IMC News Blog

Video Games in the Library?

2009-12-18T09:15:00.001-06:00

Sarah Wethern -- School Library Journal, 12/16/2009

In Colorado, as in other parts of the country, video game collections are hot. Although the John C. Fremont Library District in Florence, CO circulates everything from the Gamecube to the Nintendo DS, most of our library systems stick to the three most popular video game consoles—the Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 2 (PS2). (At the moment, PS2 is more popular than its more recently released sibling, PS3, but if the latter’s prize plunges, things may change.)

If you’re thinking of creating a video game collection, you may be worried about theft. Although it’s a valid concern, several libraries say that video games aren’t any more at risk than DVDs. (Since video games are often circulating and rarely on the shelf, they may actually be in less danger of disappearing than DVDs.) In fact, when it comes to maintaining video game collections, the biggest challenge confronting many libraries isn’t theft—it’s replacing worn out or scratched items. Still, just to be on the safe side, some libraries, including the Bemis Public Library in Littleton, CO, and the Laramie County Library in Wyoming, have created displays with empty video game cases, which means that patrons must bring the cases to the circulation desk to receive the games.

How do most libraries purchase their video games? It varies. Some of the bigger systems like Pikes Peak Library District in Colorado Springs and the Douglas County Libraries purchase video games from vendors such as Baker & Taylor. Smaller libraries, many with just one location, are more willing to buy used video games from local game stores or even accept patrons’ donations. While these low-budget options may result in more work, they’re a great way for smaller libraries to increase their video game collections without emptying their wallets.Word spreads quickly about circulating video game collections. While one library marketed the service with posters, most said the best advertisement of the new collection was the fact that there were hardly any games on the shelf. Video games in libraries seem to promote themselves.
Gaming in libraries has grown to epic proportions and it’s bound to get bigger. So why not take the next step and circulate your video games? Your teens will be glad you did.—Sarah Wethern, teen librarian, Pueblo (CO) City-County Library District

Morris Award Finalists Announced

2009-12-18T09:09:00.002-06:00

True to its name, the William C. Morris YA Debut Award honors young adult books written by first-time authors. Started in 2009, the award aims to promote titles that appeal to a wide range of teens. The five finalists for the 2010 award are Ash by Malinda Lo, Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, The Everafter by Amy Huntley, Flash Burnout by L. K. Madigan, and hold still by Nina LaCour. To learn more about the award (and to get a free customizable bookmark), visit the Young Adult Library Services Association’s Web site. And be sure to stay tuned: the winner will be announced on Monday, January 18, 2010, at the American Library Association’s midwinter meeting in Boston.

• Wikipedia Co-Founder Launches Web Site for PreK-12

2009-12-03T16:26:00.000-06:00

Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, has launched a new Web site designed to gather and organize educational videos for students ages 3 to 18. The site, WatchKnow.org, currently features more than 11,000 videos across 2,000 categories on subjects such as math, science, and history. The nonprofit site features new software that allows wiki-style collaboration among users. "Think of it as YouTube meets Wikipedia, filtering out everything but quality educational videos," Sanger said. (From AASL Hotlinks, 12/09)

Policy Brief Calls for a Reform of Teacher Preparation

2009-12-03T16:24:00.000-06:00

A policy brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education makes the case that too many teachers arrive to their first day of teaching unprepared for the challenges of a diverse set of learners. The brief lays out five critical areas where teachers must develop competency before entering the classroom. The brief recommends that the federal government encourage the creation of performance-based assessments that fairly and accurately measure the effectiveness of individual teacher candidates and preparation programs, and introduce a common set of standards for a candidate's performance before he or she becomes a full-fledged teacher. (from AASL Hotlinks, 12/09)

What's the point of having a media specialist if they aren't specialists in the media forms of the day?

2009-04-30T14:26:00.002-05:00

A student posted this on his school librarian's Twitter account. The conversation that began with that question proved to redefine every one's ideas about what libraries and librarians should be. To read their conversation and thoughts go to: http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334/post/1860043986.html?nid=2413&rid=#reg_visitor_id

Educational Computer Games

2009-04-30T14:20:00.001-05:00

Spring is here! It's warming up, and kids are enjoying playing outdoors. This season, however, also brings rain, and kids often get stuck inside instead. Next time that happens, show them this super online indoor playground. There are two dozen games that will keep them amused, fascinated, and learning, for a long time. All of the games and activities are fun, but also challenging.

http://www.funbrain.com/brain/SweepsBrain/sweepsbrain.html

Nation’s Report Card: 17-Year-Olds See Few Reading and Math Gains

2009-04-30T14:17:00.000-05:00

The average test scores of 17-year-olds in reading and math haven’t changed much since the early 1970s, but kids ages 9 and 13 have seen significant gains in both areas, says the lastest report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Gaps in reading scores between white and black students have narrowed for all three age groups since 1971, though those gaps did not change significantly from 2004 to 2008. Reading score gaps between white and Hispanic students were smaller in 2008 than in 1975 at ages 9 and 17, though there were no significant changes from 2004 to 2008. To read the report in full, go to: http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6655327.html?nid=2413&source=link&rid=765062269

What do noodles, art, frozen food and the American Red Cross all have in common?

