Citricon Library Defender

There seems to be loads of innovative services coming from the Orange County Library System, and Jenny over at Shifted Librarian posted about their forthcoming game to be released May 15th. It looks very intriguing.

Gaming, Learning and Libraries Symposium

A call for presenters at the 2008 Gaming, Learning and Libraries Symposium has been posted over at ALA Tech Source. The deadline for submission is June 15th, so be sure to get your great ideas and projects submitted in time. The conference runs from November 2-4, 2008. See the announcement here.
[photo credit: clare_and_ben]

I am not a computer programmer, but when I was a child I remember writing code with our Commodore 64. I copied the code from a manual and played around with variables to see what kind of changes I could make to the output. I was 10 and I actually found this fun. I'm sure there were many other kids out there doing the same thing. Microsoft's Matt MacLaurin explains that the blank computer screens with their blinking prompts in the 80's sent a clear signal to people that computers were a creative medium. With today's interfaces, he thinks that the invitation to create and the invitation into the programming world has been diluted, so at Microsoft, Matt is part of a team developing Boku - a Teletubbie-styled visual programming tool that will serve as the blinking ready screen for today's kids. This tool will allow people to program games. Listen to John Udell's very interesting interview with Matt on IT Conversations.