Wrapping Things Up

  I spent a great deal of time yesterday uploading documents into my portfolio.  I was using Scribd, and it worked well for most of my documents.  I never could get two documents to process, so I tried Slideshare and was finally able to get them into my portfolio.  Then I worked some on the layout of my portfolio and tried to polish up the front page.  Tomorrow, I hope to work on adding my reflections to the artifacts.  I just totalled up my practicum hours so that I can add this information to the portfolio.  I am so glad that I worked on the practicum activities and portfolio throughout this semester.  I am still a little nervous about getting everything done as I want it to be before next Monday night when we have a practice session for the presentations.  This Thanksgiving break has given me time to work on my portfolio, and I am very thankful for that. 

System Technology Meeting

  Yesterday I attended a system technology meeting at the middle/high school.  The middle/high school media specialist attended as well as teachers from both elementary schools, the middle school, and the high school.  The technology director and the technology specialist directed the meeting.  The technology specialist discussed the changing of our school e-mail from GroupWise to GoogleMail.  He explained that the switch is being made due to better pricing, better filtering, and archiving with GoogleMail.  The technology director introduced the Georgia Student Learning Data Survey (or System) feature that has been added to our PowerSchool program.  This system keeps a record of students' past test scores and attendance.  He also asked for input about the SMART Boards, slates, and student response systems that we have in our schools.  Once again I was reminded of how things will continue to change in education.  We've had Group Wise email for several years, but now a new system is being implemented and everyone will have to learn the workings of this new email program. 
  After the technology meeting, I stayed at the middle/high school and discussed various topics with the media specialist.  She explained how she concluded her book fair and how she decided to use the earnings from the fair.  She also showed me some supplies and furniture that she has ordered for the media center to make the middle school area more inviting for students.  We discussed time management issues and different projects that we would like to complete during this school year in our respective media centers.
  Tonight I began uploading documents into Scribd so that I could embed them into my portfolio.  I was able to embed a few things, but I realized that I need to re-think the items that I had planned to list under each standard.  There are a few assignments that could be listed under two different standards.  I hope to get the other documents uploaded and embedded this weekend so that I can work on my reflections and fine-tuning the portfolio. 

Hours Spent in the Atkinson County Middle/High School Media Center:  2.5

Pulling Out My Notes

    Last week was so busy that I wasn't able to spend much time at the middle/high school after Tuesday afternoon.  My children had parent-teacher conferences after school on Wednesday, my school had parent-teacher conferences after school on Thursday, and my school's fall festival was Friday night.  I was able to get in one hour at the middle/high school on Friday afternoon before our fall festival began.  I checked and straightened all of the middle and high school fiction shelves, and I straightened the book fair display area in the media center. 
   I spent most of Saturday afternoon working on the online tutorial for the staff development assignment.  I had to pull out my notes from previous classes to refresh my memory.  I was able to narrate my PowerPoint presentation, convert it into a video, and get it embedded into the wiki that I am using for the online tutorial.  I also wrote the script for my screencast video.  I worked on the wiki itself, and I think the only thing left to do is record the screencast video and embed it into the wiki.  Then this assignment will be complete. 
   I still need to check back over my blog posts and add some pictures and links.  I also need to start adding all of my assignments to my portfolio.  I have saved them on my computer, flash drive, and CDs in an effort not to lose anything before I can get it all put in the portfolio.  My computer has been acting weird lately, so I am a little nervous about something happening to all of my documents.  This week I hope to get in a few more hours at the middle/high school and make some headway on my portfolio. 

