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Connecticut’s 23 Things Program

Mar 7th, 2009
by pollyalida.
2 comments

After a successful project for staff at the state library, the Connecticut State Library is taking their 23 things project statewide. Terrific! I spend a lot of time teaching in CT and am so excited to see this program going statewide.

The program kicked off February 9th, but there’s still time to join. They’re just into Thing 2 – Blogs. There will be a new topic every 2 weeks.

The program officially wraps up on July 27th. Complete all of the activities by July 27, 2009 to receive a continuing education certificate.

I hope tons of CT library staff take advantage of this terrific learning opportunity. As an unofficial CT librarian, I’m going to follow along and participate at this blog: Polly’s CT 23 Things.

Technology, learning, global connections

Feb 3rd, 2009
by pollyalida.
No comments yet

Quote from the 2009 Horizon Report on Will Richardson’s weblogg-ed.

Information technologies are having a significant impact on how people work, play, gain information, and collaborate. Increasingly, those who use technology in ways that expand their global connections are more likely to advance, while those who do not will find themselves on the sidelines. With the growing availability of tools to connect learners and scholars all over the world — online collaborative workspaces, social networking tools, mobiles, voice-over-IP, and more — teaching and scholarship are transcending traditional borders more and more all the time.

Interesting discussion in the comments on weblogg-ed.

(Thanks to Linda for pointing me to this.)

TED Talk: Creativity & Play

Nov 16th, 2008
by pollyalida.
No comments yet

Great presentation from the TED Talks.

Tim Brown: The powerful link between creativity and play

Talked about the need to engage in:

  • playful exploration
  • playful building
  • playful roleplaying
  • Started with an exercise – asked the audience to take 30 seconds to draw a picture of the person sitting next to them. The audience was full of laughter and lots of apologies for their efforts.  His point was that adults are worried about being judged for their ideas, while kids doing this same sort of exercise don’t apologize, they’re proud of their creativity. (more…)

Games @ Lunch Break

Nov 1st, 2008
by pollyalida.
No comments yet

Lunch break Our lunch break today was too short to get any game playing going – school librarians know how to eat quick and network at the same time! But I did get a few games out for people to look at.  In honor of ALA’s National Gaming Day coming up on Nov 15, we had Pictureka and Top Trumps. And Quiddler too. All these are new to me, so I was happy to have an excuse to buy them.

But what I really loved about this, was the reaction of a couple of the librarians who started thinking about how they could use the ideas behind these games and have kids create their own games! Kids could make their own Top Trumps cards by using a big huge labs Trading Card making tool.  Use a photo from flickr, add some facts, print them out and play! Cool!  Pictureka-ish game boards could be created with clip art collections.  All themed around topics being covered in classes. Creative and fun.

Give a kid a voice and WOW! Election coverage from 5th grader.

Oct 27th, 2008
by pollyalida.
No comments yet

Election coverage from the Kathryn E. Cunningham/Canal Point Elementary in Florida. Damon Weaver, a 5th grader, is the news reporter covering Obama and McCain rallies in Florida. And he gets a terrific interview with Joe Biden. Well done Damon! And “well done” to the school too. What an amazing way to involve your students in the election process.

More videos from Canal Point KECT

Glogster: taking posters to a whole new level

Oct 24th, 2008
by pollyalida.
1 comment

Glogster for Education lets you create online posters with graphics, photos, text, video and audio. Wow, what a great tool for student projects. I can see lots of other fun uses for this in public libraries too.

Though Glogster has been around for a while, I just heard about it today in a twitter post from Buffy Hamilton. Seems the Glogster for Education service has just recently launched.

For a great example of a class project using Glogster, check out Buffy’s 11th grade lit project on Thoreau and Emerson.

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