| From the President: Lynn Gordon | 
Hello, Summer! Although I'm not quite ready to close the books on the 2009-2010 school year, I am looking forward to some quality time in the sun and having some flexibility in my schedule. Most of you are looking forward to the same thing, I'm sure. But during the summer, many of your MAME committee members will be hard at work to make things happen.
Teri Terry and Evelyn Freeman are putting together a fantastic professional development opportunity for you on July 14 at the Ingham ISD. It is a terrific value at only $60, and the content regarding the 21st century standards will be priceless. I hope to see you there.
The MAME 37 Committee will continue to work on the "Dare to Dream" conference that will be held in Dearborn on October 27-29. There are still many details to refine and nail down before it all comes together. Rachel Markel and her crew will be pulling it all together over the next few months so that everything is ready when we all descend on the Hyatt on that Wednesday in October.
I would like to take an opportunity to give recognition to all of the MAME members who volunteer to be on the various committees and the Board. They work very hard and meet four or five times a year on their free time, usually Saturdays, to plan professional development, provide support and resources to the rest of the members. This collaboration is what makes MAME such a wonderful organization.
Have a great summer, everyone! Make sure to do a little something for yourself every day. Maybe take a walk, read a book, watch a sunset (or stay up late enough to see the sunrise!), call an old friend, have a glass of lemonade on the deck, or attend one of the many professional development opportunities available to you this summer... I know that I will!
Best to you,
Lynn Gordon
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| MAME Summer Institute 2010
Get ready for the new year! | |
Wednesday, July 14
Ingham ISD
2630 W. Howell Rd.
Mason, Mi. 48854
Registration: 9 AM - 9:30 AM
Institute: 9:30 AM - 3:45 PM
.5 SB-CEUs will be available
Cost: $60
Come and join us for a day of direction, instruction, and collaboration, while developing an information literacy curriculum for your building and district. Locate pertinent information and standards to link the media program with all content areas and then develop a standards based delivery plan. The instruction piece will provide templates and tools to gather standards. The direction piece will provide avenues to gather and present curricular ideas. Collaboration will be implemented with either your media team or other professionals at your instructional level. At the end of the day, not only will you go home with a clear plan for information literacy delivery, but also many content tools for integration of the information literacy curriculum using Thinkfinity and other shared sources.
Bring your media department, curriculum director, or just yourself; but come for an invigorating work day to share where you fit into the content area curriculums as well as your impact on learning in the 21st Century. You might want to bring your own laptop, however Internet access will not be available. We do have labs to access Internet in our work rooms so your laptops would just be for writing. The curriculum template will be provided and you may want to bring a flash drive for saving information or for transferring it from lab computers to your home/work computers.
Lunch will be provided. Questions? email Evelyn Freeman before June 30, or Lynn Gordon |
Tools of the Trade: It's Time to Twitter!
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by Sarah Sindelar, Brandon Schools
Twitter - Summer is the perfect time to dive in!
Do you have a Twitter account? If not, summer may be the perfect time to dive into the world of online professional development through social networking.
Creating a Twitter account is easy. Simply go to http://www.twitter.com to create a username and password. Now you'll need to add some people to "follow." If you think of Twitter as microblogging, then to "follow" means that you are subscribing to their feed. In order to see the power of Twitter, I recommend that you follow at least 10 educators to begin with. To help you get started, here's a somewhat random list of 10 educators:
· joycevalenza
· buffyjhamilton
· erniec
· technolibrary
· sandynay
· tomwhitby
· tonnet
· Larryferlazzo
· NMHS_Principal
· mbteach
more suggestions by visiting the Twitter 4 Teachers wiki featuring educators by subject area http://twitter4teachers.pbworks.com/. Another great way to locate educators is to copy someone! If you like Joyce Valenza's tweets, look at her profile and follow who she follows. It's just that simple!
Now that you've populated a hearty list of teachers to follow, you may want to send a few tweets of your own. My recommendation would be to send professional tweets 90% of the time, and personal tweets 10% of the time to let your personality shine through.
Sometimes you'll run across a tweet that contains a pound sign (#) followed by some letters. For instance, many tweets sent out by teacher librarians contain #tlchat which stands for "teacher librarian chat." This is a hashtag and indicates that a discussion is taking place. These discussions could be temporary (created for a specific conference - #ISTE2010), or long-term like the ongoing #edchat discussion.
