Librarian Marie

This school librarian interview focused on the Shared Foundation Include. I interviewed Glenda Kern the school librarian at Haut Gap Middle School for this foundation. Haut Gap Middle School is a very diverse middle school located in Johns Island, South Carolina. Mrs. Kern strives to implement inclusive competencies in her library program. One way she does this is through providing opportunities for learners to experience diverse viewpoints. She does this through curating a very diverse collection that includes African American, Hispanic, Native American, White, and LGBTQ+ voices and perspectives. Mrs. Kern also promotes a library environment that helps learners feel empowered.  Through information literacy instruction, Mrs. Kern teaches students how to evaluate information in order to determine the author's viewpoint and perspective. This helps learners understand that not everything they read online is trustworthy and they must evaluate the information and determine their on view...

The second school librarian interview I conducted focused on the Shared Foundation Collaborate. The librarian interviewed was Jennifer Thrift, an elementary librarian. Mrs. Thrift is the librarian at Charles Pinckney Elementary School. She is known throughout the Charleston County School District for creating engaging lessons and library transformations that facilitate student collaboration. The main way Mrs. Thrift implements collaborative opportunities is by creating library transformations, STEM activities, and playing games. For example, one library transformation she created was a surgical room. Not only does she have the entire room set up like a surgical room, but students also received gloves, scrub caps, and masks. The students were presented a task of having to "diagnose" patients by cutting and putting together different text features. This provided students an opportunity to collaborate and challenged them to work together to complete the task.  All of the library...

The first school librarian interview I conducted focused on the Shared Foundation Inquire. The librarian interviewed is Jennifer Thrift, an elementary librarian that operates her library on a flexible schedule. This flexible schedule provides her the opportunity to truly create an environment that fosters student inquiry through collaborations with classroom teachers and larger inquiry projects that take longer than one class period to dive into.   Some examples of ways Mrs. Thrift implements curiosity, initiative, and promotes new knowledge is through providing students with opportunities for trial and error. Some of the ways she implements this in the library is through Breakout games and through makerspaces. She explained that Breakouts and makerspaces are dependent on student initiative, curiosity, and inquiry.  She often collaborates with classroom teachers to create Breakout games and activities that focus on grade level standards. Mrs. Thrift explained that she oft...

I feel like this semester has flown by and I cannot believe this course is almost over! I have SO many takeaways from this semester! My biggest takeaway is how much I have learned about the digital world and how comfortable I now feel in it. I have learned about so many new digital resources and tools that I have loved introducing to my students and families. I love how much this course forced me to go out of my comfort zone and learn new things! I absolutely loved creating a website. I was honestly dreading that assignment because it seemed so difficult. Come to find out, it was actually my favorite assignment and fun to create! The digital curation assignment and learning how to use Wakelet has helped me in so many ways. I just want to create a collection for everything! I also really enjoyed keeping a blog each week and reading what others in the class were posting. This was way better than posting on Blackboard week after week. I will definitely try to keep my blogging going and ...

Pokemon have definitely made a comeback in the last few years. In 2016, Pokemon GO became a big hit with Pokemon fans and even those who are not familiar with the Pokemon world. As a current third grade teacher, I hear and see Pokemon cards, toys, and stuffed animals everyday. I have heard of the Pokemon GO game and decided to download it this week and see what it is all about.  What is Pokemon GO? Pokemon GO is an augmented reality game where users explore the real world and use the mobile app to catch hidden Pokemon creatures. These Pokemon creatures can be collected, trained, evolved, and used in battles. Pokemon go is available for both Google and IOS devices.  How to use Pokemon GO? When first downloading the game, users must create their account and avatar. Once the avatar is created, the user will see an augmented reality map on their phone. This map is very similar to the users real surroundings, roads, lakes, etc. In order to move their avatar and co...

Blogshare Link: https://teachoutsidethebox.com/2018/02/unbox-magic-stem-bins/ Teach Outside the Box is an educational website run by longtime educator Brooke Brown. The website includes a shop, blog, freebies, and ideas for educators. Brown's blog has several posts focused on STEM and Makerspaces. One concept Brown discusses throughout her blog and website are STEM Bins. What are STEM Bins? A new-to-me concept I learned about this week are STEM Bins. The blog posts above are from Teach Outside the Box. In these blogs Brooke Brown discusses how to use STEM Bins in the library or classroom. According to Brown, "STEM Bins are plastic containers filled with simple engineering manipulatives". These bins contain things like task cards, base ten blocks, popsicle sticks, index cards, tape, and much more listed in the image to the left. These STEM Bins can be bought from the following link: https://www.hand2mind.com/stembins  or teachers and librarians could make th...