Book BoLOGna with Mrs. Driggers

Makerspaces are new to me. The elementary school that I am working at does not have one, but I have heard much about them since I started my SLIS degree. When I think about Makerspaces I always think about new technology like 3D printers and robots. While looking through some Blogs I found one that really interested me. How to Build An Awesome Makerspace Resource Library by Diana Rendina shares why books are important in the Makerspace also.  I enjoyed Diana Rendina's Blog. She shares a lot of information about Makerspaces and has a lot of useful suggestions. This particular Blog stuck out to me because as I mentioned before when I think about Makerspaces, I think about technology. When I begin to plan for my own future Makerspace, I begin thinking of the tools and supplies that my students would want to use and would be able to handle. Rendina shares that books are useful to support students with the tools and skills they are using. Once students get started with a new Maker-skil...

I would like to begin this blog post with how inspirational the videos on Cyberbullying.org are. I watched every single video and wanted more when I was finished. It is inspiring to see how students are standing up to Cyberbullying and exclusion, as well as other issues. I thought of ways to incorporate many of these videos into my fourth-grade classroom to help my own students understand their impact. After reading "How it's done: Incorporating Digital Citizenship into your Everyday Curriculum" I began to think about how I could integrate digital citizenship and antibullying through the year in an elementary classroom. Having students learn to teach is a great strategy. In an elementary school, I could have the older 3-5 students create projects to share with the K-2 students.   I think one of the things that surprised me when reading "From the Sandbox to the Inbox: Comparing the Acts, Impacts, and Solutions of Bullying in K-12, Higher Education, and the Workplace...

 Instagram in the School Library As I began to work on my hypothetical school media center social media, I instantly remembered how awful I am about posting on social media. I have Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and other social media accounts, and yet I create a post less than once a month across all platforms. I am bad at remembering to take pictures as I try to live in the moment. I know that social media is a great way to share information with families so I will have to schedule times to do this once it becomes my job.  After I got past the initial dread, I knew immediately which platform I would use, Instagram. Instagram is easy to use and it is popular with all ages. My friends, coworkers, siblings, and even my parents know how to use Instagram. Once I figured out the platform came the tricky part. I had to create an account for a school and library that do not exist, but I wanted to model this after what I hope to do in the future. I created an account for The...

 Accessibility Tools  Tool for visual impairments or reading disabilities As an Elementary reading teacher and future librarian, I spend a lot of my time trying to encourage all of my students to read and become emersed in books. I teach a variety of students each year and I have taught several students with dyslexia or other reading disabilities. Reading does not come easy to these students, but I have found that they still love a good story. A tool that I have used in the past to help these students is Librivox .  Librivox is a free collection of Audiobooks. These books are read by volunteers and are able to be downloaded by anyone. I like to encourage my students when listening to audiobooks to follow along in the text. This strategy can help build vocabulary and fluency. Having students with reading disabilities listen to audiobooks and follow along has helped my students become more willing readers. I use an audio recording of the Secret Garden each year from Librivo...