Poetry Contest Judging

http://www.poetrynation.com/

Tomorrow the committee of poetry judges meets to decide the winners of this year's contest. I am never conflicted about whether this is a good event, because it gives me so many opportunities to see of what our students are capable when presented with a challenge. I can feel the honesty in many of the works put forth, and I admire in particular the students who have mastered the haiku form, which encapsulates so much meaning in such a small number of words.

It is admirable that our students are willing to share their work with an audience; that's no mean thing, in my opinion. I am no poet myself, preferring prose in my spare time, and I definitely can't flatter myself in saying that I am capable of good prose, come to that. I feel that my lack of skill in that area gives me a greater respect for the potential of poetry in both long form and haiku (the major categories of this particular contest).

In the past, we have had a spoken word section of the contest, but because we only have two or three students who really have found their passion in that particular type of poetry, we decided to focus instead on written forms, and encourage our intrepid spoken word poets on during Town Meeting and similar events.

I look forward to meeting with the judges and discussing our favorites.

Blog-based Activity Example for MADE

From "HowToGeek.com"

I consulted a couple teachers and looked at a couple examples for this. I remember seeing a great blog assignment from Greg McCandless, who asked for some of us to comment back to his students’ posts and work; it was structured much like our initial assignment in this class, with students making individual posts on their own journals, and commenting at each other in response. Making the public available to your students and your students available to the public gives them additional points of view that you can’t offer.

Using Patrick Lemon’s upcoming Spring at Sage Seminar, “Build Your Own Computer,” I’m going to go through this activity in a purely hypothetical way, as I’m only supporting the seminar. It seems that a blog activity would be beneficial for a class like this, where the students might not know each other intimately or have any idea of their goals for the class (if any).

Though all students are participating in the seminar to build your own computer, all users have different expectations of their tools, particularly one as versatile as a computer. 

So to start off the class, it would be great to have a blogging activity where students introduce themselves and the things they’re looking for out of their computer. 

Some general categories might be:

• Productivity - Word processing, calendaring
• Graphics Editing
• Web Publishing
• Coding or Programming
• Gaming, which could be separated into various types that dictate graphic needs

After this activity we could then shake the students out into different smaller groups that have similar goals. 

These groups could continue blogging daily about what they’re needing to learn and do to meet the unique purpose(s) of their personalized computer. 

As part of the introductory lesson, the students could provide a video walk thru of the some of their common computer tasks using screen casting, showing some of the tasks, programs, and games they most like to use. Our students could also learn more about what they could be doing from their classmates with this multimedia activity. 

April, Poetry Month

Li Po (Li Bai)

The annual poetry contest is almost upon us!

 Anyone can write poetry. Give it a try! Every year we see many students turn their emotions and energies into this creative outlet, following in the footsteps of the illustrious and the inspired, standing in the long shadow of Basho, Poe, Angelou, Hughes, Yeats, Neruda, Homer, Byron, Li Po and Plath.

The library partners with the English Department for the poetry contest, and we offer prizes to the winners in long poetry and in a special haiku division.

Take advantage of this wonderful opportunity during the month of April.

The Johnson Family Library Blog

This semester the Director of Library is joining a number of faculty and staff who are participating in the Dean of Academic Technology's MADE course, a professional development course that dives down deep into the opportunities and features of our Learning Management System, Canvas by Instructure. Introductory modules go over using threaded discussion posts and blogs, and both features can be utilized as assignments for grades in Canvas.

We are utilizing this blog in the hope that it will be a more robust feature to promote our "libraryatsage," and all the things we're doing there. In the future we hope to expand to more diverse and media-focused platforms like Tumblr, and maybe even video, as there are exciting advancements in that field. Stay tuned while we plan for better and more engaging information literacy lesson plans and designs.

This summer we also welcome our new Library Coordinator, Miss Wahl, who joins us from Nashville Public Library system, and Michigan public libraries before that. She loves engaging programming and we are lucky to have her. Visit the lower library to say hello to Miss Wahl welcome her to the community!

End of 2014

It's been wild few months in the library!

Research
So far this year, we have seen implementation and launch of a one-search tool for all of our databases (new ground and impressive!), a brief training for employees during a faculty/staff meeting, and new faculty and student collection requests. Student requests included the Maze Runner series, Gillian Flynn novels, and the new Mortal Instruments book.

Technology in the Library
Technology equipment is flying off the shelves; we saw over 660 laptop checkouts over the course of October alone, all of them reused faculty notebooks. The overwhelming need for laptops on a daily basis is something the school as a whole is looking at from the perspective of technology. Over the course of October and November over 200 library materials circulated, including non-fiction and fiction, but not including textbooks, which are day-use only reserve materials.

The Johnson Family Library now has its own Instagram! Check out pictures here.

Additions to the Collection
We've received two great donations: 20 fundamental financial books from a generous alum and at least 100 of wonderful art books featuring detailed high-quality illustrations.

Utilizing a wonderful article in November's issue of School Library Journal, "Books That Help" by Erin E. Moulton, we have added a long list of realistic teen fiction and mental health books. Highlights include Ellen Hopkins' Perfect, George Harrar's Not as Crazy as I Seem and Amy McNamara's Lovely, Dark and Deep.

Recent additions can be seen on our LibraryThing by clicking here.

On the Move
We are very sorry to see our Library Coordinator move on to education administration at the university level, and we're searching for our next Library Coordinator. Information on the position can be found at www.sagehillschool.org/jobs.