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:
Showing posts with label LBS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LBS. Show all posts
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
Monday, March 30, 2015
Pre-Practicum Musings: Part 6
PARCC testing was going on at the middle school this week, so it was a light load of classes in the library during my shift this week, which meant I got to flex a little creative muscle.
Intrigued?
Throughout the year, the LMS creates displays that showcase some aspect of the library (but hopefully in an engaging, teen-friendly way). And, as you may or may not know, April is National Poetry Month, which is a way to celebrate the art of poetry with students, teachers, librarians, poets, and anyone who loves and appreciates poetry.
Enter the display for April...
The foundation for the display was a long sheet of butcher block on which students had written some of their favorite poetry verses. Accompanying the top were color printouts of the covers of several books poems in which some of these verses can be found. This "Poetry is..." mural is featured on a long wall to the left of the library doors.
Upon entering the library, was an easel with this year's winning poster along with a blank page for students to (hopefully) jot down a couple of lines of poetry as they think of them. Behind the easel is an easily accessible display of the poetry books that were featured in the outside mural.
Will students be inspired to check out a book of poetry? That remains to be seen, but if nothing else, they will surely be more aware of the wide variety of poetry out there, which is among the goals of National Poetry Month in the first place.
Weekly hours: 3 (all that scanning and printing took much longer than it looks!)
Total hours: 15
Intrigued?
Throughout the year, the LMS creates displays that showcase some aspect of the library (but hopefully in an engaging, teen-friendly way). And, as you may or may not know, April is National Poetry Month, which is a way to celebrate the art of poetry with students, teachers, librarians, poets, and anyone who loves and appreciates poetry.
Enter the display for April...
The foundation for the display was a long sheet of butcher block on which students had written some of their favorite poetry verses. Accompanying the top were color printouts of the covers of several books poems in which some of these verses can be found. This "Poetry is..." mural is featured on a long wall to the left of the library doors.
Upon entering the library, was an easel with this year's winning poster along with a blank page for students to (hopefully) jot down a couple of lines of poetry as they think of them. Behind the easel is an easily accessible display of the poetry books that were featured in the outside mural.
Will students be inspired to check out a book of poetry? That remains to be seen, but if nothing else, they will surely be more aware of the wide variety of poetry out there, which is among the goals of National Poetry Month in the first place.
Weekly hours: 3 (all that scanning and printing took much longer than it looks!)
Total hours: 15
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Pre-Practicum Musings: Part 5
Today was a quiet day class-wise in the library, so it meant a focus on some of the more administrative tasks in the library. In a nice juxtaposition of the old and the new, I helped in the weeding of more ancient library books and also prepared the contracts for this term's NOOK rentals. As part of a grant a few years ago, the library was gifted a number of NOOK e-readers and one of the History teachers has used them with one of his classes each term to read a companion novel to the time period they are studying. This is not my first go-around with the NOOKs but I haven't ever asked that many questions about how they are used. Stay tuned for a future blog post...
A quiet library meant a little time to chat with the LMS about how the virtual museum pilot worked out (See previous post). It didn't seem to be a slam dunk, per se, but she noted several strong positives that came out of the project. The major con was really just time. With 6 snow days that chopped up a part of 3 consecutive weeks, it just became too difficult to carry the project through to the end. Tthe final museum will be put together by the LMS and the Academic Facilitator, using the criteria and the artifacts agreed upon by the students. Although it's a little disappointing that the students won't be able to see it through, there's no doubt they'll feel a sense of pride and ownership when they see the final product online.
Among the many pros? Students created a much more robust set of artifacts than the LMS observed from the other classes who did a more traditional approach towards learning about Egyptian culture. She also felt the learning was much broader, as some of the group work and classifying exercises meant that students working on the virtual museum had greater exposure to a wider range of aspects of the culture. Another strong positive was a ripple effect throughout the teachers - word spread about the cool new thing she was working on with the History teacher and there are 2 other teachers who have now come to her with interesting ideas on how to improve some of their upcoming projects with the resources in the library.
Perhaps, this is the biggest win of them all. It's a tactic I used in my past professional life when part of my job entailed working with sales people to have them better use the research and marketing tools we had at our disposal. It's overwhelming to try to hit everyone at once with a new idea (and then it's a struggle to meet everyone's needs), but it can be very effective to find one person willing to be a trailblazer, do great work with them, and then watch how word spreads naturally from there. Very cool to see it in action, and I am interested to see what other projects come out of the library this year.
