This week was my last pre-practicum visit. From a skills perspective, it was a little more on the administration side. The good news of the art show from a few weeks ago is that many new books were donated to the library. The bad news? The books need to be processed. But I'm a pro at this by now, so printing the book plates, adding the new books to the catalog and shelving them were no big deal.
It's always interesting to see which books people selected to donate - in a sign of the times, this book was one of the first to be selected which I was pleasantly surprised to see. When I was getting the books ready for display during my last shift, I hesitated for a minute because you never know what is going to offend some people, but I am glad that my hesitation was unwarranted (it helps that I live in MA, I suppose!).
I did have a chance for a couple of philosophical conversations that helped tie together some of the things we have discussed in my class throughout the semester:
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Pre-Practicum Musings: Penultimate Post
The home stretch is near...only one more pre-practicum session until I have completed my hours.
Today's work centered mostly on a district-wide art show that is held at the Middle School. All students, from pre-K up to HS have the opportunity to have their work displayed. And...the middle school library has a large table to solicit book donations from those who attend the art show. It is a lovely event and very well attended by all sorts of members of the community.
My job today was to help the LMS get the books set up for display. The goal, obviously, is to solicit donations for the library. Supporters can do this in one of two ways: 1) Donation cash that the LMS can put towards future book orders or 2) Select a specific book(s) to donate in honor or memoriam of someone. Approximately 50 or so books had been ordered so I went through and decided how they should be priced for donation. This is always a fun task, because I like seeing what books have made the cut from the Destiny wish list to actually being purchased for the library. After much debate, we settled on a price point of $15 for fiction books, $20 for non-fiction, curriculum-based books and $40 for a few titles that were solid, coffee table-caliber books.
It's days like these where it really hits home how tough it is to be a sole practitioner - preparing for an event like this is out of the scope of "normal" activities in the library yet it's important, and must be done, even while all those "normal" activities can't be neglected. On the one hand, you get a lot more autonomy by being the one-woman show but I can't help but think about how much more the library program can achieve if there are multiple people to share the load. It's definitely been food for thought as I think about what type of library I'd like to work in, and I hope I can experience a larger staff during my next pre-practicum assignment.
Today's hours: 2
Total hours: 23
Today's work centered mostly on a district-wide art show that is held at the Middle School. All students, from pre-K up to HS have the opportunity to have their work displayed. And...the middle school library has a large table to solicit book donations from those who attend the art show. It is a lovely event and very well attended by all sorts of members of the community.
My job today was to help the LMS get the books set up for display. The goal, obviously, is to solicit donations for the library. Supporters can do this in one of two ways: 1) Donation cash that the LMS can put towards future book orders or 2) Select a specific book(s) to donate in honor or memoriam of someone. Approximately 50 or so books had been ordered so I went through and decided how they should be priced for donation. This is always a fun task, because I like seeing what books have made the cut from the Destiny wish list to actually being purchased for the library. After much debate, we settled on a price point of $15 for fiction books, $20 for non-fiction, curriculum-based books and $40 for a few titles that were solid, coffee table-caliber books.
It's days like these where it really hits home how tough it is to be a sole practitioner - preparing for an event like this is out of the scope of "normal" activities in the library yet it's important, and must be done, even while all those "normal" activities can't be neglected. On the one hand, you get a lot more autonomy by being the one-woman show but I can't help but think about how much more the library program can achieve if there are multiple people to share the load. It's definitely been food for thought as I think about what type of library I'd like to work in, and I hope I can experience a larger staff during my next pre-practicum assignment.
Today's hours: 2
Total hours: 23
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Pre-Practicum Musings: Part 8
A little more Nook preparation today (just powering down the fully-charged devices and putting them aside for distribution to students next week) which prompted a good discussion about what this program brings to the table for students.
This is the 4th year the Nooks have been in use (they were a donation to the library) and at the time, the LMS identified a new teacher that she thought would be enthusiastic about introducing this technology to his 6th grade students. She was right; he has done a nice job of integrating the benefits that e-books can bring to his students' understanding of historical fiction.
The most differentiating way the students use the Nooks (vs. paper books), is by thoughtful and frequent use of the Notes & Bookmarks features available on the Nook (this is a requirement while they are reading). There is a large discussion component of the book in class, and the LMS noted that it's great to see how students will flip through their Nooks to argue their points and back up their opinions throughout the discussion. While this is certainly possible with a book through the use of Post-its or other bookmarks, it is certainly much easier to do so with the electronic features and overall promotes better discussion and understanding of the book they are reading. So even though it's a lot of work getting the Nooks ready to go each trimester, the benefits do seem to make it worthwhile.
An interesting model that had relevance to this discussion was the SAMR model, which was new to me. Essentially, this model provides a framework to help educators determine how a new technology will impact student learning:
Today's hours: 3
Total hours: 21
This is the 4th year the Nooks have been in use (they were a donation to the library) and at the time, the LMS identified a new teacher that she thought would be enthusiastic about introducing this technology to his 6th grade students. She was right; he has done a nice job of integrating the benefits that e-books can bring to his students' understanding of historical fiction.