2009-03-03T13:01:00.002-06:00

Give up? They all have a celebration in March. March is National Noodle Month, Youth Art Month, National Frozen Food Month, and American Red Cross month. For a complete list of all of the reasons to celebrate March visit http://www.theteacherscorner.net/calendars/march.php

DOE Report Praises Improving Literacy Through School Libraries Program

2009-02-24T13:38:00.002-06:00

Students attending schools that received grant money from the Improving Literacy Through School Libraries (LSL) program perform higher on state reading tests than those in schools that didn’t participate in the program, says a recent report by the Department of Education. The program, originally created by Wisconsin educators to avoid losing funding as the result of low test scores related to the No Child Left Behind Act requirements, is now in its sixth successful year. Overall, the goal is to increase instruction related to literacy skills, specifically research skills. The full report can be read at: http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6638887.html

Friend no more?

2009-02-24T13:23:00.003-06:00

Forgot what is due the next day and want to call the teacher to double check. No problem. Want to "friend" your teacher on Facebook. Banned. The School District of Elmbrook, in Brookfield, WI, has recently created a policy banning communication on instant messaging or social networking applications not sponsored by the school district.
The policy, approved by the school board on February 10, stipulated a range of “practices considered irresponsible,” including personal communication between staff and students via social networking and IM.
During the school day, accessing sites deemed problematic is less of a problem as many schools have filters in place that prevent anyone, staff or students, from logging on to Facebook, MySpace, and even select email servers. But policing this new ban during a teacher’s off-hours may prove tricky. While the restricted sites aren’t named, it’s understood that these popular applications, perhaps even Twitter, are included.
Still, Elmbrook does allow students to communicate with teachers and other staff through email and other district-sponsored applications. The district reportedly plans to add other social networking sites that have an educational component in coming years. For now, though, writing a note on a teacher’s MySpace profile or transmitting content to students through Facebook is off limits.
The full article, as well as more information, may be viewed in the February 2009 Edition of School Library Journal.

Apply Now for the Library Diversity Internship

2009-02-20T12:53:00.001-06:00

McIntyre Library seeks a junior or senior UW – Eau Claire student with an interest in librarianship and the ability to bring a diverse perspective to our library and our profession. The McIntyre Library Diversity Internship provides 10 hours per week of professional library work under the direction of a mentor librarian, and the intern will be paid $12.00 per hour.* The internship begins September 1, 2009 and ends May 14, 2010, with time off during the winter and spring breaks. The intern may choose to focus on one of the following areas of librarianship: Reference and Instruction, Collection Development, Education / Curricular Materials / School Librarianship, or Special Collections & Archives. The internship also offers the following benefits:

**Travel, room, board, and registration fee for a state or regional librarian conference.

**Travel, room, and board for visiting the UW – Madison and/or UW- Milwaukee Graduate Schools of Library and Information Science as a prospective student.

You are warmly invited to apply if you:

**Are a junior or senior enrolled at UW – Eau Claire
**Have a interest in a career in librarianship
**Can bring diverse perspective to McIntyre Library
**Have experience working with diverse communities

Application procedure:

**Write a brief essay (no more than 500 words) addressing your interest in a career in librarianship, the area of librarianship that most interests you, and your ability to enhance the diversity of McIntyre Library.

**Submit the names, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses of two references: one UW – Eau Claire faculty member, and one work or volunteer supervisor.

Please submit applications to Colleen McFarland, Head of Special Collections & University Archivist, McIntyre Library (mcfarlcd@uwec.edu). Application due date is April 1, 2009. Decisions will be announced no later than April 30.

African American Read-In, February 10 @ 10:00

2009-02-09T09:37:00.001-06:00

Help celebrate Black History Month when the Office of Multicultural Affairs and McIntyre Library co-host the 5th Annual African American Read-In for the UW-Eau Claire Children's Center on Tuesday at 10:00.

The event will feature a short story presentation by Dwight Watson and Kati Tvaruzka in the 2nd floor Breezeway. Each child attending will take home a commemorative bookmark and a book by an African American author.