Today's hours: 2.5
Total hours: 12
A quiet library meant a little time to chat with the LMS about how the virtual museum pilot worked out (See previous post). It didn't seem to be a slam dunk, per se, but she noted several strong positives that came out of the project. The major con was really just time. With 6 snow days that chopped up a part of 3 consecutive weeks, it just became too difficult to carry the project through to the end. Tthe final museum will be put together by the LMS and the Academic Facilitator, using the criteria and the artifacts agreed upon by the students. Although it's a little disappointing that the students won't be able to see it through, there's no doubt they'll feel a sense of pride and ownership when they see the final product online.
Among the many pros? Students created a much more robust set of artifacts than the LMS observed from the other classes who did a more traditional approach towards learning about Egyptian culture. She also felt the learning was much broader, as some of the group work and classifying exercises meant that students working on the virtual museum had greater exposure to a wider range of aspects of the culture. Another strong positive was a ripple effect throughout the teachers - word spread about the cool new thing she was working on with the History teacher and there are 2 other teachers who have now come to her with interesting ideas on how to improve some of their upcoming projects with the resources in the library.
Perhaps, this is the biggest win of them all. It's a tactic I used in my past professional life when part of my job entailed working with sales people to have them better use the research and marketing tools we had at our disposal. It's overwhelming to try to hit everyone at once with a new idea (and then it's a struggle to meet everyone's needs), but it can be very effective to find one person willing to be a trailblazer, do great work with them, and then watch how word spreads naturally from there. Very cool to see it in action, and I am interested to see what other projects come out of the library this year.
Today's hours: 2.5
Total hours: 12
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Pre-Practicum Musings: Parts 3 and 4
Lots of snow days and February vacation prevented me from updating my last pre-practicum visit, so in the spirit of being concise, figured I'd give a two-for-one with today's blog post.
Between the two visits, I had a good mix of library admin and classroom observation, so I'll organize my report along those same lines.
Library Admin
I had a few tasks related to processing donations, as well as making decisions on books to weed. From the donation standpoint, I will never just blindly drop off a box of books at a school library! It is actually a lot of work to process just one new book, let alone a whole box full. And, I hate to say it, but often times the books that are donated, while well-intentioned, are donated without thought to what a school or its population actually needs. I just did the initial processing - adding the barcode and entering it into the online catalog - I've already been promised that the next time I come, I'll get to complete the process, which includes adding the spine label and covering it for extra protection. Like I said earlier, not the most glamorous of jobs, but part of the job nonetheless!
I also had a chance to help weed through some books. Some of them are no-brainers - you know, solar system books that still list Pluto as a planet, or ancient fiction titles that have pages falling out of them - but some of them are harder to make the decision on. As a book lover, it's hard to take the hard line and say "this book is no good" but given the time it takes to get a new book in the shelves (see above), it's definitely something that needs to be done.
Classroom Observation
One of the challenges of being a 21st century LMS is not only keeping on top of all the new tools that come out, but figuring out which ones will be of greatest use to your students and teachers, and then effectively training them on how to use said tools. One of the new tools that is being introduced to students this year is NoodleTools, an online academic research platform. With successful integration of a tool like this, students have a handy place to access all their research (hello, no more note cards!), and teachers have a way to regularly check in to assess their progress and offer help or suggestions along the way. Plus, it's just pretty cool.
The LMS I am working with only purchased a trial subscription so she could test it with a few classes before committing the big bucks, but from my observation, it's working pretty well. There were a few hiccups with the first class that tried it, but the LMS and the content area teacher were able to tweak their approach the next time they introduced it to a new class. Today, I was able to witness the same assignment being conducted in both the "old school" (read: notecards) and "new school" (read: NoodleTools) methods. While both classes seemed to be similarly focused and productive in the research process, I give a slight edge to the NoodleTools method, primarily for the ease with which teachers can provide feedback and the less paper students need to keep track of. Having the ability to check in on individual students prior to them coming to class certainly helps class time be more productive.
Weeks 3 and 4 hours: 4.5
Total hours: 9.5
Between the two visits, I had a good mix of library admin and classroom observation, so I'll organize my report along those same lines.
