How was your start to the new school year?

Tomorrow we are beginning our third full week back at school already. I can hardly believe it - but then time always flies when you just love what you are doing. A really significant move during these first days was that we made a shift in our language use to reflect the changes in the world of information technology and libraries. We are now refering to the scheduled visits of our students to the media center (consisting of libraries and IT labs) as information literacy. Everyone working with students in the libraries and IT labs is part of the IL team. We all feel really good about this decision but know that more work lies ahead to make as a real unit.
I also enjoyed some new learning engagements and changed my routines for the first visits of our students. Our youngest students met me as Ms. Tanja, the book doctor, all dressed up in a white coat, with glasses, mask, and stethoscope, examining books. This was a recommendation from a fellow librarian to explore book care with students and it was a great success. When reviewing genres with upper elementary students I decided to turn it into a library version of musical chairs. I prepared a basket for each genre filled with books of that particular genre. The baskets were placed in a circle on the floor and students walked around the baskets as long as the music was playing. When the music stopped, students explored the genre/basket right in front of them until the music continued playing. We had lots of fun with this.
What else is new so far this year? Oh yes, we created a media center wiki to which we plan on adding new resources as the year progresses and I keep a reader's notebook on my desk, as already mentioned in my previous post. Especially older students have shown interest for browsing through my notes, checking on what I have been reading lately - and I enjoy keeping track of my own reading as well.
All in all I am really excited about the start to the school year. It's great to be surrounded again by students, colleagues and friends, talking about books, sharing our passion for reading and inquiry, and creating new tools and resources. And how was your start?

Inspired by the Book Whisperer

I just finished reading Donalyn Miller's inspiring book The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child. Yes, she very much inspired me, not just to read the book in a day, to immediately act upon some of her great ideas (e.g. I got myself a reader's notebook which I plan to keep on my desk this year and set up a Goodreads account for those that prefer to follow on the Web what I read and recommend), but even to post on my neglected personal blog. While posting I also decided that the orange background needed to go, making space for a more serene, less distracting one. Of course, once again I spent far too much time playing around with the many options available - but still couldn't work out how to fit everything I wanted to show on my blog in the right spaces. I hope to figure this out with time - always learning, right?

If you would like to read more about and from Donalyn Miller, why not explore her blog.

And if you, just like me, wonder whether Goodreads or LibraryThing is the better option to keep track of what you are reading, here two interesting blog posts, comparing the two services: RandomThoughts and Match Goodreads vs LibraryThing. While LibraryThing seems definitely the superior service, I decided that Goodreads would be the better option for my purpose to start with. It seemed more appealing to the eye, less time-involving to manage, and stronger on the social networking aspect. I also like the easy to embed widget for my blog and the option to have automatic updates on my Facebook and Twitter accounts.

New Look

Did you know that Blogger in draft gives you a whole variety of options to customize the look of your blog while still working with templates? It's amazing what you can achieve with a bit of time - and enough patience to apply the "trial and error" method... Well, I had fun and like the new look of my blog so much better. I am inserting a screen shot of the old look below and would love to hear your opinion. Thanks, Tanja

Welcome to the LCS Elementary Library

This is my first project on VoiceThread and while it is still "work in progress", I am amazed how easy it was to embed it into my wiki and into this blog - and how much fun it is working with Voicethread. I can just see how students will enjoy commenting on their own work or the work of peers. Great fun!

Dewey Decimal Classification System - The Library Sorting Game

Check out this SlideShare Presentation (unfortunately, it comes without the animations I had built in - my students had a lot of fun with it in class because they were able to do the sorting themselves).

Dewey Decimal Classification System - The Library Sorting Game

View more presentations from Tanja Galetti.

Bead Making In Ghana

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Bead Making In Ghana

View more presentations from Tanja Galetti.

Tanja's World

Since I have not been able to put up any posts yet, I decided to share at least a few snapshots from my current working and learning environment.

(P.S. In case you are wondering: this slideshow was created with Picasa which makes adding any web album to your Blogger blog really easy - it's basically just one click. Look out for the Blogger icon on the right side of your Picasa web album screen.)