My Trip to Second Life

On Tuesday night, I participated for the first time in a Second Life meeting. I had received an email from the Teacher Librarian Ning I belong to that read “Make plans to join your colleagues on Tuesday, March 16^that 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT for a very special event, “A Chat with Sara Kelly Johns”. Sara is a candidate in the election for ALA President and she will speak to librarians about her platform and her vision for ALA.” I thought this would be a great opportunity to try out this environment and hear Sara's platform. I had to create an avatar for myself first and got my husband to help. Shopping in second life was just as frustrating as in my real life even with a thin avatar! I didn’t want to spend any real money, but there only seemed to be inappropriate outfits for free. I couldn’t possibly meet the future ALA president looking like a “lady of the night”! We eventually got an appropriate outfit and Tuesday night I transported to the location of the meeting. I was able to sit right next to Sara Kelly Johns. My cyber friend Buffy Hamilton was there for a bit too. Sara’s power point was available for us and a chat box appeared so we could ask her questions. I went back in forth between Twitter and the meeting so I could share some of Sara’s message. I loved her push for more collaboration between the public libraries and school libraries. She stated, “strong school libraries make stronger public libraries.” It would be a huge boost for school librarians if Sara is voted in as ALA president.

I have to be honest and say I am not really sure about the whole Second Life thing for use in education. I know that some schools have purchased islands and students create things in Second Life as projects. I am not a fan of video games, so the whole set up was uncomfortable in that way. I will say it was great “seeing” people while we chat. I feel isolated in the postings of my online Rutgers class because it is just words. I am visual and enjoyed watching the others participate in Second Life. Sara had a mic and spoke about her power point, which made the meeting more personal. I could also hear the passion in her voice something that would not have been achieved through just typing. So maybe teachers could have kids go to a class in Second Life even though they would be in the same real room in real life? Is anyone using Second Life in their library? Does anyone have any experiences in how this could be used for projects? Any examples they would like to share with me?

I am not sure if I will attend another Second Life event, but I am glad I had the experience. I feel if a parent or administrator questions me about the Second Life environment I will have a small background to answer. I enjoy trying out these new tools and seeing how the can benefit our students.

Prezi - Dr. Seuss

I have been looking into a new site called Prezi. This site allows you to create more visually appealing presentations rather than just a standard PowerPoint. I saw one that Dianne McKenzie created on her blog. It was so cool! The upcoming Dr. Seuss biography lesson seemed like a great time to try this out. I found the site a bit confusing at first. Their online tutorials were not as helpful as they could be, but I was able to figure it out. There are some parts of my presentation I would like to improve such as layering more artwork under the text and adding my talking points in a note section. I feel this is a good start. The presentation will be used with all of my classes this week when they come in for a book exchange. One of the ways we celebrate Read Across America is with a daily triva question read over the loud speaker of our school. The first homeroom to buzz in with the answer wins a book from the library for their classroom library. This year, we will use the information in this Prezi to create the questions for the kids. The embedded version here does cut off some of the words in the show. If you click the Dr. Seuss link directly below the show it will take you to the Prezi site where it can be viewed full screen.

Dr. Seuss Biography on Prezi

Promeathean Board Workshop

Our district has always been wonderful in professional development for the teachers. I feel they listen to our needs and find excellent presenters. This week was no exception when we had a two hour delay for an in-service. Our presenter, Ms. Susan Eley, provided a valuable workshop for us on practical tips for using our Promethean boards.

I came up with 12 new things I learned and have listed below.
1. "Drop a copy" feature
2. Placing obj into "My collection" instead of recreating them from scratch
3. Locking and unlocking obj
4. Making objects translucent
5. Using a camera tool to make a worksheet a picture and paste it into the flipchart
6. Attaching sound to an obj
7. Use the paint bucket to change the font color
8. Creating a hyperlink
9.Selecting multiple obj and clicking the trash can throws them away!
10. Create a "ticker tape" message
11. Changing the colors in my toolbar up to 24
12. Using the ink drop tool to create new colors

I am planning on turn keying this new knowledge with the staff in a morning workshop. Susan provided valuable handouts and was flexible with her agenda when we stopped to ask questions. She created a wiki space that shows videos that she created for us to refer to in the future! Amazing! She was a wonderful resource! You can tell that she put a lot of thought into our needs and set things up for continual learning. As a bonus she works close to my district so it will be nice to actually see her face to face!

