All posts by Theresa

20 Great Blogs by and for Education Administrators

think hardPamela DeLoatch of Edudemic writes,

It’s not easy being a school administrator.  As leader of your school or department, it may be difficult to find peers you can confide in, discuss challenges or get insights.

DeLoatch combats tough administrative issues with a list of 20 blogs that can come as welcome assistance for education administrators.  Most of them are written by and for administrators, but some “are written from people who aren’t in the trenches, and can provide a different, but necessary perspective.”  See the post now for the list, which includes brief descriptions.

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/o4dqj4s, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

 

Top 10 CMLE blog posts of the Academic Year

10As the school year comes to an end, we look back on our top posts of the academic year.  We can predict the popularity of some of these posts, but you surprised us with others!  Take a look:

  1. Events/Initiatives has held it’s #1 spot!  Our other event resources, Notable Dates for your NogginOnline Training, and Minitex Webinars & Training proved popular as well.
  2. Recommended Apps came to you each week, highlighting apps from different categories.  Your favorite seemed to be Tellagami, but we’ve got them all arranged by category in the Best of the Best posts.
  3. Notable Dates for your Noggin provided you with some fun dates throughout the year – to use for displays, events, and other purposes!
  4. Infographics for You to Use was a series of posts to get some great visual resources to you.  The most popular one?  Information Literacy, Copyright, Attribution, and Plagiarism.
  5. CMLE Copyright Event! announced our big event of the year!  Nancy Sims joined CMLE members at the Stearns History Museum for an afternoon of copyright learning.
  6. Genrefication of your school’s fiction collection reported on the new way some libraries are organizing their fiction collection.  Many of you chimed in with the related Quick Question Poll also!
  7. Sartell – Education Done Differently highlighted a local school and its efforts to creatively use technology in the classroom.
  8. YALSA News: Teen Read Week proved helpful for both K-12 and public librarians alike!  (It also has a booklist, which we love!)
  9. Minecraft: more than just a game showed how the very popular program teaches lessons in programming as well as digital citizenship.
  10. I’m seeing it again, and again, and again. . . highlighted the social media trend where a page admin posts the same picture every day.

There you have it – the Top 10 of the school year!  Did you have a favorite CMLE post? Send and email to admin@cmle.org or post in the comments below what it was! We love to learn what keeps you coming back.

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/n87a8p9, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Does Multitasking Truly Work?

LilacsResearchers, including MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) neuroscientist Earl Miller, are finding that multitasking simply doesn’t work!  In a post by Daniel J. Levitin, Miller says that our brains are

not wired to multitask well. . .When people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly.  And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost in doing so.”

Levitin calls multitasking “a powerful and diabolical illusion.”  His article includes more information from Miller and other researchers about multitasking.  As we switch from one task to another, we ignore the task that is not our primary focus, but it stays in the back of our head, as we worry that “it will come crashing down any minute.”  Not focusing entirely on the task at hand makes us less efficient, studies have shown.

As if this isn’t enough, “multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline, which can overstimulate your brain and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking,” Levitin writes.  It also creates a dopamine effect that rewards our brains for losing focus, and we continue to search for external stimulation when it’s not needed.  He continues:

The irony here for those of us who are trying to focus amid competing activities is clear: the very brain region we need to rely on for staying on task is easily distracted.

Click for Levitin’s full in-depth article, Why the modern world is bad for your brain.

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/nshdkoh, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A Day in the Life of a Teacher

We’ve seen GoPro cameras on ski slopes and used in extreme sports, but using them in the classroom? Recently Edutopia used them to document “A Day in the Life of a Teacher.” Then Amy Erin Borovoy of Edutopia edited the footage into the short video below. The video was made to celebrate National Teacher Day and is a fun look at a typical day from teacher’s perspective.

 

Notable Dates for your Noggin: August 2015

Calendar BannerIntroducing our new monthly update – Notable Dates for your Noggin!  Each month we’ll bring you a compiled list of fun national holidays, birthdays of authors, and publication dates of favorite books.  You can use these for your own personal use or for some library inspiration!

August is Read a Romance Month and American Adventures Month!

Other things to celebrate in August. . .

August
2 Friendship Day
3 Watermelon Day
8 The Date to Create
10 Suzanne Collins’ Birthday (1962)
National S’more’s Day
17 National Thrift Shop Day
20 National Radio Day
24 William Wilberforce Day
National Waffle Iron Day

Did we miss anything?  Let us know if we did!

For our calendar of library events, including conferences and library days, check out our Events/Initiatives page.

And for more Notable Dates for Your Noggin, check out our Notable Dates page.