CHECKLIST ITEM #7 - AASL/ALA MEMBERSHIP

Getting my AASL/ALA membership has been quite an adventure.  I moved the requisite $71 to a membership and dues budget line for the media center.  Then I had to request a check for the $71.  The budgeting software crashed for to or three weeks.  When that came back up the check was sent.  I did not hear anything for about a month.  I continued to ask our book keeper to check on the status of the check.  I asked her once again today.  She called the AASL/ALA membership line.  They told us that an email was sent on November 11.  I never received an email.  They transcribed my email address incorrectly.  I was able to login and change my email and password this afternoon.  I cannot wait to explore the many resources that are available through these organizations.

3D PRINTING @ THE BOLT

I set up a Makerbot 3D printer today.  It is the next step in creating a media center makerspace.  When the students from the class I am working with on the makerspace saw me printing a bolt I asked them what we should call the space.  Many different names were tossed about.  One of them mentioned the shortened for of our school's name.  We call Thunderbolt Tbolt for short.  One of them suggested "THE BOLT".  Ding, ding, ding...we have a winner!  The next step will be to go back and add this name to the flyers they were making to advertise the makerspace to the rest of the school.

HIGH SCHOOL

My practicum day at Islands High School was very similar to last week at Coastal Middle.  The funny thing is that the high school used to be Coastal Middle School.  The high school took over the school about six years ago.  The media center has changed little since then.

Ms. Beedle and Ms. Kicklighter welcomed me with open arms and  were willing to answer my many questions about their daily activities.  I inquired about student IDs, budgets, and technology.  They have some neat security cases for their Chrome devices.  Each of the six cases housed ten chrome books.  The cases would lock and each one had power to charge the devices.  The media staff just finished processing the devices the day before I arrived.  I was able to assist them with a problem they were having with the cases.  Each one was placed onto a metal cart that used to support an overhead projector.  The carts have a lip that makes it difficult to open the cases.  I discovered that there were adjustable feet on each case that when unscrewed would allow the door to open unhindered.  I was glad to be able to help in some way.

There was a good bit of student traffic during the day.  A few of them were checking out books, but for the most part they were in the MC for the computers.  They would come in to type a paper or print documents.  A small fee of ten cents per page for B&W and twenty-five cents per page for color was charged to the students.  However, the staff let many of the students go without paying.  It appeared as though these student were regulars to the MC.  There was also a group of students that came through from time to time for a creative writing class the clerk, Ms. Kicklighter, started.  She has ten or so students that are shooting for the goal of 30,000 word each.  Each day they come in to record their new totals.  IT was nice to see a staff that worked so well together.

MIDDLE SCHOOL MANIA

I did my first day of practicum outside of my school today.  I spent the day at Coastal Middle School.  It was like going back home.  Coastal was one of my sites when I worked for the district's Instructional Technology Department.  I spent countless hours working in and around this media center for close to five years, but all of this time was under a different media staff.  The new staff, like the former, is awesome.  In fact, the Media Specialist was nominated as teacher of the year for her school.  That is pretty cool!  Most of the time this honor goes to a classroom teacher, but Mrs. Kemp deserves it.  She has turned the media center from a place to check out books to a place where students want to hang out.  She started a new project this year where students can come in before the homeroom bell rings.  There were fifty or so students in the MC the day of my practicum.  It was neat to walk into a room that is normally full of patrons paying ID fines to find the room alive with activity.  She said that she has gotten some push back from some staff members about her morning group.  She told them that she would prefer to have the students in the MC  rather than wondering the halls.  Great idea!  The kids must like it as well, because they were in the MC with no air conditioner.  It was a bit hot.  In an effort to cool the room down they sent out an email for fans in the media center.  They were flooded with people walking in a cheering for the media center.  Gotta love middle school humor.  After the fist bell rung, the fine folks from Scholastic dropped off her book fair materials.  I jumped right in and helped her set up.  After all, I just had my book fair the month before.  We did a variety of technology trouble shooting after lunch while talking about her budget.  She gets her budget allotment each year like I do, but she is also supplemented by book fines and IDs.  She told me that a parent complained about her son having to pay for temporary IDs.  Mrs. Kemp let her know that the IDs are mandated by the district and that she has to pay for them.  I believe her exact words were, "We are self-sustaining".  Overall I had a great visit.  Mrs. Kemp helped me to see several things that I could do in my Media Center.

