We’ve probably all enjoyed some version of Carly Rae Jepsen’s song “Call Me Maybe.” (My favorite is probably Cookie Monster’s version.) But thanks to my Pinterest obsession I found this, and with the dedication of some hard-working library science students, we made this bulletin board. Students can scan the QR codes to watch the trailer and then check out the book of the one they like! Fun with a purpose is always a good thing.
Holly Frilot, Collins Hill High School
By now you’ve probably seen an infographic or two – they are popping up everywhere. Infographics are an interesting way to display statistics for the media center, whether to administrators or to teachers and students. I also think this has tremendous potential in the classroom as a meaningful way for students to represent information. However, they are not easy to create for those of us who are not graphic designers. That’s where Piktochartcomes in handy!
I’ve played around with and it’s easy enough to use that I’ve recommended it to one of my teachers that is willing to try new web tools with her students. After creating an account, Piktochart provides 5 templates to choose from. (Think making a brochure with Publisher.) Our plan is to have kids use piktochart to represent each time period in American Lit. Last year she said her students had trouble connecting one time period to the next, so we’ll be sure to include that as a requirement in the infographic (i.e. What were the people in this time period reacting to from the previous time period?) We’ll print them and use them in the classroom as a refresher before tests.
I’ll try to remember to update this post after we complete the project. In the meantime, I wish everyone the best for a happy and productive school year!
~Holly Frilot, CHHS Media Center
Dan Russell has a very cool title: Senior Research Scientist, Google Inc.
He’s also a clear-spoken and affable guide to the ins and outs of really searching with Google.
If you want to sharpen your Google-searching skills there’s a short, free course going on right now over here: http://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com/course.
I admit, I use Google enough that I didn’t learn too much from the first two classes. But I did learn a few tings and found the course design well done (which has given me some ideas for future online learning I may do with students and teachers).
The third class gets into more advanced stuff and I did learn more there. I happily got an A on my midtem this morning.
Apparently if you take the midterm and final you will get a certificate emailed to you so you can show off your new found skills.
Here’s a news article from Mashable on the course: http://mashable.com/2012/07/09/google-search-classes/
Go for it! And share the course with other students and educators you think may benefit.
Thanks,
Jim Randolph
Partee Elementary
Snellville, GA
Over the past two years I have worked with the Senior Language Arts teacher to change the “Senior Memory Book Project” into a digital “Senior Portfolio.” Different teachers have varations of the requirements, but basically it includes selections from personal writings they have completed over the year, thoughtful answers to cumulative questions, and illustrations of some kind (pictures, videos, etc.).
Talking about presentations tools with students is one of my favorite things to do. We’ve been working with Prezi, Popplet, SlideRocket, and Mixbook. All of these tools offer something a little different, but they also allow a student to share a link with a teacher. This is important for us, since many teachers want to have something they can refer back to when grading without having to deal with knowing student log-ins and passwords. However, I do warn students to be careful with the personal information they post, as most of the “free” tools are public.
If you know of any other free, student-friendly presentation tools, please comment!
Holly Frilot
Gail Giles, a YA author that has appeal to guys, girls, high and low level readers, Skyped into Collins Hill HS a few weeks ago. I was a nervous wreck, anticipating the many things that could go wrong when you combine teenagers, technology, and the first attempt at something new. However, it was a resounding success! Gail Giles was witty and fun, and our students did a wonderful job asking questions and keeping the conversation going. If you want to see the highlights, see our short video here. If you want more details, keep reading…
Amy Golemme, my co-media specialist, and I brainstormed authors that would have mass appeal. Gail Giles was our first thought, so I took a shot in the dark and emailed her. She emailed back quickly and we got the details planned out – one test session a few days before, then 2 sessions during our 2nd and 3rd periods. We decided to use the media center to keep it cozy and inviting, rather than a larger space like the commons area or theater. I made signs for the hallways and classrooms and the media center. I went into all the 9th and 10th grade LA classes to promote it. Students that wanted to participate had to read at least one of her books, answer a few questions, and write a few questions they’d like to ask her. For those students, I gave them a pass out of class during 2nd or 3rd period and they were our VIPs. I also invited two language arts classes per session and any media specialists from the around the county that could come.
In Gwinnett, we aren’t allowed to use Skype, but we do have an alternative – Polycom and the Blue Jeans network. We use those tools and the author uses Skype. Kevin Tomlinson from the county was excellent technical support for us and helped put my technology fears to rest. On the day of the event, we set up about 80 chairs in the media center, created VIP seats, put out a breakfast spread, set up the technology, and hoped for the best! Gail came on, introduced herself, and then we had the students come up to the computer to ask questions. We had a webcam and external mic hooked up to my laptop. The students asked good questions, and Gail was entertaining, funny, and informative. When I polled the students after the event, they all said they had a positive experience and many expressed interest in doing it again. One student even turned in a top ten list of authors she’d like to Skype with!
If you have any questions or want templates for signs, the handout students filled out, or any other details, don’t hestitate to email me at holly_frilot@gwinnett.k12.ga.us or call at 770.682.4126. It was a lot of work, but a great experience for us and for the students.