Library Admin
I had a few tasks related to processing donations, as well as making decisions on books to weed. From the donation standpoint, I will never just blindly drop off a box of books at a school library! It is actually a lot of work to process just one new book, let alone a whole box full. And, I hate to say it, but often times the books that are donated, while well-intentioned, are donated without thought to what a school or its population actually needs. I just did the initial processing - adding the barcode and entering it into the online catalog - I've already been promised that the next time I come, I'll get to complete the process, which includes adding the spine label and covering it for extra protection. Like I said earlier, not the most glamorous of jobs, but part of the job nonetheless!
I also had a chance to help weed through some books. Some of them are no-brainers - you know, solar system books that still list Pluto as a planet, or ancient fiction titles that have pages falling out of them - but some of them are harder to make the decision on. As a book lover, it's hard to take the hard line and say "this book is no good" but given the time it takes to get a new book in the shelves (see above), it's definitely something that needs to be done.
Classroom Observation
One of the challenges of being a 21st century LMS is not only keeping on top of all the new tools that come out, but figuring out which ones will be of greatest use to your students and teachers, and then effectively training them on how to use said tools. One of the new tools that is being introduced to students this year is NoodleTools, an online academic research platform. With successful integration of a tool like this, students have a handy place to access all their research (hello, no more note cards!), and teachers have a way to regularly check in to assess their progress and offer help or suggestions along the way. Plus, it's just pretty cool.
The LMS I am working with only purchased a trial subscription so she could test it with a few classes before committing the big bucks, but from my observation, it's working pretty well. There were a few hiccups with the first class that tried it, but the LMS and the content area teacher were able to tweak their approach the next time they introduced it to a new class. Today, I was able to witness the same assignment being conducted in both the "old school" (read: notecards) and "new school" (read: NoodleTools) methods. While both classes seemed to be similarly focused and productive in the research process, I give a slight edge to the NoodleTools method, primarily for the ease with which teachers can provide feedback and the less paper students need to keep track of. Having the ability to check in on individual students prior to them coming to class certainly helps class time be more productive.
Weeks 3 and 4 hours: 4.5
Total hours: 9.5
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Pre-practicum Musings: Part 2
This week in my pre-practicum I got to observe two 7th grade history classes in the library as they worked on their ancient Egypt "virtual library" project (in case you want to keep up as this project progresses, see the public link).
We have been reading about Media Literacy, Information Literacy, and in what is kind of a merge of the two, Information Communication Technology (ICT) Literacy in my class and there were some interesting parallels that I was able observe in practice as students worked on this project. From some of our reading on ICT Literacy, five competencies comprise ICT Literacy, including: Access, Manage, Integrate, Evaluate, and Create.
Students came to class with 4 artifacts that they had found online (Access) and got into teams of 4-5 each. Within each team, they then started to work on a classification system (Integrate and Evaluate) based on the 16-20 artifacts they had to choose from. Eventually, all the classes working on this project will need to come to some agreement on the classification system, as this will become the rooms or exhibits in their virtual museum, but it was a great first step to have everyone actively engaged in finding ways to classify their team's collection of disparate objects.
They will have to continue to evaluate the objects they come across as they narrow down which one or two they will contribute to the museum, and of course, the final part of the project will be to create their contribution (either physically or in some digital form). As the LMS said to me, her hope is that in the end, they will end learning much more about Ancient Egypt than they would have doing a more traditional project. They'll definitely learn much more than I did in the old school "read the chapter in the textbook and take a quiz" model that many of my teachers relied upon in middle school!
Today's hours: 2
Total hours: 5
We have been reading about Media Literacy, Information Literacy, and in what is kind of a merge of the two, Information Communication Technology (ICT) Literacy in my class and there were some interesting parallels that I was able observe in practice as students worked on this project. From some of our reading on ICT Literacy, five competencies comprise ICT Literacy, including: Access, Manage, Integrate, Evaluate, and Create.
Students came to class with 4 artifacts that they had found online (Access) and got into teams of 4-5 each. Within each team, they then started to work on a classification system (Integrate and Evaluate) based on the 16-20 artifacts they had to choose from. Eventually, all the classes working on this project will need to come to some agreement on the classification system, as this will become the rooms or exhibits in their virtual museum, but it was a great first step to have everyone actively engaged in finding ways to classify their team's collection of disparate objects.
They will have to continue to evaluate the objects they come across as they narrow down which one or two they will contribute to the museum, and of course, the final part of the project will be to create their contribution (either physically or in some digital form). As the LMS said to me, her hope is that in the end, they will end learning much more about Ancient Egypt than they would have doing a more traditional project. They'll definitely learn much more than I did in the old school "read the chapter in the textbook and take a quiz" model that many of my teachers relied upon in middle school!