POLL RESULTS

I am happy to say that the winning student ID design was Option 2...the one I liked the most.  The results speak for themselves.

Almost 60% of the staff members that voted choose the second option.  There are just two more hurdles before I can print student IDs.

1. The SIS or Student Information Systems group has to connect the PowerSchool database to my ID computer.
2. Student Pictures need to be uploaded to PowerSchool.

The picture disk is being delivered to school this Wednesday.

STUDENT IDs

The software for my ID card printer was installed Monday morning.  This gave me the opportunity to begin designing student IDs.  The first couple of mock ups looked similar to the student IDs that we purchased from our yearbook vendor.  I liked them at first, but something just didn't feel right.  So, today I came up with another option.  All three are shown below.

Options for School IDs

I showed the three options to my Media and Technology Committee this afternoon.  They all preferred Option 2.  Tomorrow I will send out a Google form so that the remainder of the staff can vote for their favorite.

OVERTIME

My ID printer came in this past week.  It is an exciting time!  Now I am waiting like an expectant father for our networking department to link it up with our student information system.

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A Happy Media Specialist

I received an email this weekend asking me for the workstation service tag of the computer I was going to use with the printer.  Hopefully they set it up over the weekend for me.  I want to be able to design a few mock ups to show the media and technology committee sometime next week.  I will keep my fingers crossed.

I also did some overtime this weekend.  My school is one of fourteen Focus/Impact schools in my district.  Because of this, we have to do professional development on six different Saturdays.  This past Saturday was organized around math instruction.  I love math, but I thought my time could be better spent at school.  I asked my principal if I could hand a couple of Promethean boards instead of going to the math workshops.  She agreed to my proposal.  I am sure that there will be two happy teachers when they arrive at school on Monday.  I even left each of them a little note.

CHECKLIST ITEM #10 - LMTS EVALUATION & WEBINAR

My book fair is going better than I expected.  Monday will be my final day, and I hope it goes as well as this past week. I have already exceeded my $2300 goal with one day to spare.  The kids have been great!  Each day a new group of excited students walks through the book fair monster's mouth.  It is even more fun when their parents and teachers take a trip through the wind tunnel with them.  it would be nice if I could focus solely on the book fair, but I had to attend several meetings this week as well.  The first of which was to go through an orientation for my evaluation at the end of the year.  My assistant principal presented me with a one inch binder that contained a colossal amount of antiquated paperwork.  Antiquated may be a little harsh, but in this day and age you would think that the evaluation for Library Media Technology Specialist would at least be written in this millennium.  Most of the documentation is from 1990.  In fact, some of the exemplars talk about processing film strips and cassette players.  What are those?  Who am I kidding?  I had both in my class when I started teaching.  I kind of miss the hoop sound on the cassette that told you to advance the film.

Well, maybe the evaluation process will catch up to what the job entails in the 21st century.

I also attended a webinar from teachingbooks.net.  What is teaching books.net you say?  Their site says it best.

"TeachingBooks.net is an easy-to-use website that adds a multimedia dimension to the reading experiences of children's and young adult books. Our online database is developed and maintained to include thousands of resources about fiction and nonfiction books used in the K–12 environment, with every resource selected to encourage the integration of multimedia author and book materials into reading and library activities."

Many of the schools in my district purchased the product last year, but the staff at my school hardly used it.  I have to take the blame for this.  I did not do my part in making sure they knew what it was and how to use it.  This will change this year.  I plan on conducting several in-service sessions to illustrate and illuminate the power of the product.

AHHHH! MONSTERS

Much of this week was spent gathering supplies and constructing my book fair entrance.  I took a series of pictures to illustrate our progress.  The student I told you about last week was integral to its completion.

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There is still much to do before we open Tuesday morning, but all will be well.  I cannot wait to hear the kids excitement as they walk through the monster's mouth and have to decide whether to continue through the monster's esophagus (a tunnel of streamers) or trachea (a plastic tube inflated by a fan).  It takes me back to the choose your own adventure books I bought from the book fair as a child.  My goal is to sell $2200.00 dollars worth of merchandise, but my fair will be a day shorter than normal due to Columbus Day.