Now that you are sending tweets, receiving tweets, and are keeping tabs on discussions with hashtags, you may want to use a Twitter client like TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com) to keep Twitter organized into simple columns. Within TweetDeck you may want designate one column for your regular feed, devote one column to a hash tag discussion (i.e. #tlchat), one column for your direct (private) messages.
For more information on using Twitter, simply enter "Twitter for teachers" in your favorite search engine to locate a plethora of resources to help you on your way to becoming a Twitter guru.
Sarah Sindelar (sasindel on Twitter)
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| August Summer Academy is back! | |
This summer take time to update your technology skills. Back by popular demand is the two day Summer Academy, August 10 -11, in Holland, Michigan. Topics covered this year will include podcasting, Web 2.0 video editing, Google Earth, and a special presentation by Deb Biggs Thomas on MORE and Michigan resources.
The very enjoyable boat cruise on Lake Matacawa is a relaxing way to spend Tuesday evening after a day of learning, preceded by a warm West-Michgan reception by MAME Executive Director, Tim Staal. SB-CEU's will be available from Grand Valley State University, and this year MAME in in negotiation for GVSU credit. Check the MAME website for additional registration information. |
| Project ReImagine | 
by Tim Staal, MAME Executive Director
On May 20, almost 30 media specialists and others met at the Library of Michigan for an introduction to Project ReImagine and some discussion about our role in this process.
Here's some information about the project from the MDE website: ● The primary objective of the ReImagining Michigan schools is to improve student achievement for ALL kids and develop a culture of achievement within school districts to sustain it. ... ● We need to ReImagine and restructure how education is delivered, both in terms of teaching and learning and how schools districts are managed. We should be engaging in demonstration projects using innovative strategies that go beyond the old, static ways public education has operated over the past 60 years. ● We need to do a better job of taking what we know works, and implementing it in our schools and classrooms. Participants in this Project ReImagine Day for Media Specialists included school librarians from district and ISD's chosen by the MDE to participate, State Superintendent Flannagan, representatives from MDE, the Library of Michigan, and MACUL, and several additional MAME members. We spent time learning about the project, examining new resources from MORE, MEL, and Discovery Education and thinking about school librarians can help districts re-imagine how they do education. As an organization, MAME is in a position similar to that of many of the school districts here in Michigan. We too are coping with difficult financial constraints and changing demographics. MAME as an association is strongly dependent on its membership. We are a great organization because of the hard work, support and dedication of our wonderful members. Some of our members are retired, some have been transferred to other teaching assignments, and others have even lost their jobs, but maintained their membership. Many others are being reassigned to cover multiple buildings. We all need to think about how we can stay involved in MAME and begin to Re - Imagine how we can be an important and innovative force in Michigan education. We have to help improve student achievement through what we do and help our school create a culture of achievement that values reading and inquiry and research and appropriate technology use and innovation. We need you and your colleagues to help us as we all change and grow. MAME has some great summer events planned for this summer of 2010. Look elsewhere in this newsletter or on the MAME website ( http://www.mimame.org/) for more details. Come join us as we learn, grow and support each other. Tim Staal |
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| Media Matters! Editors
Dr. Kafi Kumasi and Joanne Steckling
Database Manager
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| Summer Reading |  | |
More suggestions for your summer reading pleasure from two of MAME's literary connoisseurs:
Ferraris, Zoe. Finding Nouf
Judah, Sophie. Dropped from heaven
Morton, Kate. The forgotten garden
Shaffer, Mary Ann and Annie Barrows.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Klages, Ellen. Green glass sea (YA, but spectacular for anyone to read)
Shephard, Sadia. The girl from foreign: A search for shipwrecked ancestors, forgotten histories, and a sense of home
Lutz, Lisa. The Spellman files (and sequels)
Massey, Sujata. Rei Shimura books (1st one is The Salaryman's wife)
Jacobs, A.J. (Several titles: Year of living biblically, The know-it-all, The guinea pig diaries)
Bass, Jefferson. Bones of betrayal.
Clement, Blaize. Curiosity killed the cat sitter (and sequels).
