Display Case!

Oh the display case.......one successful display leads to a desire to create another of equal or greater success.  The self-induced pressure is what drives me.  That and the fact that I actually really love creating display cases that make people smile.  Having said that, I can't believe I forgot to take a picture of January's iRead case.  It featured iPod representations with students pictures and a "playlist" of their favorite books.  The kids loved that one and asked to take their iPod representations home. Then there was February's display case - a favorite of many and yes, once again I forgot to take a picture.  That was the giant origami case that featured Tom Angleberger's Origami Yoda book series.  I folded and displayed a giant origami Yoda, Darth Paper, and Jabba the Puppet.  Forgetting to take pictures of these cases is a concept my 13 year-old daughter can't wrap her mind around.  She takes a picture of (literally) everything she does.  She Instagrams images of her Starbucks drinks, Snapchats wardrobe decisions, and Tweets every funny thing she sees.  She doesn't understand how I could be so old that I could actually forget to snap a pic of something I put so much work into!  In her mind, if you don't post it somewhere it may as well have never happened.  Looks like I'll have to recreate those cases next year just so I can get some documentation.

At least I remembered to get a picture of March/April's case - the literature genre theme that went hand-in-hand with our building wide March Madness Reading Challenge.

Finding balance in the library program's focus

As promised, I have meditated on the library program's focus and finding a balance within elements it contains.  One of the library program's elements that I thought a lot about was reserch.  The last quarter of the school year I committed to attempting a module from the engageny website for the 3rd and 4th grade classes.  How did I arrive at this foolish decision?  Well, I'd already done some research projects with both the 1st and 2nd grade classes and felt ready to take on the upper grades but wasn't sure about choosing a topic.  So, I solicited feedback from the 3rd and 4th grade teachers - I asked if I could help support the curriculum with a particular research topic or if (gulp) anybody might be interested in collaboratively teaching a research project?  I didn't receive many responses and the ones I did receive said that any research was good research and would be well appreciated.

Now, everyone likes to be appreciated but, as a librarian, I also wanted to be helpful so I thought I'd take a look at the enagageny modules that our district would be taking on next year.  I thought maybe I could take a couple for a test drive and offer my experiences with them later.  Ha!  Taking on one of these modules solo with an entire grade level of 125+ students is not recommended.  Even a modified version of one of these things (the full module for Interdependent Roles of Colonial Trades, grade 4 is 656 pages) is a big undertaking.  I learned a valuable lesson, one that was taught extensively in library school but nevertheless, had to be experienced personally.  That lesson is that collaboration is necessary if we are going to tackle deeper projects with cross-curricular content.  Although we enjoyed some success with these modules, they could have been so much more!

It has been rumored that next year the library will be flexibly scheduled for grades 2-4.  If this schedule is put in place, the possibilities for meaningful research in the library will be greatly increased!  Collaboration will be the norm instead of the exception and at least two elements of the library program will be in balance.  Research and Curricular Support.

I've been thinking a lot recently about the library program's focus.  When I was in library school I learned about what the program "should" focus on.  When I was hired to run my first library and library program I quickly realized that those "shoulds" didn't necessarily apply to my library.  I agonized over focus for the first few months until I settled into a rhythm of programming that felt right.  Then I worried because I wasn't so stressed about the program that I would dream libraries every night.  Was I now being remiss in my attitude about the library program?  I clearly wasn't ready to tackle writing a curriculum for the library (my end-of-the-year goal).  The winter holiday break gave me some time to explore the professional blogs I respect most and catch up on my professional journals.  I came across a slideshare of Tiffany Whitehead's that spoke about balance and really made sense to me.  This is the balance that I will meditate on during the first part of 2014.  I'll let you know what comes of those meditations.

December Display Case

This one was a big hit although it did fall down once and had to be rebuilt.  Then there was the reshelving of all these books but it really was worth it in the end.