RAMPING UP TO BOOKFAIR

It is now time to begin planning the design for my book fair entrance.    The pictures below are the entrances from the past two years.  

2013 Book Fair Entrance

2014 Book Fair Entrance

I normally do this on my own or with my Mom,  but this year I decided to get students involved.  I guess it would be more accurate to say student.  One of our new fifth graders is having trouble adjusting to being at a new school, and it just so happens that he likes to draw.  I have been asking him for days to draw me a picture.  I don't really care about the subject of the picture.  I am just trying to get him to feel like he belongs.  I stopped by his room during my inventory sweep earlier this week, and he pulled me to the side to give me three pictures.  I was really excited that he felt comfortable enough to do this for me.  The next part of my plan was quickly put into play.  I asked his teacher if he could come by the media center to see if he would be willing to help me design the book fair entrance.  He agreed.  I provided him with some inspiration, paper, pencils and some time.  He came up with a great design!  

I am going to get him to soften it up a bit next week so that our younger students are not scared of entering the book fair.  I can't wait to share the step by step pictures of the process. 

CHECKLIST ITEM #8 - CONFERENCES

I have attended two conferences while working on my degree.  The first was the Georgia Conference on Information Literacy hosted by Georgia Southern @ the Coastal Georgia Center in Savannah. 

While most of the sessions I attended were geared towards higher ed media centers, I was able to glean some great information that I can adapt to my media center.  My favorite tidbit of information came from a group of presenters from the College of Charleston.  They were big proponents of advertising.  The bookmark below shows a sample of what they did to promotes happenings in and around their space.

The second conference was the Spring Media Specialist Collaborative host by First District RESA.

The keynote speaker was great, and both of my sessions were informative.  The first session introduced me to Google Classroom and the timing could not have been better.  I was able to bring the information back to three teachers that  recently received Chromebooks through a grant.  They were excited to hear about they new possibilities for the devices.  My second session introduced me to Common Sense Media.  This is a great resource for locating age appropriate materials for school and home.  I will be using the digital citizenship resources after winter break.

TITLE I, TECHNOLOGY & BEYOND

As September draws to a close, an important deadline rapidly approaches.  It is time for the first Title I inventory of the year, and it is my responsibility to make sure that all of the equipment purchased with Title I funds has been cataloged correctly and being used properly.  Each piece of equipment purchased with Title I funds must have PL 107-110 placed on it in a prominent location along with the serial number of the device.  This process requires a room to room search with a copy of last year's inventory, a clip board, a pen  and sometimes a magnifying glass.  Those serial numbers can be very small.  It's not all bad though.  Doing these inventories allows me to get into every classroom to see what is going on.  This, in turn, helps me to refocus my efforts in the media center to better suit the needs of the school.  Well, back to inventory.  Now that I have completed my room to room search, I will now focus my attention on using the information I gleaned to update my 2015 Title I spread sheet.

I wish that my only project right now was Title I inventory.  I am also working on finishing spending my media center budget, the school technology budget, and planning for book fair.  First things first.  I found a few unique pieces of equipment this week that I would love to have at school.  The first is a microphone that doubles as a ball.  Imagine being able to use a mic to ask a question and then throw it to a student for a response.  I would definitely be engaged in that classroom!  The first video shows how easy it is to set up.  The second shows how it could be used in a class.

The second piece of technology I discovered this week is called Swivl. 

My principal wants me to order a couple of them for school.

MAKING BOOK ORDERS

I was introduced to a new book vendor this week.  A representative from Junior Library Guild called me to discuss their products.  In a nutshell, JLG is a collection development and book review service.  They review thousands of books each year and place them in a series of categories.  You choose the categories you would like to receive, and you get one book per category each month for a year.  What happens if you already have a book that they have chosen?  Simply log into your account and change the selection.  I placed an order for six different categories.  Now we will have new books coming in every month instead of one or two large book orders a year.  Select the link below if you would like to learn more about JLG.

https://www.juniorlibraryguild.com/how-jlg-works/

I also placed an order with Bound to Stay Bound.  I have found their books to be very durable.  My patrons can be rough on books.  The video below takes you on a tour of their factory.

