Project ENABLE Produces New Materials for Libraries to Use to Train Their Staff


Project ENABLE (Expanding Non-discriminatory Access By Librarians Everywhere) is a project of the Syracuse University School of Information Studies' Center for Digital Literacy. It provides high quality, comprehensive, and totally free online disabilities training to library staff nationwide, a database of more than 1300 (and growing) relevant resources in various formats and a blog with important and timely information.

 

The project also includes original, free Train-the-Trainer packages for librarians wishing to provide in-house training to their staff and a variety of unique learning support materials, including a series of challenge videos, featuring interviews with 13 school, academic and public librarians who have faced specific challenges and devised successful solutions to those challenges. Each completed video is divided into two parts: "The Problem" and "A Solution." Our database also includes impact stories, brief stories written by librarians who share a low-cost idea and how they implemented it to make their libraries more accessible and inclusive and pathfinders that can be printed and given out to patrons.

 

Just visit the Project ENABLE website at https://projectenable.syr.edu and click on Resources in the main menu. Pull down the Format menu to reveal the many types of resources you can access. All Project ENABLE resources are free for educational use.

 

Project ENABLE (Expanding Non-discriminatory Access By Librarians Everywhere) is a collaborative project of Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, Center for Digital Literacy, and Burton Blatt Institute, providing a high quality, comprehensive, and totally free online disabilities training to librarians nationwide.
 
Project ENABLE's most recent IMLS grant  with non-profit Califa and its professional development arm, Infopeople, to provide professional development to librarians and library staff nationwide, through courses, large group webinars, and small group discussion forums, all using a problem-based learning approach to help librarians learn how to create more accessible and inclusive libraries to meet the needs of patrons with disabilities.
 
The project also includes original, free Train-the-Trainer packages for librarians wishing to provide in-house training to their staff and a variety of unique learning support materials, including a series of "challenge videos," featuring interviews with 16 school, academic and public librarians who have faced specific challenges and devised successful solutions to those challenges.
 
You can see these videos for yourself by visiting our Project ENABLE website at https://projectenable.syr.edu. Just click on Resources and pull down the Format menu to Video. Each completed video is divided into two parts: "The Problem" and "A Solution." All Project ENABLE resources are free to nonprofit educational organizations only.

 

 

 

 

CDL Interviews Young Inventors


CDL is a totally virtual research and development center and all of our work is conducted online, stretching from North Carolina to California and from Minnesota to Alabama.
 
For several years and over two IMLS grant projects, we have been interviewing successful young inventors from kindergarten through grade eight and from throughout the U.S. Each interview was closed captioned, edited by question into more than 500 brief videos, and put into a resource database. You'll find everything for our Young Innovators Project on the project's website at https://theinnovationdestination.net. You will find the video interviews by clicking on the Inspiring Innovation tab at the top of the home page. Each young inventor can be searched by name, by type of innovation or by interview question.

 

         

 

 

Recent Funding to CDL for Young Innovators Project


CDL's Young Innovators Project (YIP) was has been funded by two grants from the Institute of Museum & Library Services (IMLS). Our first YIP grant explored youth invention processes and how young inventors (grades 4-8) can be mentored by librarians and inspired through through literature.

Our most recent IMLS grant funded Connecting Literacy and Youth Innovation extends our video interview database with interviews with successful young inventors (grades K-3). The project also partnered with eight small rural libraries to deliver an invention education program to inspire inventive thinking and creativity through stories. To date, the project has produced more than 50 video interviews with successful, young (K-8) inventors, investigating their underlying motivation to invent, the processes and resources they use, and the people who support and guide them along the way.   

One finding from our interviews was that sometimes, young inventors don't use the best sources to answer their questions and make their decisions during the invention process. This led to our newest CDL grant from The Lemelson Foundation, a foundation dedicated to supporting and promoting invention education programs nationwide. Our grant funds the development of our Get SET! (Source Evaluation Tool) tool, a quick and easy digital tool for young inventors (grades 4-8) to use to quickly and easily assess the resources they use. As we complete this project in fall 2022, we'll be posting the tool, lesson plans and other related materials to the Young Innovators Project site https://theinnovationdestination.net), making then freely available in late fall 2022.

 

What's Happening






 

New on this site…

 

Video interviews with K-3 inventors

 

Inventor Mentor videos

 

Materials from latest grants




 

 


Coming in Fall 2022…

 

Get SET! resource evaluation tool for young inventors  

 

 

 

There are no products in your shopping cart.