Tag Archives: ALA

General, School Media Specialist

Great websites for kids

logoNot that you need more websites to visit and read, but these are some “great” ones! Selected, approved, and vetted by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, the Great Websites for Kids website has hundreds of great websites for your students. The site has groupings of websites broken by categories like: Animals, Sciences, the Arts, Math & Computers, Social Sciences and More!

This weeks site is the Seattle Times’ online information about Martin Luther King Jr.

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Apply for a Free 3D Printer for your MakerLab!

PuzzleThe Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), is teaming up with The MakerLab Club to offer free 3D printers to libraries and museums around the country.  The MakerLab Club, according to YALSA’s blog, “is a brand new community of thousands of U.S. libraries and museums committed to advancing 3D digital literacy via dedicated equipment, staff training and increased public access.”  Applications can be completed online here.  They’re due on Monday, November 17th, 2014!

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/lg3todg, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Bring the 7th Annual International Games Day to your Library!

IGD12-logoSave the date for Saturday, November 15th, 2014!  In just a couple weeks, people all over the world will be celebrating International Games Day.  The American Library Association (ALA) encourages libraries to take part in this event.  International Games Day @ your library is run by volunteers and is a way “to reconnect communities through their libraries around the educational, recreational, and social value of all types of games.”  It is free to participate, and after a library registers, they are in the running to receive donations.  International Games Day (IGD) also offers a free press kit for libraries.  For more information, check out the about section or the main site.

General, School Media Specialist

There's Still Time: Apply for the 2015 Sara Jaffarian Award

trophy 1Applications are still being accepted for the Sara Jaffarian School Library Program Award.  According to the American Library Association (ALA):

The purpose of the Sara Jaffarian School Library Program Award is to recognize, promote, and support excellence in humanities programming in elementary and middle school libraries that serve children K-8.  To promote and encourage other school libraries interested in developing outstanding humanities programs, a professional development presentation will be made by a representative of the winning library.  The focus of this presentation is to share the school’s program as a model for inspiration and adaptation by other library media programs.

A free webinar from 2014’s award recipient was held on October 8th.  The webinar, called ‘The R.O.A.D. I Travel: A Program Model for School Libraries,’ highlighted how a middle school library in Indianapolis partnered with other organizations to create a genealogy unit for 8th grade students.  The archived version of the webinar can be found here.

To find out more about the Sara Jaffarian School Library Program Award, click here.  Also on that page, you’ll find links to the ALA’s application selection criteria & guidelines as well as the application. And you don’t have to be an ALA member to apply!

Applications are due at 11:59 PM on Monday, December 15th, 2014.

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/o6tfwfy, licensed under CC BY 2.0
Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Quality Websites for Children

Great Websites for KidsLooking for great websites for kids?  The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) has the answer!  The ALSC, a division of the American Library Association (ALA), has a working website, Great Websites for Kids, to which they add weekly.  In the ALA’s post from last month, they say “Great Websites for Kids (GWS) features links to high-quality websites of interest to children 14 years of age and younger, organized into diverse subject headings from arts and astronomy to mathematics and museums and many more.”  Each site entry includes a description of the site, as well as a grade-level rating.  Users of the GWS site can rate the recommended sites, save their favorites, and share the sites with others who could benefit!  Do you see one that stands out to you?  Be sure to let us know!