Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

When Mrs. Nelson asked if I wanted to write a blog post for her blog Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts I was a little unsure.  I mean the title of her blog is Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts and I was not sure I actually had anything to say worthy of being labeled a “professional thought.” However, I started [...]

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SCASL allowed my committee (the Information Technology Committee) to sponsor a Learning Commons at conference.  We took it upon ourselves to advertise, solicit volunteers for presentations, and make it a go. We wanted to loosely base it off the one I had seen and experienced first hand at AASL in Minneapolis, MN in October.  I [...]

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Today my colibrarian and I lead a staff development each block for any interested teachers. We have been doing this since October, and we call the opportunities “One Tool at a Time.” Yes, I swiped borrowed the name from the ISTE SIGMS webinar series called “One Tool at a Time.”  When I send out emails [...]

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We started allowing students to checkout iPads from the library today. Sigh–still having a hard time wrapping my mind around how they can work like this, especially considering students cannot personalize or download apps. But the excitement is palpable. Today’s task as our students explored–leave a “note” using the note app on the ipad listing [...]

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Recently I submitted an requisition to order five iPads to be used in our library. Now mind you I’ve had serious reservations about the use or usefulness of an iPad in a school setting at all if they were not going to be implemented as a one-to-one program. In my mind, the device is meant to be [...]

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In July, 2011, the AASL Board approved the Position Statement on Labeling Books with Reading Levels. If you haven’t read it, do take some time to do so.  I wrote about it over at the SCASL blog back in September, and our SCASL listserv had a pretty heated debate by those who were defending the labeling [...]

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What does a soup have to do with technology, education, or libraries? Everything! You see, too often we shy away from tools we are unfamiliar with just because it’s the great unknown.  But my mantra is you must immerse yourself, have fun, play, and figure it out.  Then make it your own!!   So the real title [...]

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Rant two:  student ID’s. See rant 1 here. (Fictitious letter, all names and locations are anonymous.) Dear School Library Professional Guru, My colleagues and I don’t agree on the requirement of student ID’s to check out books from our high school library.  Can you guide me in how to handle this situation?  I want to [...]

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I’ve been playing with Google Chrome now since June.  I must say I like the browser. I was pretty skeptical when it first came out, refusing to get on the band wagon. My favorite part of the Chrome browser experience lies in the sheer amount of desktop real estate!  My url bar is also my [...]

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The American Association of School Librarians released its 2011 list of the 25 Best Websites for Teaching and Learning recently. This list provides several topical areas, topics naturally aligned to the AASL standards, as well as a brief description of the tools themselves along with links. While the list is targeted at school librarians, the list is most certainly [...]

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