Live blogged: please excuse awkward wording and misspellings.
If you’re like me, you’ve been so busy with your first life that you haven’t taken the time to investigate Second Life fully. Valerie Hill, librarian in Lewisville ISD, is studying Second Life for her doctoral dissertation. She came and shared a little bit about SL with TASLA attendees.
SL has many opportunities for school librarians. There are many professional development sessions, virtual classrooms, conferences, workshops, immersive learning environments, and research symposiums.
Valerie described participating in meetings with school library heavyweights, such as David Loertscher and attending conference such as NECC and TCEA virtually through Second Life.
There are other virtual worlds: Whyville is one in particular, for students ages 9-12.
Virtual worlds have many benefits for students. They are synchronous, participants can interact, information can be manipulated in ways not possible in the “real” world, and real time voice communication is possible. The learning curve and possible expense are some of the limitations.
Word of warning: Just as you stay away from the rough parts of town in real cities, there are parts of Second Life that you may not want to visit.
The Texas Association of School Library Administrators will meet this week in Austin. This annual meeting is full of information and networking opportunities for the school library leaders of Texas. In addition to the traditional updates from TSLAC, TEA and TLA, attendees will hear presentations on web 2.0 technologies, staff development/training and using data to market the school library. Click here to see the full schedule.
If you aren’t able to attend, check this blog or follow me on Twitter for updates on all the happenings! If you’re a Twitter user who is attending the conference, use the hashtag #tasla09.
Looking forward to seeing everyone and learning lots!
Have you read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins? If you haven’t, put it at the top of your summer reading list! It’s the best book I’ve read in a long time and I’m dying to get my hands on the sequel, Catching Fire. It won’t be out officially until September, which is why I can really relate to the guy in the cartoon below. I’d do almost anything to get my hands on an Advanced Reader Copy!
The Closed Stacks blog pointed me to this post featuring amazing cakes decorated like children’s books. They are so cute that I just had to share! Go to the original post to see more.
The tech world has been buzzing recently about the newest information tool on the block – Wolfram|Alpha.
Named after its creator, Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha is not a search engine like Google that helps you locate information. It is a “computational knowledge engine” that “generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.”
For more information on this amazing tool, read Joyce Valenza’s summary of Wolfram|Alpha’s features or watch Wolfram|Alpha’s creator do a demo.
Play around with Wolfram|Alpha. I think you will find a new tool to add to your information toolkit.
In February we invited U.S. kids to exercise their creativity by participating in our second annual Doodle 4 Google contest. In response, we received more than 28,000 doodles from kids representing all 50 states, a 70 percent increase from last year. Inspired by this year’s theme, “What I Wish for the World,” kids have expressed a variety of wishes, ranging from a world with a pristine environment to a world where imaginations can run free. We were impressed by the incredible spectrum of artwork we received this year, but even more amazed by the artistic talents of the kids who created them.
The Doodle 4 Google contest encourages students to play around with Google’s homepage logo to see what they can come up with. Here is last year’s winning doodle, Up in the Clouds by Grace Moon, Canyon Middle School in California.
Beautiful, right?
Today, Google announced the 40 regional winners for 2009 that were selected by a panel of expert judges. The winner, though, is selected by popular online vote. Take a look at all the beautiful and creative doodles submitted by students across the country, then vote for your favorite!
PBS Parents has launched a new blog that focuses on “spreading the fun and love of children’s books,” Booklights. The blog’s contributors (Susan, Pam and Jen) have started off by listing their 10 favorite picture books. I loved reading their lists, so I was inspired to try and do the same. Easier said than done! After thinking about it, I discovered that my favorites tend to either be books that I loved reading aloud to students as an elementary librarian (many years ago!) or ones that I have fond memories of sharing with my niece and nephew, who are now 15 and 16.
Twitter is everywhere these days and people are using it to talk – about librarians. On Tuesday, there was a long conversation about the role librarians should play in schools today and if they are even capable of playing it!
Joyce Valenza responded to the conversation with some very perceptive comments, as usual. She said:
Being an information (or media) specialist today means being an expert in how information and media flow TODAY! It is about knowing how information and media are created and communicated. How to evalute, synthesize, and ethically use information and media in all their varied forms. It is about being able to communicate knowlege in new ways for new audiences using powerful new information and communication tools.
In my mind, if you are not an expert in new information and communication tools, you are NOT a media specialist for today.
Joyce also pointed out that the Twitter conversation took place out in the open where anyone could follow it. If these are the kinds of things people are saying in public, what are they saying in private?
What are people saying about the librarians in our district? Initiatives like 23 Things and other staff development sessions that we offer are designed to help our folks be the kind of information specialists that are required in the 21st century.
Is it making enough of a difference? How would teachers and administrators in our district answer the central question of this week’s Twitter conversation: What’s the point of having a media specialist if they aren’t specialists in the media forms of the day?
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