Hello blogging world!
It has taken me about 5 years, but I am here and ready to blog. Blogging is something I've had on my long-term library to-do list, and exploring this topic through Cool Tools for School is an awesome way to practice and keep up with it. I have updated a wiki for several years, and this year I also started a library Twitter account (@dalib_mcsd), so adding a blog to my portfolio feels good! I'm trying out Blogger as my blogging platform since we are a G Suite for Education district.
I am the librarian at Davis Elementary in Malone, NY, and I teach PreK-5th. I have very short lessons (only 30 minutes including book checkout, eek!) in a 6-day cycle, so my goal since I started teaching at Davis was to come up with impactful "mini-lessons" that get the kids excited to be in a library as well as becoming strong technology and library users.
One reason I haven't blogged before now was the intimidation factor. I wasn't convinced I had time to do it myself, or that I would have time in my "mini-lessons" to teach my kids how to do it. I think the best thing I've learned during this blogging lesson is how to introduce blogging to kids without jumping right in to individual student blog accounts. I love the 'Blog Template' forms from Teach Thru Technology. I think I will use those later this year with my fourth graders. We can take our time exploring the format and practicing in short bursts. By the time they start fifth grade they will be much more independent and ready for more advanced blogging techniques.
I also really liked an article from a "Teacher Challenges" course on Edublogs about blogging. The part that stuck with me was about using interactive tools within your blog to make it more interesting. I love interactive stuff! My kids love to use Padlet, make word clouds, and use Google Apps, so I think the idea of embedding these tools from our library projects into student blogs is really exciting.
Speaking of interactive tools, here's a Padlet I made at the end of last year to showcase library Things!
