It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 4-21-2014

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (IMWAYR) is a weekly challenge begun by Sheila at Book Journey to encourage others to share the books they are reading each week. Jen at Teach Mentor Texts, and Kellee and Ricki at Unleashing Readers added the "From Picture Books to YA" element to Sheila's idea. Many thanks to these four women for creating a fun way to share our reading lists. Please be sure to visit their blogs and see what they've read over the past week. 

Librarians as Leaders in Interactive Educational Apps

One of the weekly Twitter chats I enjoy participating in when time permits is the #storyappchat on Sundays This chat has given me the chance to connect with app developers, authors and illustrators, and talented librarians. It's also provided me with the opportunity to learn about identifying quality educational apps for children and finding ways to use them as a supplemental tool in school libraries and classrooms.

In the most recent #storyappchat, hosted by Heather Shugar from the Diapered Daze and Knights blog (@DiaperedKnights on Twitter), we discussed how to bring more attention to interactive educational apps. If you go back through the entire chat archive which was curated by Brooks Jones (@brooks_jones), you will see that both authors/content creators and librarians are concerned with separating the "fluff" apps from those that truly provide an interactive learning experience while promoting literacy. Another concern is finding ways to reach out to educators and assisting them in using interactive educational apps to enhance the learning experience.

The Ninja Librarians Recon Team Week 5

It's Week 5 of The Ninja Librarians Recon Team as we continue working to promote Jen Swann Downey's brilliant book - The Ninja Librarians: The Accidental Keyhand. For those of you who might not be familiar with the book, it (finally) came out four days ago. Yes, I called a middle grade book for children "brilliant" because there's an important lesson in the book: censorship. The motif of The Ninja Librarians is making sure mankind continues to progress through creative thinking by rescuing historical figures who are in danger for challenging the status quo. For more information about this motif, please read my original book review of The Ninja Librarians. 

In any case, a new week with The Ninja Librarians Recon Team means a new topic. Here are the questions for week 5: 

Which historical figure would you like to be an apprentice for?  What would you like to learn from them (or get from them, since clearly Marcus has no intention of learning gardening….)?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 4-14-2014

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (IMWAYR) is a weekly challenge begun by Sheila at Book Journey to encourage others to share the books they are reading each week. Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee and Ricki over at Unleashing Readers took Sheila's idea and added "From Picture Books to YA," spreading the IMWAYR concept to a much wider audience.  

Yes, I know I've been slacking off big time with IMWAYR lately. In my defense, I've been occupied with administering STAAR and preparing for the TLA conference. Now I'm ready to get back on track. 

When I wasn't administering the state test, working on my poster presentation, or preparing for a road trip with another librarian from my school district, I've been mostly reading professional development books to improve my library program. 

Tellagami Tutorial

Piggybacking on Dr. Subramaniam's presentation at TLA, which I shared in my previous blog post, I'm sharing an introductory tutorial that I created for the Tellagami app. My hope is that librarians will be more confident in experimenting with Tellagami and share it with teachers.

Dr. Mega Subramaniam's Presentation at 2014 TLA Conference

Dr. Mega Subramaniam (@mmsubram) from the University of Maryland presented to librarians at the TLA conference in San Antonio. Her session, titled "Shifting Sands of School Librarianship: Math Phobic to Math Enthusiast," provided a list of suggestions for school librarians who want to assist teachers in helping students improve in mathematics. As a person who is math challenged, I chose to attend this session in order to be able to better support my teachers.

"Learning hAPPens in the Library" with Lori Heaton

IT Specialist Lori Heaton
TLA 2014, San Antonio

This past week at the Texas Library Association conference, I attended a session titled “Learning hAPPens in Libraries,” intended for school librarians but I think some of what I learned could be tweaked for a public library. The presenter, Lori Heaton, is a former school librarian currently working as an Instructional Technology Specialist in Arlington ISD.

Spotted at 2014 Texas Library Association Conference

TLA Swag - Where do I to start?!

That's all the swag I picked up at the 2014 Texas Library Association annual conference in San Antonio over the past week. The two stacks of books are mostly ARCs that I can't wait to get my hands and eyes on. What you don't see in the bags are more books for teacher giveaways; posters, pencils and bookmarks for students; and teaching guides for about a dozen young adult and children's books.

The Ninja Librarians Recon Team Week 4

Now that the Texas Library Association annual conference is over, it's time to go back to my favorite middle grade book of 2014 - The Ninja Librarians: The Accidental Keyhand by Jen Swann Downey. It's now four days away from the book's release, and I'm incredibly excited about finally getting a published copy of it.

TLA 2014 Conference Poster Session

I'm thrilled to be participating in my first ever poster session. It wasn't easy trying to decide what format to use for the presentation, which information to include or not include, and how to display this humongous poster that I've created. But I've finally got everything all wrapped up. Poster is printed and ready to go. As are my handouts and my little tabletop easel. All that's left to do is make sure the poster doesn't get damaged during the trip to San Antonio!