That’s a picture of my paternal grandparents, Howell and Irene Loper. My grandmother, Irene Garris Loper, was a school teacher in the same district I work in now. She got her education degree at Florida State Women’s College (now Florida State University). She taught in other counties before she settled with my grandfather and my … Read more
Hop on over to AASL’s blog today and check out my guest post on ways to use the free graphic design tool, Canva, in your library.
When I talk to other librarians and educators about starting a school Makerspace, one of the most common things I hear is: “I’d love to do (insert cool Maker activity) at my school, but we don’t have a budget for that”. What many people don’t realize is that the idea that you need a … Read more
This year marked my fifth year at the Florida Association for Media in Education conference. I have to say that this year was definitely my best FAME experience yet. We had an amazing slew of awesome guests, a fabulous keynote speaker (my friend, Tiffany Whitehead) and it was my first time presenting at a conference. … Read more
Show me the (grant) money! I’ve written a lot of grant proposals since I became a media specialist in 2010. And while I certainly haven’t received every grant I’ve ever applied for, I have been successful at getting quite a few, including two $5,000 grants and several smaller grants. Like many other schools throughout the … Read more
DonorsChoose: A Hidden Goldmine for Public Schools My first experience with DonorsChoose was in 2011. They had a promotion with Starbucks where gift cards were given out to patrons to spend on projects. I had several successful projects at that time, but I didn’t really use DonorsChoose much again until 2014. It was around the same time that I … Read more
When I first got into education, I thought of networking as something that only people in big businesses did. It was an ugly word, with sleazy, self-serving connotations. Fast forward a few years, and I realized that my favorite thing about going to conferences was getting to hang out with like-minded, passionate, inspiring educators. I … Read more
I’d been hearing over and over again from pretty much everyone that I absolutely needed to read The Third Teacher. I received it as a birthday gift back in Februrary, but didn’t get around to reading it until this summer. At first, it took me a bit to get used to the design of … Read more
In all the craziness of last year, I forgot to blog about one of the grants we received. Almost every year that I’ve been a media specialist, I’ve applied for a grant from the Hillsborough Education Foundation. In previous years, I’ve applied for more graphic novels, books geared towards reluctant readers, and audiobooks. This year, … Read more
I’ve been feeling generally inspired since leaving ISTE three weeks ago, and I’m still working on processing everything. My takeaways from ISTE don’t really focus on awesome new tech I want to integrate (though I saw some cool stuff) or amazing things that I learned in sessions (though there was plenty of that too). What … Read more