Are you a boy or a parent of a boy and wish you had some great ideas for reading? Feel free to check out McKinley Elementary School's Library Website that has kinds of great ideas for reading, book clubs, crafts, making your own comic and more!!! If you are a McKinley Elementary School student, check out the site and also be sure to ask a librarian any questions you may have.

Voice Thread: Shelfari

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Bookmarking with Diigo: Integrating Technology into the Classroom

Please click here for a Diigo Bookmark list of various websites about the use of technology in education.

Drought Resistant Garden Book Club - Santa Monica Library

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Shelfari Page

Check out my Shelfari page here for some great books specifically geared towards inspiring women readers!

Technology Leadership Role of School Librarians

As technology becomes more and more a part of our daily life, the role of the school librarian is shifting away from simply connecting students to resources to a campus resource for integrating technology into education. Students need not only to know how to use the technology, but are also able to synthesize and use the information. Librarians have the opportunity, and some would say, responsibility, for assuming the role of technology teacher and leader. School librarians have the opportunity to lead the school community into the integrating and understanding of how technology can be used not just in a library or technology lab, but also in the general curriculum

As students are being presented with ever increasing amounts of electronic information in the form of email, blogs, websites and more, teachers need to be both  familiar and comfortable with the same information that their students have. Some schools have the funding to have computers or laptops in many classrooms, but even those schools which are not able to afford that amount of technology usually do have some sort of lab in the library. School librarians are therefore often seen as leaders in school technology and can be a part of training teachers in new technologies. Many teachers need assistance in navigating the dizzying amount of available technology, and the librarians can support this learning.

There are sometimes barriers to school librarians assuming technology leadership roles. These can usually be categorized as:

·      Interpersonal issues

·      Institutional structures

·      Time constraints

·      Intellectual and  social differences

Institutional support should ideally be given to librarians in the form of staff meeting time, funding,  training in technology teaching and the ability to incorporate technology learning and teaching into their daily responsibilities.  Fostering a relationship between librarians, administrators and teachers that encourages trust and respect will go a long way in supporting school librarians in their roles as technology leaders.

Johnston, Melissa P. (2012, April 19). School Librarians as Technolgoy Integration Leaders: Enablers and Barriers to Leadership Enactment. EducationWorld. Retrieved July 7 2013, from http://www.ala.org/aasl/sites/ala.org.aasl/files/content/aaslpubsandjournals/slr/vol15/SLR_School_Librarians_as_Technology_Integration_Leaders_V15.pdf

Integrating Technology in the Classroom: Takes More Than Just Having Computers

1.     This article discusses the importance and even the necessity of incorporating technology into the classrooms. It also points out that technology should actually be incorporated into core subjects and not separated into a once in a while “technology” project. The key is to find projects that blend into the everyday learning of the school.

2.     Many teachers want to incorporate technology into their classes, but feel that they don’t have the expertise. The teachers need to be able to find the time to learn how to use the tools, which will allow them to incorporate technology into their existing curriculum.

3.     There are many websites that are quite easy to use and intuitive for teachers to introduce to their students. Using existing websites for teaching is a good way to begin to incorporate technology into their lessons without undergoing any training.

In the library, a good way to easily introduce technology would be to use an e-blast that all the students receive to their student email account each day or each week. In addition to  having any pertinent library news such as new books or activities occurring at the library, a librarian could easily hyperlink one or two interesting websites to the emails just in the body of the email.

It would be good to include websites that would be appealing to both students with an interest in math and also those who are interested in history or reading. One good site is called Math Forum, which can be found at http://mathforum.org/pows/. Once on the site, students could go to whichever math topic interests them, such as Algebra, Geometry or Calculus and do some fun problems and quickly check the solutions.  USA today manages a site called Today in History at the address: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/lhistory.html . Students could click on the link and be directed to the site that explains what was going on in the U.S. and also the world that day. What is nice about using hyperlinks to websites, is that there is little no no upkeep that the librarians have to do other than including the hyperlink the first time. Since the links connect to actively managed websites, the same link will take the students to a new website on a daily or weekly basis. Hyperlinks can easily be included in an email by highlighting a key word or phrase, such as click here and then right clicking on a Mac or Control clicking on a PC, which will open up a window where the librarian can simply paste the copied URL of the website.

Starr, Linda. (2011, June 12). Integrating Technology in the Classroom: Takes More Than Just Having Computers. EducationWorld. Retrieved July 7 2013, from http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech146.shtml.

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