Category Archives: Tech

School Media Specialist, Tech

Learn VR with us in November

Library staff enjoying the Carnival lesson!

CMLE has VR kits to loan FOR FREE to our school library members!

Come to our training event in St. Cloud on Tuesday, Nov. 5th and learn how to use the ClassVR headsets available to reserve for use at your school!

And, we are so excited to announce an additional training session at the Cambridge Library meeting room from 9:30am – 3pm on Friday, Nov. 8th!

RSVP for training at the bottom of this post.

We’ll have a morning and afternoon training session with lunch in between so both sessions can eat. Please feel free to attend both sessions in order to get comfortable using the headsets and Portal.

The plan is to cover fundamentals in the morning and more advanced VR skills in the afternoon, but please feel free to drop in or leave as your schedule allows! Remember to bring your own computer (and headphones if interested).

St. Cloud training will be held at our location: 570 1st St. SE St. Cloud MN 56304. We are inside the cmERDC building and have a large classroom to use.

The first session will run 9am – noon and the second from 1pm-3pm. CMLE will provide lunch from 12-1pm. (And if you’re here in the morning and have a book you’re reading that you’d like to tell us about, we will happily record a quick Book Bites podcast episode with you!)

At this training session, you will learn how to operate the devices, find lessons that line up with your curriculum, send the VR/AR content to the devices, and use the headsets effectively in your library, media center, or classroom.

The ClassVR vendor will be holding a free Q&A webinar on Nov. 13th. We will put the link to this webinar on our page in case anyone is interested in participating.

Visit our page to find out more information about the VR kit loan program, including instructions and links to additional materials.

And if you apply ahead of time, you can definitely pick up your VR headset kit at this training event! You’ll get to keep the kit (each kit has 8 headsets) until schools close for winter break.

Apply here! to reserve VR kits for your school.

Please RSVP below if you plan to come to training. Email any questions to vr@cmle.org 🙂

RSVP St. Cloud Nov. 5th training:

RSVP Cambridge Nov. 8th training:

School Media Specialist, Tech

AASL Recommended Apps: iCell

Explore cells with this informative app!

(Also called HudsonAlpha iCell)
Using the iCell app, “students can choose between animal, bacteria, or plant cell from the main screen. Explanatory text has three options: basic, intermediate, or advanced. Students can zoom in or out and can rotate cells for a 360-degree view of the cell. Basic text typically gives one or two short sentence descriptions of structures, intermediate gives longer descriptions with additional vocabulary, and advanced gives very detailed descriptions with challenging vocabulary.”

Platform: iOS, Android, Windows  
Cost: FREE
Grades: 5-12

The Tech Edvocate includes the app in their article on recommended tools for teaching biology. It’s also included in this STEM series sharing the best science apps for iPad. Finally, this review of the app from Emerging EdTech includes several instructional ideas for using the app in the classroom.


Check it Out:, School Media Specialist, Tech

Training in November for our FREE VR Device Loan Program!

If you are a school library member of CMLE, you can borrow VR kits for your school!

Come to our training event on Tuesday, Nov. 5th and learn how to use the headset devices!

📣🎆Have you heard the news? CMLE has VR kits to loan FOR FREE to our school library members! 🎉🎆

Apply here!

We’ll have a morning and afternoon training session with lunch in between so both sessions can eat. Please feel free to attend both sessions in order to get comfortable using the headsets and Portal.

Training will be held at our location: 570 1st St. SE St. Cloud MN 56304. We are inside the cmERDC building and have a large classroom to use.

The first session will be from 9am-12pm and the second from 1pm-3pm. CMLE will provide lunch from 12-1pm. (And if you’re here in the morning and have a book you’re reading that you’d like to tell us about, we will happily record a quick Book Bites podcast episode with you!)

If you can’t make it to the training, you can definitely still reserve the headsets for use at your school (provided you are a CMLE member school library) and you should still Apply Here!

At this training session, you will learn how to operate the devices, find lessons that line up with your curriculum, send the VR/AR content to the devices, and use the headsets effectively in your library, media center, or classroom.

Visit our page to find out more information about the VR kit loan program, including instructions and links to additional materials.

And if you apply ahead of time, you can definitely pick up your VR headset kit at this training event! You’ll get to keep the kit (each kit has 8 headsets) until schools close for winter break.

Please RSVP below if you plan to come to this training. Email any questions to vr@cmle.org 🙂

This program is funded in part with a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education using federal funding, CFDA 45.310 – Library Services and Technology Act, Grants to States Program (LS-00-19-0024-19). We would love you to send your thanks to @US_IMLS and with @MnDeptEd for providing this great program we can share with our members!

School Media Specialist, Tech

AASL Recommended Apps: Nearpod

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their picks for Best Apps for Teaching & Learning 2019. “Apps recognized foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration and are user friendly to encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. “

“Nearpod is an app that helps you create interactive lessons in a 1:1 setting. Save prep time by easily importing existing lessons (pdfs, jpegs, ppts) and adding interactive features such as Virtual Field Trips, 3D Objects, Quizzes, Polls, Open Ended Questions, etc. Customize every lesson to meet the needs of your students.”

Platform: iOS & Android
Cost: FREE
Grades: All

Nearpod has a blog with many ideas for using the app in the classroom. This article from Apps in Class explains the app with more details specifically for teachers. Class Tech Tips goes through several ways to create interactive lessons, including one specifically focused on reading, in this article. Finally, Teach Beyond offers this intro to using the app with suggestions for ways to begin without getting overwhelmed.

Watch this video (2:37) to see how the app works:

https://youtu.be/g3GVkM_GVa4

If you are interested in the best apps for your library, media center, or classroom, you can read our 2019 series here or find all past apps discussed in our archives.

Check it Out:, School Media Specialist, Tech

Join us for VR Training in November

Come learn how to have this much fun with VR at your school!

Maybe you’ve heard the news CMLE has VR kits to loan FOR FREE to our school library members!

Apply here!

Come to our training event on Tuesday, Nov. 5th and learn how to use the headset devices!

Training will be held from 9-3 at our location: 570 1st St. SE St. Cloud MN 56304. We are inside the cmERDC building and have a large classroom to use.

We’ll have two sessions but feel free to stay for both of them in order to really get a feel for using the headsets. The first session will be from 9am-12pm and the second from 1pm-3pm. CMLE will provide lunch from 12-1pm. (And if you’re here in the morning and have a book you’re reading that you’d like to tell us about, we will happily record a quick Book Bites podcast episode with you!)

If you can’t make it to the training, you can definitely still reserve the headsets for use at your school (provided you are a CMLE member school library) and you should still Apply Here!

At this training session, you will learn how to operate the devices, find lessons that line up with your curriculum, send the VR/AR content to the devices, and use the headsets effectively in your library, media center, or classroom.

Visit our page to find out more information about the VR kit loan program, including instructions and links to additional materials.

And if you apply ahead of time, you can definitely pick up your VR headset kit at this training event! You’ll get to keep the kit (each kit has 8 headsets) until schools close for winter break.

Please RSVP below if you plan to come to this training. Email any questions to vr@cmle.org 🙂

This program is funded in part with a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education using federal funding, CFDA 45.310 – Library Services and Technology Act, Grants to States Program (LS-00-19-0024-19). We would love you to send your thanks to @US_IMLS and with @MnDeptEd for providing this great program we can share with our members!