Tales from a Loud Librarian

I am the one on the left! A month or so ago I heard that we might have a visit from author Jen Calonita. Then I didn't hear anything confirming the date and time. I got so busy that I forgot to email or call to make sure we were on her schedule in New Orleans. Then it got to crunch time, and I was heading out of town for two days to attend the Louisiana Library Association annual conference. I needed to plan our visit. I don't like to do things last minute. It all worked as we were well prepared for her visit, but I did only have a handful of days to get ready. That just makes me crazy.  I certainly like meeting new authors, but since BRiMS had skyped with Jen in 2015 , I was pumped to meet her face to face. When we talked to her in 2015, only the first book in the Fairy Tale Reform School series had been published. For this visit, Jen was kicking off the publication of the third book. After hearing her talk, the students who bought the first book went hom...

Blog post can be foun d here Here is a blog post that I wrote for Whooo's Reading The Blog on various tools that will allow you or your students to create some fun learning games. Click here to read my post  on how to create custom games. 

I know that my students need help in assessing the validity of information that they find on the web. So I approached one of the English I teachers to see if she would like a lesson on how to discern the difference between fake and real news. Her students were starting Animal Farm by George Orwell. We thought this would be the perfect place to insert my lesson as propaganda plays a key role in the story as well as the Squealer's ability to adjust the facts to fit his own logic to get the animals to do his bidding.  Designed using results from Media Bias/Fact Check So I created a slide show that would direct students to various tasks using web tools that would allow them to look at websites and news feeds in a new way. I like to start a lesson with something to grab students attention. I have used giphs or memes, but for this lesson I found a fabulous video that you will find linked on the second slide. The author of Broadcast Hysteria, A. Brad Schwartz , put together a se...

When March rolls around, I better be prepared for the annual Louisiana Librarian Association Conference. This year, I will be heading to Lafayette on Wednesday. I am going to be presenting twice. The presentation that I planned is how to manage the research process for middle and high school students. I have given this presentation before in a bit different format to teachers but never to a group of librarians. I am sharing the slide show for this presentation with you below, and you can find links embedded in the slides to view all the tools that I have created for my students. Please note that many of the points that I make in the presentation may be something that we take for granted as librarians. My point in reiterating them in the presentation is that it is important to teach both your teachers and students the importance of following correct format, using varied sources, citing correctly, etc. If we know how to follow correct research practices, it is our job to teach i...