School Library Blogs

This month, the Building a Culture of Collaboration (BACC) co-bloggers are sharing information about school library and librarian blogs. Each of us will spotlight various blogs and bloggers and share why we think these sites are useful resources for school librarians.

Edublog-Awards-1mb7e9dEach year, Edublogs-hosted blogs in various categories are nominated for the “eddies.” (Note: BACC is hosted by Edublogs.) “The purpose of the Edublog awards is to promote and demonstrate the educational values of these social media. The best aspects include that it creates a fabulous resource for educators to use for ideas on how social media is used in different contexts, with a range of different learners. It introduces us all to new sites that we might not have found if not for the awards process.”

Congratulations to Katie Dolan and Kathy Counterman, two Texas school librarians, whose sites earned #15eddies in the “best library blog” category.

Katie Dolan is the school librarian at James Randolph Elementary (JRE) School library in the Katie Independent School District. Katie and her library program earned the top award for the best library blog. Edna Mae Fielder Elementary School Librarian Kathy Counterman, also from Katy ISD, earned the third-place best library blog award.

School librarians use their library blogs for many purposes, including promoting books, reading, and literacy events, publishing student work as well as educators’ lessons, and interacting with students, classroom teachers, administrators, parents, and the community at-large. School librarians can analyze the content of these two bloggers’ sites to get ideas to implement in their own teaching, to lively up their own library blogs, or to get ideas for starting a school library blog in 2016.

#15eddies graphic used with permission

Coteaching is Fun!

One of the important aspects of instructional partnerships that I think is not emphasized enough is this: coteaching is fun! Last spring, I was observing a preservice school librarian graduate student coteaching a lesson in an elementary school library. When the class was filing out of the library, the teacher turned to the graduate student and the practicing librarian and said, “I love hanging out with you.” Educators do get lonely when they are isolated from their adult peers.

Last March/April, American Association of School Librarians (AASL) President Susan Ballard and I co-guest edited the “Coteaching” issue of the Knowledge Quest Journal: http://www.ala.org/aasl/aaslpubsandjournals/knowledgequest/archive/v40no4

Along with several contributors to that issue, we presented a Webinar on “Coteaching” for AASL members. At the end of that program, I shared a 2.5-minute advocacy digital video I created as a sample for a TWU storytelling class: “Coteach: Step Out of the Box.”

http://animoto.com/play/E3Vmk861WPIKbSmNQ83Hqg#

I offer it here as a visual reminder that collaboration is worth the investment in time because coteaching is FUN!

Do you have a fun coteaching experience to share?