What a Day We Had With Winston & Wandoo Planet!

We had a blast today with the Banish Boredom Tour, and the students are fired up about Beta testing Wandoo Planet!  Thank you Lindsey, Winston and all of our new friends from Wandoo Planet! We hope you will come back to see us!



The smiles say it all! What a fun day!

#BanishBoredomTour Coming to Curtis!

We are so excited to have recently been selected as a stop on Wandoo Planet's  #BanishBoredomTour! Wandoo Planet will be at Curtis Elementary on Monday, April 14th to get students started using this interest-driven website!

A while back, I received an email asking Curtis students to Beta test Wandoo Planet. A great description can be found here: What Is Wandoo Planet? Our afterschool media club, The Digital Bookworms explored the site, and even talked with our friends, the Technical Difficulties Club at Van Meter, about it. Then last week, the Digital Bookworms Skyped with Lindsey Hill from Evanced Solutions, the company  behind Wandoo Planet.


Wandoo Planet is the world's first kid-powered interest genome project!

Think Pandora, Spotify, or Netflix with a twist. It's a new software platform that empowers children to discover their keenest interests and find relevant books and other content via a powerful recommendation engine. - from Wandoo Planet Website

The Digital Bookworms had already created accounts and were a little familiar with the concept of the website. During our Skype visit, the students were able to hear the story of how Wandoo Planet came to be, and the purpose. Mrs. Hill shared with the students that she had been a teacher for 14 years before going to work with Evanced Solutions. She explained to them that they had a wonderful opportunity to try out Wandoo Planet and give their feedback to make the site better! Through their use, they were making the program smarter, showing it what students were interested in and what they weren't.

Students were encouraged to spend a few minutes listening to the story in the beginning and then clicking on the "thumbs up" sign for things they were interested in, and clicking on the "thumbs down" sign for things they weren't interested in.

Things they LOVE doing, should be marked with a heart--this will be the beginning of their tree.

One of the options ask if you are looking for a specific book or content related to your interest. Students can then type in a title of a book and get the information for it.

The students can also print a list of books and take it to their school or public library, or even to a book store, to find books based on their interest. One thing that I liked about this part was that I could use this to add books of interest to our collection, and the students would have specific books to request instead of just requesting a "drawing book".

The Digital Bookworms spent their entire club time exploring Wandoo Planet. Lindsey shared how important their feedback is, so we created a Google Doc for the students to use to give feedback.  It can be found HERE. Feel free to add your thoughts to it after you use Wandoo Planet. We will give any feedback to the team when they come to visit us in a couple of weeks.

 Being Beta testers for Wandoo Planet has been very empowering for our students. It was great that they were able to ask questions while using the tool, as well as to offer feedback. Lindsey was taking notes as they would share their thoughts. They loved sharing their opinions and being a part of helping Wandoo Planet get even better! 

We can't wait to meet Lindsey, and the whole team, in a couple of weeks, as well as Winston the Owl!  And the great thing is, they are also going to Iowa, to meet our friends at Van Meter! You can read more about that visit on Shannon Miller's Blog! I can't wait for the Digital Bookworms & the Technical Difficulties club to connect in a few weeks and talk about our time with Lindsey, Winston & the whole Wandoo Planet team!

Student Review of the New MakerSpace by Sierra & Kayla

Hey, this is Sierra and Kayla filling in for Mrs. Ford! This is the first time that we  got to see the maker space room. It was so fun there was Legos, K'Nex , and Little Bits. This Maker Space room is fun for kids to Create, Connect, Collaborate! In the room many kids enjoyed the Little Bits! Little Bits are fun creative circuits that you connect to make lights come on, and motors start up! This was a very enjoyable visit, I know that everyone loved it. To be honest though, We believe that 2nd-6th enjoy and use it the most! I would not recommend K-1st to use it because there are a lot of higher level thinking tools in this particular area. To conclude this, everyone really enjoyed this fun Creative Room.

Makerspace Steering Committee

Last summer, the library applied for a grant for a makerspace with our local education foundation. We were awarded the grant, and now have all the items we asked for and are ready to start creating our Curtis Makerspace. Several 6th graders have been asking when we were going to get started with it, so they have been made the "Makerspace Steering Committee" and they met for the first time last Friday. 

This is what the space looked like before we moved the items into it. It was the copy room for several years, and has been a storage space this year. You can see the wonderful peach tint to the walls. ;) It is definitely not an inviting work space right now.

After talking with Nate, Julian and Jett about some ideas for the walls, including a whiteboard wall, a magnetic wall, and a green wall for video opportunities, they were turned loose to brainstorm other components they would like to see in the makerspace.

We are saving all kinds of items for our makerspace, like cardboard boxes and broken electronic equipment. 

It was great to see their thoughts as they brainstormed. We decided to put it on chart paper so everyone could see it and add ideas.

And thanks to some handy 6th graders, our makerspace cart was put together! It was wonderful to see them reading the instructions & working together to assemble the cart.

 The next step is to have a work day to paint the room and get everything organized. The plan is to do that the weekend we get out for Spring Break. 

Friday was a day that the library was functioning just the way I wanted it to. There were classes coming in for checkout, teachers were in there adding Skype to their computers so that they can begin connecting with others, the Digital Bookworms came in to have lunch with me and to help with the WRAD Blogging Challenge post, and the Makerspace Steering Committee was meeting in their future space. It was loud and a little messy, admittedly a little chaotic, but students were making decisions and, as my Twitter friend Shannon Miller has modeled so well, letting their voices be heard. It was a good day! 

If you have a makerspace at your school, please share what types of items are included. 

WRAD14 Week 2 Blogging Challenge

I'm joining Matthew Winner and others in the World Read Aloud Day Blogging Challenge. It is not too late to join us! And certainly join in Lit World's World Read Aloud Day celebration on March 5th!

Week 2: February 17 - 23

Adult & Child

Answering the following questions with a child. The child can be a student or your own. Age does not matter. Make sure to exchange and enjoy answers with one another before sharing them with us.
I had a lot of fun answering these questions with some of my Digital Bookworm members! They came in during lunch and shared their thoughts.


1. I think everyone in the world should read…

Me: Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. Maybe because I taught 4th grade for so long, and this was the book I always started the year with. The students always wanted to read more about Fudge & Peter!

Reagan: Percy Jackson books (she has read ALL of them MULTIPLE times! :))


2. If I could listen to anyone in the world read aloud to me it would be…

Me: my grandmother because she loved to share stories. When she would read a book, she couldn't wait to share parts of it with other readers. 

Alyssa: the author who wrote the book because then you hear his/her voice reading his/her words too.


3. When I read aloud, my favorite character to impersonate is…

Me: a character from the south. I loved reading the voice of Dovey in Dovey Coe by Frances O'Roark Dowell. What an opening paragraph... "My name is Dovey Coe and I reckon it don't matter whether you like me or not.... I hated Parnell Caraway as much as the next person, but I didn't kill him."

Kayla: Gil from The Gollywhopper Games because he is so funny.

4. The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf (or e-reader) is…

Me: realistic fiction. I like finding characters to identify with. I am branching out though, so who knows in the future! 

Sierra: Suzanne Collins- her books have a lot of action, and there is always something happening!

5. My favorite part about reading aloud or being read to is...

Me: getting so involved in the story that no one wants to stop reading. I love when my students beg me not to stop, just one more chapter!

Jeffrey: When someone reads aloud to me it makes understanding the book and story easier because I don't have to figure out the hard words. 

I loved sharing these questions with my Digital Bookworms club! They had some really great answers!