Monthly Archives: January 2019

January 31, 2019

Book A Librarian

I recently attended a IB DP librarians’ workshop. The best part of participating was networking with other librarians and learning about what they are doing. I heard about Book a A Librarian from a secondary school librarian working in a Swedish international school, and I knew right away that it was something I wanted to offer my students when I returned to school.

Book A Librarian is simply an opportunity for students to book a time with me to look at resources. Priority is given to students starting their extended essay journey, but all high school students are welcome to request a time for their school research. The ultimate goal is to improve research at school.

Screenshot of Book a Librarian form

So far, in two weeks, I have had two sessions, and I have another scheduled for next week. I have had lots of fun hearing the students explain their understanding of their topic and articulating the reasons behind their interest. I’m hoping that they will spread the word, not only of the service, but of what they have learned about research from going through the process with me.

The main points I try to cover with the student are:

  1. The library catalog.
    • We look first at our print sources, especially for those classes whose teachers have listed print sources as a requirement.
  2. Our libguides
    • HS Research – a collection of sources divided by subject. I’ve made a point to include our subscription databases at the top, as students don’t always take the time to access them through our library catalog.
    • Extended Essay – a collection of documents and sources for the extended essay students.
    • CAC Referencing – links to citation engines and quick reference citation posters.
  3. Database trawl.
    • We go through our databases, using the keywords we’ve identified. We always go from the simplest to the most complex, e.g., Britannica Online, Facts on File Modern World History, J-Stor.
  4. Keep track of your sources.
    • If the student hasn’t yet created a NoodleTools account, we go through that set up and I demo the main features. We don’t use NoodleTools as a school-wide research assistant, but the more I use it, the more I like it and encourage students and teachers to use.

I set up a meeting document where I enter the student’s name and research question or topic when I receive the request through a Google Form. I enter my initial ideas for the research focus, and I take notes during the meeting. After the meeting, I summarize our process and email the student for reference. That email also goes in my meeting document. Here is the document template I am working on for the moment.  I may end up tweaking it a bit to better document the sessions.

I also set up a folder on my Google Drive for the session. In this folder are the session notes, and any journal articles in pdf that I locate for the student. In this way, the student contributes to future scholarship at CAC.

I have high hopes for Book A Librarian and I hope to be able to share of its wild success in June.

January 24, 2019

7 Days to Learn to Blog with Edublogs

I’ve just finished my personal blogging course with Edublogs, and as a reward, Edublogs is upgrading my account to a pro account for a year.

But, even if they hadn’t, I’d still have enjoyed the course. It’s laid out super well in 10 manageable steps, and you can totally complete it in the 7 days you have left to take advantage of the Edublogs Holiday Gift. Deadline is January 31.

I’ve been a blogger for a while on other platforms, but I’ll admit not since micro-blogging on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter became easy. I am looking forward to retaking blogging as a reflection tool, and this course on personal blogging was a perfect fit.

Here are the 10 steps of the course:  (I’m lazy and don’t want to type  it out, so this is a screenshot from the course.)  The screenshot is linked to the course’s landing page. 10 steps to a personal blog

The very best part of the course is the support given by Kathleen Morris, the Edublogs instructor. She’s friendly, interested, and really tries to extend your understanding and practice. Thanks, Kathleen!

 

 

January 22, 2019

Working with Plugins

I’m enjoying my Edublogs blogging course. I’m on step 8, woot!  This step is all about working with plugins.

What are plugins? There’s like little apps you can activate for your blog that let you add functionality. Here are three to try.

Compfight – When working with students, it seems like no matter how much I encourage them to use our Britannica Image Quest subscription to locate images for their school projects, they just Google them. It doesn’t help that the Explore feature of the Google apps allows them to insert images without even leaving the application. I like Compfight because it provides that same ease with the assurance that the images have been cleared for use with a Creative Commons license.

Here’s an image. I entered computer in the search field, and found this beauty. I clicked on the size I wanted, and it popped up in this editor, with attribution to the creator.

It"s all about finding the right connectionCreative Commons License Matthias Ripp via Compfight

The downsides to the plugin is that the search results depend on the tags associated with the images. Entering the search term blogging for example, doesn’t return any results, and the search term blog, gives several Impressionistic digital images that are not associated in my mind with blogs at all, but obviously they do to someone.

Alignment doesn’t seem to work well either. You can see the attribution text to the right of the image, instead of being below it and centered. Still, for a quick boost of inspiration and illustration, it’s easy to use and provide credit.

