Tag Archives: cmle mini grant

CMLE, School Media Specialist

Join Our Extended Mini Grant Review Team!

We are very pleased to be able to offer an Extended Mini Grant Program to our members this year. If you missed our previous post, here are the basics:

For this school year only, through May, 2021, we will be soliciting minigrant applications from member libraries for funds up to $1,000. This is our Extended Minigrant program, as brought to you by the CMLE Board of Trustees.

Members are libraries in these counties: Aitkin, Benton, Chisago, Isanti, Kanabec, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Pine, Sherburne, Stearns, Todd, and Wright. You do not need to apply to be a member. If your library is in one of these counties, it is one of our members. Preference in applications will be given to school libraries.

You can be pretty flexible in what you apply to use these grants to fund in the library. Programs, materials, services – the three hallmarks of a good library – are all accessible with this money.

Potential minigrant applications that would be relevant in this program include requests like:

  • filling in a hole in your collection budget
  • buying software that will let you do distance library service
  • bringing a virtual program, or program series, to your students

You can apply here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1eng1oti0BIBWjczPPDLBZW0wnluJ57aqlHAqqEY3BLA/edit.

And we are looking for individuals to help evaluate the applications we receive! We will provide evaluation rubrics and will communicate on a monthly basis to review applications. This will not require an extensive time commitment, and will be a great way to see what other schools in the area are working on. Email us at admin@cmle.org to indicate your interest and we will be in touch soon!

We look forward to hearing from you.

Guest Blogger

CMLE Mini Grant Report: Talahi Community School WeDoLego 2.0

This is a guest post from Jenny McNew, School Media Specialist at Talahi Community School. Read more reports from CMLE Mini Grants on our page.

Students at Talahi Community School love building with Legos and after a year of not being able to use a great product because of old technology we are once again able to have a great experience working with our Lego WeDo kits.

We have 30 of the old WeDo kits but they require a usb connection with a computer program downloaded to run the software. We no longer have computers that would run the program but with a mini-grant from CMLE we were able to purchase the Lego WeDo 2.0 hubs, motors and sensors.

Students are once again able to build with the Legos and make their creations move using the Lego WeDo 2.0 app on our iPads. This app uses a bluetooth connection to drive the sensors and turn the motors.

It was so much fun to watch the students’ eyes light up as they made their creations move. Through this process, students were able to see that sometimes we need to think outside the box and with some creative thinking we can take something that may no longer work and make it work in a different way.

Thank you CMLE for bringing the fun back to our Legos!