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.