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The Learning Commons Mindset February 12, 2015 by cultureofyes Students at West Bay Elementary School I walk into almost all of our schools in West Vancouver and very often the first thing people want to show me or talk to me about is the changes happening around the library. Or more specifically, schools are taking great pride in their learning commons spaces that are developing. I like the library metaphor from Joan Frye Williams (shared in this blog from Joyce Valenza): Our libraries should transition to places to do stuff, not simply places to get stuff. The library as a kitchen – I love it. And just what does this look like? A couple weeks ago I was at West Bay Elementary for the opening of their new space. Our work in West Vancouver, both with spaces and mindsets is not happening in isolation. The photos below give a sense of some of the uses of the new space at West Bay, and what we are seeing across our district as we make these shifts. Individual and group work. Students working before school Like this:

14 Ways K–12 Librarians Can Teach Social Media by Joyce Valenza This is the best time in history to be a teacher-librarian. Major shifts in our information and communication landscapes present new opportunities for librarians to teach and lead in areas that were always considered part of their role, helping learners of all ages effectively use, manage, evaluate, organize and communicate information, and to love reading in its glorious new variety. A school’s teacher-librarian is its chief information officer, but in a networked world, the position is more that of moderator or coach, the person who ensures that students and teachers can effectively interact with information and leverage it to create and share and make a difference in the community and beyond. For background, take a look at the Standards for the 21st Century Learner. These information-fluency standards scream inquiry, critical thinking, digital citizenship, creative communication, collaboration, and networking. 7. Here are some examples" 10.

Ten Read-Aloud Lessons from Preschoolers Ten Read-Aloud Lessons from Preschoolers by Susan Stephenson, www.thebookchook.com Recently, I’ve been reading aloud once a week to a group of two- to four-year-olds at my local library. 1.There’s no point in being a book snob. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. If you're interested in children's reading, why not check out other articles by clicking Reading in my right sidebar? 21st Century Information Fluency Home > Web 2.0 > Featured Article Web 2.0 Meets Information Fluency: Evaluating Blogs By Joyce Valenza Evaluation Skills in the Web 2.0 Information Landscape. This fluency involves determining accuracy, relevance, comprehensiveness; distinguishing among facts, points of view and opinions; and selecting the most useful resources for a particular information need. The traditional publication process made evaluation a much simpler skill back in the days before digitization, and in the days before information assumed new democratic formats. New, as well as traditional questions emerge as learners evaluate the information they find. Just as mega-store sites like Amazon address the long tail or the niche market, the Web, and blogging especially, promote the flourishing of the niche opinion, a great democratic concept, but a challenge for learners struggling to evaluate context and bias. How should students evaluate and select blogs as information sources? Blogs require new types of examination

Study Finds Reading to Children of All Ages Grooms Them to Read More on Their Own Photo Cue the hand-wringing about digital distraction: Fewer children are reading books frequently for fun, according to a new report released Thursday by Scholastic, the children’s book publisher. In a 2014 survey of just over 1,000 children ages 6 to 17, only 31 percent said they read a book for fun almost daily, down from 37 percent four years ago. There were some consistent patterns among the heavier readers: For the younger children — ages 6 to 11 — being read aloud to regularly and having restricted online time were correlated with frequent reading; for the older children — ages 12 to 17 — one of the largest predictors was whether they had time to read on their own during the school day. The finding about reading aloud to children long after toddlerhood may come as a surprise to some parents who read books to children at bedtime when they were very young but then tapered off. But reading aloud through elementary school seemed to be connected to a love of reading generally.

Downloads | Kids and Family Reading Report | Scholastic Inc. Full Report Infographics Past Reports 2010 Kids & Family Reading Report (PDF) 2012 Kids & Family Reading Report (PDF) If we stop telling kids what to read, they might start reading again A rain shower sends Maynard Elementary School kindergarten student Maya Roby to shelter during a literacy program in Knoxville, Tenn. (AP/The Knoxville News Sentinel, Paul Efird) As a treat for Hanukkah last month, Sandra Stotsky took her grandchildren to the New England Mobile Book Fair in Newton, Mass. They were wandering around aimlessly. Stotsky, a self-described "professional Jewish grandmother," had plenty of suggestions. The book, Stotksy said, was too easy, and in any case, she didn't think it conveyed the values that she wanted her grandkids to grow up on. Stotsky's experience illustrates a broader debate among experts about childhood reading: whether students should be allowed to read what they like, or whether they should be encouraged to read specific books -- ones that are challenging and edifying, books that will make them into better readers. "For us, choice is key," said Kyle Good, a spokeswoman for Scholastic.

The WWW Virtual Library Being a Better Online Reader Soon after Maryanne Wolf published “Proust and the Squid,” a history of the science and the development of the reading brain from antiquity to the twenty-first century, she began to receive letters from readers. Hundreds of them. While the backgrounds of the writers varied, a theme began to emerge: the more reading moved online, the less students seemed to understand. There were the architects who wrote to her about students who relied so heavily on ready digital information that they were unprepared to address basic problems onsite. There were the neurosurgeons who worried about the “cut-and-paste chart mentality” that their students exhibited, missing crucial details because they failed to delve deeply enough into any one case. Certainly, as we turn to online reading, the physiology of the reading process itself shifts; we don’t read the same way online as we do on paper. The online world, too, tends to exhaust our resources more quickly than the page.