Month: November 2011

My Edublog Nominations

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It’s time to make our nominations for the 2011 Edublog Awards!

It’s basically impossible to pick just one person for most of these categories, but after much thought and consideration I’ve compiled my list! I’m so honored to have these individuals as part of my PLN and I’m so thankful for the contributions they continuously make to the education profession.

Best individual blog:  Joyce Valenza – Neverending Search

Joyce’s blog is the perfect balance of sharing valuable information and inspiring calls to action. She’s the fearless leader of our Geek Tribe and I’m so grateful that she continues to push those of us who follow her blog to grow as professionals.

Best group blog:  Tiffany, Shannon, Eden, Jennifer – Story Snoops

Story Snoops is a great resources for parents, teachers, and librarians. Not only do they have an incredible database of book reviews, but these four moms also co-author a fabulous blog! I use this blog to make so many book recommendations to my students (and book purchases!).

Best individual tweeter:  Steven Anderson

Steven is THE MAN on Twitter. Such an amazing sharer of the wealth of knowledge that he has on all things ed tech. Plus, he’s just a really nice guy!

Best new blog:  Tamara Cox – Eliterate Librarian

The day that I discovered Tamara’s blog was a very important day in my career! The more I read her blog, the more I knew I had found my library soulmate. She graciously shares amazing ideas on her blog, and her passion for her profession definitely shines through. I look forward to reading her blog and calling her my friend for many years to come!

Best ed tech / resource sharing blog:  Richard Byrne – Free Tech for Teachers

Honestly, Richard’s Free Tech for Teachers blog needs no explanation. He’s like the ed tech blogging Superman. This is always the first blog I recommend for teachers to follow.

Most influential blog post:  Gwyneth Jones – Lady GaGa Librarians Unite!

This blog post by Gwyneth Jones was by far my favorite and most influential of the year. It caused a bit of a stir (*evil grin*), which made it even better! In the words of Gwyneth — it’s time for us, as school librarians, to start acting more like Lady GaGa and less like Lady Bird Johnson!

Best twitter hashtag:  #ISTE11

ISTE conference time is the most wonderful time of the year! And the hashtag that belongs to the event is the best!

Best librarian / library blog:  Gwyneth Jones – The Daring Librarian

I’ve got so much love for the amazing, FANTABULOUS Gwyneth Jones! I’m talking oodles and oodles of love. Not only does her blog share the best of the best when it comes to ed tech and library goodness, but the tone and personality of her writing is what keeps us all coming back for more! Gwyneth’s blog truly gives you a sense of who she is and what she’s about — completely genuine and in my book THE BEST!

Best School Administrator blog:  Eric Sheninger – A Principal’s Reflections

I have so much admiration for Eric Sheninger and the advocating he does for social media in schools. He’s a stand-out to me when I think of proactive, forward-thinking administrators.

Best educational wiki:  SIGML Wiki

ISTE’s SIGML (Special Interest Group for Mobile Learning) wiki is fabulous! It’s beautiful! It’s clean! I love it! It inspired me to build better, fancier wikis…yay!

Best open PD / unconference / webinar series:  TL Virtual Cafe

The TL Virtual Cafe is such an incredible FREE PD opportunity offered every month! Participating in this terrific webinar series has helped me to grow so much as a teacher-librarian and it always leaves me refreshed and full of new ideas. Our Geek Tribe is so giving… having so many willing to share makes for something really great!

Lifetime achievement:  Joyce Valenza

Joyce is the queen of our tribe. She’s brilliant and inspirational. She’s an incredible leader and fabulous speaker. Joyce is also kind, generous, and a great collaborator. With everything that she has done and continues to do to push our profession and education forward, she completely deserves to be recognized!

White House Petition for School Libraries

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Come on people. What the heck is going on here? It’s time to pull ourselves together.

