Koehzie Library

 Hello I prefer to develop my skills, pedagogy, and professional learning in person rather than online. I know that there are so many resources online, but I learn a lot more from in-person sessions when available. For example, two summers ago I attended a week long STEM Pro-D session by Science World hosted at the Exploration Place (https://www.theexplorationplace.com/)  in town and learned how to do a variety of coding activities and working with multiple code-able technologies in person. Having the hands-on experience of working with these devices and systems gave me a much deeper understanding than all of the online research I did before hand. Also, it helped me to decide which technologies would be the best fit for my program. These sessions are held every 2 years (this past one was cancelled due to the pandemic) and it is a program that I plan on attending as often as I can.  The PGDTLA is a very active group of TL's in my district that plan and run multiple librari...

      Working in my district is a great TL who mentored me when I first started out in the Library. The TL always has great ideas, initiatives, and contests that promote reading all year round. Some of her initiatives are up on her website, like her "Teach your pet to read" photo contest.  https://boninjess.wixsite.com/mrsbonin/contests I have been lucky enough to be able to watch her and imitate some of her initiatives.      In my Library Learning Commons some of the reading initiatives that I have run in the past to foster reading are:  - Red Cedar Book Club + Contest (District wide contest- we participate) - Golden Tickets (based on Willy Wonka- dispersed throughout the collection)  - Book Fairs (1-2 a year, with Scholastic) - Travelling Library Bins (each class gets a bin for around a month full of books that match their Science/Socials/English topics)  - Students doing the library read-aloud or doing book recommendations for th...

  During my research I found a lot more resources on implementing design thinking through tech education than I thought that there would be. Of course, not all of them fit with my vision, program, and abilities, however I did manage to find eight good sources of information that will influence my teaching moving forward. Three of these sources are academic journals and four are blog based articles written by experts in the field. Some of the sources focus more on pedagogy and the reasoning behind and implementation of design based thinking in the classroom while others gave more practical examples and tasks to bring design thinking to the school. (For Example: A.J. Juliani gave ten specific activities. http://ajjuliani.com/design-thinking-activities/ ) Even though I have already done 3 of the activities he outlines in the web article, it does let me know that I am on the right track. The biggest take away for me from this research so far is not the activities themselves, but how m...