OverDrive Sora

Try the new Sora reading app from OverDrive on your October break travels! 

The library offers thousands of eBooks and audiobooks through OverDrive.  Download the Sora app on your device or access Sora online at: https://soraapp.com to see what books are available.

Our other link to OverDrive still works, but I think Sora provides a better student reading experience and syncs well across multiple devices.  Stop by the library if you need help using Sora.

Digital Norms

The middle school has been focusing on creating Digital Norms for the first month of school.  The library is working in collaboration with our tech department with an "end-goal" to become a Common Sense School.

We kicked off this process during middle school orientation by asking all grade levels to complete a Padlet with ideas for how to be respectful online.  The three topic areas were:

• Respect Self
• Respect Others
• Respect Digital Property

Once we had their ideas, we combined them into short statements and asked each grade to use a Google Form to vote on what they felt their grade should focus on.

Next- we went "old-school" as the students commented and created actual posters (using no digital media whatsoever!) of digital norms that are important to them.  Our old-school posters will be displayed around the middle school.

Below is the idea we came up with for a collaborative poster that could be worked on by several classes with different library times and in only a few minutes as library lessons are short.

Grade 6's completed Digital Norms poster

Grade 8's work-in-progress poster

Parent Tea: Social Media

Here's a funny video about parents and technology that we shared at our recent Parent Tea on social media use.

Need more informational resources on social media?  Try Common Sense Media for media reviews and parent/family guides!

Awkward Things Your Parents Do With Technology

Cricket, director. Awkward Things Your Parents Do With Technology. YouTube, Boldly, 19 Dec. 2014,
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTGkgrZdPfs.

International Dot Day

International Dot Day is celebrated on September 15th.  This day honors the picture book The Dot written by Peter H. Reynolds.  Dot Day encourages people of all ages to celebrate creativity, collaboration and courage.  In the MS/HS library, we observed International Dot Day by exploring the Quiver App, an augmented-reality coloring app, to make dot pictures come to life.  Here are some photos of Grade 6 students making their drawings appear to jump from the page.  

Download the app or stop by the library to try out the Quiver App on our iPads.

Print more Quiver coloring pages here: http://www.quivervision.com/coloring-packs/

Symbaloo

I recently discovered Symbaloo and have updated our library homepage in Destiny so students have easier access to our library resources.  Students like having all our frequently used links in one place as well as the icons.

I've included sections for:

• Databases
• Image searches
• Reading/Books
• Social Media
• Citing Sources

Do you have good resources you think I should add to our library Symbaloo?  If so, let me know!  Create your own Symbaloo here.