tailor your programs to complement other existing offerings and Seth will talk about this more, too. So instead of really competing with other after-school organizations you can think about how you can work together around shared goals. You can share resources like training and professional development. As I've mentioned. And, you know, this might be a higher tiered goal but you could also share data so you can tell a bigger story about the work that you're doing as a community rather than just separate institutions. And, of course, you know, the end goal would be find areas to work towards those mutual goals and create formal partnerships. But I would highlight especially if you're just getting started you know, the partnerships are great but don't be afraid to just get started with feeding those relationships because often, you know, those relationships will bloom into something down the road and you're not quite sure what that would be but just taking the time to feed that relationship and your ecosystem will really improve your programs over time. And here's a few resources that we've been help -- that have been helpful for us through this process, ready by 21 again has some great work on this. The remake learning playbook has a ton of great information for doing maker programs with youth. So a lot of great detail there but in particular they have a chapter on the learning network that talks about specifically how you get started and feed that learning network. And then, you know, one of our favorite resources is the STEM ecosystem site that really walks you through how to build those crosscollaborative partnerships. Okay. So planning for impact. And actually before we get started on that, I'm going to ask you a question again. I would like to hear -- I would like for you guys to think about a learning experience that you've had and this could be personal or professional, it could be recent or, you know, 20 years ago, whatever, think about a time in your life when you've had something that you were learning and doing that you were super passionate about and that you loved and you were super into and then think about what made that learning so successful for you. And you can -- if you would like to share ideas in the chat box like what made that learning so awesome? Yeah, hands-on. So getting to that end goal. Something to take home and show off. I like it. It was fun! Yes. Playfulness and curiosity are huge. Being able to interact with others. Real-world applications. Yeah, being able to share what you learned is huge. That it was self-driven based on your interests, I like that. That's awesome. So finding out what you're good at doing. I love seeing all these things. So yeah, these are all huge. And actually, they're echoed quite a bit when we were talking about this question and staff, a lot of your ideas are echoed in what we were thinking about, too. So having someone to work with was huge. You know, really like realizing that you were able to do something was huge, having that human connection, being emotionally invested, hands-on, all those things. Really helped the learning be fun and exciting. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about what that looks like for STEM programs. So if we approach the same program so say we're doing a robotics program. We approach the same program thinking about all those amazing outcomes that you guys were talking about there in that chat box. So look at the difference of what we'll be able to achieve if we approach it in a way that intentionally incorporates some of those ideas that you brought up there. So we could do robotics, just by, you know, laying out the supplies, giving the step-by-step instructions, and having youth build it. So that program would be a lot about access to technology, just providing access. But as you see program B allows kids to build STEM interest while they're also gaining these huge 21st century skills like collaboration, critical thinking, leadership, creativity and, you know, it just looks like they're doing a lot together and having fun. So even though it's the same program like taking a little bit different approach in focusing on the learning makes it a hugely different program. So we are all about thinking about outcomes and being intentional with the outcomes. So, of course, outcomes are the change in skill, behavior, attitude or belief that a recipient will have as a result of attending your programs. And we think by starting with that outcomes piece before you get started, it will really help your programs be that much more impactful. And I would highly recommend heading to after-school alliance. They have a report called defining youth outcomes for STEM learning and after-school and this thing has just been like our Bible. I love it. It's like the best thing ever. It really talks about outcomes that after-school organizations are are able to achieve in informal settings. So really realistic outcomes that we can be thinking about in our after-school programs. The first which I think is like, you know, just something that libraries are so good at and absolutely do and have the capacity to do with underserved audiences is to really help kids develop an interest in STEM learning. So we can take kids that maybe really aren't into science or math or whatever in school and get them to a point where they're like oh, hey, I like stem. So they're engaged in playing, in realizing that STEM can be a really cool and useful content area to work on. And the second is STEM skill building so realizing that they actually can do this. So even if it's not something they're excelling at in school, modeling that growth mindset and showing them they are able to build skills in STEM is so huge and those skills can be understanding how to collect evidence, ask questions, work in teams, apply problem solving abilities, or even basic STEM content would be that STEM skill building and then the final outcome is STEM pathways. So realizing that kids would realize that STEM is important to their lives. So they see the connection of STEM to everyday life. They're aware of opportunities for STEM, through STEM, to contribute to society. They have a little bit of knowledge of STEM careers and they feel like STEM is accessible to anyone. We can do these things! So in order to achieve these awesome outcomes, all you need to do is integrate youth voice and encourage youth ownership, really focus on relationships, make time