Tales from a Loud Librarian

For the past several weeks, I have been using free time to prepare for the presentation that I plan to give at the Louisiana Library Association's annual conference on March 9th. In past presentations, I have just touched on all the digital tools that I use when I collaborate with the teachers at my school, but this time, I wanted to be a bit more specific. I wanted to give concrete examples of the types of collaborations that I do and exactly what kinds of resources I include in the various tools that I create to share with students. I am a blatant thief and love learning about new things when I attend conferences. Once I hear about something new and exciting, I figure out how I can incorporate it into my bag of tricks and make it my own. My hope with this presentation is that others will find uses beyond what I do to invigorate their own library program. I wanted to save you some time if you did not want to view the whole presentation.  When I make a presentation, I usually ...

I really don't know what the students did in the library before we received all the gadgets and tools for our makerspace. Every day at lunch students are engaged in making and creating in collaboration with each other. It is fun to watch the students so excited, and they are having a blast.  Students who don't usually spend their time in here during lunch are visiting to have a go with the 3D pen. We bought the one from 7Tech, and it is working very well for us. I currently have only one pen, and we are waiting on delivery of two more. I think this is going to be a great tool for the kids to sit around, chat, and create together.  Fun with the 3D pen Students visit the library just to draw with the 3D pen, glad to have them The students used the Bird Brain Robot Server to access Snap to program the Finch Robot. Scratch works too, but you need the Scratch offline editor downloaded on the computer to do the programming. We downloaded the robot server, ...

Find pic online here Today is Mardi Gras. I am not in New Orleans right now to enjoy it because I am taking advantage of the week off from school to visit my father in Maine. At school last Friday, we had our annual Krewe of Taylor parade, and I thought it would be fun to share some pictures and videos of the day.  6th grade's streetcar rolls down the street driven by our mascot, a white tiger The juniors portray Shrek The class of 2016 and the dancing toys of Toy Story After the parade, each class put on a performance tied to the theme of their float to try and wow the judges. At the end of the day, awards went to the middle school and then to high school for the best float design, best theme, and most spirit.  8th grade rocks out as the Wizard of Oz Class of 2016 as dancing toys in the toy box Here are the freshman dancing their hearts out