Portable Card Catalog

20 Day Blogging Challenge - Day 4: Share a topic/idea from class this week.

Image by Stuart Caie

I happened on this idea quite by accident.  The 4th grade was using the library iPads for a project and one student needed to find a book.  He headed over to one of the desktop computers to use the card catalog.  I reminded him that the card catalog could also be accessed with the iPad.  He used it, located the book online, and then took the iPad to the shelf with him when he went to find the actual book.  All of a sudden everyone was looking up books and heading to the stacks with their iPad.  The portability of the iPad made this activity more motivating and prevented the boys from forgetting the call number, title and such.  It also made tweaking the search much more feasible.  I'll be continuing with this!

Feedly -- My Favorite Website

20 Day Blogging Challenge -- Day 3:  What is a website you cannot live without?

Image by TpdkDesign.net

I love information and I love it when information comes to me!  As a result of taking Shelley Paul's excellent online course K12 Learning 2.0 I learned about RSS feeds. 

RSS feeds alert me to whenever some of my favorite bloggers have added a new post or when a website I'm interested in has added material.  The new information is thrown my way and caught by an aggregator or feed reader.  When I find information that I'm interested in following, I subscribe to that site -- in a sense I ask by aggregator to keep looking at it and let me when when there is new information I should take a look at.  For example, professionally I subscribe to other librarians, educational technologists, teachers, and even my school's website. (I subscribe to Kelly Hines' In The Trenches blog -- the catalyst for attempting this 20 day challenge!)  On the personal side, I subscribe to several TV spoiler blogs (who has time to actually watch TV!), DIY sites, and sections of the Huffington Post.

Image by Raadius, http://raadius.deviantart.com/

I use Feedly as my aggregator.  I have it on my laptop, iPad and phone.  I can look at the latest news whenever and wherever I have a few minutes.  I can mark things to save for later, or I can mark them as read and they disappear.  I've gotten some of my best ideas from Feedly, and the information comes to me at my convenience. What's not to love about that!!

20 Day Blogging Challenge -- Day Two

Today's topic in the 20 Day Blogging Challenge is organization.

Image by oskay

I'm finding this to be a really tough topic.  I feel like I'm fairly organized in the library, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a tip.  I think I do best when I maintain structure.  When I plan my classes I always think of each class as being 3 - 15 minute periods rather than 1 - 45 minute period.  This is especially helpful when I am planning for the younger grades since 15 minutes at a time is about what they can give me.  Most library periods begin with literature, move to a related activity, and end with browsing and book selection. 

Certainly nothing earth shattering, but it seems to work!

Blog Challenge Day One: Jon Scieszka

Here we go with the first blog challenge.

Jon Scieszka is an author I love to share with the boys.  He is funny, irreverent, and appeals to boys of all ages.  He's also an important author for the boys to know about.  He's a huge proponent for boys and literacy and the founder of the Guys Read website.


I read Knucklehead, his autobiography, with the 4th grade.  They love the mischief and hijinks he describes from his childhood.  (Just ask any 4th grader about "crossing swords"!)  I then introduce the Guys Read website.  At this point the boys consider Mr. Scieszka on their side, a teammate, one of them, and are eager to read any and everything he's written.  From there we branch out into the Guys Read anthologies which is a wonderful way to introduce other boy friendly authors.

Whenever we have some spare time we revisit his picture books.  You can never read The Stinky Cheese Man or The True Story of the Three Little Pigs too times!

Challenges

Image by hgjohn

Who doesn't love a good challenge?  It's the first of the year and that means it time to take stock and make some changes.  Challenges are a fun and mostly painless way to do this.  My students love them and always seem to work better when issued a challenge.  I'm hoping this will work as well with me!

The first thing I did was renew my Good Reads Challenge.  (The widget showing my progress is in the sidebar of this blog.)  Last year I challenged myself to read 90 books.  I completed the challenge, but it about killed me!  So of course this year I increased the challenge to 95 books!  I think I must have done this sometime after midnight on New Year's Eve.


  My next and last challenge (not counting my annual lose 20 pounds and keep the house clean dreams) is to participate in the 20 Day Blogging Challenge.  This is the brain child of Kelly Hines who writes the excellent blog In the Trenches.