Howe, Katherine. The physick book of Deliverance Dane.
Hall, Tarquin. The case of the missing servant.
Zama, Farahad. The marriage bureau for rich people.
Espinasse, Kristin. Words in a French life: lessons in love and language from the south of France.
Bullock-Prado, Gesine. Confections of a closet master baker.
Alan Bradley, Allen. Sweetness at the bottom of the pie, and The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag(Flavia de Luce mysteries). You've gotta meet this young sleuth!!! From Noni St. Amand:
Ford, Jamie. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (deals with Chinese and Japanese relations during WWII through the experiences of two American schoolmates a young boy(Chinese) and girl (Japanese) who became good friends despite their cultures. Hamilton-Paterson, James. Cooking with Fernet Branca, Amazing Disgrace, Rancid Pansies (Pure fun)
Jenkins, Beverly. A Second Helping: a Blessings novel (an African American woman with a lot of money
purchases a town and creates a wonderful environment for a group of foster children)
Jordan, Hillary. Mudbound (a powerful story told by the characters themselves through alternating chapters dealing with life in the South during a difficult period)
Kanon, Joseph. The Good German ( fascinating read as it blends a love story into historical fiction which in
turn becomes a terrific spy thriller)
Larsson, Stieg. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Book 1) , The Girl who Played with Fire, (Book 2), The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Book 3 of the trilogy) (I found the first book a bit brutal and perverted but plowed on because everyone seemed to love it - Liked the second book much better and the third is very complicated but ties it all together)
Sea, L. Shanghai Girls (Interesting look at Chinese culture and society)
Shaffer and Barrows. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society(Absolutely loved it)
Stein, Garth. The Art of Racing in the Rain (Absolutely loved it but some people find it sad)
Stockett, Kathryn. The Help
NONFICTION Heilemann, J. Game Change (fascinating read about the last presidential political campaign that covers all of the players)
Mortenson, Greg. Stones into Schools: promoting peace with books (his progress and what is happening in the area up to date)
(Thanks to Shari and Noni for sharing their favorites and Happy Reading to all!) |
| MAME Members Make News! | | |
Cindy Dobrez and Lynn Rutan, MAME's booktalking/blogging duo
Lynn was recently elected by ALSC members to the 2012 Newbery Committee. Committee members each read literally hundreds of books before making the selection.
Cindy has been asked to serve as one of three judges on the L.A. Times Book Prize jury for YA literature. The judges pick a short list of 5 titles in February and then the winner is announced in April at the L.A. Times Book Festival. The appointment is for a two year term, 2010 and 2011.
Congratulations Lynn and Cindy!! |
| Have you registered yet? | Michigan Joint Education Conference (MIJEC.org)
June 23, 2010
Thurston High School
Redford Twp MI.
Pre- Registration deadline is
June 4, 2010 |
Cost for the one-day workshop is $49. After June 4, registration will be $69.
Register Now! |
| Announcing Library of Michigan's 2010 Mahoney Children's Workshop | | |
This year's workshops will be "Raising Healthy Readers!" with Carolyn Isenga, Michigan State University Extension - Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Workshop Dates & Locations
* Cadillac-Wexford County Public Library (Wednesday, Aug 18th: Cadillac)
* Peter White Public Library (Monday, Aug. 23rd: Marquette)
* Monroe County,
Frenchtown-Dixie Branch Library (Thursday, Aug. 26th: Monroe)
Register early for a discount. Early Bird Registration fee: $25 (due July 2); Regular Registration fee: $35 (due Aug. 6).
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| Upcoming Events |
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June 23, 2010
Thurston High School
Redford Twp., Mi.
June 24-29, 2010
Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC
June 27-30, 2010
Colorado Convention Center, Denver
July 14
MAME Summer Institute
Registration Form on the MAME website
August 10-11
MAME Summer Technology Academy
Holland, MI.
Oct 27 - 29, 2010
Hyatt Regency, Dearborn |
| What's on Your Mind? | | |
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What great things are going on in your media center?
Has a journal article or book recently inspired you?
Found a shortcut, great website, new and improved techie tool?
...Or just have a funny story to share?
We love to hear from our readers! | |
Send your newsletter contributions to
Dr. Kafi Kumasi
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