The Daring Librarian

Don't want to put a lot of money into a Makerspace for your Library or Classroom? Why not build a gaming tote? My splendid @hcpss_mhms 8th grade kids playing #Hipster #SpotIt in the Daring School Library Media Center! So much fun! #gamification A post shared by Gwyneth Jones (@thedaringlibrarian) on May 11, 2017 at 1:21pm PDT Spot It! In the picture at the very top you can see the games I got for my Daring School Library Media Center and the kiddos love it! This set would cost about $80 bucks without the tote.  The whole list is below, but featured is Spot It , hipster in my avatar hand at left, and Basic English for my ESOL (English as a Second Language) kiddos.   But you can also adapt the rules, and say that the kids can grab both cards, and THEN say the matching pictures or point to them. OR you can go over each of the pictures before the game and agree on what the pictures are called. Some of my kiddos didn't know what a few of the thin...

I've been sharing my love for this one stop shop of graphic design goodness for five years now, you'd think they would put me on the payroll or at least fly me to New York, pick me up in a limo, and set me up in the Four Seasons - you know - a just for a casual office visit!  But, nahhh I just got some stickers & T-shirts to give away at conferences.  But hey, that's OK...because I love them anyway! Now they have amped up their Mobile App - check it out!   (**see my sponsorship & street cred pledge to you at the bottom)  The PicMonkey App - For iPhone & Android. Get Graphic! PicMonkey is a free website & App that does wonders with your digital photos in an easy peasy click it and save it kinda way.  PicMonkey is free but yes, I enjoy the Royale upgrade - and now it's better than ever! The graphic at the very top was done on the web version of the site and this one was done just on my phone. In this post I'm going to give a...

Hello Book Lovahs! I want to share with you a favorite book selection activity that the kids dig, is super silly and fun, creates a lot of excitement, and makes the books fly out of the library! I first blogged about this with you back in 2013 , added a genre twist last year in 2016, and now I've added a video and a few new tweaks.  My kids love this lesson so much they even ask me in the hallway, “When are we going to do that again?” - so next year I'm going to try and run it both in the fall and in the spring. With my middle school kids this activity is guaranteed to make them grin, giggle, and cringe a little...ok, a LOT. Give yourself permission to really ham it up. Because prepare yourselves, book lovahs, this is super cheezy!   All the resources, printables, graphics, and videos are FREE for you to take, use, & share because they're made using the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.   ...

We celebrated Women's History Month at MHMS by creating a book display (naturally!) and daily feature news stories on our live MHTV show about famous and significant women in history!  Pretty simple. Pretty effective. Happy to share!  Here are the Google Doc scripts we wrote for this, feel free to copy and use but please keep the attribution and link back.  Thank you!       Please do not ask to be allowed to edit this Google Doc, please just make a copy. Thank you!  Women’s History Month Book Display - Pull List (much like me, this list is not perfect by any means)   Non Fiction   Women's suffrage : a primary source history of the women's rights movement in America - 305.42 ADA Failure is impossible! : the history of American women's rights (2000) by Kendall, Martha E. Series: Nonfiction - 305.42 KEN   The good, the bad, and the Barbie : a doll's history and her impact on us - 688.7 STO   Take it...

This is a mirror to a guest blog post on the YALSA blog !  WARNING: This post may take a while to load because of several embedded Instagram posts.  What’s the point of Instagram and why should you spend your precious time and money on it? Well, don’t worry about the cost, because it’s FREE! So, all you really need is creativity and a few minutes a day to make meaningful, fun, and lasting connections with your community. And with Instagram you get a twofer! Even maybe a threefer, fourfer?! (is that a thing?) That’s right, for the amazing low price of FREE, each Instagram post can cross pollinate to your Twitter, Facebook (:-P), Flickr, Tumblr, and that thing called Swarm that kinda took the place of the annoying Foursquare? That’s pretty powerful! But to be truly effective with those connections using social media, your graphics, caption copy-writing, conversation, and photography skills should strive to be, positive, professional, and on point. Realize, however...