Buffy Hamilton's Blog, page 11

2014 BCTLA Summer Institute Presentations and Resources

It was truly a pleasure earlier this week to spend time with the wonderful teacher librarians of BCTLA—-they are truly among the nicest, most enthusiastic, and most progressive groups of librarians I’ve had the honor to speak to in my career. I am truly grateful for their hospitality, their energy, and their passionate participation during the Summer Institute this past Tuesday! I’d like to give an extra word of thanks to Arlene Anderson—she was the ultimate hostess and went above and beyond...

Growing Learning Communities Through School Libraries and Makerspaces-Creating, Constructing, Collaborating, Contributing

Thank you once again to Jennifer Finley-McGill, David Kates, and the Independent School Library Exchange of Southern California for inviting me to speak at their summer retreat in beautiful Ojai, California. I am grateful for their hospitality as well as my friend and hostess Elisabeth Abarbanel for treating me to a great week of fun, learning, and sharing! The slides below are from yesterday’s presentation about the possibilities for makerspaces and school libraries. Please note all links re...

Framing and Developing an Inquiry Stance for Independent Research Projects

A heartfelt thank you to The Thacher School Dean of Faculty Jeff Hooper and the wonderful participants of our workshop today on supporting students in independent research/capstone projects using strategies and models for inquiry. The first half of our workshop began with using the write around text on text strategy to help us explore and unpack our experiences, challenges, and successes with students and research projects. We began by engaging in a write around these questions and data:

This...

Librarians and Teachers as Instructional Partners: �Written Conversations with Write Arounds Text on Text for Inquiry, Participation, and �Social Construction of Meanings

Many thanks to the gracious librarians of ISLE for inviting me to join them for their summer retreat and for the opportunity to share the structure of writing around text on text for inquiry driven learning with students of all ages. We had a wonderful hour of sharing, learning, and thinking about applications for this strategy for inquiry focused activities with our learners!

Resources of Interests

First Efforts at Writing Around Texts on Text
Write Around Texts on Text Effort 2 with Emily Russ...

Rolling and Writing Collaborative Poetry with Verb Whiteboards

Rolling and writing with Verb whiteboards and easels

Yesterday my fellow librarian Jennifer Lund, Language Arts teacher Darrell Cicchetti, and I did a little impromptu planning to organize a fun end of the year celebration of the year-long “Independent Reading” initiative for Darrell’s 7th period 10th CP Language Arts students. After some housekeeping business of checking each student’s library account for any outstanding books, we gave students a tour of new furniture arrivals(choices inspire...

Partnering for Possibilities: NHS Media Center, Gwinnett County Public Library, 3D Printing, and More

Click to view slideshow.

The grand finale to Teen Tech Week 2014 was the first step in a partnership (more details later in this post!) between our media center and our friends from the Gwinnett County Public Library. Training Manager Christopher Baker, Information Technology Director Michael Casey, and Grayson Assistant Branch Manager Steve Thomas joined us for three lunch/guided study periods to introduce 3D printing to our teens. Christina Gangwisch, Public Services Librarian from our neig...

New DMLcentral Post: Writing as “The Mass Literate Experience” of Our Age and What It Might Mean for Libraries

“For perhaps the first time in the history of mass literacy, writing seems to be eclipsing reading as the literate experience of consequence.What happens when writing (and not just reading) becomes the grounds of mass literate experience, when more and more people ‘think about audiences’ as part of their daily routine engagement with literacy?How does a social shift in that and energy toward writing affect the ways that people develop their literacy and understand its worth? And finally, how...

Teen Tech Week DIY 2014: Duct Tape, Squishy Circuits, and Makey Makey

On our first day of Teen Tech Week, we had fun creating tech cord covers and friendship bracelets; several students returned Tuesday to continue working on those crafts. On Wednesday, we brought out multiple rolls of decorative duct tape in different colors and patterns for students to use for creating decorative accessories. While we scaffolded the activity with handouts and videos of instructions for some crafty creations, many students used these resources as a springboard to devise their...

Teen Tech Week 2014 Day 1: Crafting, Experimenting, and Learning by Doing with Embroidery Floss

Teen Tech Week Day 1, NHS Media Center

We’re celebrating YALSA’s Teen Tech Week here at Norcross High and love this year’s DIY theme. We’re doing a combination of high tech and low tech activities with students this week; students can sign up to come during their lunch/guided study period to participate in the activities while eating lunch and enjoying the company of their peers.

Click to view slideshow.

On Monday, March 10, we spent three fun-filled hours creating friendship bracelets and tech...

Advances in Citation Management Technologies: How Do They Shape Inquiry and Literacies?

Two years ago, I adopted EasyBib as my primary citation subscription service for a multitude of reasons, but the driving factor was to spend less time on the mechanics of citation and more time helping students and teachers dwell in research projects from an inquiry oriented stance. Although we had always had high database usage statistics, that did not always translate into those sources finding their way into student projects and papers to the extent we would expect given our high number of...