Hours Spent in the Atkinson County Middle/High School Media Center: 1
Hours Spent Working on the Staff Development Online Tutorial: 3

Preparing the Online Training

    I have spent a good bit of time in the last few days working on the online training component of my staff development lesson.  I have decided how I want to structure the online tutorial, but it is time-consuming to put everything together.  Even though I presented the training to middle school teachers, the online tutorial will be for middle and high school teachers.  For this assignment, I am using skills that I learned earlier this year in some other courses.  I'm glad that I kept my notes and handouts in separate notebooks or folders for each class. 
   Over the weekend I was able to start checking the various assignments required for the practicum.  I made some changes and finalized most of them, but I still have a few that I need to edit and complete. 
   This afternoon I spent some time with the media specialist at the middle/high school.  She is having a book fair this week, and she walked me through the process.  We discussed how she set up the displays, and she walked me through the steps of using the cash register.  I have a book fair scheduled in December, so I was very glad to see the layout of her book fair and have her share suggestions.  We also discussed how she will be evaluated this school year.  She showed me how she is documenting various services that she is providing.  She has the same problem with time management that I seem to be having.  There are so many things that need to be done each day and not enough time to do them.  I'm sure that we'll settle into these positions more and more as the year goes on.  This first year is full of learning and finding your way, but I'm still smiling.

Hours Preparing the Online Staff Development Training:  2
Hours Spent in the Atkinson County Middle/High School Media Center:  .75

Making More Progress

  Well I finally feel that I am making significant progress on my assignments again.  I was able to get more hours in at the middle/high school level this week through my work on the staff development lesson and putting the display up in that media center.  I was anxious about teaching the technology lesson because I have been in the participant role many times in the past.  I tried to think of ways to keep the teachers' attention and keep the lesson moving at all times.  All in all, I think things went very well.  There were 15 participants including the principal and assistant principal.  I had to set everything up in the computer lab, teach the lesson, wait for everyone to leave the lab, and then shut everything down in the lab.  I now realize how involved such trainings can be. 
  My display for the ACMS/ACHS media center is complete and in place.  I focused on the middle school's theme and tried to prepare a display that can remain in place for several weeks.  I took pictures of my display and made a wiki about the project.  The wiki can be accessed at http://mediacenterdisplay.pbworks.com/ .
  I was also able to get pictures of the plagiarism posters that were made to accompany the collaborative lesson that I taught with a third grade teacher.  She hung the posters on the wall in her classroom for the students to use as a resource during the writing assignments that will be done during the rest of the school year.  The poster is a reminder of the points that we covered in our lesson on plagiarism and note-taking.
  This weekend I plan to start checking the various assignments to make sure that I have included all of the required elements.  Once I have checked them, I will start adding them to my portfolio.  I also need to begin developing the technology lesson into a self-instructional tutorial.  There were actually a few middle school teachers who asked how they could get the information since they weren't able to attend the training due to after-school classes or duty.  I told them that I would be preparing an online version of the training, and they seemed glad to hear that.
  There's one more thing that I needed to include in this post.  In a post on October 14, I gave a link to my Personal Learning Network, but I did not realize that was a private page until some time later.  I have made some changes to the PLN, and here is the new link that should allow anyone to view it:  http://www.netvibes.com/adeems#Media_Specialist_Info.

Hours Spent Delivering the Technology Lesson at ACMS:   2
Hours Spent in the ACMS/ACHS Media Center:    4.75

Preparing for the Staff Development Lesson

    Since my last post, I have spent a lot of time preparing materials for the staff development lesson that I will teach this week.  I created a PowerPoint to introduce the topic of blogs and their use in education.  I also created a wiki of resources for the participants to use for more information on blogging and using blogs with students.  I developed a training evaluation form for participants to complete at the end of the session, and I made a "Ticket out the Door" prompt for them to turn in as they leave the session.  I had not thought of a sign-in sheet until today when a fellow teacher mentioned it, so I came home and prepared a form for that.  It crossed my mind to have some candy (miniature chocolates, peppermints, etc.) on hand during the training.  Even the smallest gesture seems to set a better tone for a meeting after school.  Right after school today, I went over to the middle/high school computer lab to practice using the SMARTBoard to show my PowerPoint.  I wanted to make sure that my PowerPoint would work, and it did.  I hope things go as smoothly on Thursday as they did today for the dry run.  One kink that I was able to work out during practice was finding out how to type in the colon in a URL when using the keyboard on the SMARTBoard.  It took a few tries to learn how the shift key operates. 
   After working on my staff development lesson, I went down to the middle/high school media center to put in some more hours.  I worked on the artwork for my display, and I hope to get it put up this week.  I was using the theme of football, but due to the late hour of getting it up and football season coming to a close I changed the theme to basketball which will be starting soon.  I worked on putting the non-fiction shelves in order, and I pulled some fiction books that need new spine labels.  As I was working with the fiction books, I noticed some books that looked new in terms of the cover and pages.  When I looked in the back of the book, however, sometimes there would be a stamped due date of 2005.  These books have obviously had very little use, and I wonder why. 
    I've also been working on the memo for the evaluation of the media center and some plagiarism posters to share with the teacher and students from my collaborative lesson.  I summarized the important points of our plagiarism lesson and included some examples of plagiarism.  I plan to laminate the posters and give them to the teacher to display in her room for the remainder of the year since the students will be conducting research for various writing projects. 

