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  I found that there are many books, but most of them seem to be outdated.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