MILI Orientation 2008

Happy New School Year 2008-09! Here I am experiencing the Metronet Information Literacy Initiative (MILI) project for the second year, and I am so grateful. I am excited to redeem myself as a better blogger this year than last year. :) I love the opportunities that the MILI training opens up for our teachers here in Chaska. I look forward to a continued collaboration between Metronet, the media specialists, and the teachers at the secondary level. It's going to be a great year!

Thing 5: Create and Maintain a Teacher Web page

I would work on my Media Center Web page all day if I had the chance! It is a living, breathing creation I started over 7 years ago! It has evolved and changed and will probably change a lot more over the summer since we are adopting a new format (I think?) for all of our district Web pages. I think the secondary buildings will adopt Blackboard while the elementary buildings will adopt rSchool Today.

I am looking so forward to our MILI meeting tomorrow to learn some more new things. I wish I could spend more time with the things we've already been introduced to because they are sooooo interestting and fun! I'm pedaling as fast as I can!!!! I really do like this job. It is the best, though, to share all of the stuff we do with the classroom teachers.

Thing 4: Get to Know Your Public Library

My goal this week is to FINALLY get over to the "new" Eden Prairie branch of the Hennepin County Library. I have driven past it for how long, always thinking I will stop in and check it out. My daughter and I make our bi-weekly visits to the Chanhassen Library and our "girls' outing". Also, I've been told I need to register my card in Hennepin County. You learn something new every day!

I'm blogging this...

My dear media specialist friend, Jeanne LaMoore, gave me a fine T-shirt this past week. It says, "I'm blogging this." Well, I better get a mover on, then! I really do like blogging; I haven't made it a "habit" yet, therefore I am behind in my postings.

I just read a greta article in the Star Tribune this past Sunday, and Jeanne and I were talking about it today with our other media friend, Renee. It was an article about a new writing center they've established in the Minnetonka school district. We were discussing how student writing can improve when they are given the freedom to just write without being graded on every project. More later...

Thing 2: Create your blog and post about it

Well, we're off to a slow start here...it's created and now we need some posts. It was so fun to create our blog right then and there in our Metronet oreintation and leave that day with a blog AND an RSS feed. I'm not sure the RSS feed is working so well, but I will test it shortly.

Thing 1. What Are You Talking About? Understanding Information Literacy

I used to wonder why/how I became "information literate". My best subjects in school were always spelling, reading and anything to do with Language Arts. What made me gravitate to the written word? Why am I the only college graduate in my family? I asked my mom once what role she played in my early education and what she thought might have made a difference. She said I used to ask her to read to me ALL the time. So, she read, and read, and read.

Now, with my own daughter, I read, and read, and read. I hope this will make a difference in her early information literacy. Her education is one reason why I applied to be on the secondary Design Team for our school district. The other members of the team really understand how important information literacy will be to ALL of us. Maybe we will be able to move to information fluency in our district curriculum. I hope I can be a part of it all. The Metronet training is an exciting step in working with our teachers to spread the excitement of increasing our student achievement with information literacy for both staff and students.

Exciting First Day!

What a great opportunity to get "the gift of time" to work with our teachers regarding information literacy! We get to start thinking in possibilities...