Hours Spent Planning the Staff Development Lesson:  2
Hours in the Atkinson County Middle/High School Media Center:  3

Staying Busy

    I've been trying to make a lot of progress on my required activities this week.  I have scheduled my staff development lesson with the principal of the middle school.  I emailed him a flyer and an agenda to present to his staff.  The training will be next week, so I am working on preparing all of the materials.  I will be using the new computer lab at the middle school, so I plan to go over well in advance and find my way around the lab.  I am creating a PowerPoint to use as well as a hand-out for the teachers to take with them.  My topic is how teachers can use blogs.  I'm pretty sure that most of the teachers are not familiar with this content.  Now that I am the presenter, I find myself thinking of my past experiences in different types of trainings.  I definitely want my lesson to be informative and interesting for the participants. 
   I have been weeding during the day at the elementary media center.  There were years and years of old periodicals stored in a back room of the media center.  Some dated back to the early 1990s.  I decided what to keep and then put all of the discarded items out on some tables for the teachers.  After three days, there are some periodicals that have gone untouched.  I guess that speaks volumes (not an intentional play on words, but it was what came to mind).  I've also been processing some videos that were in the media center but not cataloged.  Since I learned how to use ZMarc for processing books that had no Marc record, these videos seem to take so much time. 
  This afternoon after school, I worked in the middle/high school media center.  I shelved some books and straightened all of the fiction sections and some of the non-fiction section.  I also spent some time working on the display for that media center.  I wanted to focus on the middle school students since the media specialist reports that they are the most frequent patrons.  I'm still working out some parts of the display, but hopefully I can finish it soon and post the results in a few days.  

Hours in the Atkinson County Middle/High School Media Center: 2.75

Weeding, Planning, Teaching, and Reading

    I didn't realize that it has been a week since my last post, and a lot has been happening in the media center.  I finished inspecting the 800s section of our collection for the weeding assignment, and it was a good choice for a weeding project.  Of 264 books located in this section, I decided to definitely weed 59 books.  Just the physical appearance of these books was depressing.  The spines were so faded on some that the titles were not visible.  Several had covers that were faded, dingy, and/or coming apart.  A few were really out of date in terms of the content.  An example would be the book How to Speak and Write for Rural Audiences. When most of the books were opened, the pages looked yellowish or had smudges on them.  I printed out the copy activity for the past five years for all of the books in this section.  Almost all of the ones to be weeded showed 0 uses over the 5-year period.  
    On Monday afternoon, Oct. 18,  I spent some more time in the middle/high school media center.  The media specialist there has been very busy preparing for Homecoming activities because she is one of the high school cheerleading sponsors.  I was able to work on her middle school fiction and several sections of her non-fiction area.  Those shelves always seem to have several books in the wrong order.  These sections are the farthest from the circulation desk in the media center, so it is harder to monitor students as they are using these sections.  I also used some of this time to plan a display for the middle school entrance to the media center.  
    Early in the week, I spent more time planning with the third grade teacher for our collaborative lesson on Thursday, Oct. 21.  Dr. Repman came to conduct my site visit that day, and everything seemed to go very well.  The focus of the lesson was property, plagiarism, and note-taking to prepare the students for research that will be starting soon.  The students did a great job, and this lesson is definitely one that I will use again.  I realize more than ever that a good lesson with students requires thoughtful planning ahead of time.  I know that I may not always have as much planning time as I did with this lesson, but I know that the time I spent talking with the teacher about what we needed to accomplish was critical. 
      Also this week I had some kindergarten and pre-k classes come to the media center for story time.  I used a story kit for There Was An Old Lady that Swallowed a Fly that I found in the media center.  The kit contained a big book, an old lady doll, and small beanbag animals.  As I read the book, students took turns feeding the animals to the doll.  We covered lots of skills such as using the cover of the book to predict what the book would be about, sequence of the story (beginning, middle, end), real versus make believe, etc.  I gave them some new vocabulary terms - fiction and non-fiction.  
    
