Rounding Out the Lineup!

I am very excited to announce our brand new database subscriptions from the well known ProQuest Databases. Touted as "indispensable research solutions that connect people and information" I was first introduced to it in high school. Since then I have been a loyal ProQuest user throughout my various careers as student and then educator. Last year I discovered that ProQuest offered services for the elementary library! After some investigation I realized these services were the perfect tools for our students as well as an excellent way to round out my goal of providing a place for our students to access accurate and safe information.

 You may be asking yourself what is included in our new subscription. But first let me tell you that due to some glitch or error I can't provide you with access to these just yet. I'm really disappointed because I want you to explore first hand. Until I hear back from ProQuest I can only paint a little picture of these powerful tools.

Here it is, strait from ProQuest

Makes learning fun and intuitive for young students
"The database includes carefully selected, 100% full-text articles and images from more than 1,900 domestic and international newspapers, magazines, and government documents, along with 9,000+ educational weblinks via the integrated Discoverer WebFind content set."  


Concise, reliable, and up-to-date country reports delivering the world... to you
"CultureGrams helps researchers discover the world with concise cultural and statistical snapshots of every country recognized by the United Nations -- from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Local experts document the unique, intimate details of each country's customs, traditions and daily life."

The ultimate elementary reference resource
"Students of all ages use eLibrary Elementary's powerful, yet engaging and easy-to-use search interface to find the answers they need from more than 140 magazines, newspapers, books, transcripts, maps, images, educator-approved websites from Homework Central®, plus audio/video titles, all selected as appropriate for elementary school studies."

I feel like I'm writing a brochure for ProQuest!

But in all seriousness, I am very excited that the St. Philip's Library is able to offer these resources to our students. In the coming weeks I will be posting much more about these databases and how best to utilize them. Also look for a post or update about how to access them from home or school.    



 

Just One More Time!

I just couldn't resist showing off a 4th grade Prezi in action. Andrew Huang and Ethan Gray chose to research Viking mythology as their religion. Many of the children who chose to research mythology found the topic a little more difficult. It took them into history requiring them to think about the type of people that would have worshiped god in such strange ways.

They did a wonderful job of presenting their research and putting together a creative Prezi.

 

If you would like to view just Andrew and Ethan's Prezi you can view here.

As part of their assignment they had to choose another way to present their findings. Ethan and Andrew not only put together a great Prezi but they also wrote this delightful poem.

A Viking God Rhyme 

There is a woman named Freyda

Whose children are Frigg and Thor

Her Husband’s name is Odin

Who is the Viking God core.

If a NORSE person dies

Its not very cool

When they were buried

They were buried with every tool.

 

Twitter

Just thought I would write a quick little post announcing the use of Twitter in the library. I actually set up a twitter account at the beginning of the school year after I came back from my conference in Minneapolis. I was inspired by technology use in school libraries. But, then I wasn't sure where I wanted to go from there. Of all the ways to use technology in our daily lives I've never been one to pick up my phone and tweet my life away. I just haven't latched onto personal tweets. Yet, over the past year I have found myself to be a follower on twitter. I sign up to follow mommy blogs, cloth diaper sites, historical costumers and photographers (I have a lot of hobbies). What I have come to realized is that I enjoy twitter as a place to learn about updates from my favorite people who offer tips and trick for all my hobbies and interests.

Recently I thought using twitter in this way was the way to go with The Falcon's Fables. If my goal for this blog is to keep the St. Philips community informed of various reference tools as well as report on classes and events, Twitter seems like a logical step in the process. Not meant to replace blog posts where I can get more in depth, I want Twitter to offer small nuggets of information that I think would be useful to our parents and students alike. I have started following various children's authors on twitter as well as other school librarians. I think it will be nice to occasionally have the library classes compose tweets of their own. I know they will be excited to share a book they have read or lesson learned.

I hope you all follow @FalconsFables on Twitter. 

It's Finally Here!!!!!

I've been doing my happy dance! Do you know why?!?! Its for something that we have been wanting for a very long time.

