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.