Public libraries must offer relevant, exciting, and stimulating learning centers that appeal to kids. This book is a step-by-step guide for creating affordable and effective educational programs for children and youth by focusing on one simple concept: play. With the standards of education rising every year and current technology making all types of information widely available to anyone with an Internet connection, libraries need to stay relevant by constantly evolving. One important way to strengthen a public library's identity as an irreplaceable resource is to make it an exciting and stimulating learning center that appeals to children and youth. This book demonstrates how to transform the informal setting of a public library into a place where "play" in the guise of game-based learning becomes a natural and exciting process for children and young students. It also shows readers how to incorporate existing programs such as the makerspace, storytime, and book clubs to play to their strengths; more effectively utilize the tools and resources they have; and transform their libraries. The first two chapters explain why learning through play and exploration isn't only for early childhood development, identifies the key differences between free play and structured play, and addresses why libraries are the perfect setting for learning. Next, the author draws on her experience in children's librarianship and as a children's book author to describe methods to listen to (and understand) children, manage organized chaos, and gain the children's trust. Additional chapters explain how to write weekly or daily lesson plans, how to brainstorm supporting activities to reinforce concepts being taught, and how to infuse STEM and literacy objectives into daily lessons. The book closes with suggestions on marketing and promotion, ways to support the classroom, and strategies that will "keep 'em coming back" and build an enthusiastic customer base.

Presents a framework for linking school information literacy teaching to academic achievement through a library media program and offers advice on working jointly with others, reading assessments, and the use of technology in the program.

Some kids refuse to read, others won't stop &– not even at the dinner table! Either way, many parents question the best way to support their child's literacy journey. When can you start reading to your child? How do you find that special book to inspire a reluctant reader? What can you do to keep your tween reading into their adolescent years? Award-winning teacher librarian Megan Daley, the passionate voice behind the Children's Books Daily blog, has the answers to all these questions and more. She unpacks her twenty years of experience into this personable and accessible guide, enhanced with up-to-date research and firsthand accounts from well-known Australian children's authors. It also contains practical tips, such as suggested reading lists and instructions on how to run book-themed activities.Raising Readers is a must-have resource for parents and educators to help the children in their lives fall in love with books.

Libraries have existed for millennia, but today many question their necessity. In an ever more digital and connected world do we still need places of books in our towns, colleges, or schools? If libraries aren't about books, what are they about?In Expect More, David Lankes, winner of the 2012 ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Award for the Best Book in Library Literature, walks you through what to expect out of your library. Lankes argues that communities need libraries that go beyond bricks and mortar and beyond books. We need to expect more out of our libraries. They should be places of learning and advocates for our communities in terms of learning, privacy, intellectual property, and economic development.Expect More is a rallying call to communities to raise the bar, and their expectations, for great libraries.

Real education, Egan Explains, consists of both general knowledge and detailed understanding, and in Learning in Depth he outlines an ambitious, yet practical plan to incorporate deep knowledge into basic education. Under Egan's program, students will follow the usual curriculum, but with one crucial addition: beginning with their first days of school and continuing until graduation, they will each also study one topic-such as apples, birds, sacred buildings, mollusks, circuses, or stars-in depth. Over the years, with the help and guidance of their supervising teacher, students will expand their understanding of their one topic and build portfolios of knowledge that grow and change along with them. By the time they graduate each student will know as much about his or her topic as almost anyone on earth-and in the process will have learned important, even life-changing lessons about the meaning of expertise, the value of dedication, and the delight of knowing something in depth. --