Hours Spent in the Media Center at Atkinson County Middle/High School:  2
Hours Spent Planning the Collaborative Lesson: 1

More Progress

   So far, this week has been a busy one.  I was responsible for ordering our Accelerated Reader t-shirts and the AR awards that we will be presenting at our awards ceremony next week.  This was a new experience for me, but it seems that I am learning something new almost daily.  I have spent some more time planning for the staff development unit and the collaborative lesson that I will teach next week during the site visit.  I've begun weeding the 800s section of our collection, and I did some original cataloging of digital cameras, a camcorder, and the related accessories.  These items had been in the media center or computer lab since last year or before, but they had not been cataloged. 
   In the last week or so, I updated my Personal Learning Network.  It can be viewed at http://www.netvibes.com/privatepage/1#General .  I need to check it more frequently than I have been because it is such an easy way to keep up with issues in this field.  A day or so ago, I received a letter confirming my membership in the American Library Association and the Georgia Library Association. 
   This afternoon, I was able to spend a little time in the middle/high school media center.  The media specialist there has to process books that were sent to her from another school in the county.  I began stamping the books with the middle/high school identification.  Tomorrow I hope to spend some more time over there working on this project. 

Hours Spent in the Atkinson County Middle/High School Media Center:  .75


 

Visit to An Elementary School Media Center

    On Thursday (Oct. 7) of this past week, I spent the day visiting the media specialist at West Green Elementary School.  This school is located in a nearby county, and the media specialist has been a friend of mine since high school. She became a media specialist after teaching high school English for many years.  I arrived around 7:45 a.m. and stayed until 3:45 p.m.  I had prepared a list of questions for her about issues that I have encountered in our media center.  It was wonderful to have someone offer suggestions based on experience dealing with the same problems.  I enjoyed walking through her media center and seeing how she had things arranged.  She decorated using an ocean theme this year, and the media center looks so inviting and kid-friendly.  She has very limited storage, so I did not see all of the equipment that I am used to in our media center.  She has to use another room in the school to house projectors, carts, and other such items. 
    After lunch, we sat down and evaluated her media center using the Library Media Program Evaluation Rubric.  She rated a few areas as "Basic", but there are some issues that seem to be out of her control.  For example, all of the media center budgets in her county were cut significantly this school year.  During the day, I was able to observe students, teachers, and parents using the media center.  I was also able to see some of the features of Follett's Destiny since all of the media centers in this county converted from InfoCentre to Destiny at the beginning of the school year.  When I left the school, I felt really good about having spent the day with her.  I am ready to go back to my school on Tuesday and start using some of her suggestions. 