November Display Case

Global Read Aloud

Back in October I began a Global Read Aloud (GRA) project with all six of our second grade classes.  The project involves reading a selected book (Marty McGuire by Kate Messner) and making global connections with other classes reading the same book.  We have had moderate success connecting with other classes but have been limited by our early morning start.  At 8:30 in the morning most of our connections are either still sleeping (Australia) or simply not available for face-to-face connections.  So, we have connected using our own Kid Blog, sending and receiving photos, comments, and questions.  We've also experimented with online tools like Padlet, Screen Chomp, and Blendspace.  This week we are taking a break from reading Marty McGuire to perform a reader's theater of the play in the book, The Frog Prince.  I can say with confidence that the students have enjoyed the experience and that they look forward to reading more Marty McGuire stories on their own.  I had to order several copies of Ms. Messner's Marty McGuire series per student demand and that in itself indicates success for this project!

Professionally, I was able to connect with other teachers in the GRA project through Twitter and Edmodo. Using these tools was exciting and a good deal easier than I'd thought it would be.  As a bonus, I was able to get the district to unblock Twitter in the library so now I can begin exploring ways to use it with the students. I even managed to collaborate with one of our own second grade teachers who used the Kid Blog as part of her writing centers.  This experience has caused me to explore many other global connections through education projects that I'll be sharing with our wonderful teachers and administration.  Thank you Global Read Aloud and we'll definitely see you next year!

Union East Kid Blog

Guess Who?

October Library Display Case.  Thanks Pinterest!

New Book Cart

It was breaking my heart to keep the Kindergarten classes out of the nonfiction section.  Especially since we were spending so much time learning about fiction and nonfiction!  They would sneak past the chairs that I put up as a "barrier" and try to smuggle out cat, dog, and dinosaur books.  So, when my brand new green apple book cart arrived I decided to use it as a portable nonfiction section for younger users of our library.  They love it!  They get to browse for themselves and choose from a wide array of nonfiction titles without leaving shelf destruction in their wake!

SLAWNY Fall Sharing 2013

Yesterday I attended SLAWNY's Fall Sharing 2013 at Hamburg's Union Pleasant Elementary.  The event was well attended with about 80 professionals there to share their ideas and resources with one another.  The first workshop consisted of 4 "speed rounds" lasting 15 minutes each.  Of the choices available, I chose Ready, Set, Art: A Look at Programming Offered at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery with Jessica DiPlama, Elementary Library Programming for Autistic and Special Education Students with Susan Walterich, teacher-librarian and mother of an autistic child, and Classroom Management in the Elementary Library with Elizabeth Kick.  I chose to stay at the last session for another round as new participants made the content fresh and I need all the classroom management support I can get.  I'd say it has been my most challenging area of teaching so far this year but I did walk away with some new ideas that I intend to implement this coming week like playing classical music during book selection and checkout!  The plan is to subliminally soothe and calm the students into a state of quiet contemplation..........I'll let you all know how that goes!

The keynote speaker at Fall Sharing was Shannon McClintock Miller, a teacher-librarian and technology integrator at Van Meter School in Iowa.  I had been following Shannon's blog and using some of her great tips and ideas since the summer so hearing her present in person was a real treat.  She shared a wealth of information on becoming and staying connected in the school library.  She advised everyone to strive for the goal of becoming connected on Twitter and provided an array of ways in which Twitter helps to grow and facilitate your personal learning network as well as streamline your online presence.  I spent a few hours going over the materials I came away with yesterday and I am excited to get started.  I even found some key people she mentioned we should follow on Twitter and started searching some hashtags!

Here is the link to Shannon's presentation where she talks about the importance of building a personal learning network.
How to be a Connected School leader

Read Box

I finally got around to getting an image of my first display case.  I found this idea on Pinterest and was really happy with the way it turned out!  I'm loving Pinterest for display ideas and have already used it for my second display case.  Now I just have to get around to taking a picture of that one!  Yes, I'm a very busy first year teacher-librarian and social media sites like Pinterest keep me fueled with great ideas for displays that bring people in to the library!

