Looking for Library Makerspace and Learning Center Ideas?

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Several years ago I crowdsourced a collection of ideas for using Learning Centers in the Library Media Center.  It was amazing how the folks in my PLN generously shared their most popular activities, and all of our students benefitted from it!

In light of the changes we’ve seen recently in the way students are learning, I feel it’s time to revisit these suggestions in order to update them as well as add to them.  Some of the links are broken now, most of the ideas don’t have an accompanying photo, and many of them don’t provide enough detail to easily recreate them in your own library.  But most importantly, back then we weren’t really talking about STEAM or Makerspaces, but those are a huge part of what librarians provide now and any list that doesn’t acknowledge that is woefully out of touch!

And it’s not just the ideas that need an upgrade.  At the time, wikis were the hot new curation tool of choice, but there are other, more effective options out there now that avoid some of the drawbacks of wikis.  (For example, the endless scrolling to view all the ideas!)  Some of the platforms I’m considering using this time around are Wakelet, LiveBinders, Padlet, and Destiny Collections.

So for the next few weeks I’ll be working on a new and improved version of the Library Learning Center collection, and I’d love to have your input.  Please leave a comment with your suggestions and links for great activities, and/or your opinion on the perfect online curation tool for the project.  I’ll be sure to give you credit for your ideas!

 

Lightbulb image created by me using Word Art

Library Advocacy – Research Studies

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My principal asked me this week to supply her with current research demonstrating the positive impact that flexible library schedules can have on student performance.  Some of our parents and teachers are asking why we have adopted an open library policy this year, so we are putting some information together to show that this is a data-driven decision.  Here are the resources I’ve shared with her:

School Libraries Work! (2008)

Idaho School Library Impact Study (2009)

Study of Wisconsin School Library Media Programs (2006)

Delaware School Library Study (2006)

AASL Advocacy Brochures (for administrators, teachers, parents, and policymakers)

If you know of any other studies that make the case for flexible library schedules, please share them in the comments!

 

 

A New Chapter

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Originally this post title was to have referred to the fact that I was leaving my job at Alice Drive Elementary School and doing something else.  I had become so disheartened at my failure over the years to institute any real changes in the library media schedule or program that I was ready to just give up and move on.

Enter my new principal, Mrs. Boozer.  In May I shared a heartfelt letter with her and broke the news to her that I would not be returning.  She responded to my concerns by letting me know that she had some of the same concerns herself, and that she wanted to begin making some changes that would set our Library Media program on the path to becoming a model program.  Did you hear that?  A Model Program!!!

Her first act was to take Library out of the related arts rotation, replacing it with a Math Lab.  It took blood, sweat, and prayers on her part to work out a way to staff the Math Lab, but she persisted in the face of district red tape and budget constraints until she received final approval for her plans.  Now our students are getting extra help and practice with math concepts, and our library is operating under a fully flexible schedule.

So, I want to publicly thank Mrs. Boozer for her faith in me, and to say that I’m grateful for this opportunity to serve our students, teachers, parents, and community in a new and more effective way.  I’ve rediscovered my passion for my job, and I appreciate the fresh start that this year has brought.

Let the learning begin!

 
 

The Conference Experience

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As I was checking my feed reader yesterday, I saw a post by Mother Reader titled Kidlit Con 2010 Recap.  (By the way, Kidlit Con is a conference for children’s literary bloggers, authors, illustrators, and publishers.  Doesn’t that sound heavenly!)  I was interested to see what she had to say about the conference, but the opening paragraphs of her post are what really struck me:

I’ve been wondering why I’ve been having trouble writing up my experience at KidlitCon 2010, and I finally realized that I was trying to write about the wrong thing — the conference itself.

Please don’t take that the wrong way. The sessions boasted wonderful speakers featuring interesting presentations with useful applications for blogging. You’ll find helpful recaps from a variety of posts on the KidlitCon blog…. But though I enjoyed the sessions, the KidlitCon experience for me was the people.

That really resonated, because I have also been struggling this week to blog about my experience at the SC EdTech Conference, but I couldn’t figure out why it was so difficult to write the post.  Now I understand that what made the conference so invigorating for me wasn’t merely the words of the speakers, or the resources they shared.  It was the ideas those words and resources sparked within me, and it was having the time apart from work and family to really develop those ideas and form a plan to put them into practice.  So actually, just sharing a description of the sessions I attended doesn’t tell the full story.