More information about the African American Read-In's 20th anniversary can be found at http://www.ncte.org/action/aari.

Walter Dean Myer's Newest Book Available for Free Online!

2009-02-05T14:01:00.001-06:00

Coinciding with the February 10 release of Dope Sick, Walter Dean Myers’s latest title, the entire book will be available online for free reading at AdLit.org. An entire section devoted to writing endeavors, related activities and online resources for teachers, parents and students is also available. The section includes a video interview with Myers about his work and a reading guide.
Myers has made this generous opportunity available to AdLit.org to reach teachers, parents, mentors, and anyone who can help positively influence the choices young people make. He believes that teens that read can make better decisions, and through this effort, more at-risk teens can be reached. (Library School Journal)

YALSA Quick Picks For Teen Detainees

2009-02-05T13:54:00.002-06:00

YALSA has added a new category to their recommended book lists- "Quick Picks for Detainees". The books are selected for teens ages 14-19 and were specifically chosen for incarcerated teens. Since many librarians serving detention centers can’t all bring in hardbacks and purchase everything on the list, incoming committee chair Amy Chaney from Alameda County Library, Fremont, California, has created a subgroup of titles that will work best in juvenile detention centers, broken down by paperback and hardback. To access this list along with YALSA's many other lists visit: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/quickpicks/qphome.cfm

Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools for Young Learners

2009-02-04T09:40:00.001-06:00

This THEJournal.com article gives a brief description of the top ten most important, quickly growing, or useful Web 2.0 tools. The user friendly guide is an excellent resource for teachers, parents, or students looking for an easy definition of a new tool. The article can be viewed in its entirety at: http://www.thejournal.com/articles/23898/

2009 Newbery Award Honor Books Chosen

2009-01-28T11:03:00.005-06:00

Savvy by Ingrid Law

For generations, the Beaumont family has harbored a magical secret. They each possess a “savvy”—a special supernatural power that strikes when they turn thirteen. Grandpa Bomba moves mountains, her older brothers create hurricanes and spark electricity . . . and now it’s the eve of Mibs’s big day. As if waiting weren’t hard enough, the family gets scary news two days before Mibs’s birthday: Poppa has been in a terrible accident. Mibs develops the singular mission to get to the hospital and prove that her new power can save her dad. So she sneaks onto a salesman’s bus . . . only to find the bus heading in the opposite direction. Suddenly Mibs finds herself on an unforgettable odyssey that will force her to make sense of growing up—and of other people, who might also have a few secrets hidden just beneath the skin.

The day D Foster enters Neeka and her best friend’s lives, the world opens up for them. D comes from a world vastly different from their safe Queens neighborhood, and through her, the girls see another side of life that includes loss, foster families and an amount of freedom that makes the girls envious. Although all of them are crazy about Tupac Shakur’s rap music, D is the one who truly understands the place where he’s coming from, and through knowing D, Tupac’s lyrics become more personal for all of them. The girls are thirteen when D’s mom swoops in to reclaim D—and as magically as she appeared, she now disappears from their lives. Tupac is gone, too, after another shooting; this time fatal. As the narrator looks back, she sees lives suspended in time, and realizes that even all-too-brief connections can touch deeply.

A calico cat, about to have kittens, hears the lonely howl of a chained-up hound deep in the backwaters of the bayou. She dares to find him in the forest, and the hound dares to befriend this cat, this feline, this creature he is supposed to hate. They are an unlikely pair, about to become an unlikely family. Ranger urges the cat to hide underneath the porch, to raise her kittens there because Gar-Face, the man living inside the house, will surely use them as alligator bait should he find them. But they are safe in the Underneath...as long as they stay in the Underneath. Kittens, however, are notoriously curious creatures. And one kitten's one moment of curiosity sets off a chain of events that is astonishing, remarkable, and enormous in its meaning. For everyone who loves Sounder, Shiloh, and The Yearling, for everyone who loves the haunting beauty of writers such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Flannery O'Connor, and Carson McCullers, Kathi Appelt spins a harrowing yet keenly sweet tale about the power of love -- and its opposite, hate -- the fragility of happiness and the importance of making good on your promises.

It is 1896. Cuba has fought three wars for independence and still is not tree. People have been rounded up in reconcentration camps with too little food and too much illness. Rosa is a nurse, but she dares not go to the camps. So she turns hidden caves into hospitals for those who know how to find her. Black, white, Cuban, Spanish—Rosa does her best for everyone. Yet who can heal a country so torn apart by war? Acclaimed poet Margarita Engle has created another breathtaking portrait of Cuba.

