From the archives: Things I hope we keep

As we move to a post-pandemic kind of "normal", there are things we adopted that I hope we keep.  For example: Not every class has to be in-person. And not every class has to actually happen.  If students are working on a project, maybe they can check in with the teacher if they need/want to…

Time for an update!

As I've been looking through the archives for what works and what doesn't work as a post, I came across this post from 2010. Wow have things changed! Essential tools/websites then and now: Gmail (staying in touch)Bank of America (for online banking)TDBank (for online banking)Facebook (seeing what my friends are up to)Google Reader (as Doug…

What happened to Spring Break?

I’m sure I’m not alone i’m wanting another week off. Living in Boston and seeing snow Monday morning?? It was, as a colleague said, adding insult to injury. On the other hand, I did create a presentation for the MSLA Conference: The best part was the opportunity to really look at the guides we’ve created…

Rising from the ashes (part six)

I've spent the better part of the past week ordering books and checking in new books. In between that, and since the fire, I've been thinking about the way forward (or, as Chris says, not standing still).In the midst of all this came the whole Cult of 2.0 controversy. Annoyed Librarian said, among many other…

Racing towards Research Season

While teachers have been reworking their classes, adjusting things for hybrid learning and multiple time zones, we've been working on getting our (digital and print) collection ready and preparing to work with students virtually on their upcoming research projects. We know that many of the teachers who do the February project are concerned because they…

So now we know… sort of…

Last week we finally heard from our Head of School what the start of the year would look like. Because Milton is such a complicated school, with three divisions, two of which are day only and one of which is day/boarding, decisions needed to be made by division rather than school-wide. Result? Our Lower and…

Minor Musings

It's been well over a year since my last one of these. Let's see what I've found since then.  For many schools in the Northeast, there's the approaching Spring Break in which to explore.  And yes, there's more to follow. Books, Reading, etc. This is so cool: an app for the Canterbury Tales, in part…

History repeats itself

The consternation and fear over the 2019-nCoV virus (I know that "Spanish Flu" is politically incorrect these days, but can we all agree that this new thing needs a snappier name) has been interesting for me to watch for two major reasons - two major intellectual reasons, that is. I'm immunocompromised so emotionally I'm not…

He cares!

At our last meeting of the academic year, our IT Director told us that he had a new toy: a tool that lets him create phishing messages and then track what we do with that email.  Over the past few days the other librarians got emails that made them go "huh?" and today I got…

Speaking their language

One of the many problems I've had over the years with various sets of standards is the language.  Those whom I've edited over the years know that jargon is a no-no (ok, I use it here but this is my personal blog not a professional publication).  If what you're saying relies on jargon indicating an…