book.and.bloom

I very much appreciated learning from other people’s experiences and suggestions in their blogs. For today’s response and blog post, I have included the resources and ideas that most resonated with me. They are not from one specific topic but are all ideas that I hope one day to implement in my school context. Thank you to my virtual classmates for inspiring me with these creative ways to challenge my teacher-librarian practice and to provide support to my colleagues as they acquire new technological skills for classroom application.   1)   Chevron McPhee Blog : Adjusting Our Pedagogy & ICT Skills: On-going Professional Development  In her blog post, Chevron McPhee shared a link from the Alberta Teacher's Association which listed a number of different professional development activities. I found this website to be very useful and a great reminder of how diverse our options for engagement in our own learning can be. The list was detailed, clearly explained each activi...

I believe mobile devices (and a reliable internet connection) hold a lot of potential for learning no matter where you find yourself in the world. As Richardson explained in his ebook   Why School i n his chapter Rethink Assessment , classrooms are often the only place in their lives where students are told not to use technology. This double standard is a disservice to students as the real-world work situations in which the school system is supposedly preparing them for does not have this same attitude towards technology. Ironically, even as a teacher, when I don’t know something in class, I take out my cellphone and look up the answer! Mobile devices are already prevalent in my classroom but I am lucky to live in a neighbourhood with a high socio-economic status and a school division and parent council who generously purchase technology. We often make use of technology as part of our teaching practice in some of these ways: 1)      Kahoot : This site is a great...

  Twitter Although it gets a bad rap, Twitter is a great space in which people can exchange ideas. Many people whom I follow are very generous with this professional life-journeys, their teaching successes and failures, and often offer materials (powerpoints, word documents, reading lists) for free. These gems enhance my teaching, challenge my thinking and provide some very appreciated pre-organized lessons for me to implement. Some of my favourite teachers to follow are Pernille Ripp (@pernilleripp), Jess Lifshitz (@Jess5th), Haley Lewis (@misslewis313), Brandi Bartok (@Brandi_Edu), and Ellen Bees (@EllenBees). Although many people from this list teach in the USA, most of their ideas are universal and I have happily implemented suggestions such as the 40 Book Challenge, Book Speed Dating and Global Read Aloud in my classrooms. I also follow authors. Some use twitter to solely promote their books, but others such as these really interact with their fans and offer supplemental acti...

To say that this has been an abnormal year is quite an understatement. Although I started September as a teacher librarian, I have been redeployed to a grade 1 and grade 2 classroom, I have had 3 new schedules so far and work at two schools (so double all of that!). Since this is the only experience I have had as a teacher librarian, I have decided early on to make the best of this experience and continue to try my best to add value to my school through my reduced role as teacher librarian. I have had to let a lot of my ideas go to “the graveyard of good ideas” due to COVID restrictions, but I am never-the-less proud of the programs I have managed to kick-start at my school and plan to resurrect the ones I couldn't implement this year in future years.  MYRCA:  The first program I would like to highlight is the MYRCA  reading challenge. Manitoba Young Readers Choice Award invites young readers to participate in choosing a MYRCA winner every year by voting for their fa...

  Resource #1: https://code.org Description: This website offeres pre-made, interactive, scaffolded lessons for students to follow and gain computer and coding skills. These lessons start at a pre-reader level and go right to highschool level.  Impression: I could see how this website would be a great resource for a teacher introducing coding to his/her students. The prescribed lessons are a bit dry but the variety of games ready for students to apply block coding skills to are vast and appealing. There is something there to meet any topic of interest the students may have. This is a solid website resource and something I plan to incorporate into my teaching of coding. Resource #2: Minecraft Teacher Guide Description: This resource is an education guide with embedded links which explain how to teach with Minecraft in the classroom. Includes videos, FAQs, outcomes, answer keys  and adaptations for remote learning. Impression: This resource has the aim to teach not only abo...

To start this blog, I began by brainstorming words that came to mind when I thought of Information Literacy. I re-read sections of  Leading Learning: Standards of Practice for School Library Learning Commons in  Canada to remind myself of some of the skills needed for 21 st  century learners. I also included the skills identified from the   National Council of Teachers of English (NTCE) 21st Century Literacies as outlined by Richardson’s book  Why School  in chapter 5. By this time, my list was over 120 words long and I was no closer to identifying major themes of interest for future pursuit.  To aid me in making sense of this long list, I entered the word list that I had compiled into a word cloud generator. Although there are many available, I made use of worditout.com since it was free and fairly user-friendly, while allowing for some control over text, direction, colour and word emphasis. I’ve included the image below. As you can see the main word...

Introduction   When talking to my own children, I remind them that within my life's memory,  I would drive to the bank to access my money, drive to a store to buy records and CDs, rent movies at a store dedicated solely to that purpose. And I’m only 37 years old! The pace of technological advancement has accelerated and I can only imagine the range of change the students of today will experience in their lifetimes.   The internet has opened the world to possibilities unheard of back in the 1980s. I can now order groceries, liquor, furniture, toys and other items to be delivered directly to my home through my smartphone. I can play cards online with people I’ve never met, I can read books on line which define unfamiliar words for me as I read, I can find my soulmate on a dating site, a house on Kijiji, or a roommate on Facebook market.     According to Statistics Canada, as of 2018, “nearly 84% of Internet users [are] buying goods or services online” (2019)....