Hours Spent at West Green Elementary School Media Center:  8

More Experience at the Middle/High School

    Today I spent some more time working in the middle/high school media center.  After school, I went over there and did some things for the media specialist.  She has a lot of equipment in two storage rooms, and she has not had time to check all of it to see what works and what doesn't.  This afternoon I checked all of the overhead projectors, an old opaque projector, and a t.v. in one storage room.  Three projectors need to be repaired or discarded.  Everything else seemed to work fine.  After checking this equipment, I worked on straightening the reference materials and some of the non-fiction shelves.  As I worked with the biographies, I came across names of people who are not familiar to me.  I also noticed the books that focus on more mature topics such as dating.  I found some books that are written in Spanish, and this made me realize that I have not seen any books written in Spanish in our elementary media center.  We have many students who speak Spanish as their primary language, so this is something that I want to address when I select books to order this year. 
   I engaged in two new activities today in my job as media specialist.  First, I finalized the art order for our school.  The art materials (construction paper, glitter, paint, etc.) at our school are located in the workroom of the media center, and the media specialist has been the person responsible for ordering art supplies each year.  A short time ago, I inventoried the current art supplies and pulled copies of the art orders for the past three years.  Today I filled out the order forms and turned them in to the school secretary for processing.   Later in the day, I met with a man who runs a book warehouse in a nearby town.  He was in the area and stopped by to see if the local schools were interested in holding a book fair.  He explained how his book fairs work, and I am thinking of having one in early February.  There has not been a book fair at our school in a few years, so I think it will generate a great deal of excitement among the students and parents.  This man assured me that he has books that sell for $1 or less so that more kids will be able to buy items.  I plan to spend tomorrow shadowing a media specialist who used this company for a book fair last school year.  I want to ask about her experience with this company before I approach my principal with the idea.

Hours spent in the Atkinson County Middle/High School Media Center:  1.5 

Working On My Hours

    So far this week I've been working on my evaluation of the reference collection project.  I spent some time online looking at different reference materials that I would like to add to our media center.  I found some good materials that should meet the needs of our pre-k through 5 students better than the materials that we have on the shelves now.  I have also been working on my collaborative lesson.  I am filling out the lesson plan based on my discussion with the teacher, and I've been looking for some online activities to work on the information literacy skills that I will target in the unit.  I found a few that I will share with the teacher to get her input.  This week is a short week for our students due to an in-service on Thursday and fall break on Friday and next Monday.  The teacher for my unit will be on a field trip all day tomorrow (Wed.), and she'll be in a workshop all day Thursday.  So, we won't have a chance to meet and plan again until next week.  
   After I left my school today, I went to our middle/high school to get some more practicum hours at a different grade level.  I reshelved some books in the fiction and  non-fiction areas, and I began straightening the non-fiction shelves.  Keeping the books in the right order is sharpening my math skills!  Today I saw a big difference in the non-fiction books at the two media centers.  Most of the ones at the middle/high school are bigger and heavier than those at the elementary school.  Several of the books that I rearranged today were too bulky for me to pick up with one hand.  That rarely happens in our non-fiction section.  In fact, some large books fell over on the shelf where I was working and broke a plastic slide-on bookend.  It doesn't seem that it would take so long to shelve books, but I only made it through part of the non-fiction area today.  

Hours Spent in the Atkinson County Middle/High School Media Center:  3.5
 

Inventory and Monthly Report

    This past week, I began taking inventory of the story collection section in the media center.  The previous media specialist kept the majority of the story collection books on a separate shelf from the rest of the collection.  A few books of story collections were placed on a shelf with classics such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Dracula.  I started by printing a shelf list of books with the call number SC to SC.  Once I had the list, I went to the story collection shelf and checked off each book that was located there or on the shelf of classics.  Of the 127 items on the shelf list, I found all but 30.  I then went into the online catalog and entered the barcodes of the missing items.  I found that 2 of the missing items were marked as "Lost and Paid For" in the system.  The remaining 28 books were shown as "In" in the system, but I could not pull up any copy history for most of the items.  I checked the books that are in my office for repair and a box of weeded books that are to be sold to students and teachers.  I thought that some of the weeded books may not have been deleted out of the system.  However, none of the 28 missing books could be found in the media center.  They are unaccounted for, and what happened to these books is a mystery to me.  I did this inventory by hand because I do not know how to do inventory with the scanner.  In fact, I have found three different handheld scanners in the media center office, and I don't know which one should be used.  I was told that the technology specialist could help me with this, so I will contact him before I try to inventory any more of the collection.  According to the notes left by the previous media specialist, no inventory has been done in the past two or three years.   This is definitely something that I plan to do at the end of the school year.   
    At the end of the school day on Thursday, I gathered the Checkout and Fine Statistics report from the online catalog.  I also updated the Excel document that I use to record different services that I provide as media specialist.  I used this information to create a monthly report for my principal.  I included the number of checkouts in the month for students and staff, the amount of fines paid in the month, instruction that I provided to students, collaborative efforts with teachers, technology assistance that I provided, meetings attended, completed projects, current projects, and future projects.  Click on the link to view the monthly report.  http://www.slideshare.net/adeems/monthly-report-for-the-principal
    I was able to meet with the teacher to do some more planning for our collaborative unit.  We meet on Wednesday after school, and we reviewed the Georgia Performance Standards that will the focus of the unit.  We also talked about essential questions, the assessment evidence, and how the unit might progress from beginning to end.  Now I need to focus on preparing for my part of the unit. 

