Competency Two: Blogs

I attempted to use two or three of the listed blog search engines, but was unable to find what I was looking for, so I decided to use just a plain, old Google search and found one of interest. I chose a blog titled Library Grits, a site about a librarian's "journey as a tenacious lifelong learner in the Teacher Librarian field." I specifically chose this blog because of her explanation of the title for her blog, which I found entertaining, if not accurate:

Library Grits....Why this name?? The noun version of grit has a number of synonyms, and if you look below, I think they describe the School and Teacher Librarian profession pretty well! (especially the intestinal fortitude). I chose grits because it is suggestive of being plural rather than singular - reflective of the multitasking and thinking we need to do.

Courage, determination, backbone, daring, doggedness, fortitude, guts, hardihood, intestinal fortitude, mettle, moxie, nerve, perseverance, pluck, resolution, spine, spirit, spunk, steadfastness, tenacity, toughness, bravery and firmness.

After further perusal, I also came across a posting about the pre-school year days spent in professional development. As a teacher, I understand how tedious these can sometimes be, but she has a particular passage about upper level students writing an extended essay and the concerns that have arisen. As eight graders, my students are expected to write essays with more content than before. We are also preparing them for high school. This post has a link to a wiki (which I though apropos given mod 1) that I find useful and plan on sharing with my coworkers when I go back in the fall.

This excerpt was taken from Library Grits located at: http://librarygrits.blogspot.com/ :

A few days later I was able to attend a day where IB Extended Essay Co-ordinators, Secondary Teacher Librarians, and Secondary Librarians discussed the Extended essay and how the library could support this aspect of the Diploma Program. This was a good opportunity for discussion of the main issues facing the Extended Essay Candidates. Some of the main concerns were that the students did not have the required information literacy skills or understanding of the process for creating the extended essay. This prompted me to create a list of essential skills from a variety of sources that are required to produce an exemplar essay, and from there work on a skills continuum for the middle and primary years curriculum. This pre-preparation will allow extended essay candidates can focus on the essay rather than have to learn the process at the same time. This is a work in progress and a project that needs extensive collaboration with teachers, co-ordinators and teacher librarians. You can see the initial stages at the wiki http://infolitskills.pbworks.com.