Holly Frilot, Collins Hill High School
Does your school system use Destiny? If not, you can skip my post this month, but if you do then here’s a little trick I’ve figured out to help with weeding.
I’ve learned that weeding is one of those tasks that is best done little and often. If you wait for a big shining quiet spot on the calendar to get a whole bunch of it finished at once, you will be waiting forever. So I prefer to pull only a few books at a time and delete them whenever I get a chance. Once I’ve filled a number of boxes, I ship them out and start over. It’s a continual process but makes me happy to be getting rid of the massive amounts of dead wood my library has accumulated over the past sixteen or so years.
The normal way I believe people weed is to print out a collection management report from either Follett or someone else. You pick a section and it lists all the books that are past the fifteen year copyright date. Some of those books will be good to weed. Some of them are okay to keep. It takes a while to figure all of this out.
But one thing you can do before you start with this report is to go into Destiny first. One of your report options is “Top/Bottom Titles.” This will show you the top or bottom circulating titles in any given Dewey range you’d like. It’s an interesting thing to play with anyway, but for our purposes today you want to select the bottom titles in whatever section and give it a nice long time period. I put something crazy in like, “past 30 years” to make sure I’m getting all the information I can.
The thing that knocked me out was that as old as my collection is, in pretty much every section I ran this on I found books that had been checked out exactly ZERO times. Now to be fair, it really only means they’ve been checked out zero times since we got Destiny in 2004. The books might have checked out a couple of times before that. But that’s still eight long years seeing no action. This is the easiest weeding you’ll ever do!
It’s freaky too, when you go over to a shelf stuffed with old books, find the title and pull it off the shelf. It’s usually a very bland, monochromatic Bound-to-Stay-Bound book that creaks when you open it. It really never has circulated! It’s usually not surprising when you see it, either. It’ll be some thing like All About Wood with a copyright date of 1984 or something. Weed it!
And don’t stop with the zeroes, either. I figure those books that circulate less than once a year (seven times or less for me) are just not paying their rent, if you get my meaning. Seek them out and weed them! You’ll be glad you did.
Jim Randolph
Partee Elementary
Snellville, GA
Well I have some answers for you, my friends! Of course, most of these are not my own. I’ve been collecting them for years from other blogs, teachers, media folks, and online comments.
Let me just start by saying, personally, I like things that go away. Baked goods and gift cards. None of us need anymore candles, tree ornaments or candy-filled mugs. But that’s just me. Here we go:
Some people have…
…bought a beach bag with a towel, sunscreen, water bottles, and beach toys.
…bought an ice cream bowl, scoop, and gift card to ice cream place.
…bought a bowl, microwave popcorn, candy, soda, and video rental gift card.
…made a gift basket out of BBQ items.
…made a small gift basket with pen, memo pad and other small supplies.
…bought a set of patio dishes and glasses.
…gave a nice notecard set.
…bought a nice beach towel.
…gave a nice candle.
…gave some bath stuff.
…gave a potted or hanging plant or flowers.
…gave a gift card. (One teacher said they gave a MC/Visa gift card so the volunteer could use it as they pleased).
…got a yummy type of chocolate…Ghiraldi Peppermint Bark this year and attach a bookstore gift card
…baked them some pumpkin bread and/or Starbucks gift cards.
…had a luncheon and then give a nice ornament or poinsettia. At the end of the year, we do a breakfast and another small gift like soap or stationery. We also give them a book & treat bag during each book fair.
…got fleece throws at Kohls (I think they were $4 with my coupon) and I was going to attach some homemade chocolates and a note for them to use this to snuggle up with a good book this holiday season. Last year I found winter themed to go coffee cups and put in packets of hot chocolate in them plus some homemade chocolates.
…bought them pedicures. They loved it!
…gave an ornament with their child’s picture in it. The volunteers love it. For those volunteers that do not celebrate Christmas I just put their child’s picture in a non-holiday frame.
…had a good friend who makes key chains, wristlets, and lanyards and all of the proceeds go to a charity. I am ordering key chains for all of my aides, a wristlet for teachers who are always good “customers” and will probably order lanyards next semester for end of the year gifts.
…purchased tree ornaments from Pier One and they loved them!
…usually hit Bath & Body Works for all their travel sized items. This year, I’ve done the socks infused with shea butter and an anti-bacterial lotion. The most important part is presentation. You don’t have to spend a lot, just make sure you wrap in cute cellophane and maybe throw some candy in there, too. They always love it!
..purchased gift certificates from restaurant.com to local establishments. $25 denominations only cost $2 each.
…moved away from the Christmas gift and give them a token of our appreciation towards the end of the year. I try to write personal notes throughout the year to let them know how much I appreciate them.
…make a few homemade goodies and write a nice thank-you note.
…took NEW books that I just ordered and before I circulate them, I let the volunteers children come by and look at them and select a book to “dedicate” to their mom. I make a dedication page and put it in the book which we cover with clear contact paper. I then let the child be the first one to check it out when it is ready. I also print a thank you card with a picture of the cover of the dedicated book.
