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