ADVERTISING NEW BOOKS

I just wanted to share something with you that my clerk did this week.  We put 289 new books on the shelves, and we were having a hard time figuring out how to advertise some of them.  The E, everybody, fiction and graphic novels were easy.  All of the graphic novels were placed on the blue shelf.  All of my patrons know that the graphic novels are on the blue shelf.  The picture below shows how we displayed the new E fiction.

Panorama of the Everybody Fiction Section

While I was pondering how to show our patrons where the new books were located, my clerk was in the work room cutting out shapes from the Ellison machine.  Then she went around the fiction and nonfiction sections and placed a tag on every shelf that contained a new book.  This made it easy for our patrons to locate them.  Great idea! Woohoo!

New Book Tags

MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE

I held my first Media and Technology Committee this afternoon.  It was the first planning day of the year, so I thought it would be the perfect time to get the team together.  Each year I try to get representatives from every grade level, administration & resource staff. This way all parts of the school are represented in the decision making process.  

The agenda items from the meeting are listed below:

1. Select a monthly day and time to meet
My district requires two meetings per year.  My principal requires one each month.  I prefer the monthly approach.  Meeting monthly allows us to be more proactive to the changing needs of the school.  We decided to meet on the first Wednesday of every month before school.

2. Give an update on current technology
Over the summer we had to condemn 28 computers.  They were over six years old, ran Windows XP and would not be able to run Windows 7.  We had the option to convert them to Linux, but their age caused me to avoid that option.

3. Funding - Title I vs. School funds, 

We have two pots of money with which we can purchase technology.  Over the past two years I have worked with my principal to make sure that part of the school budget was set aside to replace aging teacher workstations.  Fortunately, we were able to move money that was previously used to purchase text books to the equipment budget line.  This allows us to replace four or five teacher machines per year.  Our technology department recommends replace computers every five years.  The Title I funds allow us to replace aging student computers or to supplement classes with additional, new technology.

4. Technology Wish Lists

I created a simple Google form that allowed the teachers to make a prioritized technology wish list of up to five items.  The graphic below shows you what the form looks like. Next week I will look over the data and make recommendations to the administration as to what we should buy and why.

Printable Posters Classroom Technology WeAreTeachers Troxell

I have one addition to this weeks posts.  I found a great set of printable posters while searching through my PLN.  There is a sample poster below the link.  Enjoy!

Printable Posters Classroom Technology WeAreTeachers Troxell

STAYING AFLOAT

You may be asking yourself why I choose this title for my blog post.  Is it because of the many hats I wear it school, or because of my life outside of school.  Well, not exactly...it is because of the rain that we have been having for the past few weeks.  The ground around my school is saturated.  I do not believe that it can handle another drop.  What do you think?  The picture below is from the breezeway leading into my media center.  We had to close for several hours on Tuesday until the water subsided.

I believe the turtles are swimming.

The following day was picture day.  Classes were assigned to come to the media center two at a time every 10 minutes.  Yes, I said the media center.  We have the only space large enough to set up for pictures that will not cause a disruption to our master schedule.  However, we do not close down the media center for circulation.  I would have to say that Wednesday was our busiest day so far this year.  We always have students rotating through the media center in pairs or small groups to check out books, but we had every student in the school come in over a three hour period of time.  All would have turned out perfectly if the photo company had brought the two cameras they told me they were bringing.  Having one camera cause major delays frustrations among several of our teachers.  Who could blame them?  I would not want a class of kindergartners waiting in a line for 20 to 30 minutes either.  My clerk and I selected books for them to use while they waited.  Everything turned out well.

You would think that with holiday on Monday, flooding on Tuesday,  and half a day used for pictures Wednesday that our circulation for the week would be down.  We still had 872 books checked out this week.  The collection report below shows which sections had the most use.

The 700's, Everybody fiction, and our chapter book fiction saw the most use.  I believe that this was due to us placing new books on the shelves in each of those areas.  Almost every new book that we put out on Wednesday afternoon was checked out by the end of the week.  Our numbers would have been smaller if we had not restricted the kids from getting multiple "new" books.  Normally i do not place restrictions on the students other than those set up by the district, but I wanted to make sure that as many students as possible were able to get a new book.  I am not sure why, but my patrons seem to feel that if a book is not new that it is not worth reading.  My clerk and I are struggling to change these feeling among our patrons.  I like to tell the kids when they ask for new books:

If you have not read it...It is new to you.