for planning and reflection, build a network and really embrace that continuous learning. So Seth I'm going to pass the mic to you where you can dig into some of our specifics with the playbook. >> Great, yeah. So the playbook is one of the resources we created that will be available in June and as Shannon has been explaining over the presentation that she was talking about the road map. The things you should be thinking about before starting a STEM program. Again that community assessment, discovery, plan for impact, you know, how are you listening to youth voice and discovering youth interest, something that should be happening at every program. And then really having a plan for that continued learning, that growth mindset. How are you going to get from point A to point B? And once you have that plan in place, you're really ready to start thinking about specific STEM programs. And that's where the playbook comes in, so just like a coach would use when deciding -- I should advance here. So just like a coach would use when deciding specific plays to pick in a sport, we as facilitators would select plays that make up the components of a STEM event or program, so the goals of a playbook are really to provide you with the opportunity to mix and match plays for different STEM settings, skill sets, youth interests, the outcomes you've established and the audience. And again, you can make a program your own by really putting these pieces together to fit the youth, the families and the community partners you're working with to build your stem programming environment. The play book we've created has a lot of example plays that help you as you work your way through different programming models and types but it's also about you as a facilitator incorporating plays that you've created or discovered and also having youth and cofacilitators that are involved in the programming process have ownership in coming up with plays and suggestions for ideas for the program itself because again, a play is really -- it's for everyone to suggest, it's more about the interest in the program than it is about STEM knowledge. So the plays are really focused on supporting youth interest through learning in a question and trial and error sort of format. So it's a facilitator role in a prom, it isn't to tell youth how to do something or to give them answers to a challenge or problem they're trying to solve. Instead as a facilitator, you're really there to guide youth through a process so they come up with their own understanding of how a STEM topic or material works, and it's really important. This sort of environment creates a colearning environment. As some of you expressed in the beginning of the presentation, you're scared about STEM programming and I was myself when I started in many ways and I got wrapped up in feeling like I had to be a content expert, feeling like I had to know everything. Really establishing that colearning environment at the beginning is really important. It's saying to the youth that we're all here to discover together. We're all here to learn about the STEM topic together. We're all here to ask questions and try collaboratively to answer those questions and it's really a great way to discover long-term STEM programming that model that really incorporates youth interests. So I jumped to the next slide here. We see our actual programming framework that we've defined in the playbook and it's divided into four sections and they are practice, bits, explore, and engage. And as you see in the graphic, they feed into each other in a continuous loop. For a moment I want to break those sections up a little bit and just skip practice for one moment and go to bit, explore and engage. These program types align directly to our outcomes and by aligning programming to outcomes we've created this longevity in STEM programming so with the bit from that initial interest, we move to the productive engagement in STEM, and then finally that awareness of STEM pathways and careers. And by using these outcomes, we're really creating a holistic STEM learning environment again. So bits, explore and engage programming are programming, they're really -- they're programs themselves that build that environment. Practice is something that happens outside of the program itself. It's really what begins and ends the framework, and it's really how youth are involved in helping you develop a STEM programming process. So practice really centers on giving youth the opportunity to gain leadership skills through supporting STEM learning, through opportunities like volunteering or internships and practice is also about longevity and youth voice. Leveraging that youth voice to peer to peer mentorship in the bit, explore and engage programs. And, you know, really looking at what youth interests are. If youth have identified particular interests in STEM or digital media or leadership and mentorstep in general, it's important for you as a facilitator to pursue ways for youth to expand or leverage that interest. Here at Kitsap regional library we've developed a STEM internship protocol. We hire youth for five months and they work five hours a week but they solely work with our STEM programming so they're working at each library solely involved in that planning and facilitation of STEM programming. We really don't have time today to go into the internship protocol that we've created but the playbook does show you that protocol and it also shows you how it can be used with volunteers or youth who participate consistently in programming. So once you have a good sense of practice and how it really is involved in that whole process we can really again jump back into that bit, explore and engage programming model. So bit is really open ended and informal learning environments. It's about that initial engagement in STEM learning. For man youth it's about that first time access with the STEM concept. And it's really a great way to identify youth interest through youth activities, and it's really a great intro of STEM topics to us as facilitators to really build that comfort in working with STEM. Many kids just don't see themselves in STEM so the ability to play with STEM materials and STEM concepts is really a great way for them to find ways to explore STEM. So often the facilitation of these programs is simply through an activity or a simple question or problem you present to them. We'll talk more about this when we get into picking