Today's hours: 2
Total hours: 5
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Pre-practicum Musings: Part 1
New year, new semester, 2 new courses towards my LMS degree.
It's hard to believe I'll be about 2/3 done with the program after this semester!
The two classes I am taking this semester are Sheltering Content for English Language Learners (an EDU course) and Information Literacy and School Curriculum (an LBS course). For the Info Literacy one, I am also required to do a 25 hour pre-practicum in conjunction with the course, and so I humbly present to you a new feature on my blog as I record my experience (and let's be honest, track my hours) in my pre-practicum.
I'll be doing my pre-practicum at my local middle school, which is also where I have been volunteering for the last 18 months or so. It was a slow day today - first day back to school after 2 snow days (have you heard about this 'lil storm called #juno?), but a good one to get my feet wet again.
Although most of my classes so far have focused on the more thoughtful (and in my opinion, interesting) parts of the profession, there are simply nuts and bolts that have to be taken care of in the administration of a library and today it was overdue notices. That took the bulk of my time - running the reports, printing the notices to go home, and alphabetizing by Team and Homeroom. Who said being a librarian wasn't glamorous?
I did have some time to informally chat with the LMS about some of things coming up in my class, including how Information Literacy is taught in the school and where there are gaps. Lots of good info to add into my class discussion board.
Today's hours: 3
Total hours: 3
It's hard to believe I'll be about 2/3 done with the program after this semester!
The two classes I am taking this semester are Sheltering Content for English Language Learners (an EDU course) and Information Literacy and School Curriculum (an LBS course). For the Info Literacy one, I am also required to do a 25 hour pre-practicum in conjunction with the course, and so I humbly present to you a new feature on my blog as I record my experience (and let's be honest, track my hours) in my pre-practicum.
I'll be doing my pre-practicum at my local middle school, which is also where I have been volunteering for the last 18 months or so. It was a slow day today - first day back to school after 2 snow days (have you heard about this 'lil storm called #juno?), but a good one to get my feet wet again.
Although most of my classes so far have focused on the more thoughtful (and in my opinion, interesting) parts of the profession, there are simply nuts and bolts that have to be taken care of in the administration of a library and today it was overdue notices. That took the bulk of my time - running the reports, printing the notices to go home, and alphabetizing by Team and Homeroom. Who said being a librarian wasn't glamorous?
I did have some time to informally chat with the LMS about some of things coming up in my class, including how Information Literacy is taught in the school and where there are gaps. Lots of good info to add into my class discussion board.
Today's hours: 3
Total hours: 3
Monday, May 5, 2014
10 Things Every Teacher Should Know About Technology
As previewed in my last post...
- It’s never too late to start!
- You don’t need to know everything…ask for help from others (students and teachers at your school, virtually, over social networks) that you know have successfully used a new technology
- You don’t need to do everything all at once – make a goal to try one new thing each month (or semester, or year), while tweaking/optimizing the things you are already doing
- Don’t introduce an app or technology just for the sake of doing something “technological”– (Alternative wording found from the original blog post we read: "Use technology only when it makes rich, real and relevant curriculum richer, more real and more relevant”)
- Share what you do with other teachers – it’s the best way to get new ideas and get input to make your lessons even better. Corollary: Find a champion, that teacher who is most open to collaboration, and work together to create a knock-out finished product. Then, promote the heck out that success to encourage other teachers to utilize the library as a resource
- Think about what your end goal is and then find the technology solution that will accomplish your goal (vs. asking yourself “How do I use this technology?”)
- Have a backup plan (or two)
- Think outside the teacher box – use the experiences of friends/family in other professions to uncover technologies you might not have otherwise thought of
- Be organized! Create a system that will work for you to stay on top of new trends, tools, technologies, and best practices
- Have fun!
What's Old Is New...
This is my last "assigned" blog post for this course...crazy how fast time flies! Overall, it's been a really great experience having this blog to organize my thoughts about what I've learned over the course of the semester, and one that I hope to continue as I make my way through the program.
Our very first assignment back in January was to provide our own list of the "10 Things Every Teacher Need to Know About Technology." For this final blog post, we've been asked to revisit our list and add/edit/update as we see fit, based on what we've learned in this course. As I look back at my list, there's not a huge change for my v2.0, mostly just a few tweaks here and there and some reordering.