Resources:
Promethean Board Information
Promethean Planet
Susan's Wiki
Susan's Website

Dr. Joyce Valenza

Keynote speaker this morning at NJASL was Dr. Joyce Valenza. What an amazing woman! She provided us with her first singing keynote presentation down the yellow brick road to search for the Wizard of Apps. She led us on the road to many online resources to provide our students with tools to build their digital citizenship, information literacy and foster their creativity. As she provided examples through video of her students living out their research, I was in awe of her work and wanting to move to her district for my son. Her presentation will be on Slideshare and her Wiki is a path of resources that she discussed. I was brave at the end to ask for a picture. She obliged with a kind smile.

Dr. Valenza is such an empowering woman in our field and I feel fortunate to have been one of the lucky ones in the audience. Last year, it was her annual report that inspired me to write my own at the end of my first year. I am trying to slow my brain down to one thing to take away from her keynote, besides the Wizard of Oz theme song that is still playing in my head. I think what I am walking away with today is the message to be a leader in my school for the benefit of the children. Be knowledgeable of the tools that they will be using and get them to dig deeper in their research process. So much to think about!

Collaboration - A Journey

The library has been quite a buzz this year! We have hosted our book fair, begun our "Geek" campaign, started our morning book club "Book Chomp" and continue to be knee deep in many collaborative projects. At Allen, I have the benefit of having a both a fixed and flexible schedule. This assures, I meet with each class for an isolated library lesson and have open spots for collaborative lessons during classroom teacher's content times. Isolated library lessons would include book talks, Destiny instruction or lessons on the Dewey Decimal system. Collaborative lessons include the classroom teacher's content area being infused with the research process. When this happens, students benefit from a team teacher model and are able to make real world connections to the content. I am thankful that our school's technology teacher, Maureen Schoenberger and I work very closely. In most of these collaborative projects, Maureen is the facilitator of the end products that make us all go WOW! There are many librarians out there that also fill the tech teacher role. Not having to wear this hat all the time, allows me to dive deeper into the research process and continue to make sure meaning is in the front of our research goals.
Collaboration has not always been a part of our curriculum at our school. We have experimented with different models, created a planning form and had some bumps along the way. Our school is not at the point of true collaboration, but we are definitely headed in the right direction. We have a supportive principal, who makes collaboration a priority and a knowledgeable staff, that seeks ways to improve student achievement. Maureen and I were asked to clarify our collaborative journey with the staff at a past faculty meeting. We wanted to share our presentation to others on this collaboration journey.

Collaboration: A Journey

View more presentations from mschoenberger.

I geek mha library

When I moved into this position, I was unaware of the amount of marketing came with the job. I was so amazed with the amount of literature and conversations in the library community about how important it is to promote your resources. I really thought people just knew about the library and of course they would come. So naive!
In August, Buffy Hamilton brought the geek campaign to my attention. I have been thinking "geeky" thoughts ever since! It is a brilliant campaign that I have tried to embrace at my school. I slowly started to use the term, hang signs, place "geek" stickers around and definitely created a buzz. We officially unveiled the geek campaign this week and it was the talk of the school.
Here is an outline of the geek lessons
1. Shared why I geek mha library.
2. Led them to define geek using geekthelibrary.org site.
3. Viewed a slide show of what their teachers geek from my geek website.
4. Students then created black signs to display in the library to share what they geek.
5. Challenged them to find their geek at our library!
The kids were excited about the geek idea and were proud when they found what they geeked on our shelves. It was such a valuable way to gain insight into their interests! Teachers told me that the students were coming up to them and saying, "I didn't know you kayaked." or "You geek bats?" "Why?" It created a lot of dialogue and excitement. Some students reported talking about it at dinner with their parents!
I am thankful the the library community at large is creating these tool kits to help librarians like myself. I feel that even my little school is doing its part to promote the importance of libraries on a larger scale. My hope is to carry the theme throughout the year and keep the excitement going! So look for more "geeky" posts.

Kathleen and I finding our Geek @MHA Library this Halloween!

Making a difference

Throughout my teaching years, I have had the experience of feeling I made a difference in a child's life. I have to say it is one of those things that keeps me going when I am frustrated with the "details" of being a teacher. When I was a classroom teacher, I had parents tell me their kids constantly talk about my class, loved a lesson or were so happy their kids could read now. I am finding you don't always get that immediate feedback from parents as a specials teacher. Recently I did and I wanted to share!
Kate Fitzgerald is my contact at the public library near our school. We collaborated in June in hopes of increasing the number of students participating in the "Be Creative @ your library" summer reading program. Two students from my school logged over 124 hours of reading and were honored this week for their accomplishment! Kate and I were thrilled for many reasons. We are both looking at the success of our collaboration and making plans to continue the relationship between the school and public library. We also have formed a relationship with these girls around the love of reading. Getting to discuss books with kids is a perk of the job! Kate and I love to hear their thoughts, opinions and suggestions about books. One of the girls is even interested in "working" in the library for a girl scout badge!
This little interaction has helped me to see the stepping stones of making a difference in kids lives one book at a time.