individual plays but bit programs are a great way to let youth decide what they want to do next and really once they've developed those interests and developed the things they want to do next, you're ready to move on to explore and explore programs focus on youth being productively involved in the process of investigation. So as a bit program was about an activity or an initial interaction with the STEM idea, explore is about that inquiry process, it's about asking a question or presenting a problem and letting youth have time to collaborate and plan and decision make to solve that problem. So it really focuses on youth driven learning instead of library led learning so it's not about the activity, it's really about the process of solving that problem. And for us, many of our teen librarians use explore, they use past programming to explore and engage. They'll say we've been doing game design and let's look at a way to investigate that process further. And as you solve these problems, they want to start thinking about that larger STEM plan or project that they might want to work on and that's how you would get into an engaged program. And engaged programs are really designed to give youth the opportunity to spend several sessions to learn more in-depth about a particular STEM topic. And explore was about inquiry, this is more about that project based learning and design thinking where youth are observing their interests, their STEM understanding, their community and their ambitions or career path they might have and how that can really be involved into planning and developing a larger project. And the goals of this are really for them to understand the value of this learning, to become aware of how this relates to future opportunities and career paths and again, completing this larger project or plan that's developed, that's based on their interests, but has a STEM content heavy aspect to it. So now that we have a basic sense of the programming framework, the next step would be to think about what level of STEM programming you're ready for. And again that goes back to your audience and the road map, the plan you're developing. Bits explore and engage are designed to connect to the outcomes and that all goes back again to feeding into practice where youth codesign this programming but you decide that path. For many of the librarians in our system, working with bits over months or a year is a way that they are consistently engaging youth in STEM and still learning how to facilitate STEM programs on their own. So the next few slides I will be discussing putting together a play package and again, like a coach would use a playbook on game day, a play package is just a selection of plays you've picked to have on hand or during a STEM activity or program. Today, we're going to look at creating a play package for a bit program. This play package will contain a play and we actually have two supporting documents that give you an example of the play package, the play package that we'll be walking through and a basic template of how you might put a play package together. So before we select plays, we really want to think about some of the big picture questions that we need to think about before selecting that specific STEM topic that our program is going to revolve around and that really comes into that preplanning model. So we want to ask ourselves some pretty big picture questions like who is our audience, what age group are we working with? Is it just youth or families involved? Are these first time participants? Have they never been engaged in the STEM process before? And it's a great way to think if you have a particular audience you want to work with, are you going to do a STEM program for girls or teens or whoever it might be, and once you've established that audience you can really start thinking about their interests and again, it goes back to identifying those interests and saying how are you going to relate that to the program itself? And also thinking about what they're doing in school, how you can incorporate the path into the program itself. And finally, maybe in the case of a bit program, too, maybe this is just about that initial interaction with a STEM topic or idea. And the last important part of that preprogramming process is thinking about is anyone else in your community doing this type of STEM programming? How does the program that you are building connect with the STEM community and any share outcomes you've established with that community? Is your program competing or complementing STEM programs run by other community partners? Again if you have a community partner that's doing something like a robotics program you want to do one, too, really think about how your program can complement what they're doing so it's not competing with what they're doing, and another really important part about thinking about those community partners is how can they help you to get started with your STEM program and even help with facilitating that program? So we'll move into planning really quickly here and I'm going to jump through this pretty quickly. You want to identify your program outcomes and you want to think about how you're directly incorporating those youth interests into the program you're designing itself. And a quick thing you might want to do is how would you describe this program to different audiences? And maybe one or two sentences, how would you describe a program to youth you might want to have participate in the program? And how would you describe this to staff so there's buy-in at your library and so they're communicating that program well to other patrons? And then also, how would you explain this to the community partners that you're working with, so that you're really showing that you're thinking about those shared goals and outcomes. Reflection, I'm going to talk about a bit later. I'm going to jump into the next slide. We only have a few minutes left here. So on the slide we finally get into looking at the first three plays that would go into a play package. And in this case these three plays really make up community building and so it's really important in that programming process, giving youth time to really get to know each other. And this first play is a welcome and that's simply an introduction to the topic that you're working on to talk about the challenge or task that they'll be taking part in and to let them know this is about exploration and not competition