I did take exchange one tip completely, replacing "Understand how to differentiate for all skill levels..." with "Be organized..." Not that I don't think differentiating is unimportant, but I think, for today's students especially, technology is a more level playing field than other subject areas, and so much of student learning comes from simply working with and experimenting with a new tool (much as we did in this class). So while I think having an understanding of how to introduce a new tool, provide tutorials, etc. for different types of learners, I don't think it cracks my top 10. On the contrary, without having some sort of mechanism for organizing your online "world," you will never have a chance of taking advantage of all the resources out there, or remembering, weeks or months down the road, something that you wanted to use in a certain setting. Using tools like Twitter and RSS to connect/learn from other LBS professionals and Diigo or Delicious to organize the useful links you do find are paramount to staying on top of the ever-changing world of technology in education.
In the spirit of not making this blog post too long, I'll give my v2.0 it's very own post, but here's my original version with the tracked changes.
Our very first assignment back in January was to provide our own list of the "10 Things Every Teacher Need to Know About Technology." For this final blog post, we've been asked to revisit our list and add/edit/update as we see fit, based on what we've learned in this course. As I look back at my list, there's not a huge change for my v2.0, mostly just a few tweaks here and there and some reordering.
I did take exchange one tip completely, replacing "Understand how to differentiate for all skill levels..." with "Be organized..." Not that I don't think differentiating is unimportant, but I think, for today's students especially, technology is a more level playing field than other subject areas, and so much of student learning comes from simply working with and experimenting with a new tool (much as we did in this class). So while I think having an understanding of how to introduce a new tool, provide tutorials, etc. for different types of learners, I don't think it cracks my top 10. On the contrary, without having some sort of mechanism for organizing your online "world," you will never have a chance of taking advantage of all the resources out there, or remembering, weeks or months down the road, something that you wanted to use in a certain setting. Using tools like Twitter and RSS to connect/learn from other LBS professionals and Diigo or Delicious to organize the useful links you do find are paramount to staying on top of the ever-changing world of technology in education.
In the spirit of not making this blog post too long, I'll give my v2.0 it's very own post, but here's my original version with the tracked changes.
Monday, April 28, 2014
More on OPACs
In short, the LMS I interviewed was pretty happy with her OPAC, and as I researched other options, I didn't see a compelling reason to move from one to another.
I do see the value in having the system hosted by a 3rd party, especially given the situation that transpired in my district this spring, so that was what I recommended in my presentation.
For your reading pleasure...
The Case for Keeping Destiny
I do see the value in having the system hosted by a 3rd party, especially given the situation that transpired in my district this spring, so that was what I recommended in my presentation.
For your reading pleasure...
The Case for Keeping Destiny
Friday, April 25, 2014
Interview: What Do You Like About Your OPAC?
Our assignment this week is to interview a current LMS about their OPAC - likes, dislikes, wishlists, etc. - and look into alternative options that might be a better fit than what they are currently using.
What's an OPAC, you ask? A library's Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) is essentially a comprehensive list of everything in its collection -- books, DVDs, CDs, equipment, periodicals, e-books -- all accessible via author, title, subject, or keyword search.
My interview was with the school librarian at my local middle school, whom I have been volunteering for all year. Our talk came at a pretty opportune time. My local district's OPAC is housed locally and managed by the school's IT department (vs. being hosted in the cloud and managed by a 3rd party), and a few weeks ago, they experienced a major server failure that brought the OPAC offline for several days, in addition to severely limiting other technological functions across all schools within the district. Would a 3rd-party hosted solution have prevented this outage? No, of course not, but it would have lessened the pain the outage caused and decreased the impact on teachers heading into the final stretch of the school year (coincidentally, when many capstone research papers are in full swing).
This situation led me to my first "must-have" for my ideal OPAC - 3rd-party hosted service. While hopefully this exact situation won't happen again, I don't think it's a crazy idea to allow a 3rd party that is an expert in providing technology solutions to libraries to own this function. Of course a server failure could have happened anywhere, but if the school was paying a 3rd party to host their OPAC, I can guarantee that it would have been hours/days before it was back up vs. weeks, as was the case here. Plus, having a dedicated project manager ensures that all upgrades/updates happen in a timely manner which is not necessarily the case when the library systems are only 1 of the many technologies that the district IT manager is in charge of (Side note: I learned through my interview that our district's IT director actually splits his time between all 7 schools in the district plus he functions as the city IT director, further highlighting how spread his time must be).
