congerjan

[congerjan]

I did not know that Skippyjon Jones was on the banned book list since 2018. This is Banned Book Week... a week where we, as librarians, highlight books that have been banned or challenged. I have met Judy Schachner! She autographed a first edition of Skippyjon Jones for my soon to be born grandson! I will continue to read it to him. 

[congerjan]

Put a Book on Hold in Destiny

My students need to be able to get books from the WMS library even though we are virtual. Here is how they will do it! They can now put books on hold for themselves, something they have never done before!

[congerjan]

Is This Music?

Let’s Make a little Music…https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Experiments

Check out Chrome Music Lab. It’s one of the things Google has been Experimenting with and with headphones it could be fun.

No need to make an account, just find something you like click and go. It’s a website and make learning music more accessible and fun.

If you are a coder, all of the experiments are all built with freely accessible web technology such as Web Audio API, WebMIDI, Tone.js, and more. These tools make it easier for coders to build new interactive music experiences of their own based on what’s already been started. You can get the open-source code to lots of these experiments here on Github. They also have some bug fixes that may make you music sound even more amazing!

https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Experiments

Want to go a little further and find out how Artificial Intelligence is now writing pop songs, some even in the style of Katie Perry? Read this article, it’s a fresh spin on manufactured pop https://tinyurl.com/y6u9mwn6. The AI is a neural network called Jukebox and it’s part of Open AI. https://openai.com/blog/jukebox/ 

[congerjan]

Scholastic Magazine Learn at Home

Scholastic Learn at Home!

https://classroommagazines.scholastic.com/support/learnathome.html?promo_code=6294&eml=CM/smd/20200312//txtl/sm/ed

The same people that provide the books for our book fair each year are providing some day-by-day projects to keep kids reading, thinking, and growing at home. Just choose a grade level and there are 5 days of activities for 4 weeks so far with more to come. You don’t have to do them all or in order. Find something that interests you and have fun and learn something too! Our family loved the story about the Robot Dog vs. the Real Dog

(https://math.scholastic.com/issues/2019-20/090219/robot-dog.html#970L?magazineName=classroommagazines&promo_code=6294)

and then we talked about which we would prefer and why. If you are so inclined, you could write a persuasive essay! And if you do, don’t forget to quote the article and give the proper citation. You can learn how to do a proper citation here: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_periodicals.html. It will even create the citation for you if you put in the URL of the article and click a few buttons!

[congerjan]

QUARANTINE GAMES LIST

Are you starting to really get bored, so bored that you are ready to play some board games but don’t have any available? Well some very smart educators got together and started to ask other smart educators what they were doing. A Google Form was going around asking for suggestions and before you knew it the list of online games was up to 150! And then those same smart educators started putting the games into categories and now I am sharing the list called Quarantine Games List with you. Disclaimer: I have not checked out all the games so parents you may want to take a look before allowing your younger kids to play the games online. I did play the battleship game and it brought back lots of memories of my brother and I shouting, “You sank my battleship.” Hope you enjoy this list of online games! Another disclaimer these are not education games. They are just for fun!

Games List: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FnsE0E3p_qVugf2Tu6djTV_bHw3oL74P8tWZITsBL4A/edit#gid=0. 

[congerjan]

#weeklygenius

The Montgomery Counter Intermediate Unit (MCIU) has begun a series of STEM /design challenges they are calling #weeklygenius. Every week they post a challenge that students can then submit to It is the brainchild of MCIU’s Patrice Semicek who says, “students can complete these challenges with things they have at home or simply submit their prototype without making anything physical.” When submitting the project there is a spot in the form for the student to put the name of their teacher and the teacher’s e-mail.

This week’s #weeklygenius challenge was to create an outdoor game with just the materials you could find around your house. But there is so much more to these challenges than just creating the game. Each one provides job/career information and advice to parents and students. Teachers are continually told they are preparing students for jobs and careers that have not yet been invented. It’s important that our students learn the skills they need for these future jobs. Ms. Semicek says, “There are so many “STEM” jobs that students don’t know about and this is one way to show them different opportunities.”  Besides being a fun, creative, outlet during this time of being indoors, the job/career connection makes these challenges an intrical part of helping Pennsylvania with it’s Career Ready initative.

https://mciugeniuscamp.weebly.com

[congerjan]

This sounds like fun! In the library I could do one every 6 days in the library.