2009 Newbery Award Winner

2009-01-28T09:41:00.004-06:00

2009 Newbery Award Winner

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.
He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family. . . . Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, the graveyard book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages.

Caldecott Award Winner and Honor Books Announced!

2009-01-28T09:14:00.005-06:00

2009 Caldecott Award Winner

The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson, pictures by Beth Krommes

A spare, patterned text and glowing pictures explore the origins of light that make a house a home in this bedtime book for young children. Naming nighttime things that are both comforting and intriguing to preschoolers—a key, a bed, the moon—this timeless book illuminates a reassuring order to the universe.

Honor Books

A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever written and illustrated by Marla Frazee

When James and Eamon go to a week of Nature Camp and stay at Eamon's grandparents' house, it turns out that their free time spent staying inside, eating waffles, and playing video games is way more interesting than nature. But sometimes things work out best when they don't go exactly as planned. In this moving and hilarious celebration of young boys, childhood friendships, and the power of the imagination, Marla Frazee captures the very essence of summer vacation and what it means to be a kid.

A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams by Jen Bryant, illustrated by Melissa Sweet
In this picture book biography of William Carlos Williams, Bryant's engaging prose and Sweet's stunning mixed-media illustrations celebrate the amazing man who found a way to earn a living and to honor his calling to be a poet.

How I Learned Geography by Uri Shulevitz

Having fled from war in their troubled homeland, a boy and his family are living in poverty in a strange country. Food is scarce, so when the boy’s father brings home a map instead of bread for supper, at first the boy is furious. But when the map is hung on the wall, it floods their cheerless room with color. As the boy studies its every detail, he is transported to exotic places without ever leaving the room, and he eventually comes to realize that the map feeds him in a way that bread never could.

Find Solutions for Helping English Language Learners

2008-12-08T13:05:00.001-06:00

Sign up at The Big Deal Book Web site for hELLo!, a free monthly ELL e-newsletter that
includes information about new grants, upcoming contests, the latest educational research and
a wealth of information on interactive print and online resources for students, teachers,
librarians, principals and others involved in the education of English language learners.

http://www.bigdealbook.com/newsletter_signup.aspx

Confused about Copyright and Fair Use?

2008-11-19T13:43:00.002-06:00

Visit the Center for Social Media's website http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/fair_use_and_teaching for information about Fair Use and Copyright as it relates to school libraries. A new report was recently released (and available on the site) relating to Media Literacy Education and includes valuable information for librarians and teachers alike.

Gay America For Teens

2008-11-19T13:33:00.002-06:00

In Gay America: Struggle for Equality (Abrams/Amulet, 2008)—the first comprehensive history on this subject for teens—Linas Alsenas chronicles how gay men and women have lived, worked, and loved for the past 125 years. Using archival images, illustrations, and full-color photos, Alsenas, a U.S. citizen who lives in Sweden with his partner, takes us from Colonial times to the present debate over gay marriage. First reviewed in SLJ, this book has opened up more resources for gay and questioning young adults. To read a full interview with Linas Alsenas, visit http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6613800.html?nid=2413&rid=reg_visitor_id&source=link.

Alliance Creates New Approach for Federal Education Standards

2008-11-05T13:56:00.002-06:00

To improve the relationship between states and school districts and the federal government, the Learning First Alliance -- a partnership of 18 major national education associations -- has put forth six principles for "appropriate and constructive federal involvement in education." These principles recommend modification to recent federal education involvement, including the No Child Left Behind Act. To view the recommendations: http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/resources.dyn/LFAFederalRoleFINAL.pdf

New Study Supports Collaboration in the Classroom

2008-11-05T13:47:00.002-06:00

Edutopia has published a new study by Linda Darling-Hammond. Darling-Hammond's study involved classrooms and collaborative learning. She found that students who were a part of collaborative learning for the majority of the day scored better on tests, had fewer behavioral issues, and were overall more enthusiastic about learning in general. The full article can be viewed at:

http://www.edutopia.org/inquiry-project-learning-research

Story Time with International Flair on Tuesday!

2008-10-27T14:33:00.001-05:00

Nine foreign exchange students enrolled in the English as a Second Language class "Integrated Skills" will read during a story time session held in McIntyre Library. Youth from the Children's Center will gather for story time at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28, in the Instructional Media Center on the lower level of the library. The international students will each read a book they've selected and help education reference librarian Kati Tvaruzka lead activities, songs and dances. International students participating are from South Korea, Japan, China and Thailand. Click here for more information.

AASL Has New Website

2008-10-02T11:53:00.002-05:00

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has a new website:

http://www.aasl.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/index.cfm

This website offers numerous resources, suggestions, and ways to connect for school librarians.