Librarians of the Future

I came across this poster from PewInternet.com for the 2012 SUNY Librarians Association Annual Conference.  It's true, Search has changed the way we get information.  How then does the role of the librarian change as facilitator of information?    I think the new roles outlined on this poster are relevant, especially that of Filter.  For librarians interested in continuing their careers in the future, its time to start figuring out how to filter and then curate content.  Or become irrelevant.

Libraries of the Future [VISUALIZATION] | LibraryScienceList.com

By Way of Introduction

So.............I'm thinking about how to best introduce myself to the other members of the faculty when I come across a post in Jennifer Underhill's blog "Three Ring Library" that mentions the tool smores.com.  I spent the next 24 hours in a digital rabbit hole investigating and creating digital flyers.  The result speaks for itself.  I would add that normal people do not need to spend as much time as I did on creating their first digital flyer.  It is actually a really easy and user-friendly process.  It's me, not you.

Eye Openers

This past week, the administration at CCSD treated us to a 4 hour tour of the neighborhoods, history, and landmarks within our district's borders.  As a Cheektowaga native, I thought there wasn't much you could show me that I hadn't already seen.  I was wrong.  We learned about the history of the town and the first settlers here (Hitchcock).  We passed an Underground Railroad location and learned about the tremendous contributions the Rheinstein family made and continues to make.  We visited Buffalo Crushed Stone Quarry and were treated to a detonation of limestone (one in our group even got to push the button!).  It was a wonderful way to see the district in which we all will be teaching in just a few days.  There was one aspect of the tour that stood out in everyone's minds and that was the diversity of the neighborhoods in the district.  We saw neighborhoods in poverty conditions that bordered other neighborhoods in Buffalo more poverty stricken.  The bus took us through pastoral areas where the homes are valued upwards of $300,000 and the working class areas that seem to define Cheektowaga.  This is where our students live and knowing that will make it easier to identify with them in the coming year.  Thank you CCSD for an eye-opening orientation that would have made Pedro Noguera proud.

Blog « Classroom Technology

Found on EduClipper https://www.educlipper.net

This digital poster really made me think.  I'm in the middle of structuring my curriculum map and trying like crazy to use technology in my lesson plans.  As an educator I need to be ever mindful that technology exists as a tool and not as a means to an end in itself.

Technology does not transform education.  Teachers and students transform education.

Summary of Learning 2.0

It became clear to me a few weeks back that a good deal of the frustration I was experiencing with these technologies and applications in the beginning of the semester had disappeared.  I thought about why I was less agitated when sitting down to explore these tools now than I was the first few weeks of this class.  I think the answer is in becoming familiar with the technology, the way its set up, and in discovering my own set of preferences for tools I like and those I don't.  Just as I wouldn't frequent certain bricks-and-mortar social establishments, so I have determined which type of virtual social platforms and tools aren't a good fit for me.  In the beginning, I was struggling with the management of information.  I felt obligated to try everything, read everything, understand everything.  The thought that there was an account out there that held a bunch of bookmarks or pictures that I'd organized for some use not yet defined really bothered me.  Since setting some of those accounts up however, I have actually used a few of them.  Zotero, delicious, and Flickr are the main winners.  Podcasts are my new favorite companion as I whittle away the day in front of this computer that I used to resent having to sit in front of.  I guess what I'm saying is that I used to feel controlled by the information and now I feel more in control of it.  That makes me more comfortable and willing to explore the possibilities of implementing more of the Web2.0 technologies in my life and in libraries in general.

The nature of this Learning2.0 module is that it will change as the technology changes.  I felt that the tools we explored were all relevant to LIS and the objectives of information management.

