In July of 2011, Washington adopted the Common Core State Standards. Schools across the state have since been working to implement these new standards and establish a platform for learning and growth. Due to implementation still being in its earlier stages, there is a strong need for programs that will develop needed information literacy skills to satisfy these standards. The “4 Winners” are a part of an information literacy program that I designed to build critical research and evaluation skills in 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. In this digital age, students must conduct their own research in an effective and critical manner. Working with Montlake Elementary School, the “4 Winners” Information Literacy Program has been designed to be used by instructors/librarians and can be adapted to a variety of learning environments. This program develops invaluable researching skills that students will need in order to be successful throughout their lives.

My Capstone project is focused on the development of the instruction and illustration of two education programs for the Learning Theater; an extension of the Gottesman Library at the Teachers College of Columbia University. The Learning Theater is at the forefront of innovative technology, education, and immersive learning. I provided two multi-media rich programs for implementation at the theater, titled Genre Journey and History Walks. Genre Journey, a program geared toward middle school aged students distinguishes the differences between six literary genres while students explore creative and narrative writing, character context adaptation, and empathy. History Walks juxtaposes the textbook account of The Civil Rights history with the personal narratives of the same history; paralleled to emphasize and feature silenced and underrepresented voices from this historical era. These programs were created with evocative learning objectives in collaboration with the newest technologies in order to promote content for long-term understanding and life-long learning.

eSports is a rapidly growing industry where competitive online video gaming has reached a whopping 71 million followers. Gaming professionals compete and specialize in certain game genres such as real-time strategy, fighting, first-person shooter, or multiplayer online battle arenas. Gaming professionals have massive followings of fans who idolize their lives. Teaming up with Unikrn, an eSports betting startup in Seattle, we have been working hard at creating a mobile game to target eSports fans to hone their own gaming skills. Unikrn Assist will take hard-tom-aster aspects of competitive games and help fans to improve them anywhere using our mobile app. This app will help fans master their gaming skills in hopes that one day they will be able to become professional gamers.

Divorce, for children, can have strong emotional and behavioral repercussions, and can cause lasting mental health issues. Therapists work diligently to help families through this, but aren't experts in publishing. This can lead to a reliance on dated materials that may lack depth, currency and accessibility. Armed with an understanding of some of the issues that divorce causes children, Megan and Chelsea worked with therapist Carol Mapp to create an annotated bibliography of high-quality, accessible titles. It addresses issues beyond divorce, including anxiety, grief, moving to a new home and academics. The structure was designed to enhance usability, and is broken down by issue and age range. This project creates a clear, concise resource of supportive texts that can be browsed or searched with ease. This list can be used to guide decisions on materials used in specific bibliotherapy sessions, as a collection development tool, and even shared with clients.

Makerspaces— creative environments dedicated to active learning—are a growing trend in libraries; however, without a contingency plan for sustaining makerspaces, the momentum that libraries have harnessed from the “maker movement” could halt to a standstill. Our research took us to Kitsap County, where nearly 258,000 patrons are served by the regional library system. BiblioTEC (Technology, Education, and Community) is an IMLS award-winning STEM learning lab at Kitsap Regional Library. In order to enable the continued success of BiblioTEC as they enter a new phase of development, we created a Pop-Up Makerspace Toolkit for use in public library learning initiatives. We developed a scalable outcome-based curriculum to provide informal learning for at-risk youth and designed transferable models for library learning labs. Through our work in the community we have helped Kitsap Regional Library strengthen their educational outreach and empower patrons to learn, dream, and make.

Parents and caregivers are their child’s first and best teachers. The first 2,000 days of a child’s life (birth to the time a child enters Kindergarten) are critical for cognitive, social and emotional development. Therefore, early learning plays an important role in preparing a child to be successful in school. Early literacy is a component of early learning that encompasses the skills needed for children to communicate and understand language before they can read and write. There are five fun and simple practices that can be incorporated into daily routines beginning at birth to raise successful learners: talking, singing, reading, writing, and playing. This project focuses on educating the community about these five practices, specifically through the use of a short video series that can be linked and distributed through many channels. Community education will provide people with the knowledge to help make a positive impact on young learners.

Today’s generosity for book donation is well-intended, yet there is a disparity between the books donated by NGOs compared to the need and relevance of receiving young adult readers in Ghana, Africa. Two critical components to the book donation process is missing. First, communication between the school in need of reading materials and the organization providing reading materials are not aligned. Second, donated books do not include briefing materials to help the educator or librarian make recommendations to readers. This Capstone project, Enriching the Joy of Reading for Young Adult Readers in Ghana recommends adding relevant steps and content to the process. By including a “book kit” sticker inside donated books or electronically loaded in the donated Worldreader e-reader, deeper insight to the content will result in a productive, perhaps exciting, reader services exchange between librarian and young adult reader and serve as a means to increase literacy.

The Center for Disease Control has found that 80 percent of the U.S. population do not meet the federal government’s physical activity recommendation. Having a workout partner can help double your chances for fitness success. In fact, people who visit the gym with a partner have only a 6.3 dropout rate but finding that perfect partner can be difficult. Fiternity, a mobile fitness application, aims to help you find that fit by strategically providing you with a perfect match from your network of friends and family. Simply plug in your favorite fitness activities and your desired partner skill level and watch as the matches populate. By taking a collaborative approach to exercising as opposed to a competitive one, Fiternity encourages you to create a community to motivate each other to be a better self.