Week 5- Professional Collection Development

As I've mentioned previously, Dr. Mac is a long-term sub position for the past two years at our school. She has spent the last several years really working to reorganize the library and update the titles. One of her goals was to create a professional library for the teachers. With so many other responsibilities taking priority, she really wanted me to make this my long-term practicum project. This week, I got started!

Our principal took another position around Thanksgiving. She donated much of her professional literature to the library. Dr. Mac combined that with other resources in the collection. My first task was go through and weed some of the much older resources. I found this gem of outdated resources. I asked the student aides if they had ever seen a floppy disk. They said why does it look like the save icon in Word? Haha!! I'm old enough that I can remember using these to save my work in middle school!

My next task this week was to go through the professional resources and separate what was already part of the collection from the rest. Several of the resources had library barcodes and call numbers labeled on them! Dr. Mac had no idea why our previous principal had kept these in her office. Most of these resources had been marked as lost. I used an extra laptop and scanner in the supply room to check these back in. 

My final task for the week was to create shelving space for the professional library. I cleared out a section of dictionaries and put them in the supply room. Dr. Mac plans to allow teachers to check out class sets of dictionaries for instructional purposes. The dictionaries do no good sitting on a shelf and students rarely use them independently. I then shelved what was already in the catalog according to Dewey decimals. 

 

I also created a private sitting area for teachers to peruse the professional resources. This hopefully will encourage teachers to use the library for their own purposes!

 

Next week, I will start processing the professional resources NOT in the collection, adding them to the catalog!

Week 4- Bluegrass Awards Booktalks

My cooperating supervisor is a long-term sub filling in the LMS position for the past two years at our school. As such, she has not had time to really develop the program or reading promotion activities. This year, she really wanted to allow our school to participate in the Bluegrass Awards. Dr. Mac ordered multiple copies of each of the 6th-8th grades nominated titles.

As language arts classes came in, Dr. Mac gave booktalks to each of them. She used the KBA created Prezi to introduce the books. The Prezi included links to several book trailers that the students really enjoyed. She had also already read a few of them and gave her own opinions on several of them. It was really educational watching booktalks in action! With so many titles being introduced to students, she limited her time on each of the books.

http://prezi.com/zommdh82ggcs/2014-kentucky-bluegrass-awards-middle-school/

One of the nominated books, Cinder, is one of my absolute favorite titles I've read in the last several years. I've read the first three novels of the series! We played this book trailer below before Dr. Mac allowed me to present my own 30-second book talk on this  fabulous title. 

After our presentations, students were allowed to peruse the shelves. Anyone who wanted to check out a KBA title signed up on a waiting list sheet. Even though Dr. Mac ordered multiple copies of each title, we still ran out of books fast! Over the next few weeks, Dr. Mac plans to announce students' names on the waiting list on the morning announcements as books come back in. She also created a ZMS ballot for students to vote on their favorite titles in the next few weeks. 

This experience allowed me to help check ins/outs and really observe true reading promotion in action! Several of my own students were carrying these books into my classroom and I allowed them reading time when their assignments for me were completed. I am very excited to have given my first official book talk and be a part of the Kentucky Bluegrass Award process. I hope to participate as an LMS for years to come!

Week 3- Instructional Unit

A media specialist is often the expert in a school on research and research methods. I wanted to practice gathering resources for a student research project. I decided to collaborate with myself as the classroom teacher. I currently teach in the same school as my practicum site, instructing 6th and 7th grade social studies. My 7th grade students are currently studying ancient Greece. While this unit has a variety of research-able topics, I decided to narrow it to Greek mythology. I also decided to include a technology product to present their research.

I allowed each of my students to sign up for a Greek mythological figure. This gave them a choice for research, creating a better buy-in to the project. My cooperating supervisor as the LMS guided me in selecting resources for my students, both online and in the library. We pulled several mythology encyclopedias, nonfiction books, and even a few graphic novels.

Their first task is to use informal research methods to complete this graphic organizer, called an I-Chart. I chose the parameters of some of their required information. They had the freedom to research other facts about their mythological figures.

