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Sunday, January 25, 2009

Time Flies or what?

I didn't realize how long it's been since I posted on my blog. Well, I'm back for a quick post for now. The first semester has concluded, and the second has begun. I feel like I've been caught up into a time warp called library media and more. I'm enjoying and savoring every moment of every day. I'm in a constant learning mode, and when time allows, inventive/creative mode. In short, I really do believe I have found "the job" for which I was wired by the Creator.

What's it like being a library media specialist? Hmmmm....hard to put into a few words. I love books, technology, diversity, creativity, kids, and people in general. Now if you take these raw ingredients and mash them in the media center, life gets very interesting. I am always exploring with my school kids, constantly looking for that new, something special twist to put on the learning ball to minimize the learning curve for the kids and the teachers.

Books are a great adventure, and when coupled with learning projects, it creates a very royal cranial explosion of ideas, thoughts, and products. Take the past week as an example. I meet with a small group of 4th graders daily to work on ELA skills. These are the classic digital natives who really come to life when given anything of the digital kind as their tools of choice. The task was learning about a variety of evergreen trees. This mini project started when they had a short story to read about the red mangrove tree a.k.a. the walking tree. It is in the evergreen family and yours truly decided that these kids needed to expand their depth and breadth of knowledge about all things evergreen. They were busy researching using virtual library resources as well as traditional reference books in the media center. Once they had learned all they could possibly learn, they created and communicated that new found knowledge using PowerPoint. I must say that they did an awesome job. Little do they know that this is their first digital artifact for their e-portfolio. They are true 21st century knowledge workers.

Stay tuned as I hope to update more frequently about my life in Library 2.5 or the 21st Century Library Media Center. I really don't think it can get much better than this. But with emerging technologies and intelligent kids, it surely will.

Linda