Learn how to get your teacher ready for back to school…from the first dayl to graduation! The kids are in charge in this hilarious classroom adventure--from the creators of the New York Times bestseller How to Babysit a Grandpa. This humorous new book in the beloved HOW TO . . . series takes readers through a fun and busy school year. Written in tongue-in-cheek instructional style, a class of adorable students gives tips and tricks for getting a teacher ready—for the first day of school, and all the events and milestones that will follow (picture day, holiday concert, the 100th day of school, field day!). And along the way, children will see that getting their teacher ready is really getting themselves ready. Filled with charming role-reversal humor, this is a playful and heartwarming celebration of teachers and students. A fun read-a-loud to prepare for first day jitters, back-to-school readiness or end of year celebrations.. The fun doesn't stop! Check out more HOW TO... picture books: How to Babysit a Grandpa How to Babysit a Grandma How to Catch Santa How to Get Your Teacher Ready How to Raise a Mom How to Read to a Grandma or Grandpa

Librarians Graves et al. discuss challenge-based learning in school library makerspaces. They describe how to create a maker community in a school; expand learning with the local and global maker community through Maker Fests, digital media, local events, and other means; craft interactive spaces; use the workshop model to teach students a new skill; use design thinking, design challenges, and crowdsourced research methods to help students think like designers; create design challenges for elementary and secondary students; and use crowdsourced research and maker journals. --Publisher.

Start building your very own mobile apps with this comprehensive introduction to Swift and object-oriented programming Key Features A complete beginner's guide to Swift programming language Understand core Swift programming concepts and techniques for creating popular iOS apps Start your journey toward building mobile app development with this practical guide Book Description Swift Language is now more powerful than ever; it has introduced new ways to solve old problems and has gone on to become one of the fastest growing popular languages. It is now a de-facto choice for iOS developers and it powers most of the newly released and popular apps. This practical guide will help you to begin your journey with Swift programming through learning how to build iOS apps. You will learn all about basic variables, if clauses, functions, loops, and other core concepts; then structures, classes, and inheritance will be discussed. Next, you’ll dive into developing a weather app that consumes data from the internet and presents information to the user. The final project is more complex, involving creating an Instagram like app that integrates different external libraries. The app also uses CocoaPods as its package dependency manager, to give you a cutting-edge tool to add to your skillset. By the end of the book, you will have learned how to model real-world apps in Swift. What you will learn Become a pro at iOS development by creating simple-to-complex iOS mobile applications Master Playgrounds, a unique and intuitive approach to teaching Xcode Tackle the basics, including variables, if clauses, functions, loops and structures, classes, and inheritance Model real-world objects in Swift and have an in-depth understanding of the data structures used, along with OOP concepts and protocols Use CocoaPods, an open source Swift package manager to ease your everyday developer requirements Develop a wide range of apps, from a simple weather app to an Instagram-like social app Get ahead in the industry by learning how to use third-party libraries efficiently in your apps Who this book is for This book is for beginners who are new to Swift or may have some preliminary knowledge of Objective-C. If you are interested in learning and mastering Swift in Apple’s ecosystem, namely mobile development, then this book is for you.

"The best book on high school dynamics I have ever read."--Jay Mathews, Washington Post An award-winning professor and an accomplished educator take us beyond the hype of reform and inside some of America's most innovative classrooms to show what is working--and what isn't--in our schools. What would it take to transform industrial-era schools into modern organizations capable of supporting deep learning for all? Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine's quest to answer this question took them inside some of America's most innovative schools and classrooms--places where educators are rethinking both what and how students should learn. The story they tell is alternately discouraging and hopeful. Drawing on hundreds of hours of observations and interviews at thirty different schools, Mehta and Fine reveal that deeper learning is more often the exception than the rule. And yet they find pockets of powerful learning at almost every school, often in electives and extracurriculars as well as in a few mold-breaking academic courses. These spaces achieve depth, the authors argue, because they emphasize purpose and choice, cultivate community, and draw on powerful traditions of apprenticeship. These outliers suggest that it is difficult but possible for schools and classrooms to achieve the integrations that support deep learning: rigor with joy, precision with play, mastery with identity and creativity. This boldly humanistic book offers a rich account of what education can be. The first panoramic study of American public high schools since the 1980s, In Search of Deeper Learning lays out a new vision for American education--one that will set the agenda for schools of the future.