We need your help! Occasionally we get questions from our members and CMLE doesn’t always know the answer. That’s where you come in! Yes you! This week we have a question about Accelerated Reader and other options. Thanks in advance for your help!
An area media specialist/tech integrationist asked:We have used Accelerated Reader for the past 16 years and are exploring other options/alternatives.What are other schools using to help create strong readers?
Another question came from the ITEM listserv:Our school is into the AR (Accelerated Reader) program. In the past, there has been a “store” twice a year for students to spend their points. I want to come up with a different plan or a better plan. What do your schools do?
Solutions to this question: Help us fill in the answers! Share your thoughts below and we’ll update this blog post with the responses we receive!
What’s in a title? When it comes to school libraries, those working in them have seemed to have a few different ones over the past few years. In Mobile County, in the state of Alabama, their Media Specialists just got a new one: Digital Literacy Leaders. But what’s in a title?
Today’s school library media specialists need to be a leader at school, know the curriculum, co-teach, mentor teachers and students, keep up on tech, and much, much more. The Mobile County administration wanted their staff to go beyond the walls of the school library and truly embed themselves with teachers and students. This led them to launch “a project last fall to transform the school system’s library media specialists into digital leaders, coaches and collaborative partners who work with students, teachers and school leaders to ensure appropriate technology is woven throughout the curriculum. As these library media specialists were taking on a new role, the school district gave the transformed position a new title: Digital Literacy Leaders.”
Does the title matter? Maybe. Some of the Media Specialists we’ve talked to have changed titles and/or responsibilities in the past few years. Technology Integrationist is one of the most popular title changes. Usually, this change in title is part of an overall change in direction of the school district; from Books to Tech, from Reference Sources to Digital Literacy. In Mobile County this seems to be the case too. “In addition to assisting students and teachers in the media center, the media specialists now go into the classrooms to help teachers incorporate new tools and strategies into their instruction, often co-teaching lessons and modeling digital technology use.” Mobile County changed the job responsibilities of the Media Specialist and a change in job title happened to come with it too.
This quick tech tip comes from conversations had a EdCampMidMN. Need a simple easy way to stream announcements to a TV? Chromecast to the rescue! Just plug it in to the TV. Then from a laptop or even a mobile device you can stream a Microsoft PowerPoint slide or video.
The world’s largest natural sound archive is now fully digital and fully online. With a collection of nearly 150,000 digital audio recordings you are likely to find the animal sound you are looking for! Currently there are about 9,000 species with an emphasis on birds, but the collection also has whales, elephants, frogs, primates, and more. Hosted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Macaulay Library is the world’s largest and oldest scientific archive of biodiversity audio and video recordings.
The short answer: it depends. It turns out that most laptops have 2 types of batteries: lithium-ion and lithium-polymer. So the song by Nirvana might have been talking about batteries, but probably not. These 2 types of batteries act differently when being used and being charged.
So, what’s a laptop owner to do? Luckily there are some hard and fast rules you can live by:
Plug and unplug: Leaving your laptop plugged in will not cause short term damage, but if you only ever use it on AC power you’ll almost certainly find that after a year the battery’s capacity has been significantly reduced.
But this one goes to 100%: Keeping the battery permanently charged at 100% will slowly shorten its life. Keeping it at 100% and exposing it to high temperatures will shorten it much quicker.
A battery cannot be overcharged: There’s no danger of a battery being overcharged if you leave it plugged in all the time. As soon as it hits 100%, it will cease charging and won’t start again until the voltage falls below a certain level.
Fully discharging a battery will damage it: Having a battery fully discharged for an extended period can put it into a deep discharge state, from which it might never recover.