Other "must-haves" that I determined through my interview included:
You'll have to wait for part two of my assignment to find out...
What's an OPAC, you ask? A library's Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) is essentially a comprehensive list of everything in its collection -- books, DVDs, CDs, equipment, periodicals, e-books -- all accessible via author, title, subject, or keyword search.
My interview was with the school librarian at my local middle school, whom I have been volunteering for all year. Our talk came at a pretty opportune time. My local district's OPAC is housed locally and managed by the school's IT department (vs. being hosted in the cloud and managed by a 3rd party), and a few weeks ago, they experienced a major server failure that brought the OPAC offline for several days, in addition to severely limiting other technological functions across all schools within the district. Would a 3rd-party hosted solution have prevented this outage? No, of course not, but it would have lessened the pain the outage caused and decreased the impact on teachers heading into the final stretch of the school year (coincidentally, when many capstone research papers are in full swing).
This situation led me to my first "must-have" for my ideal OPAC - 3rd-party hosted service. While hopefully this exact situation won't happen again, I don't think it's a crazy idea to allow a 3rd party that is an expert in providing technology solutions to libraries to own this function. Of course a server failure could have happened anywhere, but if the school was paying a 3rd party to host their OPAC, I can guarantee that it would have been hours/days before it was back up vs. weeks, as was the case here. Plus, having a dedicated project manager ensures that all upgrades/updates happen in a timely manner which is not necessarily the case when the library systems are only 1 of the many technologies that the district IT manager is in charge of (Side note: I learned through my interview that our district's IT director actually splits his time between all 7 schools in the district plus he functions as the city IT director, further highlighting how spread his time must be).
Other "must-haves" that I determined through my interview included:
- Compatibility with other systems -at this school, the OPAC and the Student Information Platform are from the same company, making a nice "one-stop shop" for students and teachers alike
- User-friendly interface - Kind of goes without saying, but having an easy way for students to access library resources is a must
- Useful and flexible back-end reporting - What good is a great system if you can't manipulate the data to figure out how well it's working for you? As with any system, the ability to run customized reports is a major plus
- Price - Obviously a factor - the more it costs to run your OPAC, the less available to add needed resources to the collection
- Customer service - Tied to the first point above, but bears repeating. Having a dedicated person to reach out to with questions and concerns is crucial
You'll have to wait for part two of my assignment to find out...
Friday, April 11, 2014
How Should You Maintain Your Collection? (and Other Burning Cataloging Questions)
We had some interesting topics and conversations in my class discussion board this week around cataloging (go figure!). There was lots of back and forth about the feasibility of truly ditching Dewey (as I mentioned in my last blog post) and some interesting perspectives on how a librarian should add to her collection, specifically what the non-fiction/fiction breakdown should be and how this varies based on student age.
I set off on some good old internet searching to find some additional perspectives on this particular topic, and I stumbled on some great stuff that I don't want to forget when I need it:
I set off on some good old internet searching to find some additional perspectives on this particular topic, and I stumbled on some great stuff that I don't want to forget when I need it:
- Keeping Your Library Collection Smelling F.R.E.S.H! - A blog post from Library Girl includes a very handy set of criteria on both why it is important to weed through your collection and how to assess which items in your collection should be tossed. Bonus: Printable handout addressing the "how"
- Mighty Little Librarian - This blog was a treasure trove of good info, so much that I officially added it to my blog roll. The author, a middle school librarian from Baton Rouge, is another proponent of library "genrefication" (i.e. Ditching Dewey), and has a whole series of blog posts dedicated to how she accomplished this in her library. Upon further investigation of her blog, I found awesome posts on social media in education, digital citizenship lessons, and creating a March Madness bracket for the most popular books in her library. Can't wait to see what is to come!
- The End of Nonfiction - An interesting blog post from the SLJ's "The Digital Shift" points out the inherent confusion in classifying books in fiction, nonfiction and reference and advocates for new terminology that better correlates with the Common Core (one suggestion: arrange books by whether they are trying to "tell me a story" or "teach me about something)
Thursday, April 3, 2014
Diving into Cataloging...
And I don't mean shopping with the many books that magically appear in my mailbox! (Though, if I'm being honest, I did a bit of that this week, too. Just can't help it with all the adorable little girl spring and summer dresses!).