again, establishing that this is a colearning environment. The second play is really about community building, building that community again, an activity to allow the youth to be comfortable with each other. It does or doesn't really have to connect to the STEM topic. It's really about developing common interests and relationships between the youth. And this could be the first time the youth are really intact with -- interacting with each other. You want to make sure you as facilitators and other cofacilitators are really involved in that process of community building and finally, an introduction to materials. A chance to introduce the STEM topic, to discuss what they'll be creating or accomplishing that day and working together on the initial example creation and having time to ask some initial questions, and then talk about best practices of equipment and any safety involve in the process of the day. The second part here is the challenge itself. And this can come in many forms. This is the task you're asking them to engage in and that could be a task, that can be a basic interaction with the STEM materials and equipment, that can be inquiry questions or that could be a project or plan for the youth to development once you get into that explore and engage programming. The next play is the check-in with groups and the youth are working on challenges, it's really important for you as a facilitator to walk around, to encourage them to help out when needed, to ask questions whenever possible and also include those cofacilitators into that process and really think about some questions for them to ask before the program so that you're really discovering what they like and don't like, and it's really a great opportunity to help youth articulate their learning by talking about STEM concepts and asking youth to connect what they're doing to the real life experience. The next play is simply having a backup plan. We all know that youth work at different speeds and different rates so really having some things for youth to do should they finish early or not be ready for the challenge, and it's a great opportunity to have them, you know, expand on the challenge, it's also a great way to introduce that initial peer to peer mentorship by having them help others or share their process with others or even have them create a challenge for you, something that you could use in a future program. And finally, here, the last section of play is really about that reflection. So the first is the showcase. The showcase play is something that should be happening throughout the program. It's really a chance to allow youth to share what they did to learn from each other, to ask questions to each other and it's really an important part of that community building that can happen throughout the process. And then finally, we have the reflection. And again, that's a play that should be happening in every play package that you would create. It's essentially a chance to give youth time to articulate what they learned, what they liked, and what they didn't like and what they would really want to do next. And quickly I want to address some of the big picture reflection indicators that you really want to identify when selecting a play, reflection play for a program and that's really about STEM ideas, comfort, and interest in STEM. STEM ideas really allow the reflection time to show you if youth have expanded their knowledge of a STEM idea. It also lets you know if by completing a challenge -- and did they learn any new vocabulary or concepts that they will take outside of the program? Comfort again do they feel comfortable talking about STEM? Do they feel more comfortable talking about STEM? Do they want to explore STEM topics more? And did they enjoy the challenge and working with the materials? And in general, did they find the environment comfortable? And then interest in STEM. And that's really about expanding their excitement in STEM topics and that will help to develop future programs. And one final quick thing that program assessment that time at the end to reflect on what happened in a program. Really taking time to think about did you reach all of your program outcomes, did you meet all of the shared goals you have with community partners, did you select the right plays? What would you have changed? Really talking to the youth that you're working with and the cofacilitators to really get a sense of how they felt about the program because that's all going to help you in the end develop that next step programming. Again, this is just an example and this was a very quick example here. It may feel a bit robotic at first, when you're trying to do these things and there's a lot of text and a lot of things to think about when going into this process but really it's all about community building, developing the context of STEM learning, collaborating and reflecting. And again, it's all about the stuff. It's not about the stuff. It's all about the learning environment you're building within that programming context. And I don't think we have any time for Q&A because we are a little over time. >> Yeah, we are and I'll jump in and thank you both. There are a couple of questions that came up that Shannon did a great job of answering. So we'll be sure and make sure that you all have the chat and can refer to that. But I really want to thank you and appreciate the depth of what you're thinking about this. I think, as you mentioned, at the beginning, this is really about the intention of the planning and reflecting and getting that input throughout the process. So really it's really telling in terms of the impact that you're having. So again, thanks to both of you and I'm going to actually just be sure and also move here to the slide where Shannon and Seth have shared their contact information. They are both eager to be resources for you as you continue to think through this and again, this session will be archived and we'll be posting that. Be sure to explore the learner guide and the other resources we've provided and we'll add a link to the guide they bring to the field in the summertime as well, so thank you both and thank you to our captioner and everyone have a fantastic day. >> Thank you. >> Thanks so much Jennifer and thanks again to everyone for attending and please, please feel free to reach out to us any time. We're so excited that you will are thinking about this, too, so let's definitely connect. Thanks. >> Thank you.