All about Discovery Education

This Wednesday, I am going to spend the entire day teaching about Discovery Education, an awesome tool that is underutilized on most of our campuses.

This resource includes many forms of high quality media that can be used in our classrooms as well as for flipping your classroom. Students are given accounts to log in and all of a sudden you have a virtual classroom.  You can assign students folders of content to explore, writing assignments, quizzes as well as virtual bulletin boards.  Students can turn their work in online and you view and comment right there.

Here is the link to the training site.

https://sites.google.com/site/discoveryeducationcisd2/

For those of you attending, we will wrap up with the following reflection questions: 
1.   What level of technology can be reached using the technology tool in this training?  Why? How? 
2.  How can your students use the technology tool from this training in your curriculum? 

The library should be the heart of the school!!!  This statement encompasses everything about how libraries should fit into our school communities.  The magical thing about a school library is that it pulls us all together.  You have this space, this amazing area in your school where students can come in and learn, explore and create.  Students can be curious, ask questions and find answers.  

The teacher librarian who is seen as an integral part of the campus is indeed a very powerful partner for teachers on campus.  Librarians are experts in informational literacy.  They have been trained to match effective resources with content as well as recommend technology tools.  

My vision for next at Joy James Elementary is for the library to be the most inviting, vibrant place on campus.  I want to see students coming in to the library before school, during school and after school to research, learn and explore.  I would love to see teachers come in to plan and look through resources to see what fits best in their classroom.  I want everyone in our learning community to feel welcome in the library at any time.  

As we all get ready for summer, please know that I am so excited about starting next year.  It is going to be an amazing year and the Joy James Library is going to be EPIC!