  Here is a picture from the Annie Oakley lesson that I taught on Wednesday.  I used a glog that I had created to review information about Annie Oakley.   

 

Hours in the Media Center:  40

Hours Spent Planning the Collaborative Unit:  .5 hour

A Busy Day

    Wow!  Today was so busy.  The media center parapro came in late today due to a dentist appointment, and it seemed that every student came to the media center before 9:00 a.m.  I was head over heels in books.  Then at 2:00 this afternoon I went to a first grade classroom to continue the reading enrichment unit that started yesterday.  The topic is Annie Oakley, one of the historical figures that is covered in social studies.  I have been reading some books to the students and discussing different things about Annie's life that we have learned from the books.  Tomorrow I plan to use a glog to show some pictures of Annie and do some online games to review information about Annie.  We have used the SMARTBoard in each lesson, and it has been fairly easy to incorporate it into whatever activity we are doing. 
   Right after school, I went over to our middle/high school to put in some hours working in that media center.  The media specialist had some books that needed to be shelved, so I shelved them and spent the rest of the time straightening shelves and putting books in the correct order.  This gave me a chance to see what kinds of books the middle and high school students can check out.  Most of their books seem to be in better shape than the ones in our media center, but then our patrons are very young children who are rough on materials.  The previous media specialist told me this, but now I really understand the kind of treatment books receive even though book care is taught each year.   
   The day wasn't over when I left school.  Once I was home, I tuned in for the webinar "21st Century Skills are Elementary".  The presenters gave examples of ways that new technology can be used with students in grades kindergarten through fifth grade.  Some of the tools included blogs, glogs, podcasts, VoiceThread, and Animoto.  They stressed that the technology tools are ways to teach the content, not something else to add on top of the content that teachers are having to cover.  The presenters also explained a way to conduct staff development to teach teachers about new technology.  I hope to use their method with the teachers at my school. 

Hours in the media center:  7.5
Hours spent in the Atkinson County Middle/High School media center: 3

Grade level meeting and grant

On Thursday of this past week, I attended a grade level meeting of second grade teachers.  The participants included four second grade teachers, the principal, the school counselor, the sp. ed. inclusion teacher, and me.  The counselor began the meeting by discussing the results of the fall benchmark testing.  The teachers were asked to look at their students' performance and decide if any students should be placed in the tiers of intervention for support.  Some students were recommended for the tiers to receive gifted support, and some were recommended for the tiers due to very poor academic performance.  The counselor showed us how to access the RTI (response-to-intervention) checklist and forms on the school web site.  The lead teacher for second grade shared information from the recent leadership meeting, and then another teacher demonstrated a web site (http://www.tumblebooks.com/) that shows books and reads them aloud to students.  I was able to share some information about our Accelerated Reader program during this part of the meeting.  I also learned from the principal that we will probably get an upgrade to AR that will allow access to all of the quizzes instead of us having to purchase quizzes.  That was good news! 

This week I was able to complete the draft of my grant application form.  The hardest part of the application seemed to be answering the questions adequately while staying within the number of words allowed for each question.  Some questions had a limit of 50 words while others had a limit of 100 words.  I also spent more time planning with the teacher for my information literacy unit.  We discussed the essential questions and GPS standards for the unit.  Next week I am to meet with her again for more planning.  It is hard to find time to meet face-to-face with so many meetings after school and meetings during teachers' planning periods.  We've done some planning by email, and that has helped.  

