Hello and welcome to Episode Twenty of Page Turn: the Largo Public Library Podcast. I'm your host, Hannah!
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The Spanish Language Book Review begins at 13:42 and ends at 17:38
The English Language Transcript can be found below
But as always we start with Reader's Advisory!
The Reader's Advisory for Episode Twenty is The Cartel by Ashley. If you like The Cartel you should also check out: Dutch by Terri Woods, Dallas by Treasure Hernandez, and Thugs and the Women Who Love Them by Wahida Clark.
My personal favorite Goodreads list The Cartel is on is If I Were Stranded On an Island, I'd Need the Following to Survive...".
Today’s Library Tidbit comes to us from Denice and is all about the new STEAM Spot!
My name is Denice and I’m here to talk about a new addition to our Library, our STEAM Spot! To let our audience know, STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math. This lovely room was funded by the Friends of the Largo Library. Thank you, Friends!
So, why is STEAM important? It promotes problem solving, and creative and analytical thinking. Many of the jobs that affect our economy include STEAM subjects. For example, accounting, architecture, medical research, and environmental studies all involve STEAM. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, STEAM occupations are growing at 17%, while other occupations are growing at 9.8%. With the accelerating pace of social and technological change, the World Economic Forum estimates that 65% of children today will end up in careers that don't even exist yet. For example, social media manager is a job position that did not exist 20 years ago and technology is just going to keep on accelerating. It’s important to teach children about STEAM.
I teach a variety of STEAM classes, for example I teach:
Hour of Code
Code Squad
Robot Invasion
Lego Constructors
Internet Safety
Animate with Stikbot
Computer Whiz Kids
Typing Kids
A lot of the classes I teach have to do with coding or one can also call it programming too. But what exactly is coding? Code is a set of instructions (or rules) that computers can understand; it might be helpful to think of code as a recipe. People write code, code powers computers and computers power many everyday objects like phones, watches, microwaves and cars. In fact, almost anything powered by electricity uses code.
So, what do we call people who code? We call them coders, programmers, developers, computer scientists, software engineers, etc. Although, just as people can understand different languages, computers can understand different programming languages. For example, there is Python, C, C++, Perl, Visual Basic, Java, Javascript, Ruby and PHP, among others). To illustrate, C++ is a programming language that is good for graphics-heavy applications, like video games. Javascript is for websites and web applications. As I mentioned before, we use a similar version of Javascript in Bitsbox and CodeMonkey.
Many parents are looking for other ways to get their kids coding! Even former President, Barack Obama, is on-board, encouraging children to not “just play on your phone. Program it.” So our STEAM Spot provides the perfect setting for classes in basic computing, coding, robotics, stop-motion animation, and more! If you are interested in your child participating in one of these classes, they are free but registration is required. There are age requirements for these classes and I open up registration 30 days prior to the class. Parents can sign up their child/children on our websites and a link to that will be in our show notes.
Check out Former President Barack Obama's speech right here!
If you aren't sure what dabbing is click this video.
A huge thank you to Denice for coming on. If you want to enroll your kid or kids into a STEAM program check them out here.
