Wednesday, December 14, 2016

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December 14, 2016 at 12:37PM
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Saturday, December 3, 2016

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December 03, 2016 at 09:01AM
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Tuesday, November 22, 2016

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November 22, 2016 at 02:36PM
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November 22, 2016 at 12:34PM
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November 22, 2016 at 10:44AM
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Monday, November 21, 2016

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November 21, 2016 at 09:55PM
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November 21, 2016 at 03:18PM
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November 21, 2016 at 02:57PM
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November 21, 2016 at 11:49AM
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November 21, 2016 at 09:36AM
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Sunday, November 20, 2016

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November 20, 2016 at 04:12PM
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Thursday, November 17, 2016

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Sunday, November 6, 2016

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November 06, 2016 at 05:45PM
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Wednesday, November 2, 2016

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November 02, 2016 at 01:47PM
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Advanced Genre-Sort Question

This is my second year in a genre sorted Middle / High school library. The first year went great and brought very positive results and compliments. It works, but I am still tweaking and changing. My driving goal is to improve collection accessibility for all users - to help great books jump into readers hands!

My question is about how to catalog Classic Fiction,  but think it is important to understand my set-up first in order to answer.

My current Genres are:
  • Sci-Fi
  • Fantasy - (FAN - includes fairy tales, high fantasy, and anythng else that does not fit other sub-genre's)
  • Contemporary Fantasy (CONFAN - AKA Urban Fantasy - Current time period fantasy - often include elements of paranormal but tend to add magical element not found in paranormal - often include or rely upon some sort of mystery 
  • Paranormal - (PARA - verging on reality but that cannot be explained - ghosts, body/identity swapping, angels, vampires - often synonymous w/ romance)
  • Horror - (HOR - 
  • History - (HIS - If primary genre is history - If primary genre is Mystery or Fantasy in another time period, see below regarding secondary genres)
  • Mystery - (MYS - 
  • Action/Adventure - (ACT/ADV - A catch-all category that includes survival, travel, hunting, war stories (cataloged here with HIS secondary label), and even some soft science fiction and superhero stories -- This section is right next to my Sports section and I use it as a go to for boys and reluctant readers) 
  • Sports - (SPORTS - 
  • Real - Realistic, modern fiction. Anything set more than 15 years earlier would have a secondary Historic tag 
  • Humor - Tends toward middle school with Wimpy Kid, etc.
  • Graphic - I segregate my graphic with the following call number prefixes and find that it works great!
    • GN - includes original graphic novels and Manga (my current manga collection is very small!)
    • GNA - adaptations of previously printed materials
    • GNN - Graphic Novel Nonfiction (by Dewey)
    • COM - Comic - (DC, Marvel, comic books)
    • CAR - Cartoon - (Garfield, Peanuts, etc)
Each of the above groupings on are shelved by author in their own area of the library. My twist, upgrade to the classic genre sort, is in identification of secondary genres. Whenever appropriate, secondary and tertiary genres are also marked on the spines. This allows readers to have a quick idea what might be inside. They know up front, whether they are looking at a Fantasy / Action Adventure or a Fantasy / Romance, etc. In addition to the genres listed above, I have identified three sub-genre, listed below, that I add as secondary and tertiary tags but do not shelve separately. I am sure the photographs attached will help explain this better.
  • Romance
  • Thriller
  • Classic
  • I may add Dystopia, Apocolyptic, & SteamPunk at some point
  • I haven't found a need to add Fairy Tale, High Fantasy, or others, but am open to these and others in the future
We are getting closer to my questions. Please remember my driving goal is to make all titles discoverable through serendipity by readers who show interest in certain types of books. Looking at Classics, it seemed obvious to shelve:
  • War of the Worlds, A Wrinkle in Time, Handmaid's tale, and other in the Sci-Fi area with a secondary Classic tag
  • Lord of the rings, The Hobbit, The Wizard of Oz, and The Neverending Story in Fantasy area with a secondary Classic tag
  • Call of the Wild, Lord of the Flies, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Outsiders, and others in Action Adventure with a secondary Classic tag
It also seemed obvious to shelve To Kill a Mockingbird, Grapes of Wrath, Little Women, and others in Historic with secondary Classic Tag as I felt students who were not necessarily interested in the classics might still enjoy these stories. 

