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Enjoying the Ride
A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving at the destination. -Lao Tzu Most of the time this blog is about library land, today it is about military life. The fluid geography that comes with our military lifestyle has provided me with opportunities and experiences that I would not have…
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Supporting Technology Integration for Teachers
School Librarians can provide important in-house opportunities for professional development, especially in the arena of the integration of technical tools that support 21st Century Learning in the classroom. Teaching teachers is clearly different from teaching younger students. In spite of the differences, the ARCS Model of Motivational Design, which focuses on the four motivational elements of attention, relevance,…
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Initiating Collaboration for Guided Inquiry
In this post, I explore some of the challenges new school librarians face in collaborating with educators who are already strapped for time and stressed out about the pressures of their ongoing transition to implement the Common Core Standards. Collaboration takes time, and if teacher librarians want to be included in learning partnerships with classroom…
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Motivational Mixer
American Phychological Theorist David McClelland had a theory about motivation that you are probably familiar with, even if you didn’t know exactly what it was called. The Achievement Motivation Theory is one of those so-simple-yet-so-complex ideas that is easily grasped and multilayered. Simply put, it is the idea that we find intrinsic motivation through three…
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Failure is Always an Option
At our house, we love the Mythbusters. As soon as we saw the “Larry’s Lawn Chair Balloon” episode we were hooked. We love the Mythbuster’s enthusiasm for investigation, their willingness to look at things from different perspectives, and we especially love their willingness to fail, and fail, and fail again to prove or disprove a…
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One Size Does Not Fit All
This post is an edited, enhanced, and otherwise reworked version of an internal class blog post from a class called Motivating 21st Century Learners at Syracuse University. I am posting a series of these because the topics are close to my heart, they illustrate part of my library school journey, and I believe will get…
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Roadmap for New Beginnings
This post is an edited, enhanced, and otherwise reworked version of an internal class blog post from a class called Motivating 21st Century Learners at Syracuse University. I am posting a series of these because the topics are close to my heart, they illustrate part of my library school journey, and I believe will get…
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Tell Me a Chocolate Story
I had the pleasure last weekend of participating in a story time for military families on Fort Drum. Tell Me a Story is a program hosted by the Military Child Education Coalition and is intended to promote literacy and, according to the MCEC website, to “empower Military Children by using literature and their own stories in…
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The Lego Lady
I am greeted as the “Lego Lady” when I enter my library and I couldn’t be happier about it. I’m not the first library Lego Lady, and I won’t be the last, but I’m glad I am one for the moment. A few weeks ago, I met with the library director and she mentioned that she…
Dog-eared & Overdue 