Georgia COMO 2011 Presentation

Welcome new visitors to my blog from GA COMO 2011. Below is the presentation I gave at GA COMO 2011 today titled: Inviting the World into Your School Library Using Web 2.0 tools.

Inviting The World Into Your School Library on Prezi

Happy Birthday!

Two of my favorite people have new books coming out TODAY!

Matt Tavares' new book, Over The River And Through The Wood is a beautiful picture book of the song we all know, Matt also included some background information on the song that I didn't know about! I just love the book trailer!



Laurel Snyder's new book, Bigger Than a Bread Box is about divorce, Bruce Springsteen songs, Baltimore, Atlanta and a magic bread box.  It is SUCH a great book, and I am not just saying that because she is a friend and because at her book party on Friday night at Little Shop of Stories in Decatur she is serving TastyCakes (butterscotch krimpets - YUM!) I gave the book to a 5th grader on Friday, she read the book this weekend and had the BIGGEST smile on her face Monday morning when she came in to tell me she loved it - she keep stopping me in the halls telling me more about what she liked about it!



There is also a slew of other great books out today - check out a list and book trailers at Kid Lit Frenzy.

Who says kids books are dead???

International Dot Day at Rock Springs

International Dot Day at Rock Springs

Check out the animoto video of all the FUN we had in the Media Center last week celebrating DOT DAY!

Time flies when your having fun...

I can't believe we are starting week six of the school year - it seems like it should only be week two or three!

I have been busy in the media center and here are a few things we've been working on:

I've been working with all five 5th grade classes on a big civil war research/technology project - we are almost done with the research and are ready to get going on our multimedia projects and get our Wiki up and running.

I am having my 2nd graders learn a little bit about the world of Roal Dahl and one of my 2nd grade classes decorated peaches to Follow that Peach - we have sent our decorated peaches to Van Meter, Iowa as part of a multi school project - the students are so excited to see where their peaches are going! Here is a blog that the schools participating will be posting to.

Today we started celebrating Dot Day (which is actually on Thursday). I have loved the book The Dot by Peter Reynolds for years, so when I heard about Dot Day from my friends Shannon Miller and John Schu I knew I had to do something.  Today I showed my 3rd grade technology class the TumbleBook of The Dot then the kids made their own Dots using the program KidPix.  Tomorrow I am going to show my Kindergarten classes the TumbleBook and I am also going to read them the book New York's Bravest by Mary Pope Osborne. We are going to talk about heroes and how people leave their mark on the world.  Then the kids will create their own dot with paint and crayons and markers.
And finally, today I had my first Club Click meeting. Shannon Miller and Diane Cordell started Club Click last year at Shannon's school Van Meter - well a bunch of us joined in on the fun this year and started clubs in our schools.  My club is an after school club for fourth and fifth graders.  We will learn about digital photography, share photographs with the other schools and learn how to use digital photography to tell a story. The kids were very excited today and they started taking photographs of our school to introduce our school to the other members of Club Click.

I also had a few costumes already this year - the first one was for a little video I created for an in-service meeting of media specialist for our county - I am SUPER LIBRARIAN and my tag line for the video was 'Even Super Heroes Need Capes" this was in reference to the fact that we all need mentors and a PLN (personal learning network) to rely on as we try to be the best librarians/media specialists we can be!

And my next costume was for a contest author Jarrett Krosozka (and fellow Worcester, MA native!) was holding for the book release of the latest Lunch Lady book - Lunch Lady and the Field Trip Fiasco.  Even if I didn't win, it was worth it to see my 13 yr old daughter absolutely MORTIFIED by me dressing up in the middle of downtown Atlanta (she was my photographer)!  I kept telling her it could have been worse and I could have worn the cape too!

It's been a busy first six weeks and a great, if not hectic, start to our year!

Happy New School Year

School actually began a week ago here in my neck of the woods, and I have about five blog posts in my head, but haven't had a chance to actually sit long enough to write them out - my own three kids started school last week also and it has been a week filled with forms to fill out, checks to be written and the start of football, dance and baseball tryouts - whew - what a week!

This year my media center schedule looks a lot different than in years past- I am teaching a fifth grade technology special (basically teachers planning period) everyday and teaching a third grade technology special two days a week. I scheduled all of kindergarten, first and second grade to come in once every other week for story time.  With the success of my readers theater collaboration with our fourth grade gifted teacher, I have had two second grade teachers ask if I can collaborate with them with their gifted students twice a week. I am still working with the fourth grade gifted teacher with a reader's theater unit, only this year instead of meeting with two small groups once a week I will be meeting with one very LARGE group once a week. After I put my schedule down on paper,  I realized I have very little flexible time to meet with classes for projects and special things. I am hoping that as the year goes on I will realize my schedule isn't as packed as it seems and I can fit in more special collaborations, but time will tell.

Summer Reading Bulletin Board, filled with postcard book reviews sent in by students this summer

I am excited to get a club click going in my school this year.  This will be an after school digital photography club that I will be collaborating with Shannon Miller at Van Meter School in Iowa, John Schumacher at Brook Forest Elementary in Illinois, Jen Malphy at Kickapoo School in Wisconsin and the FABULOUS Diane Cordell, a retired media specialist and amazing photographer in New York.  Shannon and Diane started the club last year and I am excited to see what this year will bring with all of us collaborating!  I am also excited to have a fifth grade lunch book club (using books for our counties Reader's Rally list) and a fourth grade Penny Dreadful lunch book club (with books that I acquired last year from a Donors Choose grant).

I have also been looking at the possibility of acquiring some Nooks in our library.  I have been working with the Principal trying to figure out the logistics and the funding and am hoping ((fingers crossed)) that we can get these in here sometime this fall.

I do admit, 5am comes AWFULLY early and I really am missing the somewhat lazy days of summer, but I think this is going to be a great year and I can't wait to see what exciting things happen here in the media center this year!


My already out of control desk



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