The Champion Of The Oak Hills March Madness Tournament Of Books - Diary Of A Wimpy Kid!!!

It's April 18th, and our tournament didn't quite all fit into March, but the final votes were cast and tallied today!  The winner of the Oak Hills March Madness Tournament of Books is officially Diary of A Wimpy Kid, Hard Luck!  Congratulations on a fantastic book series Jeff Kinney!  Oak Hills students LOVE your book series!  Though the Oak Hills Elementary students clearly love the Wimpy Kid series, they also love Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan!  In the final show down, Wimpy Kid versus Lightning Thief, Wimpy Kid won by only 5 votes (out of 312!).  So close for two great books!  We are grateful to Jeff Kinney and Rick Riordan for sharing their talent!  Winning brackets of our March Madness Tournament of Book will be announced at school during media class...can't wait to share with my students!!

5th Graders Share Book Reviews On Their Reading Blogs!!

This week, 5th grade students added to their reading blogs!  As an ongoing Technology Is Loose In The Library blog feature, I am adding their blog posts on ScoopIt Curation Topic so readers can read them by clicking the side panel of this blog. Check it out!!

Big Change For Oak Hills Teachers - Trading Our Desktops Computers For Laptops!

A casual observer probably didn't notice that it was a big day at Oak Hills! Teaching and learning continued without interruption, but behind the scenes, Oak Hills teachers were learning about their new laptops!  A big thanks to Digital Coordinator, Trish Harvey and Digital Coach, Chris Myers for their before school rollout and training.  It was a morning packed with tips for making sure our teachers are successful with their new laptops!  Trish and Chris spent most of the day with a constant trickle of teachers asking for help mastering the details of their new devices.

#whylib - April Is School Library Month And Librarians Are Telling Their Stories!!

A few weeks ago, right as I was leaving for Spring Break, I noticed a few of the fantastic school librarians that I follow on Twitter discussing their reasons for becoming librarians. From their conversations a new Twitter hashtag was born - #whylib, with librarians around the nation telling their stories! Great timing - April is School Library Month and this year's theme is "Lives Change @ Your Library!!  I went on Spring Break and took a hiatus from most of my social media. When I returned I found that a padlet wall had begun and I had to catch up on my reading!!!  I was fascinated to read the stories of my librarian peers!! My story doesn't have any real surprises, but it ends well!  I am a school librarian (aka Media Specialist) at Oak Hills Elementary in Lakeville Minnesota!!  Hooray!

When I was a preschooler in Athens, Georgia, I vividly remember playing librarian! (I know...kind of a sad excuse for playtime fun...how many kids can say they played librarian!!) I was clearly a little confused about what a librarian did because I would pass the “library” books through one of our low living room windows like a bank teller, but no matter, loaning books to imaginary patrons and stamping cards gave my young heart a thrill! 

I demonstrated impeccable taste very early on!  My first book memory was of the 1942 Caldecott Award winning book The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton!  Just to be clear, I was looking at the book in 1969, not 1942!!! I loved the book so much that I took scissors and cut out one of my favorite pictures until I was stopped by my very unhappy mother!!

Fast forwarding a year or two, I didn’t actually grow into a book lover in spite of the generous collection of books in our home, avid “reader” parents and frequent visits to the public library. I was an above average reader, a proud member of the 1^st grade Bluebird reading group (shhhh - we weren't supposed to know that we were being ability grouped!) As the books advanced and had fewer and fewer pictures, my interest in reading for pleasure diminished. I have often reflected that my reluctance to read for pleasure in late elementary school/middle school has been a critical factor in making me a better librarian today!  I understand why some of my students don’t enjoy reading. For some students like me, it isn't that they struggle reading, it is that they haven't found their reading niche! Often these students have yet to discover a genre that really ignites their imagination! This is what makes a tenacious librarian's job so very important!! Book promotion keeps reminding students to consider their options! Happily I did eventually find my reading niche!