We are switching gears a little bit and diving into a module on cataloging. Our first assignment was to work through the first 89 pages of what seems to be a school library media specialist's bible: Catalog It! A Guide to Cataloging School Library Materials.
Let's just say that I am glad that technology has advanced to the degree it has today so that I will rarely need to physically create my own records - this is confusing stuff! It's systematic, and doesn't leave a ton of room for misinterpretation, which does appeal to my love of order and organization, but I'm certainly thankful for the ability to cut and paste records from other libraries' collections and to import records direct from the publisher for new acquisitions.
A few takeaways from my reading this week:
We are switching gears a little bit and diving into a module on cataloging. Our first assignment was to work through the first 89 pages of what seems to be a school library media specialist's bible: Catalog It! A Guide to Cataloging School Library Materials.
Let's just say that I am glad that technology has advanced to the degree it has today so that I will rarely need to physically create my own records - this is confusing stuff! It's systematic, and doesn't leave a ton of room for misinterpretation, which does appeal to my love of order and organization, but I'm certainly thankful for the ability to cut and paste records from other libraries' collections and to import records direct from the publisher for new acquisitions.
A few takeaways from my reading this week:
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Week 10 - Internet Safety
This week we are looking at the issue of internet safety and how to best teach kids to be responsible digital citizens. Our assignment is to create a presentation for any audience we choose related to internet security. In doing some of my initial research, one thing that struck me was how early we need to be having these conversations (a 2013 study by Common Sense Media showed that 72% of children under age 8 have used a mobile device to view some type of media, compared to 38% only 2 years earlier. Crazy!).
With my own 5 year old starting kindergarten in the fall, I wanted to explore this further with my assignment and put together a presentation that could be used at her preschool. She is definitely part of the 72%, as she has access to the family iPad and occasionally our phones, but so far she hasn't figured how to buy apps, or necessarily what the internet is (though she does know that the PBS Kids app needs internet access in order to work). But it's only a matter of time, and I now realize I need to be proactively thinking of how to start this education with her.
In no particular order, I have included some of the best sources I found while doing research for my presentation:
With my own 5 year old starting kindergarten in the fall, I wanted to explore this further with my assignment and put together a presentation that could be used at her preschool. She is definitely part of the 72%, as she has access to the family iPad and occasionally our phones, but so far she hasn't figured how to buy apps, or necessarily what the internet is (though she does know that the PBS Kids app needs internet access in order to work). But it's only a matter of time, and I now realize I need to be proactively thinking of how to start this education with her.
In no particular order, I have included some of the best sources I found while doing research for my presentation:
Monday, March 24, 2014
More Flipping of the Classroom
Our goal this week was to create a Professional Development (PD) opportunity that would be relevant to teachers in our chosen age range. I was so interested in flipping the classroom following my work last week that I thought I would try to create a module that would introduce this idea to teachers, and provide them an opportunity to get started with a flipped lesson of their own.
I found a lot of great videos explaining the theory behind the flipped classroom as well the benefits, but this twosome really stood out to me. Enjoy this TEDx talk from Lodge McCammon, PhD and Katie Gimbar, a middle school math teacher who has wholly embraced the flipped classroom model. Very interesting and inspiring!
I found a lot of great videos explaining the theory behind the flipped classroom as well the benefits, but this twosome really stood out to me. Enjoy this TEDx talk from Lodge McCammon, PhD and Katie Gimbar, a middle school math teacher who has wholly embraced the flipped classroom model. Very interesting and inspiring!
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Week 8: Technology Integrated Unit
This assignment was pretty comprehensive. We were asked to create
a unit in the subject of our choice, for the grade level of our
choice incorporating 10 of the applications, tools, or formats we have learned about thus far.
One thing I have learned (sometimes the hard way, as evidenced by the trouble I had finding podcasts that related to women's suffrage!) is to do a little pre-research to make sure that the subject area I choose will have enough "meat" for the given assignment. This time around I chose to create a poetry unit, which for the most part wasn't too difficult to think of ways to incorporate various online tools and application.
The cornerstone of my unit was a tool called Blendspace, which was introduced to me by the library media specialist that I volunteer for once a week. She had helped a history teacher put together a flipped classroom model using this tool, so I thought I would give it a whirl myself. The concept of a flipped classroom is still pretty new to me, so it may not be a perfect representation of the idea, but I had some fun playing around with it. From a student perspective, I think it's a great way to aggregate resources and assignments, and also to have them engage in specific work outside the classroom, so that they are better prepared for the next day's class.
