As you may be starting to appreciate, we like to be festive at CMLE Headquarters. Since Thanksgiving is soon approaching, we decided it was time to hang up the turkeys! (We have decorative turkeys on streamers floating from the ceiling. There’s no good way to photograph them, so stop by or use your imagination!)
We just wanted to share our decorations with you, and perhaps you have some festive November or Thanksgiving themed decorating going on at your library or media center? Send us a picture! For more glimpses of our exciting office happenings (often including Orville the Bear and the Office Plant team) follow us on Instagram.
By now, you’ve probably noticed that each week we’ve been sharing a tip from Carson Tate’s book Work Simply on how to streamline your life. Here at CMLE, we found Tate’s book incredibly valuable and thought it would resonate with many of you, too. We hope this has been the case, and that you have found these tips useful in your daily activities!
This post is simply to remind you of the source of that content: Carson Tate’s Work Simply. Before beginning the series, we reached out to her to request her permission to incorporate her content into our posts. We were so pleased when she was willing to do so! It was a great reminder that sometimes taking a chance does pay off.
Have any of the Strategies to Simplify tips we have shared worked particularly well for you? We’d love to hear about it! Leave us a comment or send us an email. We will continue to share tips beginning again next week.
If you missed any of the series so far, catch up now:
A quick update on the CMLE travel bug progress! We have dropped another travel bug – this one in Quarry Park near St Cloud.
This TB is called “Libraries Rock” and is hidden in a very nice cache just off a trail in the park. You can go out there, and hunt for the Cable Merger cache, find this travel bug, blow bubbles with it if you wish, and then take it to its next location – preferably near a library!
We are always looking for tools to share information, to connect with library people, and to just enjoy it all! We hope you will get involved in caching and finding – or placing – caches and travel bugs, in your library or elsewhere. Go enjoy yourself, and find some caches!
Banned Books Week has come and gone – and we are looking forward to next year! But the issue of censorship regarding the books that young people are able to read continue all year long. This great article from boingboing.net shares that, “Some of the most frequently challenged books are the very books that young readers say are especially important and meaningful to them.”
Adults tend to worry about kids being exposed to ideas or beliefs that differ from their own. They also worry about allowing young people access to books that feature content such as sexuality, racial and ethnicity issues, violence, drugs, body image, and more. However, as the article claims, this controversial content can actually help kids and young people learn, empathize, and grow.
The authors of the article contacted eight writers including Lois Lowry, Chris Crutcher, and Rainbow Rowell to see if they would be willing to share messages they have received from young readers detailing the positive effects that have come from reading their often challenged books.
Read the article to see all of the responses, but some repeating themes are that young people feel less isolated, feel more connected to friends or family that may be facing challenges, are able to find the strength to remove themselves from harmful situations, and to begin to find a sense of self-acceptance.
While well-meaning (hopefully) adults may challenge books that feature tough issues like self-harm, abuse, and addiction, the young people that read these books are generally all too aware of these same issues already. Reading these books can help them not only work through and make sense of the issues, but show that they aren’t the only ones dealing with them.
In 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.
Sway is an easy-to-use tool that creates interactive reports, presentations, newsletters, and more. Sway is able to suggest searches to easily find relevant images, videos, and other content that the user can then simply drag into their project. The app even features a design engine that formats the layout for you (with the possibility to customize, of course). The finished project is able to be shared through a URL that doesn’t require a login, and there are privacy controls available. Sway is a good tool for educators to use to create interactive newsletters to share with parents.
This article from Teacher’s Tuts.com explains how the app can be used, and includes videos and tutorials. You can also check out this article that gives great examples of projects that can be created using Sway.
Cost: Free! Level: Middle and High School Platforms: iOS
Partnering with libraries for visioning, advocating, and educating
As you may be starting to appreciate, we like to be festive at CMLE Headquarters. Since Thanksgiving is soon approaching, we decided it was time to hang up the turkeys! (We have decorative turkeys on streamers floating from the ceiling. There’s no good way to photograph them, so stop by or use your imagination!)
