The Most Modern Library

Take a gander at the "library concept center" called DOK in Delft, Holland. Its goal is to be the most modern library in the world, and I was drooling while reading the article about all if offers its patrons: multimedia chairs, rotating art exhibits, video games, an entire room dedicated to graphic novels, cafes (please let's get cafes in school libraries at some point!) and a groovy information dispenser called a TANK U.

Jenny from the Shifted Librarian wrote a great article about her recent visit there and all the amazingly different things she found in comparison to traditional libraries. It's got me thinking about how the idea of what a library should be is so archaic, yet so engrained in people's minds as a quiet place where kids go to learn or study or read quietly. And that's it for many people. In order to change how we think of libraries, perhaps changing the name is the perfect place to start. I'm heading to a new school in July, the International School of Bangkok, and they have recently changed the name of the library to the Learning Hub, or Hub for short. What a myriad of possibilities a new name invites...

image taken from Shifted Librarian

A Near Brilliant Idea

Is there anything worse than a grumpy librarian hounding and nagging kids and teachers at the end of the year about returning books to the library? Stories have been shared with me about librarians getting their knickers in a twist about this, and I was determined in my first year as a librarian not to do that. So, I came up with a contest--the first 3 classes to get all their books in (teachers not included as I know they still need their books) would get a popcorn party and movie in the library. The lovely twist to this is that it motivated teachers just as much as students because the party gave them an extra prep time when they need it so desperately at this time of the year. The "Get Your Books Back" contest was a huge success, almost too huge with the chaos that ensued in the early morning moments after the busses arrived, but it was a great idea. Feedback received from teachers was so positive and appreciative that it will now become a tradition for me each year.

Parting words...librarians unite! Let's change some/many/all of the negative stereotypes about us!

Our Friend Dewey

With all the integrating with classroom curriculum in regards to library lessons, I realized sometime in March that the majority of kids still had no clue about how to find a book on their own. So, I started looking for ways to teach the Dewey Decimal system that wouldn't be so boring that I would lose them all in the first five minutes. There's not a ton of stuff out there, but I did find a good Webquest and decided to use that as my teaching tool. Sure enough, the adventures through the sections of the library and finding mystery letters along the way to break a code was just motivating enough to generate responses such as, "This is so cool!" from 4th graders. Our three week mini-unit ended with me creating a Dewey Decimal Jeopardy game using a template. Just fill in what you want on this and use it for tons of great activities.

President for a Day

A colleague found this awesome website at PBS KIDS where students (or grownups) can fill in their basic information and be guided through what it is like to be President for a day. The day starts at 6:00 with choices of what to do before the appointments start, and each page has photos of former U.S. Presidents in action with factual information. It is just the right amount of content to hold kids' attention and teach something at the same time. When you finish going through the whole day, a news article is written about your day as President. Pretty cool!

Decided to take this one step further with a willing teacher, and we are going to make a student-created movie based on a day in the life of a President. Small groups will take portions of the day, write a script, act it out and film using the very cool and kid-friendly FLIP cameras. One of the groups will add in random Presidential facts between takes. Loving the idea of finding a fun way to understand the President's job a bit more.

Simple Yet Brilliant

My husband showed me this the other night, and we both wound up exploring every inch of the website as it was simple yet brilliant. Matt, from Where The Hell is Matt? (oh, the teacher in me wishes so badly that he named it "Where the Heck is Matt?"), has traveled the world and films himself doing a really funny and not so coordinated dance in a ton of different countries. He made a YouTube of a bunch of clips, and it has taken on a life of its own, leading to corporate sponsorship and him creating new dance videos with people living around the globe. The Google Earth aspect is great on this, and I love the inspiration his dancing gives in the fact that someone can take something quirky and spread that little bit of joy around the world by means of using technology. Of added interest is the video clips of his presenting of how the idea came about and how it grew to such a huge audience.

International teacher sidenote: Our counselor showed this at a middle school event and had kids cheer for places they had visited. Love that idea! Plus, it reinspired me to get to Petra, Jordan.

Image used is from the wherethehellismatt.com website

Adding Fonts

Warning: adding fonts can become addicting! This falls under the category of something that everyone kept saying was "so easy" but I couldn't get it. Well, now I've got it, and I want to share it. Please note that this was done on a Mac, but most fonts are for both Mac and PC.

First, you must download STUFFIT, which compresses the files for you. This is the part I was missing, which made it not so easy.

After you have Stuffit, go to a free font site. There are tons out there, but I used DaFont and Simply The Best and found some really fun ones.

1. Download the font(s) of your choice. You will see that it becomes a TTF file (your file will say the name and then .ttf).

2. Go to Applications and click on Font Book.

3. Then click on File, Add Font.

4. Find the font you downloaded and add it.

5. Done! A groovy new font on your computer. Repeat and repeat and repeat. Man, I love fonts.


images taken from simplythebest.net

Twitter

Oh, Twitter! Twitter, in a nutshell, is like a chat but with many people. So, if you send something out there into the Twitterverse (yes, that is really what it is called), such as a question about technology or even what you had for lunch, all the people you have put on your Twitter list see this. Much like Facebook, I avoided Twitter for a long time, mostly because whenver I looked at it, I would see people writing things like, "Just had an awesome egg salad sandwich" or "leaving for the airport in 2 hours," and I couldn't figure out why I needed to know that. However, I need to be careful, because especially with all things technology, I tend to eat my words six months down the line. What I said I wouldn't do often comes back to haunt me.

Case in point--a month or so ago, I was with a class and having a devil of a time getting Voicethread to record, so I had to take my laptop and walk all the way over to the high school 3rd floor just to find our tech guy to ask him what to do. If I had had Twitter, I could quickly send out the message/question I needed and get an almost instant response (seems many Twitterers are great at responding right away). Another month goes by, and I realize I have yet another quick question that required me to send an email to Thailand and wait for a response. Twitter would have been much quicker.

A friend of mine mentioned that all these social networks feel like high school all over again--Will you be my friend? Do you accept me as your friend? How many people are following you? Long story short, I joined Twitter, albeit still with hesitation. I'm starting out small and following only a few people, but I've already found it useful. I found out that blogspot blogs are unblocked in China at the moment (yippee!), baseball season started and I found a few great links to good blog postings. Worth it already, and who knows? Maybe six months from now I'll be writing down what I had for lunch. My Twitter name is bookchica if you want to check it out.