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Copyright 180
I am attending the always wonderful PSLA Conference at State College, PA.Yesterday morning I attended a session for librarians and the CFF (Classrooms for the Future) coaches. We began with an...
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Geocaching!
The PSLA conference is over and it was back to the old grind today. However, I need another couple of days just to sort through and flesh out all of the ideas that are swimming around in my head right...
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Glogs, Glogs, Glogs
While this is not the newest tool on the market, I think it is one of the best for educators! Within the past year, glogster has created an education portal for teachers to use with their students....
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Technology Boot Camp
It is hard to believe that another school year is over. However, unlike the start of many summers, I spent the first two weeks at school. Between participating in our school's technology camp and...
View ArticleAnnual Report
I always enjoy reading through other librarian's annual reports. It gives me a lot of great ideas for my own library. So, I thought I would add my annual report to the mix. While I would have liked to...
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Test Driving Edmodo
With the emergence of Twitter this past year as a mainstream source for news (Iran and Venezuela), updates from government officials, info from businesses, etc. I want to make sure my students...
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Cultivating a Culture of Reading
Sometimes trying to cultivate readers in middle school has felt like trying to grow a garden on a sidewalk. The only places where reading was encouraged and promoted was by their language arts teachers...
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Wordle
Wordle is not a new application, but sometimes it's helpful to remember those little tools in our technology toolbox that don't get used on a regular basis, but are perfect for certain jobs. So, I went...
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Book Review 2.0
I was approached by one of my eighth-grade language arts teachers at the beginning of the year about book reports. She requires her students to read 2 books per quarter and wanted to try some...
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Cloudy in the Library
To continue our goal to build a culture of reading at the middle school, I decided to enlist the help of Wordle. I wanted to come up with a way for students to share with their classmates what books...
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Character Traits with Wordle
I have been working with one of my eighth grade language arts teachers to create book projects 2.0 style. Since I've been on a Wordle kick lately, I thought I would come up with a book project using...
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30-Minute Projects with Miss M
I have been having a fun time this year coming up with alternative ways to assess student reading for the Language Arts teachers in my school - read here and here.While some projects may take several...
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Typing Time
I'm sure we've all seen it . . . the one-fingered, hunting, pecking typer. Since our school does not provide keyboarding classes, the majority of the fifth graders enter the middle school with a...
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Bulletin Board Happiness
I have to send out a big thanks to Tara Ethridge for introducing me to WallWisher. She has written two blog articles about using WallWisherhere and here. WallWisher is a sort of online bulletin board....
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Book Review Podcasts
I just finished working with an eighth grade Language Arts teacher and her students on creating book review podcasts. (I've blogged previously on podcasting - here and here.)Podcasts are a great way to...
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Collaborative Writing Made Fun and Easy
Last month my fifth graders completed a unit on Internet Safety. Our culminating activity (which only took 1 1/2 periods!!) was a group essay.To facilitate the collaborative writing process, which can...
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Newbie Presenter
This past weekend was my first presentation (other than at school, of course). I was a presenter at the 37th annual Pennsylvania State Librarian's Association Conference.I'm happy with how the...
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It's Been Too Long
Eternal Learning of the Open Mind is open again for bogging. I took the past year off from writing any posts. Sometimes you just need a break ... but it's good to be back.I have decided, though, that...
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The Good, The Bad, The Challenges
The start of a new school year always brings changes. This year, the middle school where I work is dramatically changing its schedule. The good news is that I no longer have to teach classes. I will...
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User-Friendly? - Part 1
I had been rolling an idea around in my head for several years ... reorganizing my fiction collection by genre. Finally, last year, I decided to actually go for it. It genuinely took an entire school...
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User-Friendly? - part 2
So, here are the nuts and bolts of how I rearranged my library to be genre based. The entire process took just over a year and I'm loving the change.Step 1I determined the genres I would use and where...
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I'm Published!!!
This past April, the high school librarian and I presented at PSLA on Building a Culture of Reading in a school and/or district.The presentation was a huge success. Several people e-mailed our...
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Museum Box
The 5th grade Social Studies teacher asked me to come up with a research project to introduce the Explorers Unit. I gave her a few options and she liked the idea of having each student create a Museum...
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GoogleDocs+Prezi+Screenr = Collaboration
Each year the 8th graders do a research project on the Cambodian genocide before reading the book, Children of the River. This year we decided to revamp the project completely! First, we wanted to...
View ArticleWeb2.0 Professional Development
In late June, I led two three-hour professional development sessions for teachers at my school. One was geared toward teachers in grades 5-12 and the other was geared toward teachers in grades K-4....
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