Bates Library News January

In the Library Media Center this month we're talking about Caldecott Awards.

The 2011 awards were announced and the Medal winner, given for A Sick Day for Amos McGee lives right next door in Ann Arbor which we all thought was pretty exciting!

You can find a list of all the award winners on the American Library Association website.

We will also be starting what I hope will be an annual tradition of creating the Bates Book Award, an honor that will be bestowed every January on our favorite books at Bates, complete with our personally designed award.

In Tech we are learning how to type through the Dance Mat Typing site. The students are getting faster at typing and better at staying on the home row.

We are still processing all the books that we got through the Scholastic Book Fair. Thank you again to everyone who came and bought books this past Fall!

New AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner

In order to better understand the American Library Association (ALA), American Association of School Librarians (AASL) Standards for the 21st Century Learner, (the new revision or "evolution" of the Standards for Student Learning in Information Power), I interviewed Dr. Marcia Mardis, a professor at Wayne State University and one of the authors of these new standards.

The Standards for the 21st Century Learner document is available through the ALA website, for convenience I have also linked directly to it here.

You may listen to my interview with Dr. Mardis here.

Web 2.0 and Education

I spoke with Dr. Annette Lamb and media specialists Mike Chmura and Cindy Albarado about Web 2.0 and the implications for education, in particular for teacher librarians.

Dr. Lamb has a webpage called Library Media Specialist 2.0 that she publishes with Larry Johnson, this page is part of their website eduScapes.

This podcast is available through itunes, or you can choose to listen to this show directly here: http://www.julielibrarian.com/TLPodcast3.mp3

Community Reads

In my quest to understand how to create a community read in an exciting, successful and relatively pitfall-free way I interviewed Nancy Pearl creator of the "One Book, One City" concept.

In addition, I talked with Charlie Shaw and Pat Burns, two educators who were involved with community reads in their schools.

The books discussed in the show are:
The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks
Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich and
Crash by Jerri Spinelli

Nancy Pearl spoke of a grant that she received from the Wallace Foundation that allowed her to create the "One City One Book" program and also mentioned the Seattle Public Library Center for the Book.

Nancy Pearl also has an action figure that was created in her likeness, which is part of what makes her one of my personal heros (although all the reading stuff is good too).

How will the field of School Library Media evolve?

This is the first podcast of the School Library Media Primer. This first show was an exploration as to where the field of school library media is headed in the future, in particular pertaining to traditional library media versus the influx of digital tools and resources.

Those interviewed for this show were: Mary Osmar, Esme Raji Codell, Judy Hauser, Mary Whyte and David Warlick.

Mary Osmar, Mary Whyte and Judy Hauser all work in K-12 schools in Michigan in various capacities.

Esme Raji Codell is a former teacher and library media specialist and currently an author. This is her website:http://planetesme.com/

David Warlick is a former teacher and is currently very active in educational technology. His blog is located here: http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/

I Julie (Lawrence) Darling conducted the interviews with some help from Mike Chmura.

You can listen to this one show directly by going here: http://julielibrarian.com/SLMPP1.mp3
Although it might take a while to load.