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