For example, in my post on Thursday I mentioned that Lights Camera Action shared many different ways to use video in the classroom, which is a great session topic.  However, with all due respect to Dennis Duszynski, the most important thing to me about his session was the cool video idea I thought of during his presentation!

So I’ll continue sharing my conference experiences with you via this blog, but to paraphrase Levar Burton, don’t just take my word for it!  Check out the links for yourself, view the presentation notes through the lens of your own mission and vision, and let your imagination lead you into brand new territory!

 

*In case you’re wondering what my idea was, our book fair starts next week and I’m going to make my own promotional video to display on my school website, since the book fair company doesn’t supply any online videos of their own for us to use.  Can you believe Scholastic hasn’t already thought of that as a marketing tool?)

Summer Reading

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Our annual Flip Flop Book Swap began today in the ADE Library, and the students have been flocking in to participate!  Kids have the opportunity to bring in any books from home that they don’t read anymore (making sure it’s okay with parents, of course) and trade them for books someone else brings in so that everybody gets something “new” and different to read this summer.  We also sell books from the swap tables for just 25 or 50 cents each, for those who don’t have any books at home to trade. 
 
I’m also sharing information with students this week about summer reading programs going on at the Sumter County Library, the McElveen Library at Shaw AFB, and Borders (Waldenbooks) in the mall here.  (By the way, Barnes and Noble does a summer reading promotion, too, but we don’t have one here.)  Everyone who brings me proof that they participated in a summer reading program (a reading log or certificate) will be invited to an ice cream sundae party in August when school starts back.
 
Students will also be taking home a Summer Reading Fun brochure that I created to help parents understand the importance of encouraging their children to keep reading over the summer.  It includes lists of recommended reading, including next year’s South Carolina Children’s Book Award nominees. 
I’m determined to help our students beat the summer slide!  Have some other great summer resources to share?  Leave a comment!

Students Sharing Poetry

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We have been celebrating National Poetry Month in my Library, and last week I read aloud a selection of poems from various poetry books to my 3rd grade classes.  They enjoyed the poems, a few checked out poetry books to take with them, and I considered it a successful activity.  This week I’m doing a Poetry Pass with my 3rd and 4th grade classes, which means I put a stack of poetry books on their tables, set a timer for five minutes, and allow them to read silently until time is up.  We switch books and repeat this two more times, so that each student samples three different poetry books altogether.

As an afterthought, I told the first group of students that if anyone came across a poem he or she would like to read to the rest of the class, we would have a sharing time after the Poetry Pass.  I figured there might be three or four kids at the most who would be excited enough about a particular poem to want to read it aloud, so imagine my surprise when nearly every hand shot up for sharing time!  These kids were thrilled to stand up in front of the class and read the poems they had discovered!

Were they all polished presenters of poetry?  Not by a long shot.  Did they all choose poems that the rest of the class was interested in?  Hardly.  Were they at least able to pronounce all the words in the poems they chose to read aloud?  Unfortunately, no.  But there was excitement there!  There was a feeling that they were reading for an important purpose – to find something worthy of sharing.  There were real decisions to be made – this poem or that poem?  There was a sensation of power standing in front of the class commanding the attention of all the other students, a flush of success when the audience laughed in the right places, and a feeling of triumph at the sound of applause at the close of the reading.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with a teacher reading her favorite poems to the class, but the experience felt so much more authentic when it was the students choosing the poems to share.  And the scary thing is that the sharing component was only, as I mentioned earlier, an afterthought.  Yikes!  So my challenge from here on is to remember this “aha” moment when planning future Library activities, and to find other ways to let go of the power and give students more control over their own learning experience.

 

Putting Technology In Its Place

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I just read two blog posts yesterday that echo some of the ideas I’ve been wrestling with lately concerning the place of technology in the classroom, and I’d like to share them here.

Background:  As my school’s Library Media Specialist and Technology Coach, I have a responsibility to provide appropriate resources to my students and teachers, and to make sure they know how to use them.  With so many useful (and free) technology tools available out there in cyberspace, I want to make sure I’m keeping up with them, using them appropriately, and sharing them with those who need them. 

However, I don’t want to become so focused on the “coolness” of technology that I lose sight of my ultimate goal, which is student learning.  I also don’t want my attitude regarding the importance of technology to become so overbearing that I alienate teachers who, for various reasons, are hesitant about using a lot of online resources or tech tools.  I need to balance my role as a cheerleader for Web 2.0 with my role as someone who assists users with what’s actually going on in the classroom.

Enter Jennifer Wagner and Joyce Valenza, two educators who are doing wonderful things with technology at their respective schools.  Continue reading