Blogs

=Harlem Renaissance Party 2014=

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =Tech Talk 2014=

[|Manga High] A small group of eighth graders in Ms. Carger's Algebra class worked on a very cool-looking math program during 3rd period today! It's called Manga High. I'd never heard of it, but was instantly intrigued because I am a big advocate of gaming in education. The students were so engaged in this program that you could hear a pin drop while they were working! Posted 31st January by [|It's Great to BALibrarian] Location: [|Kenwood Academy High School 5015 S Blackstone Ave, Chicago] Labels: Gaming KAHSLibrary library media center manga Technology =**TECH TALK 2014**= 24 =[| Big takeaway: Sharing]= One thing I've learned as a professional, and as an adult, is that success in life is about sharing. Sharing is one of the many things happening today at CPS #TechTalk2014 being held at Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory High School. Though it is a district wide conference, one additional perk for me was the chance to network and catch up with my fellow librarians. Many of them are presenters here today and are doing wonderful things on their schools (which is why they are presenters!). > > K.C. Boyd is one of them. She is presenting during both the morning and afternoon sessions, but I got a chance to speak with her before lunch and she had some wonderful things to share. The result of our talk led me to create this blogger account as a means of sharing the wonderful things I am doing in my library with //my// students. > > And, I plan to challenge myself to blog at least twice per week and add photos or video to post to my wiki page. We will see how this goes! Posted 24th January by [|It's Great to BALibrarian] Location: [|Palmer Park Chicago] Labels: collaboration Conference Professional Development Technology
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Natural Hair Program
Posted by [|balibrarian] on April 18, 2012 · [|Leave a Comment] [|(Edit)] “An attitude of positive expectation is the mark of the superior personality.”

― [|Brian Tracy] So, going into this Naturals Hair Program, I had expectations. I expected that someone other than me might be interested. I expected that a few of my really good teacher friends and loyal students would show up to support. I expected that things would work out and that the program would be “nice”. Boy, did I underestimate the power of having high expectations! From the outset, things were working to make this program come together. A chance encounter and discussion with a stranger resulted in boxes of free hair products arriving at my school. Volunteers approached me to see what I needed for the program. Members of the school community RSVP’d by the dozens. My branch library just happened to have a copy of the documentary //Good Hair// in stock, the very one I’d planned to use to begin a dialogue about cultural perceptions and attitudes about hair! A student just happened to have a parent who worked at another hair care company who solicited //more// donated hair products for the event. And on and on… And, though the event itself was the Friday before a much needed Spring Break, from 4pm to 6pm, people came. And came. And continued to come…There was dialogue. There was openness. There was networking. There was an explosion of passion for a subject, technology, community participation (alumni, current students, teachers, parents, and there was cake! Our guest speaker and author, ChrisTia Donanldson is donating copies of her book, Thank God I’m Natural to our attendees. Needless to say, the event far exceeded my expectations. I kept telling one of my students that my magic number was 50. Well, more than 125 attendees showed up. It was a great event and we received many compliments and requests for similar programs. It feels good to provide service that my students and other members of my school community find useful and relevant. My student told me during the event, “Ms. Brown, you’re thinking too small”. From the mouths of babes!

The following was originally published November 18, 2010 at http://balibrarian.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/week-5-reflection-comic-strips/

This week, we experimented with making comic strips. I grew up reading //Nancy, Marmaduke (not that he ever said much),// sighing deeply over the daily //Love Is// cartoon, and many other comics in the newspapers. Making one of my own was something I’d never really thought about. Having done so this week gives me a newfound appreciation for the comics whose work I love, because it’s not easy to combine dialogue, text, and limited space to communicate for work or pleasure. Using the comic strip maker itself was not difficult. It only got a little tricky for me at first when trying to insert text into the clouds, and to try to resize them, but I eventually caught on. I was able to create a three panel strip that hopefully informs the reader about the benefits of joining our book club. Of course I could immediately see how teachers could use this tool with students: Currently, our school’s ILT focus is **summarizing**. Having students make a comic strip summarizing either a chapter of a novel, an entire novel, scientific concept, or how to conjugate the verb //etre// in French class are all possibilities. Beyond summary, students can certainly use comic strips to enhance presentations to the class using a projector, as can teachers, and really, for anything expository. Teachers might consider using their created strips to create overhead projector sheets they can project to the class (if they don’t feel LCD projectors are readily accessible or available, or whatever). I was truly pleased with how striking my final product looked. While I was creating the comic strip, I couldn’t yet envision just how polished it would look, or how clearly the images and text combined would sell my ideas. It’s pretty cool, to say the least. Lastly, being able to share the strip on other networks adds to the appeal, thus making this tool, multi-dimensional. I am going to do more work with this in my school.

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