My problem begins here. I seem to trend toward pushing more and more classics into subcategories and then revolting against myself. The revolt is based upon my theory that cluttered shelves and the illusion of choice reduces student's ability to make good selections or have positive serendipitous experiences. My goal is to limit options to titles that truly belong together.

Don Quixote, Elmer gantry, Gulliver's Travels do not get read except by the .001% of students interested in reading Classics so these, and books like them should be foundations of a Classics Collection. I can add to these, Crime & Punishment, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Ulysses, and more. I would like to pull Shakespeare and Homer out of the 800's to add to the Classic Collection. I believe this will give it some weight and draw increased attention to its existence.

There is a list of much more popular books like The Pearl and Catcher in the Rye that we read as classics, not as historical fiction or any other common genre. It makes sense to me to locate these in the Classics Collection

Which brings me back around to titles that are not as easily categorized and the reason for my call for help. Considering a middle & high school audience, I am struggling with the titles below and many more. I am not sure where they fit best and need suggestions.
  • Scarlet Letter and Pride & Prejudice and many others are historic but usually read as a classics
  • Grapes of Wrath, Little Women, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn -- historic or classic?
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin, & The Good Earth,  - historic or classic?
  • Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Dracula, & Wieland in horror or classic as primary shelving location?
  • The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle is fantasy or maybe sci-fi, but should it be considered classic?
  • Where should Huckleberry Finn go?  (Think middle & high combined audience. Do I put it in Action Adventure with Tom Sawyer?)
  • The Three Musketeers & Man in the Iron Mask
  • Great Gatsby?
  • My list goes on . . 
Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated. I am struggling to draw lines and in search of guidance and wisdom from others. 

Thank you for taking the time to consider this situation and offer me some guidance.

Sunday, September 18, 2016

It takes more than technology

     Using technology is NOT more engaging.
No matter the medium, we must design for student engagement. Technology does not create engagement, your lesson design does. While anything new may energize students for a short period of time, there is no substitute for designing high-quality lessons.    
http://alicekeeler.com/2016/07/05/google-classroom-not-jump-deep-end/

Making the shift to digital is NOT about doing what you’ve always done in a digital format. Digital allows us to rethink our tasks.
  
“When students can access information, I can talk less.”
  
How the class functions should be different when students have access to devices. First, students no longer need to wait for you to know what to do. Students walk in the door, go to Google Classroom and get to work.
http://alicekeeler.com/2016/07/05/google-classroom-not-jump-deep-end/

When moving to digital tools it is a mindset shift. Our first question should not be “how do I take all my stuff I have and put it online?” Instead,

  • How do I have more dynamic interactions with my students?”
  • “How will we collaborate?”
  • “How can I give feedback faster?”
  • “How can I change the task to create more engagement?”
  • “How can students be more actively involved in their learning?”

http://alicekeeler.com/2016/06/28/collaborative-google-slides/

Change is slow, 
    Change is hard, 
        Change is messy. 
    We will get it wrong and things won't work. 
     We can only do so much. 
Some things truly should not be changed! 
It is far, far easier to rely on tools and methods we know. 
And yet, great success begins with small steps
Expect more from our students. 
Focus more on their learning and less upon our teaching! 
   
Prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare, and execute!
Change the expectations!
     Change the energy level!
   Reflect upon and consider the path and the outcome . . . 
wash, rinse, repeat . . .  
plan, teach, assess, reflect, repeat . . . 


Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

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September 06, 2016 at 07:09PM
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September 06, 2016 at 06:04PM
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New year - New adventures!

In addition to a full scale overhaul of the traditional library with major weeding and re-cataloging to improve student accessibility, we are introducing one-to-one Chromebooks at 6th and 7th grade, and I was asked at the last minute to teach a series of ten week courses to 7th graders.

Library stuff and one-to-one later. Course curriculum request was to include some keyboarding and whatever good stuff I'd like to teach them. WOW! It didn't take much research to learn that today's seventh graders are not excited about keyboarding class and that with few exceptions, without opportunity to use keyboarding on task students' find personally appealing, it tends to be ineffective. (Sorry I didn't save links to all articles but they are fairly easy to find if you are looking.)

So what to teach?

I've spent too much time learning about and promoting non-traditional lessons and projects to fall into a traditional research project to teach library skills and practice keyboarding. Our ELA teachers and even some of our SS and science teachers help me with that. Now Genius Hour is something that I could get excited about, but not sure I want ten weeks of seventh grade Genius Hour . . .

CODING! We have no business or digital technology teachers in the district. Seventh graders are the perfect age for an exploratory class in computer programming! The goal would be to teach some computational thinking and ability to break a problem down to develop simple algorithm solutions. I know absolutely nothing about computer science or coding! This should be a cinch!

Three days of research into keyboarding and intro to coding programs and I am practically a pro (at research, not keyboarding or coding.) I have decided that my first major goal is to have students animate their names to include on cover page of the Google Sites websites I also plan to have them create. Problem is, the name animation exercise I found on Scratch seems way too difficult. Next week . . .

Day one: Shortened schedule to make time for afternoon assembly. Seventeen of twenty students on roster came to class. We got all but one logged in to computers and into Google Chrome. Logging in to Code.org is simple with a Google account. They had to be convinced it was okay to tell the truth about their ages. Sad that their first instinct is to pretend (lie) that they are at least 13.

They followed instructions to join my class but their instincts again to skip tutorial video at beginning of the Classic Maze, Hour of Code project that I chose as a starting point for them. The roar of confusion was almost deafening - and yet amusing. We turned our monitors off to watch the intro video together as a class. They couldn't get monitors back on fast enough and away they went!

Day one of school, with shortened classes, and the class of 2022 has already started to build code! I can't wait until tomorrow!

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

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July 27, 2016 at 11:04PM
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Monday, July 18, 2016

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July 18, 2016 at 05:34PM
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July 18, 2016 at 05:24PM
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Using Technology in Education


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July 18, 2016 at 03:47PM
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Sunday, July 17, 2016

On Education


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July 17, 2016 at 11:43PM
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Saturday, July 16, 2016

On Education


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July 16, 2016 at 10:22AM
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Thursday, July 14, 2016

Tech Tips Tweet


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July 14, 2016 at 11:08PM
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Tech Tips Tweet


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July 14, 2016 at 05:04PM
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Reflections on 1:1 Chromebook Implementation. Train - Empower - Coach - Measure - Communicate - Promote - #GAFE - https://t.co/jbyWnZSEeq


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July 14, 2016 at 10:04AM
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Wednesday, July 13, 2016

"Set print area" in #GoogleSheets. "Print Selection" - never print 63 pages again


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July 13, 2016 at 12:33PM
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What a long strange journey it's been!

Lol! My last post was prior to beginning of school year in 2013, happy and excited to be employed.

Summer of 2016, still happy and excited to be employed, but now starting my second year in a different district than I was three years ago. Suffice to say, this is good news and I am very happy.

Huge reason I am here is to support leap into GAFE and year is shaping up to be busier than ever. Realizing though as I work with teachers that my success to this point is built upon a foundation laid by great librarians, teachers, and tech integration specialists who blog and Tweet regularly. I am never sure how these GREAT ONES get it all done and have little hope of matching their success, but would like to begin to "give back" this year as I have the opportunity.