Join Celebrities, Communities in the “What Book Got You Hooked” Campaign By SLJ Staff - 08/10/2009
What book left a lasting impression on you as a kid? For actor Morgan Freeman, it was Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. For singer Patti LaBelle, it was Johanna Spyri’s Heidi, and for Newbery-award-winning author Kate DiCamillo, it was Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. More
Sticky Standards: AASL requires permission to use 21st-C standards sparking backlash Lauren Barack - 08/01/2009
The American Association of School Librarians’ (AASL) decision to require permission—and potentially a fee—to commercially use its Standards for the 21st-Century Learner (bit.ly/lWd9B) has generated ire among its members. “At first I was annoyed, but now getting mad,” posted librarian Beth Frise on Twitter.
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Get Ready for Google Wave By Christopher Harris - 08/01/2009
Over the past few years, Google has changed the way we search. Later this year, the search giant is going to reinvent how we communicate and share online with its new Google Wave application. To get a good feeling for what Google Wave’s about, imagine that your email program got a bit hungry and ate your instant-messaging client.
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My First NECC: The big tech show still resonates for two first-timers Kathy Ishizuka - 08/01/2009
NECC, the big National Educational Computing Conference, has come and gone, but attendees, both in person and virtual, are still basking in the glow of all that sharing (bit.ly/dbGY5). School librarians Keisa Williams of Monarch Academy, a K–5 charter school in Oakland, CA, and Melissa Techman of Broadus Wood Elementary School in Albemarle Co.
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Site of the Month: Library of Congress Teachers’ Page Kathy Ishizuka - 08/01/2009
www.loc.gov/teachers Most of us know the excitement that primary sources can bring to teaching. Photographs, maps, correspondence, and other original records that have survived from the past spark the imagination, and a staggering 13 million of these items have been digitized and made available online, thanks to the Library of Congress.
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Literacy Focus for Library Grants By Lauren Barack - 07/24/2009
Libraries with a focus on family literacy now have three $10,000 grants to help them keep their programs flourishing.
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Baseball’s Kevin Youkilis Goes to Bat for Young Readers By Rocco Staino - 07/09/2009
Kevin Youkilis, an all-star first baseman with the Boston Red Sox, is going to bat for young readers with his Hits for Kids, an organization that hopes to collect 100,000 new or gently used books for Boston’s public school libraries over a two day period.
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Model Behavior: Children (and Adults) Often Learn Best by Seeing and Doing By Renea Arnold and Nell Colburn - 07/01/2009
Watching our Commander-in-Chief read Where the Wild Things Are (HarperCollins, 1964) at the White House Easter Egg Roll gave us chills, even though we had to experience it vicariously on YouTube. We had often heard the new president suggest to parents that they “turn off the TV and read to your child.
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Mind the Time: Apps for Managing a Busy Schedule By Steve Hargadon - 06/01/2009
Web-based telephony, desktop video conferencing, and other digital tools make it easy to connect with people in real time. Virtual meetings have become standard fare, and the once arcane task of calculating time zones is now regularly performed in classrooms, where students and teachers collaborate with distant peers or welcome guest experts from around the globe.
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Social Media Specialists?: The use—or nonuse—of social tools sparks Twitterstorm By Lauren Barack - 06/01/2009
A recent firestorm on Twitter involved media specialists and education technology experts who considered whether librarians who don’t engage in social media are jeopardizing their careers not to mention student learning. “Can a media specialist do their job now if they are not also a social media specialist? I’m not sure,” Karl Fisch (on Twitter: karlfisch), director of ...
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You Are There: No budget for travel? Try video chat. By Eric Langhorst - 06/01/2009
It was the sort of exchange that could only happen on a field trip. One of my students, noticing the unusual bow attached to Alexander Hamilton’s ponytail, asked our guide about the odd accessory. “That’s a bag wig,” replied Eli Lesser, director of education at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
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My Bluford High Boys By Sara Stevenson - 05/01/2009
How a book club for reluctant readers proved the naysayers wrong.
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High School Graduation Rates Decline in Some Major Cities By SLJ Staff - 04/27/2009
Nineteen of the nation’s largest cities—including Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Omaha—have seen a decline in their high school graduation rate over the last decade. At the same time, only a little more than half (53 percent) of teens in the largest cities graduate from high school on time, says a new report from America’s Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization that hopes to help at-risk students.
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Teen Creates ‘Adele’s Literacy Library’ to Spread a Love of Books By SLJ Staff - 04/08/2009
Eighth-grader Adele Taylor may seem like an average teenager—she likes to write poetry, dance, rock climb, and read. But this New Jersey girl has taken her love of books further than most kids her age by creating a nonprofit organization with the motto: read and be empowered.
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Twittering Dante By Lauren Barack - 04/01/2009
Cracking Dante’s Inferno is a tough row to hoe for any high school student—but what if the reading assignment was conducted via Twitter? The exercise “Twitter in Hell” was handed to some lucky seniors at University Laboratory High School at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, after reading the classic tome.
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For the Love of Art: The Road to Fame Was Long and Hard for Some of the Best Artists By Kathleen Baxter - 04/01/2009
The words “starving” and “artist” are a too-familiar pair. Some creators are willing to suffer whatever it takes. But the grit and sweat that challenge artists also make them fascinating, compelling, and unforgettable. Children in grades 2–5 will be charmed and intrigued by a trio of stunning author biographies.
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Egg-static Librarians Get Behind Tillie By Lauren Barack - 03/23/2009
Librarians and teachers are in egg-stasy over Terry Golson’s new children’s book, Tillie Lays an Egg (Scholastic, 2009), and her hencam, which dovetails with the fanciful tale.
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Celebrate the Lorax Project Student Earth Day By SLJ Staff - 03/09/2009
If you’re thinking of a way to make Earth Day fun for your students, how about getting them involved in first-ever Lorax Project Student Earth Day?
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