Blog Posts

216 posts

National Poetry Month

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April is (among other things) National Poetry Month! Started in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets (poets.org), National Poetry Month has become the largest literary celebration in the world. There are a myriad of ways to acknowledge and celebrate the importance of poetry in our culture:

  • The Academy of American Poets hosts the “Dear Poet Project“, which invites students in middle through high school to write letters in response to poems.
  • You can request a National Poetry Month poster and hang it in your library.
  • You could sign up to receive a poem-a-day in your email.
  • Build a creative book display (and if you do, please send us a photo to liesl_toates@boces.monroe.edu and tell us whether we are allowed to share it on our blog!)

Check out this list of 30 ways to celebrate national poetry month.

Autism Awareness Month

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April is (among other things) Autism Awareness Month. PBS has a number of valuable programming for this purpose. Check out the following programs and use the request form for a recording.

POV #3011 “Swim Team” – Parents of teens on the autism spectrum form a competitive swim team, training them with high expectations. Follow the rise of three athletes as the film captures a moving quest for inclusion, independence and a life that feels like winning.

Airs 4/3 at 7 p.m.;

Spectrum: A Story of the Mind – Take a journey into the rich sensory experience of autism. Imagine a world where words taste and thoughts feel, where sounds swell with color and leaves on trees change tones visible to the naked eye, and where eye contact with another can cause physical pain. Spectrum: A Story of the Mind explores autism through the lens of diverse characters on the spectrum.

Airs 4/6 at 1:30 p.m.

America Reframed #514 “Deej” – the story of DJ Savarese (“Deej”), a gifted, young writer and advocate for nonspeaking autistics. Once a “profoundly disabled” foster kid on a fast track to nowhere, DJ is now a first-year college student who insists on standing up for his peers: people who are dismissed as incompetent because they are neurologically diverse. Will Deej be able to find freedom for himself and others like him?

Airs 4/13 at 10 p.m.

Autism: Coming of Age – In the next 10 to 15 years, an estimated 800,000 children with autism will age out of the school system and transition into adulthood. Then, they will look to ill-prepared state and federal governments for the support services and resources to meet their many needs – a situation autism experts refer to as the “coming tsunami.” The one-hour documentary AUTISM: COMING OF AGE provides an inside look at the lives of three adults with autism and includes interviews with their families and support teams. Autism and disability experts from Massachusetts, New York, Washington, Virginia and Pennsylvania also discuss the current system, impending challenges and possible outcomes for the future.

Airs 4/13 at 11 p.m.

Keep checking the Offair Listings portion our blog throughout the month as we post more information and links to request these.

Media and Information Literacy Study

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Ohio University professor M. Laeeq Khan published a new study in the journal Behavior and Information Technology, which found that media and information literacy is the biggest factor in recognizing misinformation online and in the media.

The study is titled “Recognise misinformation and verify before sharing: a reasoned action and information literacy perspective”.

Find out more at Science Daily

Remembering W.S. Merwin

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The world lost a renowned poet the other day, on March 15th. W.S. Merwin died at the age of 91.

In 1971 and again in 2009, Merwin won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2005, and the Tanning Prize, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Academy of American Poets, and the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings. He was also named the 17th United States Poet Laureate by the Library of congress in 2010.

Click here for a remembrance of his life by Poetry Foundation, and to read some of his poetry.

and

Click here for the latest Brain Pickings by Maria Popova for the article titled: “Astrophysicist and Author Janna Levin Reads “Berryman” by W.S. Merwin: Some of the Finest and Most Soul-Salving Advice on How to Stay Sane as an Artist”

 

PBS STEAM Education Webinar Series

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PBS is offering a series of three webinars designed to inspire young scientists through STEAM education. PBS will provide a certificate of attendance for each one-hour virtual learning event.

Part One | Helping Students Interpret Data

March 19 @ 7PM ET

Data, data, data. Data is everywhere! How do we teach students to interpret data? To care about data? About all the cool things that can be done because of data? Look no further. Join us in this LIVE conversation with NASA experts to explore how they brought visualizations of the Earth to the palm of your hands all using, you guessed it, DATA!

Register Now

Part Two | Teaching Computational Thinking

March 26 @ 7PM ET

Join in on a live conversation with Josh Caldwell from Code.Org! Josh, a former classroom teacher, is the author of “Creative Coding” and the curriculum lead at Code.Org. This one-hour live learning event will dive into the ways in which you can help students think about computational thinking in artful, creative, digestible and fun ways!

Register Now

Part Three | Exploring Models Inspired by Nature

April 2 @ 7PM ET

There are so many innovations and models we use in our day-to-day life that are inspired by nature. How do you incorporate these concepts into your classroom? And how do you get students excited to learn more about it? In this last of our three-part “Inspiring Young Scientists” series, world renowned anatomist, Dr. Joy Reidenberg, and Megan Schuknecht, from the Biomimicry Institute, will join us to present ideas about the science within nature!

Register Now

Reading Fiction Makes You a Better Person

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Ok, ok. It makes you a slightly better person. A study done by Rochester’s own David Dodell-Feder (a University of Rochester psychologist), that shows that reading fiction slightly boosts your emotional intelligence. Here are a few articles that came out recently about this study:

New Study: Reading Fiction Really Will Make You Nicer and More Empathetic

Want More Emotional Intelligence in 2019? Do More of This 1 Thing, According to 2 Clinical Psychologists

And you can request the original article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology General here: Fiction Reading Has a Small Positive Impact on Social Cognition: A Meta-Analysis

So, keep on doing the good work you’re doing getting kids to read more!

#FundLibraries

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ALA’s American Libraries journal reported that the White House released its Fiscal Year 2020 federal budget proposal on March 11, and again it aims to eliminate funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). In response, ALA is kicking off its #FundLibraries campaign.

Read the full article by Kathi Kromer here and see what you can do to take part in this important campaign.

Then go directly to the ALA Fund Libraries Campaign web page.

Digital Collections Accessible to Students

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There are a number of digital archives around the world that are free and open to the public and therefore, available to students. This past November, the British Library digitized 800 medieval manuscripts. These are accessible at the British Library.

The Library of Congress has thousands of items that have been digitized and made available online to the public. It houses anything from Presidential letters to to Civil War Maps to notated sheet music, famous and not so famous photographs, newspapers, and legislation.

The World Digital Library is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world.

The WDL makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures including, Chinese rare books, Mozart’s original manuscript score of the Magic Flute, works by Galileo Galilei, primary documents from US history, and more!

The Library and Archives of Canada has archives and digital collections which include governmental records, immigration records, photographs and a collection on indigenous heritage.

The National Library of Australia has a few digital collections accessible from its home page. This includes Trove, a group of collections from hundreds of Australian cultural organizations.

The National Archives of Australia also has a number of digital collections available to view.

Trinity College in Dublin has also made the Book of Kells (a 9th-century gospel manuscript famous throughout the world) accessible in a digital format.