Dog-eared & Overdue

Author: Kate Gukeisen

  • Memorial Day

    Memorial Day

    In Flanders Fields by John McCrae (1872-1918)     In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.   We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset…

  • 3D Printers, Creativity, and Innovation

    Creativity and innovation are at the heart of my library school experience at Syracuse University. 3D Printing is an innovative technology being adopted by some public and school libraries as a tool to foster innovation and creativity. In my Motivating 21st Century Learners course, we were asked to think of ways 3D printers could encourage…

  • This is a Library

       What’s a library? This is about the Carthage Free Library. I’d love to hear about your public, academic, or special library. My library is located in a charming building on Budd Street, but its services are at the Farmer’s Market, the school gym, and anywhere the community gathers. My library is summer reading, water balloon…

  • Seizing the Teachable Moment in "What’s a Library?"

    Over the weekend, video producer Michael Rosenblum’s Huffington Post blog “What’s a Library?” generated quite a bit of discussion in my library-loving world. Mr. Rosenblum, who admits to never having gone inside the now-demolished library that inspired his post, questions the need for libraries in a world where he says everything can be found on…

  • Library Land

    This post is inspired by  a class called Motivating 21st Century Learners at Syracuse University.  I’ve included a number of links  to articles and video clips about games and gamification throughout the post so that you can explore this topic further. At left: My team’s game creation, a spin-off of CandyLand to facilitate learning about the resources…

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…