My students had two days in the library to complete their research. Half of my students used the 12 computers while the other half used the print resources. The second day they swapped. This allowed them to use both print and non-print resources to meet the 21st century standards required by the AASL.

After two days this week of time in the library, I was able to secure a mobile lab with a class set of laptops for my classroom. For the rest of the week, students created a Weebly site to present their information on their mythological figure. This was very challenging for some students while others seemed to pick it up right away. I allowed several students to help others. All students reported liking creating a website as opposed to a tired PowerPoint or poster. By the end of the week, most of my students created websites that I deemed proficient, according to a rubric I created. Students were very proud of their work. The best ones were linked from the school website and featured as great work!

This unit allowed me to gain many outside and inside hours and was a very valuable experience. As an LMS, I hope to have more time with this unit to create more of a formal research project, using a method such as the Big 6. My students' learning was definitely impacted by this instructional unit with a lot of success! Isn't that what it's all about?

Week 2- Snow days= Outside Hours

AN ENTIRE WEEK OF SCHOOL CANCELED FOR SNOW?? Anyone feel like punching mother nature right now? 

This was my measurements of snow earlier this week! 

Due to the entire week of school being canceled, I did not get in any inside hours. However, I got in 7 hours of "outside" hours working! Our district requires principals to get to school during snow days. As I live very close to school, I was able to make it into work when my principal was there.

Many media specialists are also the STCs, or school technology coordinators, for their schools. It is important that I gain experience troubleshooting, updating, and processing technology. Our district offers an online work order system for teachers with technology problems. I was allowed to access the ZMS system and work on a variety of work orders. I fixed Smart Boards, projectors, replaced desktop mice and keyboards, updated software and many other technology needs.

One of my biggest tasks was to process newly purchased technology. Zoneton is a Title I school and we receive funds to support our needs. Recently, we had a budget surplus that needed to be spent for the fiscal school year. Our school had enough funds to purchase 82 mini-laptops! My task is to help process all of these laptops to create two mobile labs with 60 of them and create a library mini-lab of 22.

Processing 82 laptops is an enormous job!! First I had to unbox, unwrap, and plug in all of them. That took several hours! Then I had to "image" each of them. The district technology gurus showed me how to use the district internet to download all required software and network capabilities. This process takes at least 45 minutes for each mini-laptop. ZMS has 10 open network ports for imaging use. As you can imagine, I spent a lot of time in the network room this week!

Hopefully next week we will actually have school and I can get into the library!

Week 1- Getting to know the ZMS Library

Anyone sick of snow yet? January has given my district, Bullitt County Public Schools, several days of inclement weather! I have a feeling winter isn't done with us for awhile!

I was able to get in a few hours in the library this week to start off my practicum. My cooperating supervisor is Dr. Christine McIntosh, or Dr. Mac, in the Zoneton Middle School library. Dr. Mac is a retired librarian serving as a long-term sub at ZMS for the past year and a half. She is very well-known in Bullitt County as an LMS. She was the first LMS to put together an OPAC with 4 library computers in the early 90s before other OPACs even existed! She has worked in several Bullitt County schools, as well as in Frankfort for state library media organizations. Dr. Mac has many years of experience and I am excited to learn from her expertise in my practicum journey!

While I teach at ZMS, I have only used the library to bring my social studies classes in for research lessons or to complete assignments for this library program. I have never studied the routines and procedures of the ZMS library from the media specialist point of view. To begin my practicum, Dr. Mac gave me a tour of the library.

Entrance of the library, teaching area, rocking reading chairs

Circulation desk for student aides

View of library- 12 computers, nonfiction shelves in the back

Library office (and school psychologist office)

Broadcasting room on left, fiction shelves. 

This week we focused on my practice of basic library routines- circulation and shelving. Students come in with language arts classes every other week to check out books. They were each issued a library card in the beginning of the year. If they have their cards, they receive check ins/out priorities to the front of the line. Other students must find their name on a key ring with their bar code to check out books. I found this to be a really good system. Next week, we plan on working on the collection!