Hey, What's All The Muss?!

Libraries are the perfect place for sharing information and building knowledge.  The Engage Shared Foundation from the AASL standards emphasizes the effort students (and adult researchers) should make to be ethical when using someone else’s work.    In the middle school years, students are just beginning to venture out on their own in research projects, finding information, and creating understanding.  Jen, a school librarian, has worked for many years with middle school students and is concerned with showing her students what to look for when they begin the information search.  She meets yearly with every grade in her school to discuss evaluating websites for reliability, validity, and accuracy.  Jen is determined to show her students how to evaluate resources before they begin to pull information for their research projects.   One of the resources  she demonstrates for her classes is Wikipedia.   She uses it purposely, cautioning her stude...

This week, I was happy to chat with a school librarian I worked with years ago and it was marvelous catching up with her.  In fact, I called her when I was pondering my decision to attempt my MLIS degree. Elizabeth is a middle school librarian with 20 years’ experience, so she has seen many teachers, many styles, and many standards in her day.  She is a strong advocate for students’ rights to read, both for pleasure and for information.   When I asked her about the Inquire Shared Foundation, her first thought was for what students can do to find their next book.  She pointed out the first indicator in the Think Domain:  Encouraging learners to formulate questions about a personal interest or a curricular topic (AASL, 2018).  She actively seeks tools to share with her students that help them accomplish this.  Recently, she led a lesson for a sixth-grade ELA class.  The students used SCDiscus to find the NoveList database.  She asked the studen...

Many school librarians are currently waiting for the other shoe to drop.  They are waiting to see if someone in their community is going to approach the podium at the school board meeting and blast them for having a copy of Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give or George Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue.   These books do exist in our town’s school libraries. I interviewed a fellow high school librarian in November to find out how she curates her collection in this current climate.  The American Association of School Librarians has outlined best practices for curation in the National School Library Standards.  The key commitment is for librarians to “make meaning for oneself and others by collecting, organizing, and sharing resources of personal relevance” (AASL, 2018).  Bobbie has been a school librarian for ten years, and an English teacher for 12 years before that.  She has always been deliberate in her purchases.  She uses Follet Titlewave to select the books...

  Mark Twain said it best: “ Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” (Twain, 2018) As a novice librarian, it is most helpful to travel… to other libraries, that is.  During the time of Covid, we have been forced to remain in our little corners of the earth and may have become a bit stagnant.  I have only worked in my school librarian position under Covid conditions, so I have missed the influx of students trooping into the media center for a class; I have not yet joined a PLC meeting to hear what curriculum is being planned; I have had only two 1 on 1 conferences with teachers to plan research lessons. Therefore, it was a treat for me to travel to a sister high school and interview an experienced librarian about collaborating with teachers to pla...

 Yes, this is actual footage of me preparing to write another blog for SLIS 761.   So the immediate answer to the question "What is your biggest takeaway from this semester" is that I will not be becoming the next big thing in the blogosphere.  I appreciated the introduction to blogging but by blog #5, I was ready to be excused from the blog-table.   Upon reflection, though, this semester I learned that librarians have a responsibility to do the research into what is new and innovative in education, AND a responsibility to share it -- hence the blogs.  That feels slightly different from a teacher-view of new ideas.  As a teacher, I might find a groovy, new tool, and share it with my hall-mates.  A librarian is rightly included in a school's leadership team because s/he should be leading .  That leadership should incorporate getting the word out about new technologies, new pedagogy, new ideas.  If I am not going to be blogging about ...

  Guess again!   It’s not really there!   That is the magic of virtual reality and augmented reality.   For our tech minute today, I would like to introduce you to Happy Atoms, a product by Schnell Games.  (click for link to website)      It is an augmented reality experience, which means that “it is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information” (2020, Augmented Reality). These augmented reality programs are a boon to content teachers.   They can make the un-seeable not only visible but interactive.   As librarians, our ability to enhance content and curriculum makes us invaluable to our teachers.   As Young says, “Being a connected educator is the only way to survive as a librarian” (2020).   The Happy Atoms program is perfect for science teachers in both middle school and high school and the librarian that brings...

Sometimes we do NOT want to make a great big leap.   Just one small step will do just fine, thank you very much!    That is how I was feeling as I began to learn about makerspaces.        These are spaces devoted to learning through inquiry where the student has control of the pace, materials, design, and final product.   Dr. Moorefield-Lang shares a Laura Fleming quote in her video, explaining that a makerspace is “a unique learning environment that encourages tinkering, play and open-ended exploration for all” (2018).   This quote does not quite reveal the real advantage that a makerspace brings to education.   Consider this: “Maker spaces promote learning through play; have the potential to demystify science, math, technology, and engineering; and encourage women and underrepresented minorities to seek careers in those fields” (Britton, 2012).   That is a big bang for the buck and that is why I made the decision to investigate H...