Remote Programming: E-Zine

Dawn Abron By Dawn Abron, Teen Services Supervisor/Creative Space Supervisor, Zion-Benton Public Library June 27, 2020, 1 comment

2020 is a historical time in our lives and many teens have lots of feelings and opinions.  An E-Zine is an electronic literary magazine and it is a perfect vehicle for teens express themselves. It's also the perfect literacy program to host remotely.

Type: Self-directed
Age: Middle school
Optimal size: 6-10
Estimated cost: Free
Planning time: 2-5 hours
Frequency: Monthly

Learning outcomes

● Think flexibly ● Innovate ● Demonstrate an openness to risk-taking ● Experiment, prototype and test ideas ● Create original work or responsibly remix existing content to make something new ● Engage in personal expression ● Demonstrate technology use that is safe, ethical and responsible ● Leverage digital tools to broaden their perspective● Express themselves on a variety of platforms

Instructions

  • You'll need to find teens to be contributors. 
    • Start with teens who follow your social media accounts. Ask for short stories, artwork, poems, photography, etc. Ask your TAG groups. If you host a short story contest, contact the teens who entered last contest. Use your library's eNews or social media for contributors.
  • Themes
    • We have themes for each monthly issue but teens are free to submit whatever they want. Sometimes we've found that if you give teens free reign, they don't know what to submit.  
      • Our themes have included quarantine; equality; fandom; fresh start
  • Find a Vehicle
    • You'll need a publication to compile all their submissions.
      • We use a Wordpress blog but you can use Canva's newlsetter or Publisher's newsletter templates and save them as PDF or JPEGs.
  • Post Their Work
    • Once you've created your E-Zine, post it to all your teen and library-wide social media so that adults can see how teens are feeling.

Evaluation

  • We were having trouble getting participants so we put a survey on our Instastory asking what they wanted to see. Lots of teens contributed to the survey.
  • I've also found that teens need personal invitations and that casually asking for submissions sometimes does not work. We contacted the teens to answered the survey for example, if a teen said they liked doing photography we asked that teen to head the photography section of the e-zine. They would be responsible for submitting at least one photo. We did this for the poets and the writers too.
  • We always get lots of viewers to the e-zine and positive comments.
  • We don't sensor the teen's topics but we do ask that they keep the language PG. If teens want to write about LGTBQ+ topics, we allow it.

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