The most differentiating way the students use the Nooks (vs. paper books), is by thoughtful and frequent use of the Notes & Bookmarks features available on the Nook (this is a requirement while they are reading). There is a large discussion component of the book in class, and the LMS noted that it's great to see how students will flip through their Nooks to argue their points and back up their opinions throughout the discussion. While this is certainly possible with a book through the use of Post-its or other bookmarks, it is certainly much easier to do so with the electronic features and overall promotes better discussion and understanding of the book they are reading. So even though it's a lot of work getting the Nooks ready to go each trimester, the benefits do seem to make it worthwhile.
An interesting model that had relevance to this discussion was the SAMR model, which was new to me. Essentially, this model provides a framework to help educators determine how a new technology will impact student learning:
- Substitution - Technology is a direct substitute; no functional change
- Augmentation - Technology is a direct substitute; some functional improvement
- Modification - Technology allows for significant task redesign
- Redefinition - Technology allows for creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable
Today's hours: 3
Total hours: 21
Monday, April 6, 2015
Pre-Practicum Musings: Part 7
I had a chance to do a little bit of lots of different things last week, including the following:
1) A few more pesky Nook contracts (like I said, the glamorous stuff!)
2) Search for a missing book (even more glamorous, no?)
3) Compiled a student-submitted "cheat sheet" of what to do and not do when taking notes based on their own notes that they turned in after a lesson on notetaking (a crucial lesson to deliver just before they start research for their final research paper). Some good takeaways in here - nice to see that many of them were actually listening during the lesson! - and having it in a concise format that they can refer to throughout their research process.
4) Some initial research into interesting ways to present Summer Reading for all the incoming 6th-graders. In the past, the LMS has book-talked the books which hasn't been ineffective, but she was wondering if there were any resources out there that might liven up the presentation so that she's not just talking the whole time. Ran short on time a bit, but found a few interesting trailer-type videos that I included in this working file.
Our class discussion this week was around Project-Based Learning (PBL) which is some pretty interesting stuff. What is Project-Based Learning?
I was able to make some real-library applications in talking with the LMS that I've been working with during my pre-practicum. Simply put, while I think PBL is a worthwhile endeavor, and perhaps where education should be going, it's a fundamental change that can't just happen overnight. There have been some PBL-inspired projects I've been able to observe in the library (one example: The Egyptian Virtual Museum) and while there was enthusiasm on the part of the content-area teacher, snow days and other time constraints required that he move on with other parts of the curriculum before the project actually finished, leaving library personnel to tie up the loose ends and get the virtual museum up and running. Not the end of the world, of course, but it does leave out the 6th step of PBL (Presenting the Results and Reflecting on the Process). Does this matter? At the end of the day, students learned more about Egypt than previous classes did when they just worked on creating one artifact, they had exposure to information literacy skills while they created the hierarchy for their museum rooms, and the LMS and history teacher had a chance to collaborate on a truly new way of teaching the unit on Ancient Egypt. So while maybe it's not a "true" PBL example, it helped pave the way (hopefully) for future collaborations with other teachers.
Today's Hours: 3
Total Hours: 18
1) A few more pesky Nook contracts (like I said, the glamorous stuff!)
2) Search for a missing book (even more glamorous, no?)
3) Compiled a student-submitted "cheat sheet" of what to do and not do when taking notes based on their own notes that they turned in after a lesson on notetaking (a crucial lesson to deliver just before they start research for their final research paper). Some good takeaways in here - nice to see that many of them were actually listening during the lesson! - and having it in a concise format that they can refer to throughout their research process.
4) Some initial research into interesting ways to present Summer Reading for all the incoming 6th-graders. In the past, the LMS has book-talked the books which hasn't been ineffective, but she was wondering if there were any resources out there that might liven up the presentation so that she's not just talking the whole time. Ran short on time a bit, but found a few interesting trailer-type videos that I included in this working file.
Our class discussion this week was around Project-Based Learning (PBL) which is some pretty interesting stuff. What is Project-Based Learning?
I was able to make some real-library applications in talking with the LMS that I've been working with during my pre-practicum. Simply put, while I think PBL is a worthwhile endeavor, and perhaps where education should be going, it's a fundamental change that can't just happen overnight. There have been some PBL-inspired projects I've been able to observe in the library (one example: The Egyptian Virtual Museum) and while there was enthusiasm on the part of the content-area teacher, snow days and other time constraints required that he move on with other parts of the curriculum before the project actually finished, leaving library personnel to tie up the loose ends and get the virtual museum up and running. Not the end of the world, of course, but it does leave out the 6th step of PBL (Presenting the Results and Reflecting on the Process). Does this matter? At the end of the day, students learned more about Egypt than previous classes did when they just worked on creating one artifact, they had exposure to information literacy skills while they created the hierarchy for their museum rooms, and the LMS and history teacher had a chance to collaborate on a truly new way of teaching the unit on Ancient Egypt. So while maybe it's not a "true" PBL example, it helped pave the way (hopefully) for future collaborations with other teachers.
Today's Hours: 3
Total Hours: 18
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