Category Archives: School Media Specialist

General, School Media Specialist

AASL Recommended Apps: Humanities & Arts: StoryCorps

storycorpsIn 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.

StoryCorps is an app that allows users to record memories and stories of family members and friends, and archive them with thousands of others. It’s a good way for students to practice interviewing skills while getting to know older relatives, neighbors, or family friends. The app even comes with questions to ask, or users can come up with their own. Stories can be saved to the device, or uploaded to the StoryCorps website to be shared.

To get an idea of the powerful impact StoryCorps can have in the classroom, check out this article from the TED Blog. To get a more step-by-step approach to using the app for assignments, check out this blog post written by a teacher. Finally, the StoryCorps site includes several resources for educators or those interested in using the app.

Cost: Free
Level: All
Platforms: iOS and Android

Books, Communication, Public, School Media Specialist

YALSA 2017 Selected Book Lists: Don’t Forget to Check Them Out!

CMLE members – pay attention to the Young Adult Library Services Association, and all their resources to help you in your work! They provide awards for more than 4,000 books, audiobooks, and movies. “This database provides access to all of YALSA‘s annual selected book and media lists, awards, and honorees. These resources are developed by library staff and educators to support the collection development and readers’ advisory work of library staff.

While these books have been selected for teens from 12 to 18 years of age, the award-winning titles and the titles on YALSA’s selected lists span a broad range of reading and maturity levels. We encourage adults to take an active role in helping individual teens choose those books that are the best fit for them and their families.”

Continue reading YALSA 2017 Selected Book Lists: Don’t Forget to Check Them Out! →

Academic, Communication, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist, Services

Preserve your past; Think about the future!

Internet Archive logo and wordmark
As library people, we think about making our information and materials available to our communities every day.  Part of that work is a responsibility to think about making it all available to people in the future. The Web is like a living thing – it changes, grows, and pieces can die; thinking about preserving information needs to take into account those potential changes.

The Digital Preservation Network is already thinking about this, and helping to establish a safe system as well as best practices for you to preserve information. Their audience is academic environments, potentially producing unique material that may not be available elsewhere. As we have seen in the recent news, turbulent political changes can cause information to disappear or to be suppressed; the DPN can help libraries to preserve and share their information. Likewise, natural disasters can destroy buildings holding both paper materials and servers holding backups, ransomware attacks can happen, institutions can change or fall, and just bad luck and bad planning can destroy years of work. Having information available through something like the DPN will help to ensure its survival. Continue reading Preserve your past; Think about the future! →

School Media Specialist

Share your ideas on ESSA in Minnesota!

Save the date! Public Conversation on Well-Rounded Education Please join us Saturday, February 25 at 10 a.m. at Brooklyn Center High School for a public conversation on well-rounded education with Commissioner Cassellius.

Ensuring all students have access to a well-rounded education is a core principle of the Every Student Succeeds Act. While the law gives us a starting point, we look forward to continuing to engage with parents, educators and students as we shape a vision for what a well-rounded education means in Minnesota. In order to understand what Minnesotans want to see in our schools, we need to hear from you.

Join Commissioner Cassellius for a conversation around these three questions:

1. Thinking about a well-rounded education, what do I want to see change about the student experience of school?

2. Based on that answer, what do I want to see change about the actions of adults closest to the student?

3. Based on both previous answers, what do I want to see change about system actions and policies that affect student experiences and adult actions?

Please register and find more information on the ESSA page of the MDE website: education.state.mn.us/MDE/ESSA

Continue reading Share your ideas on ESSA in Minnesota! →

Books, Communication, Public, School Media Specialist

Finding but not keeping: Some book recommendations!

Books-aj.svg aj ashton 01

Many libraries have issues with patrons who struggle, and fail, to rein in their impulses to keep things they find. In this case, we are focusing on our younger patrons; and suggesting some books to help to share some good behavior habits!

A librarian was looking for book suggestions to help overcome a problem in her school library. She wanted books to help kids learn a few skills:

  • that when we find— we don’t keep
  • we don’t pass on what we find to someone who does not own it
  • we don’t put it in our backpacks or pockets and take it home
  • we give it to the person who we know for sure owns it
  • or we give it to the Teacher or the Teacher Librarian​-it may belong to another student, the Teacher, The Teacher Librarian, the library, the classroom, the school, etc.

As library people do, there was a quick rush of suggestions for books that might help in this school. And they sounded so good, they just might be helpful in your library too! Continue reading Finding but not keeping: Some book recommendations! →