Tag Archives: News

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

My Report on the iOS (iPad) in the Classroom Event

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The following observations, musings, and missteps are from my perspective, and by no means capture the brilliance of the presenters or the content at this well-attended  event! Your humble reporter…..Patricia….

Sartell Middle School hosted this free, three-hour Apple event on Wednesday, November 14th (we did an earlier blog post about registration). The event was fast paced and invigorating and many people identified new learning they could apply immediately. I will share a few of the highlights, including the areas where I observed audience engagement and excitement.

Things I Learned about iOS 6

  • Once you move to iOS 6, you can’t go back
  • 200 new features
  • Can lock the device into a single app (to contain students)
  • Guided access allows you to lock parts of the screen while in an app (student control)
  • Your Google Apps will no longer crash with this operating system.

Two hours was spent on short presentations from representatives from Central MN schools. Schools  included: Becker, Sartell, Little Falls, Milaca, and St. Cloud. Presentations were modeled after the famous TED talks, and the presenters did a great job.  It was so inspirational to see a 39-year, veteran teacher (Milaca)  energized and excited about new ways of teaching the subject he loves (biology). Most districts admitted that some teachers are very engaged, others struggle more, so there is plenty of coaching and assistance still needed. A few highlights from the talks or the Q & A that followed:

  • Becker has been doing its 1:1 iPad initiative for several years now, and they are taking pause to ask teachers which apps they use the most. Then, Director of Instructional Technology Ryan Cox, hopes to help teachers develop deeper skill levels with those apps. The three apps that rose to the surface in Becker are: Socrative, Edmodo, and Showbie.
  • I have always wondered how elementary teachers share a complicated url and get their little fledglings safely to a website. Angie Kalthoff, Technology Integrationist at St. Cloud Schools shared that she uses an app called Chirp!
  • An Apple rep shared that if you are looking for an app for moving files around more easily, you may want to invest in Good Reader, the true “swiss army knife” for these tasks!
  • “Release the hounds” became a popular phrase with presenters. When trying to make this shift in education in integrating technology, the teacher cannot possibly know everything ahead of time. Teachers are masters of the subject area, but often need to challenge the students to figure out how they might use a specified app to do their subject-specific-project work. In other words, “release the hounds!” and have them report back to the class! Students love it….
  • I am going to bite the bullet, spend $10, and buy the Keynote app for doing presentations on my iPad. Enough with finding a workaround solution already.
  • Just when I thought I knew something, I learned differently. I assumed that all schools who are doing the 1:1 initiatives, were also doing flipped classrooms, when in fact, Little Falls, who has also been 1:1 for a few years, has deemed that flipped classroom will not serve their purposes! Moral of the story: Stay humble in what you think you know in any given moment!
  • Sadly, I thought I had found the app of my dreams….in a mad scrawl I wrote down, Touch Feel Go, and it was an app that enables you to take a picture of a pdf, which turns the doc into a form that you can type directly into. Then, you can email the doc, or drop it into Dropbox too. Unfortunately, I can find no such app. If you were at this event and can solve this mystery for me, please save me by typing in the comments field to this post. Thanks!
Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

CMLE Discounts are Ready

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We have eleven book companies participating in the discount program this year, and eight of them are discounting e-books!  Please check your inbox for an  email attachment with all of the discount details. These discounts provide cost savings to 319 academic, school, public, and special libraries. The eleven participating book  companies this year are listed below, the companies with e-book discounts are blue! Don’t forget, you must mention the promo code with each company to get the described discounts. Please let me know if you have any problems using these discounts, or if the list does not include a company you would like to suggest for inclusion next year. These discounts are a perk to you as part of your free membership as a CMLE member library. Send email to papost@stcloudstate.edu with your input. Thanks!

Didn’t get the attachment? Send an email to cmle@stcloudstate.edu and use subject line, Discount Promo Codes Needed.

Abdo, Baker & Taylor, Brodart, Follett, Gumdrop, Ingram, Mackin, Rainbow,

Sebco, Scholastic, and Usborne

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

We’ve Learned: Staffing News and Updates from Around the Region

We’ve Learned… is designed to keep our readers informed about news concerning personnel in CMLE libraries/media centers. Please keep us informed of any “happenings” regarding staff members in your area so that we can include them in the next write-up! Happenings can include: changes in staffing, awards, honors… you get the idea!

  • Mary Waite is the new Media Specialist at Rocori Middle School and High School.
  • Tom Gilgenbach is the new Media Specialist at Maple Lake High School.
  • Be sure to send CMLE updates from your library, school, or district as well! Send us an email or post in the comments area. We’d love to share them!
School Media Specialist

Superhero 2012 – Tech Camp: A CMLE Scholarship

The following was submitted by a CMLE scholarship recipient.