Joyce Valenza, Jennifer LaGarde and Gwyneth Jones have posted about it. We know that properly staffed and stocked school libraries really do make a difference in the lives of students. I’m not rehashing all of that, because – DUH! – we already know that. Despite this, the flippin’ petition still doesn’t have enough signatures. It’s time to get it together, people!!

This is what we are going to do: set up a petition station at your big Thanksgiving bash. I will be taking my laptop with this cute little sign I made and STRONGLY encourage every single person there to sign the petition:

PDF Here: SupportLibraries

I invite you to print it out and do the same. You could also use this QR code and have people get to the petition that way:

I think that setting up a station and having people do it right then and there would be the most effective way to make this happen. And we have GOT to make this happen!

If you plan to join in and set up a station at your holiday dinner, leave a comment! PLEASE! I’m begging you…let’s make this happen!

EDIT: Here’s the link to the petition!

Obsessed with Decorations!

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I’m a big believer in decorating in the library. I don’t care if you have a moldy, musty, ancient room with ceiling tiles falling in (because I do!!) — you can still make the place cute. It’s not superficial, it’s an important part of making your library a comfortable, welcoming place. This is why I went crazy decorating when I moved into my current position.

So guess what else: I think decorating for holidays is pretty important, too. Yep, I’m out of control. But the kids love it, so that makes it all okay 🙂

For November, I created a “Thankful Door” where students and teachers could grab a marker and share something that they were thankful for this year. I broke out the Cricut and cut out some Thanksgiving cuteness to add to the door. I also broke out the leaves from last fall (I laminated them!) that I brought home from my North Carolina trip. Check out our Thankful Door:

  

ANNOYANCE: The stores apparently  think that Thanksgiving isn’t uber important in terms of decorations. They completely skipped from Halloween decorations to Christmas! The only things I managed to find were this goofy little turkey man to sit on the circulation desk and this little fall themed basket arrangement. Next year I WILL have a cornucopia. It’s essential!

 

Before I left on Friday, I went ahead and took down the fall decorations. My wonderful mom dropped off my Christmas tree and some of the kids were dying to set it up.

  

Since I’m at the middle school now, I (and by “I”, I mean mom) had to make new book ornaments with my kids’ favorite books (see my old elementary tree here). Have I mentioned that my mom is the best?? She is! After we got out of school on Friday (early dismissal for the holiday…SCORE!) we rolled on over to Hobby Lobby for some more Christmas decorations. Then we went up this afternoon to put everything up. Check it out:

        

We went with the BIG lights. And some nice touches of pink…

Yes, I like to be over-the-top. Don’t hate! 🙂

Wiki Redesign

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This weekend I finally dove into a task that I’ve been wanting to get after…wiki redesign!!

First, let me say that I absolutely love Wikispaces. The wikis are very user friendly and they even give perks to educators!

What my wikis were lacking…genuine cuteness. I mean, I’m all about the cuteness and I REALLY needed to fix up my wiki. I was inspired by SIGML’s Wiki which is so nicely done! And their great designer, Victor Fitzjarrald, has created a great Wiki Design tutorial. Score!

So I spent Saturday getting cozy with Photoshop and CSS and put lots of work into our SIGMS wiki.

Check out the SIGMS Wiki here!

Then I was hooked. My presentation wiki was much overdue for some TLC. Our state technology conference, LACUE, is coming up and I’ve got a presentation that I’ll be working on for that…so it needed a extra cute home.

Check out my Presentation Wiki here 🙂

I think the buttons are what really make the new look pop — those were created in Photoshop. According to my husband (who does graphic/web design), I know just enough Photoshop to mess things up. HA! I fixed things up 🙂 So proud of myself!!

I was inspired a second time this week by the absolutely FANTABULOUS Gwyneth Jones! Yep, that Daring Librarian is uber inspiring! She posted about Dropbox, which I finally took advantage of last week. I grew to love it so much, so quickly that I created a Tech Tuesday video about it: