Category Archives: Public

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

A good time was had by all!

The CMLE/MEMO Fall Annual Meeting & Workshop took place at the St. Cloud Country Club on November 4, 2010. It was a fun, yet educational event for our members and their guests. Throughout the course of the evening we had about 50 attendees, and we were so happy to see each of you!

Evaluations of the event show that it was a success, with nearly all attendees reporting that they loved the author as well as the Five in Fifty presentations. The author for the evening was Catherine Friend, who gave a fantastic and funny presentation on writing, publishing and several of her most memorable experiences on the farm.  The Five in Fifty presentations were short, ten minute presentations on technology and resources, given by CMLE members, and CMLE staff.  It seems that everyone loves these quick, yet informative sessions! Many thanks to our presenters!!

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Registration is now open for the CMLE/MEMO Annual Fall Meeting and Workshop!

The CMLE/MEMO Annual Fall Meeting and Workshop will take place on Thursday, November 4, 2010. The event will be held at the St. Cloud Country Club.

Register online … http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/cmleregistration now! The deadline for registration is October 29, 2010.

Here’s what you can expect…

1:30   CMLE Governing Board Meeting (optional)

4:00   Opening remarks

4:30   Five in Fifty: Five 10 minute presentations on new ideas in library programming and technology. Presentations will be coming from a variety of library types and topics will range from mind mapping tools to apps for the iPod Touch to literary resources and sites for children.

5:30   Cash bar, book sales, book signing

6:00   Dinner: An Italian buffet featuring a Caesar salad and garlic bread sticks to start, as well as your choice from two pastas, two meats and two sauces. Cake for dessert! Yum!

6:45   Author Catherine Friend:

 

c_friendCatherine Friend is the author of six books for children, and five books for adults. Catherine received the Minnesota Book Award for General Nonfiction in 2009 for her book The Compassionate Carnivore. Her book, Hit by a Farm, also received high praise from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the New York Times, and Lavender.  Her children’s book, The Perfect Nest, was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of five best ‘read alouds’. Currently, Catherine is writing two additional books – one for children titled Barn Boot Blues, and one for adults titled Sheepish – which is a loose sequel to Hit by a Farm. Check out Catherine’s website at www.catherinefriend.com for more information.

7:45   East Central MEMO Regional Meeting: Even if you are not a current MEMO member, all are welcome to sit in on this brief meeting to plan the Spring MEMO/CMLE Meeting. Come with your ideas for topics and/or locations.

 

Hope to see you there!

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist

Education Nation

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NBC is launching a discussion, starting Monday, September 27th, on the topic of education in the United States. The mission statement for the week long segment is:

“Education Nation seeks to engage the public, through thoughtful dialogue, in pursuit of the shared goal of providing every American with an opportunity to pursue the best education in the world.”

Key political figures, decision makers, educators, parents, students, and the general public will come together to discuss all aspects of education (positive and negative), and determine why, in a nation that is founded on democracy, our students continue to fall behind.

Special events include a television interview with President Obama, a special appearance by Collin Powell and his wife Alma Powell, and an education summit with attendees such as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Multi-media coverage of the event will occur on the Nightly News, the Today Show, Meet the Press, MSNBC, ivillage.com, EducationNation.com, and several other news outlets.   

For more information please go to http://www.educationnation.com/.

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Things 63 and 64 are here!

Check out the most recent Things on a Stick Newsletter at http://thingsonasticknews.blogspot.com/. Thing 64, written by Dayle Zelenka from Traverse des Souix Regional Library System/SMILE and Gina Zelenka from Blue Earth County Public Library, is titled Face-to-Face Social Networking for Libraries: Let’s Get Back to Basics. Thing 63, written by Dayle Zelenka as well, focuses on the new Droid X. Check it out now, and be sure to review some of the older posts in the archive – the multitypes were busy this summer bringing you the latest and greatest in technology via the Things on a Stick News Archive!

General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Information Literacy Programming with SCRATCH and SMILE: A CMLE Scholarship

The following report was submitted by a recipient of our new CMLE scholarship program.

Submitted By: Betsy Miller

For generations our family has loved visiting the North Shore.  When I received an email announcing that MINITEX was sponsoring a free workshop in Grand Marais this past August, I decided to attend.  The combination of Lake Superior, learning something new and FREE was definitely a winner.

 The workshop was Information Literacy Programming with SCRATCH and SMILE presented by Jennifer Nelson of the Hennepin County Library and Keith Braafladt of the Science Museum of Minnesota at the Cook County High School Media Center.  They gave us a great deal of information as we experienced a hands-on workshop of practical Web sites I will continue to use.

SCRATCH is new to me but has been around for awhile both in time and geographically as it is used all over the world. It is a programming language used to create interactive stories, games and animations. The home page is found at http://scratch.mit.edu/ giving over a million projects that others have created.  This is also the page where the free download is available for you to begin your own Scratch projects. There are several online tutorials giving you step by step directions to get started or to challenge you once you get going.  As a teacher I find Scratch Ed to be very helpful, http://scratched.media.mit.edu/,  giving resources and ideas for using Scratch in the classroom.

SMILE (Science and Math Informal Learning Educators) was also part of the workshop. This is a great online clearinghouse for math and science activities. The site, http://howtosmile.org/,  partners with the Lawrence Hall of Science, Exploratorium, New York Hall of Science, Science Museum of Minnesota, and the Children’s Museum of Houston to bring activities of all kinds to kids of all ages.