More on Blog Following and News Feeds

Blogs I am following: I found a fun blog by a librarian who really loves to try techy stuff online and one I met in real life. I am interested in Open Source and the idea behind it since I read an article about a district in Iowa that is not using textbooks anymore. Teachers from the district took the common core, downloaded their best lesson plans, links, information and ideas and created their own textbooks and it is trending slowly across education. In the past textbooks have been expensive, sometimes biased and often off-target meeting the needs of students. Much of their information was affected by the opinions and ideas of the publishers and with few publishers and not much to choose from, it became a problem. Also larger states and districts had a lot of pull in what was in the books. Open source teaching is an idea whose time has come. Teachers and librarians can pull from current, relevant resources and ideas and help students make connections to their real lives. I also like My other site is Shannon Johns school website for her library. She did a sweet 16 reading contest in March that shadowed March Madness to have students read the books the Newbery committee would have been considering. She also followed the similar contest online where writers read the books and chose their favorites to move ahead for the final four and winner. Their school found what I have found with my older students, that Hunger Games is still king and the newbery winner will take a while to click. I have loved past winners and honor books--Moon Over Manifest is an amazing period book with really good writing and very well-developed characters.