Yelp and Mango

I visited Yelp and immediately searched the restaurant my husband and I own, Falafel Bar.  The search function is great for searching restaurants because you can search by food type, restaurant name, or any other descriptive word for food (think "spicy").  Then you add a zip code or city and Yelp returns a list of possible matches complete with user reviews.  The browse feature is also great with subject specific headings and a "Best Of" list for  each category.  I've lived in this area my whole life and I'm a small business owner but I still find myself wondering where the best place is for this or that service from time to time.  I can't wait to use this site more, having the user reviews is so helpful.  I can imagine this site would be more than useful in a public library setting where I'm sure the librarians and staff are regularly quizzed on where the best place is for  (fill in the blank).

Mango Languages is an amazing tool!  I went to their site, viewed the demo and then remembered seeing something about Mango on the public library's website.  Sure enough, Buffalo & Erie County Public Libraries offer Mango Languages to card holders!  I spent a ridiculous amount of time with this tool and plan to spend more as soon as I can.  My daughter also spent about an hour with the first 2 lessons in Hebrew and loved it!  This is a powerful tool, engaging, interactive, and super easy to use.  I can see why the Buffalo libraries subscribe to it and I think it's a wonderful alternative to some of the outrageously expensive language software packages on the market today.  As we become a more global society, tools for sharing languages will rise to the top of new technologies.  That reminds me of Google translate, another great tool for language sharing!  That was just one of the more interesting gadgets I put on my iGoogle homepage.  Which reminds me, I'd better go feed that little hamster.

If You Give a Student an iPad…

If You Give a Student an iPad…

Library 2.0

I found Dr. Wendy Schultz's blog To a Temporary Place in Time..... http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/6.htm
resonated most loudly with me.  "Libraries aren't just in communities, they are communities."  If, as librarians, educators, administrators, and patrons we strive to think of the library in this context the future of libraries everywhere will be secure.  I loved her Library 1.0 - 4.0 progression model, it puts the library as community at the center and therefore, the library doesn't have to "keep up" with technology, the library (the community) incorporates the technology through absorption into our routine, the same  way we all do when something proves valuable.  It is exactly this idea of "absorption" that is key to understanding the future of libraries (successful future that is).  Library 2.0 is just the beginning, Library 3.0 and 4.0 will absorb 1.0 and 2.0, but they will still exist inside the model.  All the knowledge, all the experience the library contains is really a collection of knowledge we have gained as a community (local, global, virtual).  We are on a path of progression (we always were) and libraries will evolve and change along with the world with librarians as "tour guides" and someday soon we'll talk about the "old days" of Library2.0.

Zotero

I've found Zotero particularly useful as a sharing source for literary information.  I am currently using it with a group to share resource information on an instructional presentation.  It's been helpful to see the information others have sourced regarding our topic that I've missed.  We are having some technical difficulty however.  For some reason it has been a problem to make the group library accessible to everyone in the group for editing.  Currently, only the creator of the group has editing rights.  If anyone knows how to fix this problem, I'd greatly appreciate the knowledge.  Zotero is different than other social bookmarking in that it allows you to post the article in full format with annotation and bibliographic information.  This is particularly useful for LIS students and professionals.  I downloaded the Google Chrome plug-in as well as the Firefox as I don't usually work in Firefox.  So far, everything has gone well while working in Chrome with this app.
I see Zotero's applications in LIS as more relevant than other applications in the same neighborhood since the ability to annotate scholarly resources is crucial and time-saving.
https://www.zotero.org/annarauvenpoor/items

Delicious!

Social bookmarking as a research tool.  Interesting yes.  Efficient no.  I lost the better portion of my morning to creating stacks and then browsing other's stacks.  Delicious.com is great for browsing when you have some time to kill (use the Inbox) but isn't going to be effective as a pointed research tool.  As for creating a stack that will organize all of your research in a particular area, it does that just fine.  Add the accessibility factor and you've got yourself a powerful, portable portfolio of information relevant to you.  Of course, you could invest some time finding others with similar information interests and follow their stacks for updates and news you may have missed.  I think it is with delicious.com as with many of the other web2.0 technologies that we've encountered......you get out of it what you put into it.  The more you tend to use and frequent these tools, the more useful they become.