…buy these lovely ladies gift cards out of my own pocket and am happy to do it. But if I had more than my current 3 or 4 volunteers, I’d just do a whole lot more baking. I also brought in a coffee maker last year and keep that stocked with good coffee and creamer and such out of my own pocket. Because they are awesome.
More ideas? Leave them in the comments!
Thanks,
Jim Randolph
Partee Elementary
Snellville, GA
@library_jim
How do you invite a participatory culture in your library? For me, this is a term that is an embedded part of my philosophy. I strive to find ways for students to have multiple opportunities to connect, participate, collaborate, and create in the media center throughout the year. All students don’t participate every time, which is fine, but my goal is to offer enough variety of experiences through collaborative lessons, resource promotions, and incentives/contests that every student has a chance to find a place to participate during the year.
After several impromptu conversations with parents and teachers recently, I’ve come to value the power of library sponsored literacy contests and reading promotions. Teachers have mentioned that they love the “choice” that is a part of these contests and promotions because they see such a variety of students who participate. Parents have commented to me that their child had no interest in writing poetry or essays until a contest came along. Multiple parents have mentioned the motivating power of these contests. My parapro and I have seen how the simple interactive component of stamping a box on a piece of paper can give direction in choosing new books outside of comfort zones and motivation to try something new.
What have I done this year?
What else is coming this year?
These contests and promotions are just one layer of the participatory culture of the Barrow Media Center, but they have come to be a piece that students, teachers, and families appreciate and expect. These promotions and contests run simultaneously with the multiple collaborative lessons and projects that take place in the library and by no means replace other purposes of the library. I will continue to evaluate their relevance to our program and always look to give even more students opportunities to connect and create in our library. How are you celebrating literacy and inviting participation in your library?
Andy Plemmons
School Librarian
David C. Barrow Elementary
Athens, GA
Salem Press via kwout
Today, Salem Press launched The Library Grants Center, a free, online directory of grants for libraries. Developed and Edited by Mirela Roncevic for Salem Press, the grants tool empowers librarians to locate library grant funding sources on the national, state, regional and local levels (US sources). The center is free, requires no login or authentication, and will be updated on a regular basis. It also contains a how-to area with a tutorial, FAQ, and lists of resources.
According to the Salem press release, the web site focuses on grants available to all types of libraries and from a range of sources—public and private— including professional organizations, large corporations, and family foundations. “Everyone’s aware of the financial pressures on libraries. They are enormous and growing,” said Peter Tobey, Salem Press’s Director of Sales & Marketing. “So we were motivated to try to relieve some of that pressure by developing self-help tools for librarians. The Library Grant Center is that tool.”
The Library Grants Center consists of three distinct sections:
“We hope librarians will help us add to the Center so that, as a community, we can keep it up-to-date and growing,” added Tobey. “We are committed to keeping it current and useful.”
According to Roncevic, “the proliferation of social media outlets has inundated the library and publishing industry with relentless dialog. While dialog is important, we shouldn’t forget the tools. The more free tools we build and share, the more we grow our community’s footprint. The bigger that footprint, the greater the benefit for all involved. The Library Grants Center is a free tool that addresses the needs of librarians looking for funding but also a practical reminder to publishers and vendors that their support still matters a great deal.”
All the kids should, actually. All the kids from 9 months to 99. It’s just a blog collecting cool videos from around the interwebz, but it’s done better than most. When I came across it a couple of months ago it was one of those head-smacking moments. The blogger, Rion Nakaya, is doing what I should have done. I’m forever coming across funny, interesting and mind-blowing little videos online and sharing them with my daughter. Never thought to put them all into a blog to share with everyone. We’d actually seen many of the ones on the blog at first, but now she keeps on digging up fantastic stuff and it’s just an amazing resource of wonder.
Jason Kottke wrote, ”With obvious exceptions, media ‘made for kids’ is mindnumbingly dumb. Youtube, Flickr, and Vimeo are amazing resources of not-made-for-kids but totally-appropriate-for-kids-stuff like what Rion is posting here.”
She answered, ”This is the exact reason that I started this blog. So far, my guidelines have been that my kid(s) watch stuff that should also educate/entertain me, and that what I post here must be approved by my kid(s). My 3 year old co-creator has been a big help.”
Using the aforementioned youtube, Vimeo and other sources like Science Friday and TED talks, she is continuing to ”curate” videos about music, art, science, human tricks, robots and all manner of delightful things. Flying planets, exploding experiments, Jerry Lewis, Ella Fitzgerald, Legos, insects flying, robots flying, ”the greatest dance number ever filmed,” and more.
I have shared it with my art teacher, science lab teacher, music teacher and the other staff members and it’s becoming a favorite resource for us all.
As soon as you finish reading this post, do check it out. But make sure you don’t mind leaving a little vacuuming and laundry undone, because a couple of hours will go by before you know it. Amazing, wonderful, delightful hours.
Enjoy!
Jim Randolph
Partee Elementary
Snellville, GA