School Library Program Technology and Insights

My Aunt Wendy is an extraordinary person. Many would look at her and see “disabilities,” but she has many abilities. She makes crafts, is an expert at coloring, can beat most people in Wii bowling, and enjoys writing down people’s names and phone numbers. She was born with Spina Bifida and uses a wheelchair; she also is deaf and has the mindset of a child. She just celebrated her 47th birthday! When she was in school, there were not as many tools that could assist her with her education and daily life. However, students who have challenges now have many technology tools that can make their lives easier and their learning more enjoyable and meaningful.  Using Bookshare to Make Reading More Accessible  Librarians often spend a large amount of time developing their book collection, but for many students a print book is not the most accessible format. Bookshare is an online tool that can make reading more accessible for students. According to their website “people wit...

What are Drones?  Drones are unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that can be flown a utonomously or by using a handheld controller. What once was thought of as a military piece of equipment has rapidly moved into the consumer world. Drones are available at a variety of retail stores and online ranging greatly in price. Some more simplistic drones are smaller and can only fly short distances from the person manning the controller. Other drones are more sophisticated and have GPS and cameras with the capability to take pictures and video. Even Amazon is working to use drones in their package delivery - known as Amazon Prime Air . With military, commercial, and residential uses, drones have become easily accessible, quickly recognizable, and of great interest for the future. As Smith and Image by  moerschy  from  Pixabay Sefton (2015) explain, “when students understand how drones work and use them in applications at a local scale their understanding of drone us...

Loving Google Drawings in ELA  It's the month of February and most teachers are just trying to make it past the Valentine's Day sugar rush and heightened feelings of love and heartbreak (especially those middle and high school teachers). February is the perfect time, therefore, to show some love to some new ideas that will integrate technology into the classroom and engage students in something other than their crush. Google Drawings is an excellent resource that is easy to integrate into a variety of lesson topics. Eve Heaton's education blog,  Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology ,  includes excellent resources that Image from   Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology Blog can help teachers (and students) fall in love with technology. In one of her more recent posts , she highlights using Google Drawings to create Digital Sensory Figure Posters about influential African- Americans. These posters are created by taking an image online and removing the backgro...

My daughter enjoys putting things together; puzzles, blocks, Legos, and really anything that has parts and pieces. My favorite to watch is when she is working on her Minnie Mouse Lego house; it’s simplistic (she is only three years old), but to see how the individual pieces become a cohesive structure that her tiny self is able to build always leaves me with a sense of pride. Information literacy, technology, and digital/media may appear to be individual pieces, after all they do have distinct characteristics. However, they are like the Minnie Mouse house my daughter constructs; when the pieces fit together, everything makes more sense. Additionally, the process is something to be proud of; sometimes it takes time, mistakes, and repetition, but the end result is worth it. For our students and ourselves, it is worth teaching and spending time on information literacy, technology use, and digital/media literacy. The process may be time-consuming, but when the pieces all fit together,...