secondary school library
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The Silent Summer of Kyle McGinley by Jan Andrews
The Silent Summer of Kyle McGinley by Jan Andrews My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is my first read of the 2014-15 Ontario Library Association’s White Pine picks for this year and based on this book alone, I’m very hopeful. Like last year’s Old Man by David A. Poulsen, our main character Kyle McGinley…
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Reading in a Participatory Culture by Henry Jenkins and Wyn Kelley
Jenkins and Kelley offer an optimistic alternative to Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our Brains which is filled, as Jenkins claims, with “contemporary anxieties” (p. 10). The book offers instead this explanation: “As a society, we are still sorting through the long-term implications of these [media] changes. But one thing is…
book reviews, books, Code Switch, collection development, Collective intelligence, definition of literacy, educational research, Henry Jenkins, library leadership, literacy, literacy promotion, Negotiating Cultural Spaces, Nicholas Carr, Participatory Culture, professional development, reading, Reading in a Participatory Culture, research, school librarian, school library, secondary school library, secondary school teacher, struggling reader, student-centred learning, teacher-librarian, transliteracy, Wyn Kelley -
Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal
I don’t think of myself as a gamer. I have been known to play lots of those Flash-based Facebook games with my Candy Crush Saga friends, and occasionally a great puzzle-based novella will come along like Gabriel Knight 2, Syberia or Ripper that I devour, but generally I didn’t think they were a big part…
Black & White, book reviews, Candy Crush Saga, collection development, definition of literacy, digital identity, Eagles Flight, educational research, educational technology, Epic Winners, Gabriel Knight 2, Game of Thrones Ascent, game-based learning, games for change, information literacy, inquiry-based learning, Jane McGonigal, Lemonade Stand, library leadership, Librarygame, literacy promotion, McGonigal, meaningful games, non-fiction, Plants vs. Zombies, professional development, Quest to Learn, Reality is Broken, Ripper, school librarian, secondary school library, secondary school teacher, serious games, Sim City, Spore, student-centred learning, Syberia, teacher-librarian, technology, technology integration, The Audience, the game, The Sims, transliteracy, Twitter, Will Wright -
Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden My rating: 5 of 5 stars Boyden allowed me to feel that I had been to Moose Factory and felt the complicated nuances of self-government and survival that happen there. And yet it’s a wonderful modern mystery as we try to understand what has happened to Suzanne and we…
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The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
When Nicholas Carr wrote the infamous article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (2008), he made waves in the education community who had bought into the Marc Prensky vision of today’s students as “digital natives” (2005). While making impetuous decisions about technology integration in schools, Carr halted everyone into thinking maybe we should be a bit…
book reviews, definition of literacy, digital literacy, educational research, games, information literacy, Jim Collins, literacy, marc prensky, Nicholas Carr, Nicholas Jackson, non-fiction, professional development, reading, research, school librarian, school library, secondary school library, secondary school teacher, struggling reader, teacher-librarian, technology integration, The Shallows, transliteracy, Zite -
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman My rating: 5 of 5 stars Absolutely fabulous. You’ve got to really like dragons (and luckily I do) but Rachel Hartman will have a fan in me forever after this. I hope she’s busy writing a sequel as after I was done I immediately looked for the next one. This is…
threadbare beauty 