Presented by Michelle Luhtala, Library Department Chair, New Canaan High School, CT; Samantha Bremekamp, Media Specialist & Innovation Facilitator, Shrewsbury Borough School, NJ; and Jim Knox, Curator of Education at Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo

Sponsored by Mackin Educational Resources

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Raising the bar on equity demands that all learners leave high school equipped with inquiry skills that will empower them to pursue civic reasoning throughout their adult life. At edWeb.net/emergingtech, we frequently focus on inquiry instruction for middle and high school students. In this session, we walk that learning way back to the elementary years. How can we prepare our elementary learners for success throughout their inquiry journey? Please watch Michelle Luhtala for a conversation with Samantha Bremekamp, Media Specialist & Innovation Facilitator at Shrewsbury Borough School in New Jersey and Jim Knox, Curator of Education at Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo to look at inquiry projects to participate in a discussion about inquiry for young learners.

This recorded edWebinar will be of interest to grades K-12 educators across subject areas. 

About the Presenters

Michelle Luhtala, Library Department Chair at New Canaan High School in Connecticut, was one of five school librarians named as a “Mover and Shaker” by Library Journal in 2015. She is the winner of the 2011 “I Love My Librarian” Award and the Library Association’s 2010 Outstanding Librarian Award. The New Canaan High School Library won AASL’s National School Library Program of the year in 2010. Follow Michelle on Twitter @mluhtala.

Samantha Bremekamp is a media specialist and innovation facilitator at Shrewsbury Borough School in New Jersey, going into her fifth year in these roles. Prior to that, while obtaining her master’s degree in library and information science and her teaching credentials, Samantha worked as a reference librarian in a modest-sized 27-branch library system. Inquiry has always been important to her as has her ability and doggedness to get down to the facts. Before becoming a librarian, Samantha was an assistant director at NYU, where she worked with undergraduates and graduates. It was there that she realized how education was lacking that inquiry drive due to a massive loss of school librarians. Determined to help change that, Samantha went back to school and found a job working with preK through 8th-grade students. Having an ability to ask questions and a foundation to find the answers is vital to pursuing civic reasoning through high school, college, and adulthood.

Jim Knox is a TEDx Speaker with more than 3,000 presentations to his credit. As a wildlife expert and keynote speaker, he revels in sharing his passion for working with the world’s most remarkable animals to transport audiences into his wild world. Early on, Jim realized he had a unique opportunity to partner with others to save the world’s wildlife through the power of the spoken word. A graduate of Cornell University, Jim has written for PBS television and appeared on The Today Show, The CBS Early Show, and Fox News, and has been featured in the New York Times.

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Mackin is one of the top providers of library and classroom materials for grades PK-12. Working with over 18,000 publishers and a database of nearly 3 million printed titles, and more than 1.9 million digital titles, Mackin supplies print books, eBooks, online educational databases, audiobooks and video resources to schools around the globe.