Category Archives: General

General, School Media Specialist

AASL Recommended App: STEM: Earth Primer

earth_primerIn June 2016, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their 25 Best Apps for Teaching and Learning. The apps encourage qualities such as innovation and active participation, and are user-friendly.

The app Earth Primer is a great tool to reinforce concepts from an earth science class. The app functions as an interactive textbook, and allows students to manipulate a variety of concepts that make up our planet. Students can make volcanoes, move tectonic plates, manipulate weather systems, and more. These activities help foster an understanding of how all these concepts come together to affect our planet.

To learn more about Earth Primer, this article from TechGenMag explains how the app can be used in the classroom as a fun way to bring learned science concepts to life. It also allows students to work at their own pace. This post from EdShelf includes a video and also some reviews of the app.

Cost: $9.99
Level: Elementary and Middle School
Platforms: iOS

Communication, General, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist

What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2017?

If you are interested in copyright – or if you think copyright laws don’t really apply to you – you might want to look through this article from the Duke Law School Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

Take a moment to mourn  the material we can not access, that we can not freely share with our patrons, and that may never be accessible to us!! (How many of our patrons would have enjoyed having a free copy of Green Eggs and Ham?)

Current copyright law is too often a tragedy for libraries, and for the communities we serve. Look at this list, published every year by this organization, and consider some ways you might work within copyright laws to help your patrons. And then be a voice of advocacy in your community to loosen these too-tight federal laws!!

Continue reading What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2017? →

General, Public, School Media Specialist

Take the Everyday Advocacy Challenge!

At CMLE Headquarters we are all about library advocacy!! So we are excited to pass on to you the chance to do some fun, and valuable, advocacy work for your library!

This is a challenge from the Association for Library Service to Children. You can be part of a cohort of library people who do some advocacy work, and have the support of your cohort in providing great service! Sound like an adventure to you? Click through to see the details: Continue reading Take the Everyday Advocacy Challenge! →

Academic, General, Guest Blogger, Public, Research, School Media Specialist, Special, Training

Creative Commons Part 1: What does “Creative Commons” mean?

Creative Commons

CMLE Guest Blogger: Carli Spina If you have any questions, let me know in the comments or contact me on Twitter where I’m @CarliSpina.

Creative Commons Part 1: What does “Creative Commons” mean?

Copyright is an important but often intimidating topic. As library staff, we may know that copyright protections exist, but knowing their exact parameters or how to get permission to use a copyrighted work can be complex and time consuming.

Recognizing this problem, a group of experts developed the concept of the Creative Commons (often abbreviated CC) and the associated licenses to make sharing, reusing, and remixing works easier for everyone. Using this approach, the creator of an item offers the item under a license (or legal agreement) that explicitly provides for the types of use that are permitted free of charge. Continue reading Creative Commons Part 1: What does “Creative Commons” mean? →

General, School Media Specialist

AASL Recommended App: Humanities & Arts: Homes

homesIn June 2016, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their 25 Best Apps for Teaching and Learning. The apps encourage qualities such as innovation and active participation, and are user-friendly.

The app Homes allows students to travel around the globe and take interactive tours of different traditional homes. They can learn about living in a Brooklyn brownstone, Yemeni tower house, Mongolian ger (yurt), and Guatemalan adobe. Students learn about daily activities in other cultures and see how electricity and water is directed in each building. The app is available in over 50 languages and has a guide for parents that includes questions to help encourage learning.

Cost: $3.99
Level: Elementary
Platforms: iOS

Watch the video here: