The Daring Librarian

Google has quietly unveiled a super handy new way to search...and Save Google Images! I just stumbled across this and was like, Whaaat? It's super cool, but it's going to make my job trying to teach students (and teachers) NOT to just always use (and give sloppy attribution) Google Image Search instead of my beloved Flikr Creative Commons ! Gah!!! LOL When you're logged into your Gmail or Google and you go to Google Image Search, click on any image and you now see two little new buttons that say Save? and View Save? Try it! Voila!  But it's quirky! I just checked this morning when I got into school, logged in with my other Gmail account (you know we all have more than one, amirite?) and it didn't work! But when I logged into the one that I was on yesterday at home, all my saves were there! So, quirky!  Same computer, Firefox, maybe it's because it's NEW?   So, with anything new by Google - your mileage may vary.   Click for the full size exa...

I've had some emails and Tweets lately asking how do I manage the LEGO portion of our Makerspace area, so I thought I would share with you... The Way of the Lego.  Questions: How did you set up your Lego Creation Station?   Did you start with a Lego Wall?  Aren't there problems with stray pieces? How do you manage the Makerspace? What did you buy?   ..............and what are the rules? When I first started the Makerspace, inspired by my PLN, I had a very small budget and a admittedly a rather large dose of skepticism that all this Makerspace folderoll could just be another fad or Ed Tech buzzword. Like the $11,000 Smart Board everyone just HAD to have 10 years ago that seemed to end up as a very expensive white board a few years later. But I did want to give it a whirl!   The reason I often talk about baby-steppin into Makerspace (or any new education innovation) is because I don't want you to feel like pressured or guilted into jumping i...

I've been blogging about my favourite Social Media outlet Twitter for over five years now. From Twitter: The Art of the Follow , header and background design tips with Are You Ready for a New Twitter? to What's YOUR Twitter Formula? I figured it was time to try and put a lot of these tips into one package. This is a new presentation that I'm still fine-tuning, but I thought I would share it to get some feedback. Below are a few slides to give you a taste, as well as the full embedded Slideshare . Your suggestions are very welcome - but please remember a lot of these tips are just my opinion or rather, enjoy this disclaimer ...       Here's the full presentation - Enjoy!  Tweet Like a Ninja from The Daring Librarian Experience I know it's a LOT of slides but I swear it all fits into a one hour presentation, really! But it's not as fun without me presenting it LIVE! You gotta belie...

Why Blog? You don't start blogging for awards. Although they're very nice!  More about awards at the very end of this post. Do not let anyone force you or guilt trip you to start a blog. Not even yourself! You blog because you are passionate about your profession, and have ideas & content to share with potential readers, or want a living, growing on-going journal of your professional life. If you blog it, they will come. Eventually. It may just take a while! Don't give up! I blogged for YEARS out the aethernets and for a handful of readers! And you surely don't start blogging for comments. If you are expecting comments when you start blogging you're gonna be quickly discouraged and give up. I get about 6 or 7 comments per blog post and most all of those are spam. That's why I treasure and am grateful for each and every REAL comment I get! Now, I am in NO WAY saying I'm an expert blogger, (or writer! Ha!) but I do have some reflective ideas and...

I forget sometimes how lucky I am that I grew up in the Washington DC metro area and have within 25 min of my front doorstep (ok, maybe not 25 with DC traffic, right!?) but close by is one of the largest collections of rich resources in the world - the United States Library of Congress. But don't fret, you don't need to travel to DC to enjoy the FREE and open globally to everyone in the world the resources, lesson plans, and primary source documents  through their amazingly extensive online website for teachers.  In these tough economic times when districts are discontinuing paying for online research databases this is a goldmine of FREE resources. (Have I said FREE enough? LOL) Oh and you can tell from the title of this post that I love me some alliterative action! But why not? "Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man" Use the Creative Commons infographic below to "sell' all the great stuff that's available AN...

Teaching tech in isolation never works. When a reluctant tech user learns how to do something with a project about which they're personally passionate, they're gonna be instantly engaged, work hard at it, and feel super exultant when it works!  For example, when I teach iPhoto , I have the teachers bring in 10-15 pictures of their vacations, hobbies, pets, or yeah...their families and kids. OR if they didn't bring them in, I hand them a digital camera with a grin and say "Go take a 15 min digital safari - lay down, lean over, step on chairs, and take pics of your classroom or the school from freaky angles and come right back!"   From there we teach how to import, edit, crop, enhance, adjust, and then export those photos in different sizes. That way when they email that photo of "little Johnnie on the pottie" the recipient doesn't have to scroll to see one eye...then the other, etc.  In the second session we use those same pics to make an iPhoto s...