Finally, Destiny Quest, our online library manager and book club is available online. St. Philip's students have learned to enjoy the graphic interface of the program, utilizing it's unique online search engine, social network and book search while at school. As long as a student has created a username and password they can access these features from home.

1. They can search for library books and save them to personal lists.
2. Make friends to share and discuss favorite books and authors.
3. Recommend books to their peers.
4. Write book reviews
5. Use the search engine to access kid and parent approved websites. 

Trust me, it is fun for all. Currently 1st - 5th grade classes have a username and password. If your child does not have one and would like to make one they must come to the library at their lunch time and fill out a request form. I would like to see Jr. High utilizing this wonderful program. 

To access Destiny Quest use the tab located at the top of this blog. Go ahead and bookmark the page also!

4B Research and Prezi

The 4th grade library classes have been working hard learning the Dewey Decimal System. Starting with the 000 and going to the 900 they learn what each section means. The past few weeks have been spent learning the 200's; Religion. To better understand their world the class was asked to research a non Christian religion. While the Dewey 200's is made up of mostly Christianity if you look at the numbers between 290 and 299 you will find a multitude of books about various world religions. We have books about Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and other eastern religions. There are also books that cover ancient religions like Greek and Roman Mythology, Aztec Gods, Celtic and Scandinavian Mythology.

After reading about various religions the students were ask to do mini presentations. They choose from a list of various genres that included things like advertisements, book jackets, poetry, quizzes, and much more. By far the most popular choice was to do a Prezi. A few month ago I posted my own prezi. It can be found Here

Yesterday 4B presented what they learned about their religions. The posters, quizzes and book jackets will be displayed in the hallway outside the library.  The Prezi's are posted below.

Sikhism on Prezi

Hinduism temples on Prezi

Ramadan on Prezi

JAINISM on Prezi

Dionysus on Prezi

Buddah on Prezi

Taoism on Prezi

5th and Jr. High Databases

The databases for the older students are up and running. We are subscribing through a company called ABC CLEO. I asked for teacher feedback to help decide what databases would be most used by the students. It was decided that Religion and Social Studies would get the most use from the databases. I have done a few random test searches and have found the articles to be interesting and useful but definitely geared toward middle school student. You can access the databases through the tab on top of this page. The username and password are provided on the database page.

We have the following databases:

• American History
• Daily Life Through History
• World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras
• World Religion

1st Database!

Our first database subscription is up and running! To access it you must go to the Database tab at the top of this blog. For now, this is where the access point will be for all database subscriptions. There are two links on the database home page. The 1st is World Book Online, which is our subscription to World Book Encyclopedia. The second link is our brand new database. Pebble Go is geared toward K-3 and is actually two database subscriptions. The first is Animals and the second is Earth and Space Sciences. Both can be accessed thru the same link.

Just like World Book Online, Pebble Go requires a username and password. It is pretty easy for all Falcon's to remember but if you forget, I put them on the database home page.

NOW! Go off and explore!!!!!

Redesign

The past few weeks I have been working toward revamping The Falcons Fables. I wanted it to be more user friendly and easier to navigate. I believe I have achieved those goals.

The major change has been to move all my links from the side bar to the tabs at the top of the page. I believe the most exciting tab to add was Databases. I have been speaking of them for a while now. I promise that by the end of the year we will have a few more links within that tab. Right now the link for World Book online is located there. Keep an eye out for many more. Also check out the Other Blogs tab. There are many great book related blogs on the web.

I hope you like the redesign. I had fun doing it!

 

Unconventional

So I might be creating bad library habits. You see, every once in awhile, I need to listen to music. Actually, that isn't true, I ALWAYS need to listen to music. Usually, I have it playing very low so only I can hear it if I am at my desk. But occasionally I want to share with the children.  I just can't help myself. Often the urge to blast out the music happens on Friday's when I am ready for the weekend. Today, I created a new Pandora station that is all Disney. I must say it is fun listening to my favorite songs from my childhood.

Now, being unconventional does have its interesting moments. For instance, what is a music loving librarian to do when she plays music loud enough for library users to hear and they decide to break out into a conga line? Does she stop them or let them live in the moment and throw convention out the door?







