Category Archives: General

2016 Higher Education Horizon Report

A perennial favorite, the 2016 New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon report for Higher Education is out! In it, they talk about “six key trends, six significant challenges, and six important developments in educational technology” and “their likely impact on the core missions of universities and colleges.” Interestingly we are seeing many of these trends affecting academic libraries in the CMLE region. A new library at SCTCC and new work on a Learning Commons at CSB/SJU reflect a focus on “redesigning learning spaces” and “rethinking how institutions currently work.” Check out the table of contents below to get a quick snapshot or check out the whole report now.

Key Trends Accelerating Technology Adoption in Higher Education:

  • Advancing Cultures of Innovation
  • Rethinking How Institutions Work
  • Redesigning Learning Spaces
  • Shift to Deeper Learning Approaches
  • Growing Focus on Measuring Learning
  • Increasing Use of Blended Learning Designs
  • Blending Formal and Informal Learning
  • Improving Digital Literacy
  • Competing Models of Education
  • Personalizing Learning
  • Balancing Our Connected and Unconnected Lives
  • Keeping Education Relevant
  • Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
  • Learning Analytics and Adaptive Learning
  • Augmented and Virtual Reality
  • Makerspaces
  • Affective Computing
  • Robotics

Read the whole report now.

Free, live webcast with author Kate DiCamillo

8katedicamilloThis one sneaked up on us, the timeline to register is short, but it is too good to not share!

Join two-time Newbery award-winning author Kate DiCamillo as she discusses her newest release, Raymie Nightingale, a masterful, moving novel about an unforgettable summer friendship. Sign up now! Sponsored by Candlewick Press, you are encouraged to set up a class assembly for this live event, so all of your kids, parents, and teachers will be able to watch and participate. To view the LIVE webcast, sites need just an internet connection and web browser.

DiCamillo, in her role as National Summer Reading Champion, will talk directly to students about the importance of summer reading, which will probably reinforce what you have already told them.

Moderated by John Schumacher (Mr. Schu) – http://mrschureads.blogspot.com/

Friday, May 13, 2016, 10:00-11:00 AM CDT

Register Here!

Sorry, this one will not be available in an archived format!

 

New Teen Read Week theme: "Read for the fun of it!"

RainbowEncouraging teens to read can itself be a challenge. But what about inspiring a love of reading in teens that speak a language other than English?

YALSA is addressing this issue with their multilingual “Read for the fun of it” theme during Teen Read Week, October 9–15. According to their 2016 Teen Read Week website, 22% of the nation’s youth speak a language other than English at home. This year’s Teen Read Week poster features the theme in the six most spoken languages in the US: English, Chinese (Mandarin), French, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Tagalog.

YALSA encourages libraries to highlight services and resources for multilingual teens. Eligible library staff, afterschool providers, and educators can now apply for a YALSA 2016 Teen Read Week Activity Grant to support activities aimed at youth that speak English as a second language

Use the hashtag #TRW16 to join the conversation on social media!

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/omzxm4x, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Three ways to share your screen and offer tech help

Do you need a quick and easy way to share your screen? Maybe you find yourself needing to show students, or present, or even helping someone with tech support. Well, leave it to Richard Byrne at FreeTech4Teachers.com to give us a list of some of the best options for sharing your screen. All three options are free and require little to no technical knowledge. Check out the whole article now for all the details or use the quick links below to jump right in!

Which books are weeds?

SeedlingI have got gardening on the brain, do you? It is exciting to see anything green push up through the dirt, even a weed! But soon enough, we know that for the sake of the garden, those weeds have to go. So goes it with our library collections too. As we remove the clutter, the truly good content can breathe, can shine through more brightly. This is the time of year when many of our readers are doing inventory and weeding collections, so this post seems timely. The key question always is….which books are weeds, and many a librarian are quite tortured by it! Deep down, I think librarians absolutely know something needs to be weeded, they just need absolution for discarding any book. In many cases, the act of discarding is painful, and fraught with indecision. Some people simply cannot do it!

If you have been reading our blog for some time, you have heard of Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner, two light-hearted Michigan librarians best known for their Awful Library Books blog.  They also offer Advice to Reluctant Weeders Here. You might want to also check out their Hurdles to Weeding.

Good to go, or do you need to go deeper? Other resources that may help include:

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/q3vaodr, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0