Another plug in I’ve tried is the Visual Editor for widgets. With this plugin, we can easily create or edit widgets. If you look at the sidebar, you’ll see a widget I created showing the cover of the book I’m currently reading.

It’s easy enough to create an image using html, but having the Visual Editor makes it even easier to set size, alignment, alt text, and a link.

The third plugin is EasyTables, which I think I’m going to like a lot because it will make formatting my top ten lists easier.

I currently enter the image and the text separately. I tried wrapping the text around the image, but it doesn’t really work. Having a table with transparent borders takes care of the layout for me.

Here are my top 5 circulating books for the month of December 2018.

#5 – Booked, by Jason Alexander.

Twelve-year-old Nick loves soccer and hates books, but soon learns the power of words as he wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams.

#4 – Ties That Bind, Ties That Break, by Lensey Namioka

Ailin’s life takes a different turn when she defies the traditions of upper class Chinese society by refusing to have her feet bound.

#3 – Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party, by Ying Chang Compestine

Starting in 1972 when she is nine years old, Ling, the daughter of two doctors, struggles to make sense of the communists’ Cultural Revolution, which empties stores of food, homes of appliances deemed “bourgeois,” and people of laughter.

#2 – Refugee, by Alan Gratz

Although separated by continents and decades, three refugees embark on harrowing journeys in search of refuge, discovering shocking connections that tie their stories together.

#1 – The War that Saved my Life, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley.

A young disabled girl and her brother are evacuated from London to the English countryside during World War II, where they find life to be much sweeter away from their abusive mother.

Unfortunately, the tables resize themselves depending on their contents and at least on my preview, the two rows do not align correctly. Still, it allows me to post my top ten lists of books a lot faster than I was able to previously.

Turns out that one can set attributes for the table, by selecting it and clicking on the EasyTables icon on the editor bar. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to fix my alignment problem. Hmmm. More work needed!

 

January 13, 2019

Top 10 Fiction Titles for 2018

Here are the top 10 circulating fiction titles at Cairo American College for 2018 . How many did you read?

(Links are to the CAC MHS library catalog record for the title.)

10. Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins  Written in 2008, this book is still in the top 10. Go, Katniss!!Click for more information on this title

 

9. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, by J.K. Rowling

The second book in the series seems to have been the most popular this year, but all of them still circulate well.

Click on the cover for more information on the book.

8. Gathering Blue, by Lois Lowry

Set in the universe of The Giver, this story is about a handicapped and gifted girl who must work for the all powerful Guardians.

Click for more information on this title

7. The Empty Kingdom, by Elizabeth E. Wein

This is book 2 in the series Mark of Solomon. I loved Ms. Wein’s historical fiction novels set in World War 2 with their courageous female spies. I highly recommend that series too!

Click for more information on this title

6. The Elite, by Kiera Cass

Also book 2 in a series: The Selection. Cinderella-ish romance in a post-apocalyptic world. We have several novellas set in that universe on our Overdrive collection.

Click for more information on this title

5. Camp Nine, by Vivienne Schiffer

I have been seeing more and more titles set during the Japanese internment of World War II. This one is new to me, so I’ll be reading it this year!

Click for more information on this title

 

4. The School for Good and Evil: A World Without Princes, by Soman Chainani

The second book in series has been very popular this year! This is the fourth one in this list of 10 ten.

Click for more information on this title

3. Everything, Everything, by Nicola Yoon

Now a movie. Nicola Yoon is a very popular author at our library!

Click for more information on this title

2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie

Another book still going strong more than 10 years after publication.

Click for more information on this title

  1. The Inquisitor’s Tale, or, Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog, by Adam Gidwitz, illustrated by Hatem Aly

The illustrator for The Inquisitor’s Tale visited CAC last school year. Very glad to see his book in the top spot for fiction in 2018.

Click for more information on this title

 

January 11, 2019

What will you read in 2019?

For the last 5 years, I’ve joined Goodreads Reading Challenge and set myself the goal of reading 365 books. That was somewhat easy given that I’d been an elementary school librarian and picture books formed the bulk of my professional reading. I thought that now that I was a secondary school librarian, I’d struggle to read the goal, but I did it, and several days before the end of the year too!

Here’s a screenshot of my year in books for 2018. You can see the full list of books here. 

I love reading mysteries, fantasy and steampunk science fiction. I also read a lot of professional books about education and libraries. What will you read in 2019?

 

 

Infographic summarizing my year of reading 2019