Tag Archives: virtual learning

Winter Edition: What Are We Doing Today? Virtual Activity Ideas from CMLE

Since so many of us are once again learning and working from home, CMLE has decided to resume sharing weekly online activity ideas!

Back in the spring of 2020, we created pages full of STEAM projects, art, daily exercise routines, scavenger hunts inside and outside, history lessons, virtual visits to museums and national parks, and so much more.

And we’re at it again!
To keep up with our weekly virtual activity inspiration, you can follow us on social media, sign up for our newsletter, or just keep an eye on our blog.
We will once again provide links to all our featured activities on our page in one spot for easy access.

CMLE is here to support our library members, especially during this challenging time. Always feel free to contact us at admin (at) cmle.org.

Here are a few activity ideas to get us started:

To start the day, try one of these four activities to get students excited about the day ahead! A scavenger hunt, beat the teacher game, and work on language using questions and clues! Check it out here.

Get those STEAM skills to work and make your own frost! It’s an easy experiment that doesn’t require too many materials, and if you’re in Minnesota like us, you can compare your homemade frost to the stuff outside!

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis has this great page with FREE virtual workshops, storytime, short films, and instructions to make art at your home! Check it out and create away!

We’ll have more posts like this next week, with lots of ideas to keep you busy and learning from home. In the meantime, stay safe and healthy!

Cheer on the CMLE Bike Team!

As you may be aware, at CMLE HQ we are huge fans of our bike desks. We appreciate the focus that biking brings us while we work, and they are a healthy addition to our work space!

Since we bike at our desks every day, we thought it would be fun to start tracking the miles to see how far we can travel. That was how we created the idea for our Virtual Library Bike Tour! Each week we will track our mileage and will virtually “visit” libraries along our trip.

We have an in-person map with pins (Orange = Angie, Blue = Mary) for visual tracking and will of course be keeping track online as well. Follow our progress on Google Maps here!

Each library that we “visit” will be linked to and briefly described on our Twitter account @CMLEBikeTeam.

So far, on my way out west, I’ve “visited” St. Cloud Public Library, Clemens Library at St. Ben’s, and Alcuin Library at St. John’s!

Follow along and visit libraries across the country with us as we embark on this biking adventure!

And of course, if you’d like a bike desk of your own, check them out on Amazon.

Interested in an ACRL virtual focus group??

CMLE members: we are passing on some info on recent ACRL materials, and a chance for you to participate in a focus group to help them better serve you and your professional needs!

Dear Colleagues,

At its Fall Board Meeting on October 23, 2015, the ACRL Board of Directors approved the ACRL Libraries Transform Task Force to support the new ALA advocacy campaign and was charged to develop messages and resources that will address the needs of academic and research libraries using the new ALA campaign, Libraries Transform. Continue reading Interested in an ACRL virtual focus group??

Physical Vs. Virtual Libraries

Image by JD Hancock. Retrieved from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons licensing.
Image by JD Hancock. Retrieved from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons licensing.

Most libraries engage in a yearly (more or less) assessment of their collections; weed dated materials and identified additional, new items to purchase. However, not all libraries are treated equal when it comes to budget allocations for resources. So at some point a process is generally developed to identify what to purchased, and ultimately in which format (print or electronic.)

With the growing interest in electronic resources, a dialogue has began about the viability and perceived importance of sustaining a physical library. The Higher Education Network recently weighed in on this discussion, from an academic perspective, in an article stating that. “Academics will need both the physical and virtual library for years to come (June 2013). ”  Click here to read the full article.

Minneapolis Schools Transform Learning

Some rights reserved by Kev_Hickey_UK
Some rights reserved by Kev_Hickey_UK

An article in the April 9th Star Tribune gives helpful detail about efforts to embed technology in the Eden Prairie, Minnetonka, and Bloomington schools.

Read more to hear what kinds of tablets were used and what Microsoft and Best Buy added to the resource base to make transformative learning come alive in these metro schools.