Submitted by: Debbie Disher, Holdingford Public Schools Media Specialist

I recently had the opportunity to attend my first Superhero conference held over Education Minnesota weekend at Madden’s Resort.  One of my favorite things about the conference was that it was small and relaxing.  There were approximately 65 attendees from Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin and California.  We had time to attend some great mini-sessions as well as opportunities to connect with others and share our technology experiences. 

Some of the great ideas that I left the conference with included:  how to make better presentations, using the iPad for documentation, Chrome extensions and all the possibilities they give us, Reflections vs. Apple TV, and much more.  One thing that we are going to try for our January inservice day is to Flip our technology portion of the inservice.  We are going to create some short screencasts of different things we learned at the conference, send these out to teachers ahead of time and then on inservice day offer an open lab and give teachers time to come down and try some of these things we learned.  We will be there to offer assistance.  Not only will we be demonstrating the “flipped classroom”, but also give teachers an opportunity to expand their technology skills.

This is a great conference and we will be attending next year.  This is a great conference for classroom teachers, integrationists, technology coordinators, etc.  Anyone who wishes to know more checkout their website (https://sites.google.com/site/superherotechcamp/) or feel free to contact me.

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Staying Connected with CMLE via Email

CMLE wants to stay connected with you! One of the ways we do this is by sending specific and targeted emails to five distinct listservs. We do our best to keep the messages basic so that the email isn’t blocked or marked as spam by your email service; however, we have found that some of our library personnel struggle with this quite a bit. Below we’ve provided some key information about staying connected with CMLE – feel free to apply some of these techniques to other contacts you wish to stay in touch with as well!

Have you noticed that many important emails are showing up in junk folders or on spam reports?   This problem can easily be fixed in five (maybe more) ways.

  1. The best way of preventing  important emails from going into your spam report or junk folder is to add the sender(s) to your safe senders list. See the section below for CMLE addresses to add to your safe sender list. In Outlook software, go into the junk folder, right click on a spam message, and add the sender to your safe sender list.
  2. Add important senders to your Contacts list. If you use Outlook, each time you add a person to your Contacts list, that person is automatically added to your safe sender list.
  3. The last way is by taking people off of your blocked senders list.  Once a sender ends up in your spam folder, that sender’s emails may (or may not) continue going there. This is because in some email  programs, some contacts in the spam folder are automatically added to the blocked senders list.  You will want to go into your blocked senders list. Remove the important people from this list so you will still get their messages.
  4. Have you tried the three options above and still haven’t gotten anywhere? Or, are you just not sure about this whole process? Print out this blog post, take it to your tech person, and ask for their assistance in putting the addresses in the next section on your Safe Senders list (sometimes also referred to as a whitelist).
  5. Have you tried the options above and aren’t able to work with your tech support? Contact Kate Bessey at kmbessey@stcloudstate.edu for help!

CMLE Addresses to Add to your Safe Sender or Contacts List

Most of our members can easily spot which listserv below that they would be included on. Board members or those not necessarily affiliated directly with a specific library type, may fall into Other. Consider your work setting, then select which of following five selections below as the most probable list you would reside on.  Please add it to your safe senders list (some email services also call it a whitelist).

  1. Academic Library Listserv: cmle-list-academic-bounces@lists.stcloudstate.edu
  2. K-12 Library Media Center Listserv: cmle-list-k-12-bounces@lists.stcloudstate.edu
  3. Public Library Listserv: cmle-list-public-bounces@lists.stcloudstate.edu
  4. Special Library Listserv: cmle-list-special-bounces@lists.stcloudstate.edu
  5. Other Listserv: cmle-list-other-bounces@lists.stcloudstate.edu

In addition, it is important to make sure you can receive email from the following three email addresses by adding these to your Contacts or safe senders list.

papost@stcloudstate.edu (Patricia Post)

kmbessey@stcloudstate.edu (Kate Bessey)

cmle@stcloudstate.edu (This email sends you overdue and cancellation letters on your CMLE interlibrary loan items, and it is also used by our ILL Assistant, Danielle.)

Final Important Tip

Please remember to check your Junk folder or spam report at least once a week. Sometimes, a subject line on a message will send an email to your Junk folder, even if messages from that person don’t typically go there, and even if they are included on your safe senders list and on your Contacts list.

CMLE cannot guarantee that all of our 319 member libraries receive all pertinent emails sent from our office. Your diligence in checking your spam folder and addressing problems as outlined in this communication are very much appreciated and will go a long way towards ensuring that you will receive emails about promotions, discounts, and free offers. Thank you.