Inspiration

One of the things I love about the digital age is all the sharing. What we used to call copying is now called 'being inspired,' and I have been buzzing with inspiration since returning from the ECIS conference.

When I read this post on one of my favorite blogs, I was immediately inspired. We read Kindergarten Rocks! by Katie Davis (check out her website--very cute!) and then brainstormed all the things we thought rocked this year in kinder. We made a quick Voicethread recording afterwards and will now share this with our Pre-K students who are heading to kinder next year. Super fun activity that wasn't too taxing at this time of year when energy is waning!

Summer Reading

It's that time of year again. Time to start thinking of the lazy days of summer when the extra time allows for tons of reading. As I began to put together a list for each grade level, I started thinking that there should be more than just me recommending books. Kids recommend books to each other all the time. Then, a tweet about kids helping each other find books using a google form* inspired me to make my own google form and put it on our Destiny homepage. Yet another use for that homepage!



*To make your own google form, look on your gmail account under google docs. There are so many fun choices of templates. Make sure to remember to change the setting to make it public.

90 responses and counting! Top winners so far are Children of the Lamp, Quantum Prophecy and Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

ECIS Library/Tech Conference

Imagine 200+ librarians in one room, all excited and buzzing and sharing and learning. That would be the ECIS Library/Tech conference I attended last week. It was hands-down the best library professional development I've had. Of course, the conference being held in Istanbul was the icing on the Turkish delight. We were wined and dined on the Bosphorus by the book companies and were saturated with awesome information from the keynotes, Doug Johnson and Joyce Valenza.



It was also my first tweet-up (this is when you meet people from Twitter in real life!) with @sducharme, @librarydonna and @librareanne. It was great to meet them all and learn from them. Amazing connecting all around, and I'm already dreaming of the next one three years from now.

My big takeways from the conference...

1. Only2Clicks--using this to house the game and sites allowed in our tech zone. The visual part is so appealing.

2. Sqworl--Love this for finding age-appropriate sites quickly. Again loving the visual aspect of this.

3. QR codes--I am finally setting up my own QR code station (blog post to follow!), inspired by Book Trailers For All.

Last takeaway is that Istanbul is an amazing city. Cannot wait to go back one day!