WebJunction

Pennsylvania librarians may register at WebJunction Pennsylvania, a service provided by Access Pennsylvania, to register for free library trainings for which Act 48 continuing education credits are available.  The URL is http://pa.webjunction.org/.  I've just finished two of their self-paced courses, "Leadership Essentials 2: Communicating Vision" and "Directors ASK! (LibraryU)", each of which granted 1 hour of Act 48 credit.  My next selection will be "Copyright Issues in the Classroom and School Library (LEAD)".

Our district hosted a training session in LibGuides recently, so our librarians and others in neighboring areas could obtain a free year's subscription the the PA LibGuides curation pages for public and school librarians. My cohort librarian and I have made a CASD Faculty LibGuide page at http://palibraries.libguides.com/content.php?pid=270348&sid=2230234, where we organize resources for classes coming to our high school library for library instruction. I am also working on a private LibGuides site to arrange lesson plans for the Technology Integration Into the Classroom course I'll be teaching next semester for Wilson College's M.Ed program, focusing on Web 2.0 tools for education.

I've been exploring the Web. 2.0 tools listed in Bloom's Revised Digital Taxonomy: http://www.usi.edu/distance/bdt.htm and teaching the use of them to new teachers in our district: http://www.chambersburg.k12.pa.us/education/dept/dept.php?sectionid=2528&

I just joined Library 2.0 in order to participate in the [free] Library 2.011 Worldwide Virtual Conference that will be held online from Wednesday, November 2 through Friday, November 4. More than 4,000 information professionals from 149 countries have signed up to join the global conversation on the current and future state of libraries. 160 presentations are scheduled over two days, and all will be recorded so you can catch them later if you're not available at they time they are happening.


Create your own membership in Library 2.0: http://www.library20.com/main/invitation/new?xg_source=msg_wel_network

Back to Blogging

I'd been the only librarian in a middle school library and I had a blog on my school Web site, so I really saw no need to continue using this blog that had been set up for the purposes of a course.

Life changes, and so do decisions. I'm now librarian at a high school and find myself sharing the high school library Web site with another librarian. I have not yet ventured to put my own blog there -- although I might -- but in the meantime I've decided to resurrect this blogspot.

Comic Book Artists Illustrate Sci-Fi Legends | NewsCred, Quality Newspapers & Blogs

Comic Book Artists Illustrate Sci-Fi Legends NewsCred, Quality Newspapers & Blogs

Love these comic book artists' renditions of Sci-Fi authors!

Is the Internet Rewiring Our Brains?

I recently read an article in eSchool News Online titled, "Scientists: Is technology rewiring our brains?", that I found very interesting. The part about whether the social skills of teens could be harmed by being online so much wasn't of so much interest to me as the question Wolf raises about whether young children, learning to read, will have brains that do not follow "normal reading pathways" because those pathways take more time, which is not accorded in Internet reading.

I'll be interested in following this research. I'm currently taking Reading Apprenticeship training, which has taught me that I need to teach my students how to read a Web page. Apparently they don't know how to look for keywords and key ideas as they read, and they don't read the details that are laid out in the sentences before their eyes. Those of us who learned to read text in books before the age of the Internet do not have the same problems reading a Web page that school students who are "digital natives" have.