Without further ado, the Blendspace for my Poetry Unit assignment:
One thing I have learned (sometimes the hard way, as evidenced by the trouble I had finding podcasts that related to women's suffrage!) is to do a little pre-research to make sure that the subject area I choose will have enough "meat" for the given assignment. This time around I chose to create a poetry unit, which for the most part wasn't too difficult to think of ways to incorporate various online tools and application.
The cornerstone of my unit was a tool called Blendspace, which was introduced to me by the library media specialist that I volunteer for once a week. She had helped a history teacher put together a flipped classroom model using this tool, so I thought I would give it a whirl myself. The concept of a flipped classroom is still pretty new to me, so it may not be a perfect representation of the idea, but I had some fun playing around with it. From a student perspective, I think it's a great way to aggregate resources and assignments, and also to have them engage in specific work outside the classroom, so that they are better prepared for the next day's class.
Without further ado, the Blendspace for my Poetry Unit assignment:
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat, oh my!
Week 7 is about social networking and all that it entails. I am no novice to social networking - I've been on Facebook since shortly after it was opened up to people with a .edu email address, keep a professional profile on LinkedIn and regularly post on Instagram, to name a few.
But while I access these sites daily, I am apparently no match for Generation Z (who's that, you ask?). Gen Z, roughly those born between 1995-2010, is the first generation who will grow up in a digital world, where technology is ever-present.
Our assignment this week was to write a position paper on social networking - which led me down the path of researching the good, the bad, and the ugly of all things social media.
One of the first sources I found was courtesy of a fellow classmate, which she shared on our class discussion forum. Generation Like examines the phenomenon of teens and how they use social media to promote images of themselves. Thoroughly captivating, and somewhat disturbing, it definitely made me realize the differences in generations. It was particularly interesting for me as both my children fall into Gen Z (though I have a few years at least before they are posting selfies!).
While it is easy to decry the reliance on technology and the shameless self-promotion (this article very much falls on the side of "Social Networking Has Gone Too Far"). I think the author makes some very valid points - it is tough to find redeemable value in Baby Scumbag, after all.
But my ultimate position is that social networking will do more good than evil. Much of the research into Gen Z points to the fact that these kids will be more globally aware, more environmentally-conscious, and more accepting of different cultures and perspectives as a direct result of the internet and social networks "shrinking" the world. And that, to me, is worth it.
But while I access these sites daily, I am apparently no match for Generation Z (who's that, you ask?). Gen Z, roughly those born between 1995-2010, is the first generation who will grow up in a digital world, where technology is ever-present.
Our assignment this week was to write a position paper on social networking - which led me down the path of researching the good, the bad, and the ugly of all things social media.
One of the first sources I found was courtesy of a fellow classmate, which she shared on our class discussion forum. Generation Like examines the phenomenon of teens and how they use social media to promote images of themselves. Thoroughly captivating, and somewhat disturbing, it definitely made me realize the differences in generations. It was particularly interesting for me as both my children fall into Gen Z (though I have a few years at least before they are posting selfies!).
While it is easy to decry the reliance on technology and the shameless self-promotion (this article very much falls on the side of "Social Networking Has Gone Too Far"). I think the author makes some very valid points - it is tough to find redeemable value in Baby Scumbag, after all.
But my ultimate position is that social networking will do more good than evil. Much of the research into Gen Z points to the fact that these kids will be more globally aware, more environmentally-conscious, and more accepting of different cultures and perspectives as a direct result of the internet and social networks "shrinking" the world. And that, to me, is worth it.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Week 6: Online Digital Media (part 2)
Had some technical difficulties with my formatting of the 2nd part of my last blog post, so why not start a new post? It is my blog and all.
The second part of this week's assignment was to create my own digital media. I think it goes without saying that I didn't choose a podcast! I used the same tool, Animoto, that I experimented with last week, but this time did a 30-second book review of one of the recent books I've read. This was a really fun way to think about being concise, yet still capturing the essence of the book. I think this could definitely be an application for this tool that could be used across many grade levels.
The second part of this week's assignment was to create my own digital media. I think it goes without saying that I didn't choose a podcast! I used the same tool, Animoto, that I experimented with last week, but this time did a 30-second book review of one of the recent books I've read. This was a really fun way to think about being concise, yet still capturing the essence of the book. I think this could definitely be an application for this tool that could be used across many grade levels.
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