The Daring Librarian

I love books. I love art.  I love Etsy. I love funky stuff. I love recycling and upcycling. This artist on Etsy combines both! Nifty & Thrifty Crafter Meet Kim Franklin (aka) the Trashy Crafter and here's her nifty thrifty story: "... I love to go to thrift stores, I think mainly because it's such an adventure!  Anywho, my Mom and I were at a thrift store when we saw them throwing out hundreds of damaged and outdated books.  This made me really sad, there had to be someway to recycled them into something useful and beautiful.  My Mom and I grabbed about 50 books and threw then into the back of our truck and headed home.  The books sat in a corner of my tiny bedroom for a few months as I finished up finals for my senior year at UCSD. Soon after graduating I remembered my 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Bryant had taught us how to roll  paper beads from magazine paper, but it was so flimsy and not sturdy.  So I thought, why not turn this beauti...

(Warning: This blog post may load slowly because of all the embedded videos.  To hear the audio, click on the tiny speaker in the top left of each video) Every year I get excited to share with my kiddos our district & local library Summer Reading List (more about that below!) and to try and generate new ways to catch their interest in reading over the break. This year we decided to create video book trailers using the Vine App! Six second videos that loop with sound. No editing needed, just creativity! You Gotta ASK For It! When I originally had this idea, I got permission from my principal and then I emailed & called my district tech leaders Julie Wray @jwwray and Robert Cole @racolej  to see if I could actually do it. Unfortunately, the Vine App wasn't approved yet -sooooo I asked if it COULD be and then I had to scramble to adapt the idea using a flip camera. Luckily, Bob Cole pushed the Vine App through in about a week, and BAM!  We were back ...

I hope that the click-bait blog title got your attention. It was designed to! But you may ultimately find it misleading. Please keep reading! Before any admins out there start sharpening their pitchforks for me, I gotta say that I really don't think teachers need to train new principals. Principals come to us already accomplished, trained, vetted, and hand-picked. Nor are Principals or Assistant Principals really dragons...but then again, dragons ARE protective! And a new Admin does sorta have to take control of the school which may include a little fire breathing now and then. Are you still with me? The conversation I really want to have is with YOU - or rather, with US!  The classroom teacher, school librarian, and educator of any subject who is NOT in charge of a whole school.   I actually think it's the teachers and staff that needs to be trained to be more tolerant! Cut Me Some Slack! Why do we seem to give all kinds of slack, assistance, mentoring...

We love connecting with other kiddos in schools in other cities and states. Our sister library is  Central Middle School of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and we had a great time the other day chatting with them about books! Books Beyond Borders with Google Plus Hangout Our friend & one my librarian mentees, Mrs. Tiffany Whitehead , excitedly emailed that she was being filmed for a local news segment and she wanted to show off our long distance cooperative relationship and highlight cool tech with a Google Plus Hangout! FUN! Amazingly, we were in between testing windows & thanks to my fantastic 7th grade ELA teacher Mrs. Krieger for being spontaneous and jumping on board with this cutting edge conversation! It was lots of fun!  Both groups of our kiddos picked out books they loved & wanted to share and did quick book talks. This has been such a banner year for Tiff ! She has been named one of  Library Journal’s 2014 Movers & Shakers , an ISTE’...

Twitter: Professional or Personal? When I speak to groups, I often talk about how I use Twitter as my main source of rich professional development and as a transformational PLN builder (Personal Learning Network). I don't use Facebook personally or professionally at all. If you've been reading my blog or follow me on Twitter you know that we broke up a few years ago.  Read Dear Facebook , We Need to Talk. I think every Twitter user has some kind of  formula for their Tweets. For me, (and this SO not scientific though I did have to get my calculator out!)  I Tweet 82% ed tech & library, lesson ideas, curation and content building, being a shameless sharer and giving back to my community. I want to give more than I take. I try not to Tweet in an echo chamber.    8% pop culture - Doctor Who, Real Housewives, Sherlock, etc, 4% personal - the random and oft times inarticulate sophomoric thoughts going through me heid, my travels, Oh and weird dreams. ...

Irony of ironies! I recently worked a few nights madly and happily Photoshopping & designing a new Twitter look for our school's Twitter page! (it's still not perfect! & best viewed on a big desktop screen) when I heard that they're soon changing the look and design features of Twitter altogether! What the what!? Doh! (It's HERE! See Update below!) According to Mashable , they're making it look a lot more like Facebook.  You know how I feel about Facebook , right? Change Happens. When Twitter changed their profile look a few years ago, I was Gwynnie on the spot figuring out how to make it look cool & I shamelessly shared my tips , too! Added to that my Twitter At-A-Glance and my Twitter: Art of the Follow comics, I try and keep up with Twitter trends.  Heck I could do a collection of screenshots of Twitter's morphing looks. So, it comes as no surprise that they're changing it again. You probably won't notice much if you us...