All posts by Angie

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Holiday Self-Care 2019

Working in libraries and serving your community can be exhausting. Take a moment for yourself!

It seems like this is always an extra-stressful time of year: holidays, end of semesters, rushing to finish things before the end of the year.

So we want to help! CMLE cares about you, our members and library communities, and we want to see you through this season as healthfully as possible! 😊💕

We’ve talked about ways to tackle stress in the world of libraries before (check out our podcast episodes on the topic: Linking Our Libraries Episode 12 and a bonus episode on Stress Management) and have written a post with some relaxing reading suggestions.

  • From this excellent Bustle article: “Self-care means taking care of yourself in every aspect: Emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, and relationally.” The article offers 12 ways to engage in self-care.
  • Psychology Today shares some ways to begin taking better care of yourself in this article.
  • Oprah has this article filled with expert self-care suggestions.
  • Mindful.org shares their five rules for self-care in this article.
  • In case you’d like more reading suggestions, Real Simple has this list of books to help you relax.
  • Plus, the U of M has this article explaining the benefits of reading for stress management!
  • CMLE created this article full of links and skills to help you combat workplace stress.
  • When all else fails, wrap yourself up in a blanket and/or find a nice animal to snuggle. See below:
School Media Specialist

AASL Recommended Apps: Tynker

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their picks for Best Apps for Teaching & Learning 2019. “Apps recognized foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration and are user friendly to encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. “

“Tynker empowers students to learn to code through play. Solve engaging puzzles, modify Minecraft worlds, program robots and drones, create custom games, make drawings, and build and animate characters. Students can unleash their creative potential through this fun, interactive introduction to computer science.”

Platform: iOS & Android  
Grades: K-8
Cost: FREE

Tynker’s Educator page offers free training, coding curriculum, and classroom management. Common Sense Education has this review of the app. Edutopia recommends the app in this article about ways to incorporate coding into any classroom subject. Finally, Cision writes about the app in greater detail in this post.

This one-minute video shows tons of ways Tynker can work with any subject:

If you are interested in the best apps for your library, media center, or classroom, you can read our 2019 series here or find all past apps discussed in our archives.

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Next ClassVR In-Person Training on Jan. 30th

Learn to use our VR devices and bring them to your school!

Last fall, CMLE was THRILLED to receive an LSTA grant that has allowed us to purchase ClassVR headset devices. We started loaning these out to our member schools FOR FREE last fall and are excited to continue this program. Get more details and reserve kits for your school here.

Each kit comes with eight headsets that include access to an amazing array of VR/AR technology, for students K-12.  Lesson plans, 360 images and videos, and 3D models are all available to use.

And we are holding in-person training again, to help you get comfortable with using the devices!

If you are interested in reserving kits for your school, either this year or next, sign up for training at the bottom of this post. Learning how to operate the devices and making plans ahead of time can really improve your experience with the headsets.

Training will take place from 9am – 3pm on Thursday, January 30th.
Lunch will be provided from 12-1pm

In the morning, we will look at the basics of using the headsets and the portal filled with educational material. In the afternoon, we will practice everything, and give people a chance to work through making their own playlists, and to get their school’s planning set up. (Time is flexible, if you have to come late or leave early it’s okay – we would rather see you for part of it than have you miss it entirely!)

Training will be held at our location: 570 1st St. SE St. Cloud MN 56304. We are inside the cmERDC building and have a large classroom to use.

And if you apply ahead of time, you can definitely pick up your VR headset kit at this training event! You’ll get to keep the kit (each kit has 8 headsets) for approximately one month.

Please RSVP below if you plan to come to this training. Email any questions to vr@cmle.org 🙂

This program is funded in part with a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education using federal funding, CFDA 45.310 – Library Services and Technology Act, Grants to States Program (LS-00-19-0024-19). We would love you to send your thanks to @US_IMLS and with @MnDeptEd for providing this great program we can share with our members!

Podcast

Episode 415: Minnesota ⛄

Welcome, everyone, to our final episode of Season Four of Reading With Libraries! This snowy Thursday is the perfect day to discuss books by Minnesota authors. ❄😊❄

Check out our full show notes page here. We have books, resources, and beverages waiting there for you.

It has been so great to read with you for these fifteen weeks – we just can’t bear for our book fun to end. So while we are on hiatus you will get a Book Bite each week. This is a quickie five-minute sharing of a book by one of our Guests. We have been producing these for a while now, so you can browse our entire archive on our website.

This week we are discussing a favorite topic: Minnesota books! We will look at book set in Minnesota, and books by Minnesota authors. This is always our season finale topic, because we know there are 10,000 lakes here and at least as many good stories!

Who is joining us today? We are welcoming a new Guest Host to be our Minnesota book expert: Wendy Sykes, from the Great River Public Library system!

This is our last episode of the season, but never fear: Tuesday we will start dropping quickie book podcast into this spot on a weekly basis!

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Next Week: Linking Our Libraries Season 6 Premiere!

Fire up those headphones (and your favorite podcast app) because next Thursday, Dec. 19th, we drop the first episode of Season 6 of Linking Our Libraries!

Episode 601: Working With Teachers features Guest Host Amy Moe, Instructional Technology Specialist. We were so pleased she could join us to share suggestions for collaborating with teachers.

Maybe you’ve been enjoying our book group podcast: Reading With Libraries. (We certainly hope so!) This Thursday is our last episode for the season and it is our classic final episode topic: Minnesota Books! Guest Host Wendy brought some excellent titles to share with us and we hope you enjoy the episode and the book suggestions. Catch up on the rest of the season and all previous episodes here.

As always, if you’d like to support our podcasting work, consider joining us on Patreon.

And THANK YOU for listening/subscribing/recording with us! We are so lucky to work with such fantastic members 😊