Library Goody Bags

I am always impressed by the creative ways librarians get the word out about what their libraries have to offer. A request on Twitter is met with so many replies from generous librarian willing to share their ideas in hopes it will help others reach their patrons. Two such people from my PLN have been instrumental in helping me prepare for my upcoming year. Fran Bullington is a librarian in South Carolina. She sent me a pamphlet example of what she distributes to her teachers. The layout was simple and clear, just what I wanted. Fran outlined resources the library could offer, along with how to schedule a class, and where to find materials. With her permission, I tweaked it to meet my needs and could not be more pleased with the results. Buffy Hamilton is an amazing librarian in Georgia. Recently she wrote about goody bags for her teachers. As soon as I read her post I knew I wanted to do this for my staff too. However, Buffy had started collecting in May from her vendors, I had two weeks. Before I even finished gathering items for my bags, Buffy introduced me to the Geek The Library campaign happening in the Georgia libraries. So I did my best to combine the two.

The Goody Bags contain:
My pamphlet about the library
Lanyards from Britannica Online - New for us this year!
EBSCO stickers and magnets
Apple candle in a reusable wicker basket
Hersey kisses

I followed Buffy's packaging with brown bags with self adhesive book pockets on the front. I created stickers from avery labels that said I geek mha library. In the pocket, I created another label with our contact information to affix on our old library cards. My six year old son was such a trouper! He helped with the stickers and loved filling the bags.

Thanks to Buffy, Fran and all of the many librarians who share ideas through their blogs, twitter and nings. Look for more GEEK stuff soon.

End of the Year Report

I was encouraged to complete an annual report from my Rutgers classes. Joyce Valenza shared her report through Twitter and I was just amazed. Dianne McKenzie wrote about the importance of creating these reports on her blog. I wholeheartedly agree with her reasons. She asked for other librarians out there to share there reports, so I am bravely answering her request. At the end of her blog post is a site she set up for all librarians to post their reports.
For my annual report, I collected student and teacher data from surveys I developed through Zoomerang. Questions for the surveys were based on research articles from my Rutgers class and conversations with classmates. I used my Destiny software and Titlewave resources to help gather collection statistics.
The process was time consuming, yet so beneficial. I feel I have a strong foundation on which I can build from year after year. Thank you Dianne for creating this valuable network tool. I already see things that I will include in my report for next year. Learning from each other will make our profession stronger and will benefit our students.
My report can be found at http://web.me.com/amylking/Report/Welcome.html

Evidence-Based Practice in the library.

I am ending my class at Rutgers this week. No surprise the last topic is assessment. How do we document the learning that takes place in our libraries. One of the many interesting articles I read this week comes from the Library Media Connection "Can You Find Evidence-Based Practice in Your School Library? (Geitgey & Tepe, March 2007). The authors discuss the turn from statistical collection data to data that documents student learning and achievement, Evidence-Based Practice or EBP. They outline three steps for beginners, like me, to realize about EBP. I want to share what those steps are and how I plan to address them in my library setting.

#1. Know the research that demonstrates how school libraries affect learning. Being in the middle of finalizing my library certificate I am surrounded by library research. Will this always be the case? I have set up a google reader account to ensure that I continue to follow blogs that discuss library issues and assessment. I have key journal alerts set up through EBSCO host that bring library information to my inbox. I also follow librarians like Christopher Harris, Joyce Valenza and Michael Stephens on Twitter that provide links, ideas and transcripts from library conferences. Surrounding myself with current research is a must for this profession.

#2. Mesh this knowledge with your own wisdom to build student learning. The authors point out that the data that is collected must "relate to instruction much more than the program." They encourage the librarian to view the item analysis from the state tests to look for correlations from the content standards tested to the library standards. By meeting with my principal later this year to review this data, I will be able to make collaborative unit recommendations that will allow me to focus library instruction on those standards that are tested.

#3 Work with your own school library to collect edvidence that shows you do make a difference. I was already planning on having library skills be included in collaborative project rubrics next year. However, after reading the authors' suggestions, I am now designing student reflection sheets, surveys, exit slips and checklists as well.I will start with a student reflection sheet before this year ends about how students felt the library helped them this year.

The authors do not stop with encouraging librarians to gather data, but to create a plan to share that data. They encourage us to share the evidence with teachers, administration, parents and the community. I will start small this year and present this the data I have from reflection sheets and teacher surveys to my principal. At the meeting where we discuss the test standards, I will share next year's plan to show Evidence-Based Practice in the library.

I welcome any suggestions you may have to guide me along this path. I promise to post my plan as soon as it is outlined.