I think I will make a poster with that saying on it this week.

Tomorrow I will be hosting my first media and technology committee meeting of the year.  The  members of the team represent all areas of the school - grade level representatives, the administration, resource teachers and our exceptional children department.  My plan is to review the process for challenged materials, discuss technology needs for the school and present a proposal to have student IDs.  I will let you know in next week's post how the meeting goes.

ADJUSTING TO NEW SCHEDULES

My school has approximately 420 students from Pre-K through 5th grade.  However, for FTE, full time equivalent count,  we cannot include our sixty Pre-K students.  This leaves us with about 360 kids which that state uses to determine our funding. My county has been nice enough to grant each school with a full time media specialist and at minimum a part time clerk no matter what their count.  This year we earned an additional part time paraprofessional position for school, and my principle told me that we could use the new position to make my clerk full time.  She moved from being in the media center four hours a day to almost six hours a day.  Unfortunately, this has proven to be a challenge for me.  Last year she was with me for four hours straight.  Now I am having to adjust her schedule around her lunch break, lunch duty, and to meet the needs of our front office staff.  It has been strange, but we are adjusting to the time changes as the days progress.  My biggest trouble now comes when I have to communicate my expectations.  I am the type of persons that feels the need to do a task a certain way.  I can be down right stubborn about when and how a job gets done.  In fact, I am hardest on myself, but I have to realize that jobs can be done in ways other than those I feel is best.  I believe that we will be a well oiled machine within the next few weeks.

Scheduling matters aside, there were some great experiences in the media center this week.  Our inclusion Pre-K class came in for story time.  It was a blast.  They were so eager to listen to some stories before they went to lunch.  I choose to read two books about animals this week.  The kids were spot on when I asked them to "talk" like the animals in the book.  I would ask, "What does the duck say?"  They media center was soon filled with quack, quack, quack.  I cannot wait until next week.

I was also able to divvy up the twenty-eight Chrome base computers that I talked about in last week's post.  I conducted a walk through of the school on Monday morning to see the number of student computers in each room.  Then I calculated how many student computers were needed so that each class on a grade level had the same number of machines.  Each class ended up with three to four students computers.  It was like I was Santa Claus each time I entered a new room.  I have to say it is a good feeling.

My last bit of excitement was finally getting in a book order that I placed last year.  Five boxes, containing almost 300 books were delivered Monday.  These were already labeled when they arrived.  Woohoo!  My clerk and I went through each box to make sure that all of the books listed on the packing slip were delivered.  The school secretary needed this information so the items could be marked as received and be paid for.  Now we have to stamp each book, import the MARC records into Destiny, and display them for the eager students that will be flooding the room next week to get a look at our new titles.  I think that I am more excited then they are.

IN THE BEGINNING...

My first week of practicum was quite eventful.  In fact, a good portion of my time was spent outside of the Media Center.  After the ten day count, we were allocated two additional teachers.  My principal called me in to help think through the logistics of adding the additional staff.  We had to find appropriate classroom spaces, locate available technology, edit lunch/lab & resource schedules... all while avoiding too much disruption to the learning environment of the school.  We reluctantly decided to breakdown our second computer lab for a first grade class.  The laptops from the lab will be used to supplement the technology resources for our third grade classes.  With this move, each grade level, second through fifth, will have a COW cart (computers on wheels) with at least 15 laptops to share among them.  Having a COW for each grade level should prove beneficial as more and more teaching resources and testing can be found online.

Wow!  This makes it seem like I wasn't even in the media center this week.  This is not true at all.  In fact, an order of ninety-five books was delivered this week. 

Labeled and Ready for Check Out

I love getting new books in the media center.  Unfortunately, none of the books were processed.  There was slight error when the order was submitted to Follett.  Yikes! After my clerk and I labeled each book, I made a phone call to Follett and asked them to make sure that all future orders included processing.

I also had another order that came in late Friday afternoon... twenty-eight Chrome base computers.  

28 New Chrome Base Computers

This influx of technology will need to be equitably distributed.  To do this I will have to do a physical inventory of the computers in each classroom.  Then, I will look at the age and number of computers in each room.  This information will be presented to my media & technology committee where we will develop an implementation plan.  My goal is to have this plan designed and put into place within two weeks.