Teen Tech Week

 

As you may have heard, Teen Tech Week, sponsored by YALSA, will be taking place between March 7-13 and after looking through their materials, I realized that these activities can be easily implemented using our teen social network!

This week of techno fun is a national initiative aimed at teens, librarians, educators, and other concerned adults to encourage teens to take advantage of libraries' nonprint resources. YALSA has a variety of different activities and suggestions which can be found on their website.

In the spirit of Teen Tech Week, Sourcebooks Fire (the YA imprint of Sourcebooks) is not only putting together a list of suggested activities, but we’re going to give your students a moderated forum to showcase their work to almost 1,000 of our digitally inclined, teen fiction fanatics! Additionally, they will have the chance to win FREE BOOKS for both themselves and their libraries just by participating!

What differentiates the TeenFire social network from similar websites is the involvement of published authors and YA editors throughout. Teens who submit original fiction on the Writers Forum, for example, are regularly given advice from authors like two-time national book award finalist Adele Griffin, Dianne Salerni and Joy Preble. Debut authors Lisa and Laura Roecker have a regular blog on the site and actively interact with all the members. The site is only one month old, but with almost 1,000 active members we’re very excited at how fast it has been growing!

For Teen Tech week, TeenFire is hosting the following events:

·         Share a Book Video Contest: Are you the next James Cameron? Create a book trailer, video review, scene from a book or any other book related shot video (3 mins MAX) and upload it to the TeenFire video archive for a shot to win FREE copies of any 5 Sourcebooks Fire books for you & your library. For contest details & tips on how to do this quickly (and for free!), check out the Share a Book Video Contest forum below. As submissions come in, they’ll also be posted in our TeenFire Web Portal, prominently displayed on our front page. Featured videos will be picked at random, and we will continue to feature one teen video through March 19^th (assuming we have enough contestants!) Trailers of Sourcebooks Fire books will be eligible for both this and the TeenFire trailer contest.

·         Mad Men of Literature: Put Don Draper to shame using all your creative & technological powers to design an ad to inspire your peers to pick up a book! Five winners will receive an 11x17 poster of their ad, with additional copies available to their library. A grand prize winner will also receive free copies of any 5 Sourcebook Fire books, as will the sponsoring libraries. For details & guides, check out the Mad Men of Literature forum below.

·         Pimp My Profile: Let your true colors show by customizing your profile page! Our TeenFire network allows much more flexibility in picking colors, uploading graphics and posting videos than a regular facebook page! For the easiest contest to enter in all Teen Tech Week, design a unique profile page & enter to win one book of your choosing for both yourself and your library from Sourcebooks Fire. For more info on editing your profile, check out the Pimp My Profile forum below.

·         TeenFire Trailer Contest: Our authors need your help! Create trailers for any Sourcebooks Fire titles and enter to win five Sourcebooks Fire books of your choosing for you and your library. Since many of our YA books aren’t out yet, we’ve uploaded a few chapters of each title which can be read on each book group page. To participate, check out the TeenFire Trailer Contest Below.

If you're a librarian who would like to have a group of teens participate in these events, it may be a good idea to form a "group" so that you can have a place to post instructions, as well as have a method of emailing all the members with the click of a button. For more on creating a group, please read this one-sheet: How To Join A Group-Or Start Your Own.docx

Restricted to teens ages 13-19, individuals and groups of up to five teens. Prizes for individuals and groups will be shipped to a single address. Distribution to groups will be up to the recipient. All are invited to participate, but library prizes will only be shipped directly to a library address. Individual teens (not affiliated with a library) are free to participate, but are encouraged to contact local libraries to find out if they’re doing anything for Teen Tech Week. All submissions will be considered if posted before 11:59pm on March 13th (feel free to submit early). Judging for all contests will be completed on March 22nd and winners will be announced on this group, and in a message sent out to group members (so remember to check back!). No disparaging comments or language will be tolerated and abusers will be banned at the administrator’s discretion. Please direct any questions to TeenFire@sourcebooks.com.

 

Although TeenFire is a highly monitored website, as with any social network it is important to be sensible about your online interactions. Please check out this brief one-sheet regarding safety on TeenFire: How To Navigate Teen Fire Safely.

And, most importantly, HAVE FUN!!