The Daring Librarian

Problem: Teacher Wants to Show a YouTube Video A few days ago one of my awesome 7th grade math teachers came to me in the library with her laptop & a problem. She had downloaded a kick butt Math video (above) from YouTube but couldn't get it to work. (she had downloaded it as .html) Could I help? Sure! Solution! KeepVid.com Now...of course YouTube is blocked in my school (yeah, I'm fighting that, too! UPDATE: I won! OR at least for teachers) so being the daring librarian (and a contrarian!) I brought out my Verizon Fascinate droid smart phone and turned on my 3G Hotspot and Voila! Download the comic in many sizes . In 4 Easy Steps: I Found the video, copied the video URL, went to KeepVid.com , pasted it and clicked Download. Another Voila! Given a choice of video formats I told her that the best one for us was MP4 and saved it to my desktop ( HINT: .FLV is good when you want to embed it to a PREZI!) then...she pulled out her 3G flashdrive and within a few min she ...

(graphic by Tim Holt) The digital shift revolution in educational practice isn't about throwing everything out that has been done before (sometimes to Ad nauseam ) but to add projects & product choices that enhance learning and better demonstrate research assessments and the comprehension of data. In other words: does a diorama and the science fair trifold with pasted on pictures & graphs really best show that the student has grasped the meaning and complexity of the research project. Really? Several change agents in eduction are asking this question of late (including yours truly) and I would like to start that conversation here, too! This also ties into the conversation Diane Cordell and I will be leading at EduCon in January (YAY!) The Power of the Product: Creative, Meaningful, & Daring Ways to Demonstrate Information Mastery : This conversation will create a shared list of viable, creative, meaningful, and daring products that demonstrate information mastery...

Dont Hate the Hashtag: a Social Media Revolution for Librarians View more presentations from gwyneth jones . Dear CASL family of school librarians, Thank you so much for your time today! It is such an honor to be invited to talk to you! The people of CT have been so wonderfully warm, friendly, whipsmart, & inspiring! I truly met some "kindred spirits" in your state! Thank you Jackie, Irene, & Sara for welcoming me - I'd come back ANY time! Heart You!! And on a personal note, can I say what a thrill and an honor it was to share the billing with The Unquiet Librarian: Buffy J . Hamilton ? I so treasure her mentorship and friendship! She rocked it at the pre-conference! Ok...enough of the mushy stuff - Let's get onto the resources, links & goodies! Don't Hate the Hashtag: A Social Media Revolution for School Librarians Having a web presence, keeping hip with cultural literacy, transliteracy, and building strong personal learning networks is not jus...

Hi, My name is Gwyneth and I use Wikipedia every day. There, I said it. Somehow that's pretty freeing! Wikipedia is NOT a dirty word. We're doing a disservice not teaching our kids HOW to use it and how to cite it...as in - ummm selectively & with forethought. Sadly, I don't believe teachers & college professors are ready to wrap their mind around or admit recent studies that show: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica. Much like the Internets in general, (or the Googles, or the Facebooks, or the Twitters, or the YouTubes) many educators look upon Wikipedia with suspicion, sometimes derision, and occasionally with fear. But who are we kidding? It ain't goin away folks! The Wikipedias are here to stay...It's an Internet Wonder of the World! And for gosh sakes, it comes up top 3 in just about any Google search you do. What? Ignore a good entry for a query? Really? Can you admit, you use it, too? So....How do we teach kids to use it? Teaching Wikipedi...

At ISTE10 Denver I met a LOT of great people... one of them was ISTE Emerging Leader and EduTecher Adam Bellow. Funny story, I was hanging out in the Butterfly Lounge with Joquetta Johnson waiting to hook up with Joyce Valenza & the Geek Tribe when I got to talking to this guy there - Adam Bellow. Turns out I'd already been visiting his EduTecher site for a while (Ok, I'm really bad with names!) and was thrilled to meet him F2F! Now I call him a friend and part of my PLN here and on Twitter! This new easy to participate crowdsourcing charity project of his is amazing! You don't donate money, you just click. (similar to FreeRice.com) ....The EducTecher site isn't commercial...its' a FREE site that gives awesome tech tips and classroom & library resources. Learn more about how you can Change the World with just one click and get involved - by clicking the logo above. I also modded the badge to fit my blogger sidebar, grab it if you like for your own widge...

We were SO excited & flattered to host the Bob Edwards Sirius XM show a few weeks ago! They were doing a month long series called “ Shhhh… Libraries at Work !” (of course I HATE the Shhh! part!) and chose my school, Murray Hill Middle School to represent school libraries. (I know...like, WOW!) They found us through this blog and the interview focused on the future of school libraries, digital literacy, creating a positive digital footprint, research strategies, creating student assessment products, audio books, and how we always push the love of reading to our kids! In Part 1 (#6 on the iTunes list) you can listen to the Bob Edwards XM Show Podcast featuring my MHMS kids, MHTV crew, & our school library! It starts with Mrs. Singleton's 6th grade reading & research class visited for seminar book selection & talked about the kind of books they like, transitions into our MHTV crew creating our news show, and finishes with...Mrs. Cullison's class coming in for th...

Tomorrow morning I leave for Chicago. I've never been there and I'm SO excited. I'm honored, humbled, floored, & flattered (and frankly gobsmacked!) to have been asked to come to the School Library Journal’s 2010 Leadership Summit ! As the summit starts today I think I can safely announce why...and it makes me squirmy, happy, and strangely bashful to do so! GAH! 20 days ago I got this email out of the blue... "On behalf of Gale, part of Cengage Learning, and School Library Journal, I am pleased to inform you that you have been selected as one of five people to attend SLJ ’s Leadership Summit as part of the Cengage Learning / SLJ New Leaders program. The Cengage Learning/ SLJ New Leaders program is designed for school librarians who are new to the profession, and have already displayed leadership within their building, district and/or state; are advocates for students, libraries, and 21st century learning; and are actively engaged in sharing and colla...