I've attended an ALA Annual and Midwinter before, but it's been a while, so I was excited to have the opportunity to attend ALA Virtual this year. The nice thing about this online format is that many of the panels were recorded and available to watch outside of their scheduled time. I watched a panel [...]
Entering my third semester at Mankato State University, I elected to take the course, KSP 622: Materials for Children. This course focused on selecting and evaluating both print and multimodal media materials that are appropriate for children in grades kindergarten through sixth grade. I became knowledgeable about current issues such as censorship, social justice, and [...]
Thank you so much for the grant to attend PLA in Nashville. I had a wonderful time. I met many new librarians, authors, and vendors. I attended a session called "Serving Patrons With Mental Illness and Promoting Wellness". This session fit in well with my library. We have 3 different "houses" of patrons who are [...]
I took the course IM (Information Media) 696 from St. Cloud State University, Portfolio, fall semester. This was an online course in which my final master's portfolio chapters 1-3 were planned, researched, and written. I used refereed articles to research, met with my culminated project committee to discuss changes that were needed, and made necessary [...]
Last month, I completed an online course on library services for people living with memory loss. As of 2019, over 5.8 million people in the United States suffer from Alzheimer’s dementia, with the numbers projected to keep growing. The course covered the importance of serving those who are caregivers for loved ones with memory loss. [...]
Over the last month, I have worked through the online course created by Sphero to better learn how to utilize the Sphero SPRK+ robots that the library owns. The course taught me the basics of how to create programs using the draw, blocks, and text options. It also helped further explain what the terms on [...]
This semester I completed courses in Collection Development and Management and Introduction to Web Design for my Master's of Library and Information Science. I enjoyed both classes, and felt especially challenged by the Web Design Class, where I hand coded my own website's HTML and CSS. Collection Development was also challenging, and one of our [...]
I attended the WatchGuard firewall training session “Network Security Essentials” hosted at Verus Corporation in Coon Rapids, November 12th through the 15th. The curriculum for the training session was programming their new series of firewalls. Day one consisted of orientation and setting up a new Firebox firewall, upgrading its software, and backing up its configuration [...]
I attended the Power of Play workshop, facilitated by the Minnesota Children's Museum. The workshop was 4 hours long and easily could have been longer -- it was packed with information! The presenter covered a lot of ground -- what does play look like, what memories did we have of playing, how (and why) do [...]
I attended the workshop on November 9 at St Catherine's University. There were 2 large group sessions featuring Dr. Debbie Reese and Dr Dawn Quigley as well as 2 small group break out sessions lead by each of the speakers. They talked about the inappropriate/negative use of Native Americans in children's books as well as [...]