Data

http://data.un.org/ United Nations Data of the World : Education, Literacy, Workforce, etc.

 

World Bank http://databank.worldbank.org/data/home.aspx

Both of these are free to use and have a wealth of data.

 

 

Zanran is like Google but searches for data

http://www.zanran.com/q/

Norwegian Refugee Council World Map of Displaced People

Mondays

series request

Students rush up the stairs to the library before their crews meet. Twenty-Five to Thirty students, each I can identify by name (another nice thing about teaching in a small school.).

One asks for the Shadow Falls series. Another checks out a book and looks delighted. Several students are chatting, using computers, no one has asked for an Ipad today.

Things to Do today:

• Create Donors Choose page for summer read.

• See Mr. Gillane about a claymation club using the ICreate app on the Library Ipads.

I need Plasticine! And Wire.

• Clean one corner. Organize invoices. Work with the social studies classes coming in!
• Send Mr. Stein student poems from the 11th grade Nuclear Expedition in which students turned their research into poetry.
• Create Libguide for the 8th grade exploration of natural phenomenon.
• Include a research help guide!!!!

In Truth I Do Scare Pretty Easily

mage courtesy of goliath-merchandising.myshopify.com: Retrieved from http://hacklibschool.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/congratulations-now-get-a-job/

Things that scare me:

I have too many passwords, favorite sites, books to read (Shocked: My mother, Schapiarelli and me; 1Q84 and everything H.M, Lady Painter (joan mitchell) and so on , and I am still speeding down the information highway in a vehicle that keeps morphing. Just when I started to like my igoogle (last year’s igoogle) I’m changing it over to Flipboard because igoogle will be igone this summer.

I’m sad and scared today to learn bits and pieces about the Boston bombing. The young men had teachers who taught fairness and justice. But somewhere they found adults who planted the seeds of hatred  deep within them. So very sad for everyone.  

Remember to Make What You Do Transparent

So it’s nearing 10:30 am and I’m thinking about my lost goal of remembering to post what it is a librarian does from day to day. Ovid said something like “nothing is stronger than habit.” I suppose that could be a plus. Perhaps I’ll set a timer on my iPhone for an 8:00 pm post. I like Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

So far today I’ve planned an Online Identity Workshop, gathered Holocaust resources in the form of picture books and graphic novels for an ELA teacher, checked in and checked out books, netbooks, ipads and consulted with a Mt. Holyoke Professor about an Africa study — let’s watch how the libguide evolves… and connected with outside poets for an expedition we’re planning.

To Dos!

Tomorrow’s libguide for History.

D block cover a  class.

Set up Netbooks for whole class library typing throughout the day!

Eat Lunch

2012 Year in Review

What was accomplished this past year?

First Cool Feedback: Couldn’t keep up with the blog here even after reading an article about transparent practice which I liked very much.

Warm: Created the school website and  libguides.  Had two Donors Choose projects funded for books, yeah mon! Got folks– students and teachers — into ABC-CLio databases! And made some great collaborative connections. Got into working with Pinterest and Diigo. Diigo is great for librarians. Check out this Diigo link from my Diigo library about Puerto Rico: http://www.diigo.com/list/renlibrarian/puerto-rico-history

Here’s a Tribute to a Recent Collaboration Below!

Ms. Donoghue, dynamite 9th grade Social studies teacher came to collaborate with me in the library! We used the “Gist of  It”  protocol from EL .  I would add one step — which BTW is a CC standard, adding conversation to the steps.

In “The Gist of  It,”  students choose 12 words from a difficult text — studentsn were reading a difficult summary of the Berlin Conference found in the ABC clio database. Students wrote down Key Words culled from the article to explain the gist of the article. Next, students composed their paragraph summaries explaining the article while adopting the key terms such as: annexation, colonial holdings, sovereign powers, conference. If I were to revise such a lesson, I would stop and have students talk about the article in small groups with a few guiding questions and then have them write but that’s for next time maybe. Thank you Ms. Donoghue for working in the library with me and bringing your 9th grade class! Also, it was pretty great that we could –or students could — expand the text up on the Smartboard and circle key words with the magic Smartboard pen and write notes in the margins! After Ms. Donoghue had students type their summaries which were projected onto the Smartboard. Yeah! Whowee!

The following day, Ms. Donoghue had students unpack a visual image. Librarians are so on this visual literacy — and getting ready for PARC with teaching approaches that lend themselves to preparing our students for PARC. Edmodo is promising as well!

Next steps for me: Create database log in sheets and deliver to crews. Talk to the powers that be about the ABC Clio databases and the need for funding. A good high school library needs funding for digital resources. The libguides are another case in point.  Should I sell brownies in order to afford the libguides next year?

Here’s the Libguide 9th grade will use next week.  I know it needs work but there’s a lot there with guidance.

Information Management

I am a poor information manager. As a librarian my focus should be my strength: books — picture books exactly — writing them, reviewing them, reading them, creating lessons around them. But I’m in a high school now and finding that I am more and more an information manager although my skills really need practice. I am working on a school website (this is crazy to me because I am so unorganized). I also have a libguide that suffers from neglect, and several abandoned blogs. I wonder if other librarians feel scattered in the information landscape of their own creation?