Back to school, are you ready? I am and here's why

It's that time of year, back to school!  How many of us are ready?  We've read professionally, learned new web 2.0 or technology skills to share, and took advantage of the myriad of PD available, live and online.  If you did, good job; now is the time to figure out how to most effectively share this with your teachers.  Will you have a 10 for tech, a ten minute overview of a new tool you have learned?  Or maybe an enticing email teaser, if you plan with me you will find out about .....?  Maybe you are like me and you are a blitz bomber; just bound in to a planning meeting with "Ooohh, look what I have to share with you!  And, I brought candy!"  Whatever your style, remember it is not really professional development unless you use what you've learned.
Here's one great tool I use: Scoop It (http://www.scoop.it/).  You set up the topics you want searched, and this program culls the Internet for possibilities, puts them together in a magazine-like forum, and delivers it to your email box for you.  You then get to decide what articles/links work for you and you add them to your page.  People can follow you, I think this would be great to collect information for a particular course project.  In the past I have used it for "women in the military" when a student was doing a research project, I have a technology in education page, inquiry in library, and others.  I love that new material is collected and sorted for me; and it also provides a place to save this info so I can find it again!
Any great tools you have discovered this summer? Please share!

Annual Report done, just in time for Summer!

Well, it's finished, my Annual Report.  Here is the link if you want to check it out! http://bit.ly/16n79MF   I learned several things during the creation of this report, hope they are helpful to you.

1. Be sure to take lots of pictures and even video throughout the year.  I find you are either a picture taker or not. If you are not, find a student who can do it for you.  Photos share a lot of information that can't be adequately expressed in a formal report.
2. Find the human element.  Don't forget to add events or activities that show your media center as the hub of the school; not just the research center.
3. Let your personality shine through.  You are an educational leader in your building, show how.
4.  Toot you horn!  Yes, this is difficult, but your media center needs it.

Use your report "creation" as a time for you to reflect on your year; what went well, what you would like to revamp, what you may have missed.  Statistics can point out gaps, take heed of that information.  Did you neglect a content area that needs curation?  You may even want to take the time to do a computer evaluation of your collection; plans for building a particular section of your resources can be a part of your plans for next year.

I was reluctant to get this done, but I am so glad I did.  Here it is June and I already have some goals for next year based on what I learned.

End of a school year, time for reflection

Only two weeks left with students!  Where did the time go?  I had plans to do so many things, was I successful or not?  Think it is time to do some reflection on the year; what things I did, what I didn't, and how did those decisions impact student learning.
This would be a good time to finish my annual report (must start it to finish it, though!)  Guess that is a good place to start, and I can use the report to guide my plans for next school year.   Stay tuned as I start this process; compiling my report and analyzing my results, and then making new plans.

I know there are things I am happy about; my Battle of the Books event, and new this year, a traveling BOB team.  The work I did with a special class for at risk students (it is a Read 180 class, Scholastic, if you know that) to make them more authentic readers and the work with my ELL classes because of the grant we received. 

I added new databases and some eBooks to the collection, as well as lots of fiction recommended by students, and put print magazines out as well; not sure that is curation, but it is collection development.

Areas I still need work are building a collaborative atmosphere with my content area teachers; Science and Social Studies are challenging; next year?

Looking over this rambling I realize I have a lot to do in the next two weeks! Yikes - I will continue to share what I am doing and hope you tell me how you are handling some of these things.

Bring on Summer!!

New Year, new ways of thinking about media centers!



A new library without books

http://www.cilip.org.uk/filedownloadslibrary/sliv32b.pdf 

This is a longish article, but well worth the time to read.  I have been thinking about change, when is it purposeful and prudent, and when is it just following the current trend.  The attached article has definitely given me a lot to ponder; I will be wondering and wandering through ideas about this "new" library space for a while.

What a lot to think about! After 25 years in elementary settings, I am in the secondary (15-18 year olds) for the first time. The media center usage is so different! It's January, and no one has used any of the reference section yet, except for a few dictionaries! Everyone goes directly to databses or the Internet! Because this school level is new to me, I go back to the evaluative resources I know, like the Wilson evaluation, or the evaluation in Follett's Titlewave, when I order materials for the library, but I wonder if "someone" out there is thinking of a  revisioning a model of what the "ideal" media center should contain.  For example, a student came in last week, to find a book about a US state; we did not have any, and I don't plan to order any, the Internet is the logical place to find update information for things like that.  Add in an online encyclopedia, and voila!, instant, current information!  But what about these areas of nonfiction that students read for pleasure -- sports books, leisure activity books, or crafting books?  Or, how many print sources should we maintain to support that teacher who has not yet joined the 21st century's tools for teaching arena?
Curation is a thoughtful, responsive idea, but your faculty needs to embrace it for it to be successful.
It seems as though we, media centers and librarians, are currently caught between two worlds, in which one do you live?  Or, are you like me, a foot in both worlds and tottering at the edge of both.

Next big wonder -- show me the books?!?  There are still students who come to check out physical books for the simple joy of reading, what about them?

Mid Conference Reflections, am I a curator? Are you?

Here I am, up at 4 in the morning, thinking about everything I have heard or seen in the last two days.  I am at the AASL (American Association of School Librarians) in Minneapolis.  While the conference has barely started, my mind is already filled with so many thoughts, ideas and questions.  I heard sharing about some wonderful web 2.9 tools I had missed; vimeo, lib guides, and many more I will share later.  I was introduced to a new idea for libraries; curation.  The idea behind this is that collection, by definition, is a person selecting, choosing, and organizing in a group of their own creation.  It has the stamp of that individual on it.  If you stop and think about your library collection, you will agree that it is filtered by the things you don't care as much about, and is more heavily filled with your personal interests and passions.   Curation, on the other hand, is creating a group of materials that answer one question, or are arranged to share one theme or thread.  Alright, I am not explaining that as well as I could, I am still processing through my thoughts about all of this, but hopefully you get the idea.  I think it is fine that we have collections for our libraries, but I also like the idea of curating a subject or theme.  The web 2.0 twist is that you design a curation page and download or link to all the resources you find that supports it.  This idea would come from a unit of study you were doing with students, or even better, show those students how to curate their own theme or idea to build a wealth of information on their topic of study!  One website that will help you find information, especially if you are looking for the most current, is Scoop.it.  You sign up, list what you want to follow (OCCUPY, or Bully in schools, etc.) and this site will send a page to you daily that links you to what has been said or done about that topic.  It continues to do this daily so you are creating oyour "collection" to curate.  You can delete pieces you do not want so that you have this page of information relevant to your theme.  Can you see the implications for student research?!?!  Here are a few places for you to read more about curation.  http://www.bethkanter.org/content-curation-101/ , http://www.masternewmedia.org/ (Robin Good),  and http://heyjude.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/new-content-and-better-access-content-curation/.
Have I left you with a lot to think about, GOOD!
More later ...