Despite the fact that there was some early foreshadowing of my future career as librarian, I really side stepped my way into the field.  I went to college to be a teacher.  I took my first job teaching 5th grade at Timothy Road Elementary School in Athens, Georgia.  Athens is the home of the University of Georgia which is why my soon-to-be Minnesota husband was in town completing his Physics PhD. Two years after beginning teaching, we married and we moved to Minnesota where I was offered a 4th grade teaching position at Orchard Lake Elementary School in Lakeville, Minnesota!  Still a relatively new teacher, I got my first Master's degree in Elementary Education, fully planning to remain in the classroom for the rest of my career! As I began to plan further academic credits, I began to look around at other possibilities. At the time, a media specialist degree piqued my interest. I wouldn't be completely honest if I didn't mention that it was the technology as well as great children's literature that interested me in the field of library science. There really weren't any technology integrationist yet, and the only people really getting their hands on technology in most schools were the librarians!!  I mean REALLY! - Is there anything better than a field that combines great books, the latest technology and teaching!!  So in 1995, when my oldest daughter was born, I took a year leave of absence and got my media specialist certification. As luck would have it, when I returned to Orchard Lake Elementary a year later, there was an opening for a media specialist! In 1998, when the district began building a new building, Oak Hills Elementary, I volunteered to open the building. After a year of intense researching, selecting

and ordering of a core library collection, AV and technology, I helped open the Oak Hills Elementary library in 1999, and here I am in 2014! Though the field is constantly changing and evolving, and some are even questioning the future for libraries all together, my initial enthusiasm has not wained and my impressions of what it means to be a librarian remain unchanged. Fantastic books (no matter the format), technology (served best when chilled over learning and integrated with literature!) and children...it is a magical combination!!  

Always A Teacher & Librarian - Even On Spring Break!!

This Spring Break our family traveled to Orlando, Florida - a birthday wish of my 16-year-old daughter.  We had a great time visiting the parks and beach!  Even through our sunburns, we had a great time!  

I found that even on Spring Break, a thousand miles from my library, I was constantly bumping into things that I would love to share with my students.  My 3rd graders are in the middle of a Super Hero unit, and Universal Studios was filled with comics from past and present! Speech bubbles were everywhere!  They had a store entirely dedicated to Marvel Comics! Disney had books from series that are favorites in my library!! I found a series that I know students will love that I can't wait to get for our library.  Kingdom Keepers isn't new, but I know my students will love them! 

I decided that our trip proved that you can take the teacher out of the library, but you can't take the library out of the teacher!!  Hope everyone had a great spring break!!

Thanks for Inviting Me To Contribute - Little eLit!!

Recently, I was asked to make a contribution to a fantastic website - Little eLit.  Their mission as stated on their site...

Little eLit is a crowd-sourced, grass-roots professional learning network that works to develop promising practices for the incorporation of new media into library collections, services and programs for families with young children.

The website was established by Cen Campbell, Founder and Editor in Chief.  Cen was recently named by School Library Journal as a Mover and Shaker for 2014 (Tech Leader)! She brings together professionals to share and learn from each other. From my perspective, this is the best kind of professional development!  

When I was contacted by Cen, I was honored to be invited to contribute, but I was nervous that I might not be able to provide the readers of Little eLit with ideas that they could really use!  Most of my students are a little older than the children that Little eLit focuses on.  Also, though I write for my own blog several times a week, it is all together different identifying what followers of a different site might find helpful. As I began to ponder, I came to a few conclusions. 

I owe such a debt of gratitude to the many educational and library web writers and bloggers who have inspired me!  They are brave enough to share their ideas with their online audiences - one of which is me! Their ideas have not always been exactly what I could use in the setting I teach in, but they did provide me with a spark, a kernel of an idea that inspired me to create lessons adapted for the needs of my students! It is the all important spark that we try to provide for our students each day!  So I chose to 'pay it forward' and share my lesson ideas, hoping that I could provide the spark for some of the readers of Little eLit.  

To read the article with live links - Technology is Loose in the Library by Cathy Knutson

First Graders Create Their Oak Hills Elementary Alphabet Pages Using Haiku Deck!!

Before spring break, first graders began reading and designing their very own alphabet books.(Read all about our research in an earlier blog post - First Graders Begin Working On OHE Alphabet Books)  This week students imported the OHE images into Haiku Deck to add labels for each page. I used the web publishing tool FlipSnack to show off their work in an eBook!