If you are interested here is my Disney Pandora station.
http://www.pandora.com/?_sl=1&shareImp=true#!/stations/play/709364946205602735

The Immaculate Conception Part 1

Alright Falcons, there is something that seems to confuse many people including Catholics. As you know, we attend mass, as a school, once a week on Tuesdays. Yet this past Tuesday we did not go to mass. Instead we went today. I heard from a few students that they were a little confused as to why. Fr. Dennis did an excellent job of explaining it to us during his Homily but I'm afraid some of our falcons weren't listening. I had to laugh a little when a student turned to me and asked, "why did we go to mass today and not Tuesday?" Mind you this was said seconds after Fr. Dave finished speaking. That's OK, it happens to the best of us! But of course this got me thinking. If you follow this blog you know I have a passion for research.  I will take every chance I get to become The Falcon, supper speedy research librarian extraordinaire! Hey, it is fun!

I did not know today was a holy day of obligation. I am not sure why this year my brain decided to acknowledge mass as a school or that it is a day of obligation. Also, I was once a Catholic who thought the feast of the Immaculate Conception meant it was the day Mary immaculately conceived Jesus. Perhaps in all my years of Catholic schooling it was never explained to me properly OR more likely, I didn't listen properly. Now I know better and am aware that it has to do with Mary herself being immaculate.

All right, that's what I know! Ready? Get your research caps on! Here we go...

GOOGLE: Yes, yes I did Google. 
Immaculate Conception brought up websites for some schools. 
The Immaculate Conception got me Wikipedia! Um no thank you. While, I think of Wikipedia as a great jumping off point I reserve it only for subjects I don't know much about. I use it as a way to get those synapses going. So I skipped over Wikipedia.
What is the feast day of the immaculate conception returned some interesting results and I scanned the various websites for information. All seemed correct and unbiased either written for Catholics or for people wanting to learn about Catholicism. Good. 

But, I didn't want to just trust websites, especially ones I didn't know much about. So I pulled out a book donated by Mrs. Ramirez (the school principal for you non SP readers). 

The Catholic Source Book: A Comprehensive Collection of Information about the Catholic Church. Our copy is from 2000 so it could be considered outdated. I am not 100% sure if some of this information has changed or not.  Here are some tidbits of what I found. 

"There are ten holy days of obligation listed by Rome. In the Untied States six, besides Sundays, are celebrated. The number varies from country to country because conferences of bishops are free to set their country's holy days - with the Vatican's approval. Current practice is to retain at least two: Christmas and one feast honoring Mary." Here is the list, the italicized ones are not obligations in the USA. Christmas, Epiphany, Ascension, The Body and Blood of Christ, Mary, Mother of God, Immaculate Conception, Assumption, St. Joseph, Saints Peter and Paul, All Saints. 

Well that explains why we had mass today instead of Tuesday. Today, the Immaculate Conception is a holy day of obligation. It is also special in that it is a mass that honors Mary, the Mother of God. 
Beyond that there were only some references to symbolism, mainly Mary and the Moon. (more on that in another post)

Back to the internet. 

I found many many websites explaining Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary or the feast day of the Immaculate Conception. While they all said it a little differently this is the one thing that stood out. 
Mary, full of grace from God was redeemed from the moment of her conception. As said by Pope Pius IX in December 8, 1854, "The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin." It was on that December day that Pope Pius IX made it church dogma, that Mary is free from original sin through the grace of God. While the concept was not new, in fact centuries of Catholics believed in immaculate Mary, the church now acknowledges officially Mary's freedom from original sin. Immaculate meaning without sin and conception referring to Mary's conception, not Jesus'. 


And that is all for now. I am very interested in this topic, especially the symbolism and artwork. I also have a lovely book written by DEMI. She is known for her award-winning picture book biographies of spiritual leaders. Her book on Mary has some interesting text that I want to do further research on before posting. So stay tuned! 

I Am a Librarian

I'm a Librarian on Prezi