Hours in the media center: 40

Making progress

This week has been a busy week in the media center.  Tuesday, Sept. 14, I attended the South Georgia Media Specialist Conference at Valdosta State University.  This conference was hosted by the VSU Educational Technology Center, and it was a one-day conference from 8:30 until 3:15.  The keynote speaker and presenter was Tony Vincent.  His presentations included "21 Strategies, Ideas, and Tips to Reach 21st Century Learners", "Personal Productivity: Advanced Common Sense with Technology", and "Education Image Sets for iPods and other Mobile Devices."  I attended a session entitled "EduBlogs" in which a middle/high school media specialist shared the blogs that she uses in her school and one that is her personal blog. The other session that I attended was "What's in Your Bag of Tricks?"  The presenter gave many, many resources that can be used to increase the value-add.  By using different fonts, images, sound, and video, we can make the content that we are presenting more interesting for the audience.  I left this conference with so many ideas that I want to try! 

I was able to finish up my wiki that supports a professional learning community at my school.  I added some more links to different SMARTBoard resources and did the final editing.  I think it is ready to present to the teachers.  I was finally able to get my glog unblocked for my reading enrichment/enjoyment unit that will be taught soon.  I have been working on looking through all of the materials in our reference section.  I found that there are many books, but most of them seem to be outdated.  Several books look ancient (faded covers and white spots on the spines), and some of them are not relevant to the students that we have since our sixth and seventh graders moved to the new middle/high school this year.  I met with the teacher to do some planning for our collaborative lesson, and we were able to get a focus for the lesson and talk about the roles each of will play in instruction.  Things seem to be coming together, but I know that there is still much to do before the semester ends. 

Hours in the media center:  32
Hours spent in the media conference:  6.5

Working on my projects

I haven't posted anything in a few days, but I have been working on several different projects.  I have created one glog and two wikis to use for some of the required activities.  I created a glog for the reading enrichment unit and then found out that it was blocked by the Internet filter at school.  I asked to have it unblocked, but that hasn't occurred yet.  I then created a wiki of the same information to use instead of the glog if it is not available.  The third wiki was created to support a professional learning community at my school.  It is still a work in progress.  After school on Friday, I began to evaluate the reference collection in the media center.  This is a timely activity because this reference collection seems to have been stagnant for a while.  I say this because dust was flying as I pulled some of the items off the shelves.  Our school housed students in pre-kindergarten through seventh grade until this school year, but now we only have students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade.  This change will impact the evaluation of this reference collection in terms of items that are no longer needed in the media center.  Tomorrow (Monday) I plan to continue working on these activities and hopefully start some new ones later in the week.   

Hours in the media center:  30

Processing new books

    I spent most of yesterday and today processing new books that were ordered by the previous media specialist at the end of last school year.  She ordered books from four different companies, and the books were waiting on me when I started the job a few weeks ago.  During the first week of school, I unpacked the books to verify that the items that had been ordered were actually received.  Yesterday morning, I gathered all of the paperwork from each order and found that each company had sent barcode labels and spine labels with the book order.  However, I still had to find out how to get the Marc records.  I telephoned the technical support number for our library management program.  The representative gave me step-by-step directions and actually talked me through the import of Marc records from a CD-rom and a download.  After getting this information, I had to log in to the web site of two companies and download the records.  Afterward, I was able to import the records into our system.  Then, I put the barcode labels and spine labels, which were sent with the books, onto the books.  Next, I had to search our Accelerated Reader program to see if we had a test for each book.  If there was a test, I wrote the reading level and the number of points in the back cover of the book and applied a colored sticker to the spine to signify that particular reading level.  After stamping the school's name into the front and back covers, the books were ready to be put out on the shelves for circulation.  I completed the entire process on at least 20 items.  The media clerk helped apply the labels for most of the remaining books.   

    Today I also spent some time planning the reading enrichment unit with a first grade teacher.  She described the social studies unit that she will be teaching for the next few weeks, and we decided on two possible topics.  We discussed some possible activities to include in the unit.  We will meet again in a few days to finalize the unit.

Hours in the media center:  9.50 hours

Books, books, and more books!

  Today I spent most of my time trying to sort through books that have been in different areas of the media center but not in circulation.  (These were not the newest books that still need to be processed.)  I found these books in a box in the media specialist's office and in small stacks in various places around the media center.  Some paperbacks were found in the back storage room.  Most of the books had barcode labels and spine labels attached, but many were bare.  I finally decided to check each book to see if it was labeled for shelving, if it was showing up in the online catalog, and if an Accelerated Reader (AR) test was available in our school. Depending on the results, we shelved the books for circulation or placed them in new stacks in my office with a note explaining what was lacking.  This led me to find out how to order AR tests, and I placed several titles in my new shopping cart in Renaissance Learning.  I have never seen paperback books in our media center, but I decided to put some into circulation since the ones that I found in storage already have AR tests at our school.  Once again, this decision led me to another learning experience.  I went online to see how to protect the paperbacks, and my husband helped me apply Contact paper to most of them.  They seemed to turn out well for a first try.  Now I need to figure out how to generate original barcode numbers based on the system that the previous media specialist used.  At the end of the day, it seems that I haven't been able to clear off any space in my office. 

Hours in the media center:  9

Media Meeting

 After conducting several orientations for second grade, I met with the director of media services and the other first-year media specialist.  The director called the meeting so that she could explain our media budgets and hear any concerns that we have thus far.  I'm not sure what media budgets are in surrounding counties, but my budget seems to be very small.  There are three components of the budget:  supplies (tape, book carts, etc.), books, and software.  The director stated that the renewal for our circulation system is generally the only item that is paid with the software funds.   Most of the questions that we posed to the director dealt with how to use the circulation system, how to discard different types of materials, and how to address issues such as nonpayment of fines for library books.  She told us that we could work with our site administrators to develop policies for our individual schools on some issues.  She seemed to be very supportive of the media programs in the county, and she offered to find us some training for using our circulation system.  Before I left for the day, I ended up weeding out some materials that were in the professional development area of our media center.  I actually found some materials that contained the old, thin floppy disks for use with the old Apple computers.  More and more I am seeing the need to be diligent in weeding the collection. 

Hours in the media center:  9

Media Center Orientation

This week has been spent preparing for media center orientation.  I had to learn the circulation system in order to update it for the current school year.  Then the class rosters continued to change with students being moved to adjust for special education services from the inclusion teachers.  Finally we were able to make library cards and set up a schedule for orientation.  I spent a lot of time trying to prepare an informative but interesting presentation since this is my first appearance in front of the students in the role of media specialist.  After having so many encounters with technology in this program, I decided to make a PowerPoint presentation and show it using the laptop/projector/screen combination.  The PowerPoint was designed to appeal to the 4th and 5th grade students, so I will need to create a second,  more simplified, version for the lower grades.  I may even decide to just use a poster with the kindergarten and first grades which is what the previous media specialist did.  It was exciting to interact with the students during the instruction part of the orientation, but then I felt so limited in my knowledge of the collection when students asked me where certain books were.  I'm sure that this will improve as I shelve books now that circulation has begun. 

Hours in the media center:  40+.

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school, and it was my sixth day in the position of media specialist at the local elementary school (PreK-5).  This practicum is the last course that I have to take to gain media specialist certification.  I spent most of today trying to learn how to update the online catalog system that we have.  The previous media specialist left some instructions about things that must be done at the start of the school year, but I wish there was much more detail in her notes. I began updating the system by editing the patron list, and that was a long process.  Two grade levels at my school moved into another school, so there were several teachers who had to be taken out of the system.  When I entered their patron ID numbers, some of the teachers had materials that were still checked out in their names.  Then I started trying to find out if those materials had been left behind at our school or if they had been taken over to the other school.  This made for a rather complicated day in the catalog, but I just plan to start working on this again in the morning.  There is a full-time paraprofessional who has about five years of experience in the media center, and she has been able to do some other tasks while I work in the catalog.  Thank goodness for that! 

Hours in the media center: 7.5