New again and what I've learned

The end of November is coming up and I've now had 3 months being in a new school. Here are some of the things I've learned over the last three months. They would be my recommendations for helping to get incorporated.

Learning the lay of the land.
Who are the key people you need to know? The principal's secretary is a key ally here for knowing who's who and who does what.
Set up a meeting with your principal and set some goals. Keep it simple this first year and make them about learning who your users are...
Run a collection analysis and look over the library sections. Get out and about among the shelves when you have a spare 5 minutes and don't want to start something new on Friday afternoon it's a good time to wander along a set of shelves looking at titles.
Survey the staff for their needs--no you don't get great return (10% or less), but it helps for planning for collection development.


Make yourself known
Set up email lists by departments and send them quick snipets once in awhile. I use the LII update feed to help with this. If a post there seems appropriate I send it to the whole department.
I try to do a monthly newsletter for the staff. While I made my first one electronic only, I printed my second one and put it in all the boxes. I got many more comments and complements for the hard copy. Even if only a few read it, it's worth the copies to give them the paper even if it hurts the trees.
Use your school bulletin to attract students' attention to the library. They are wary of a new person and the "changes", so making attempts to include them help.
Volunteer to be on School Site Council or some other entity so that you can be seen as an asset to the school as a whole. Along the same lines, volunteer your space. Yes, it may close you down, but the more you can get people in the library for meetings and other events the more likely they will remember to use it.

There's more, but this is long enough for now and a class is headed in soon.

More from AASL

Back at school today and I've already had the opportunity to share with a teacher. I went to the SSR with Interventions (http://www.lesliepreddy.com/SSR.htm) A senior teacher came in complaining about her seniors lack of focus during SSR so I shared some of the suggestions from the workshop. WOW, immediate impact. Definitely worth my time and money!

AASL

I've been attending AASL this week. I always feel a conference is a success if I have at least one good idea that I can take home with me. I've got so many ideas that I consider this a success, and I've still got a full day ahead tomorrow. The power of networking with school library folks from around the U.S. provides a broader perspective. The shocked expressions when I share my almost 3K students and no additional help has been gratifying. It's amazing what great CA folks are here and sharing given our struggles. The power of our people are amazing.

Profound

I just finished checking up on my Google Reader accounts and I see so many profound writers as they reflect upon their practice and keep up with the latest and greatest. I'm not there yet...This still remains my own attempt to reflect, but no profound insights into library world or the education profession. Maybe at some point I will be able to start posting meaninful information here that would inspire others and help them in their day to day stuff.

Meanwhile, I keep plugging along. The library as a testing center was this week's dilemma. It's the large central place with an environment conductive to testing, but the doors are closed and the students kept out while testing goes on. My plans to be productive with collection development work went out the window when I was called on to help proctor. Politics happens in every school.

It is what it is...but I love library world.

Back in library world

I love being back in library world. I'm crazy busy (hence the lack of posting here), but it's a good busy. 65 classes in during the month of September. My last school was only 33 the first month.

I'm really enjoying the chance to interact with students around their interests. Some days I feel like the 11 months away from the library really set me back. I can't just pull up the right title or the right author whenever I want. Of course, not knowing the collection completely makes it more challenging. I want to be able to get it right every time and I feel like I'm bumbling at times. Then there is the bookstore dilemma--students wanting the science fiction section or the humor section.

The librarian knows...

Check out this song about the librarian's expertise...I found it on one of the blogs I follow. There's more at: http://addywillknow.pbwiki.com/

The library opened

The library opened this week now that I'm done distributing math books. It was an interesting week. Classes coming in already for orientation, research, and SSR book check out. It appears that the library will be well used and I will be busy. A very good thing!

This next week is book talking, Native American research and more orientation. Whew...I'm glad I've worked in a library before or I'd be completely overwhelmed.

Back to School--The students have arrived.

Most of the week was spent distributing textbooks which were stored in the library over the summer. Luckily, I'm not in charge of all textbooks. I only had to disribute the math books (ironic since I'm leaving the math classroom, again). Despite a few glitches--computers going down, teachers coming on the wrong day, books in horrid disrepair--the books are distributed and I can now move on to being the librarian.

Two classes are scheduled for Tuesday. I can see I will need to do some work in creating a culture of collaboration. The staff doesn't seem to be used to that concept, so I have my work cut out for me. Still, I'm looking forward to the opportunities that lie ahead. I'm doing "orientation" with a special education class and book checkout for an English class to get SSR books.

In the meantime, there is work to be done to make the library and inviting place. With the help of my TA's we rearranged the tables and chairs and attempted to make things match. (It's a girl thing!) All the pink chairs are around the circular tables and two wooden tables. The purple chairs are around the wood veneer metal tables. The mismatched chairs and chairs with wheels are in the computer lab. We'll see how long that lasts. We're also spreading out the fiction section. The shelves are so crammed tight we can't get everything onto the shelves--I see some weeding in my future.

Week 9--Thing 23--THE END

Sighhh, the end of this journey is here. I have really enjoyed it and appreciated the comments and the opportunity to expand my knowledge.

1. My favorite discoveries or exercises were many:
--the flikr tools and mashups. I haven't quite figured out how I will utilize this with my high schoolers, but I liked playing.
--the power of wikis which I'm hoping I will develop and use throughout the year in the library with classes. I'm convinced this is a great collaborative tool for kids and adults
--RSS reader, I'm now hooked on keeping up with the various blogs and websites that I'm tracking. I get my CALIB in digest form and read it all at once, the reader allows me to do the same with other library information.

2. Learning is what keeps me fresh!

3. I don't know that there were any big surprises, but the big takeaway is my comfort with blogging has increased.

4. I don't have any suggestions for improvement. This worked well for me and my style. I liked the self-pacing format.

5. Yes, I would probably do this again.

6. Discover a new dimension

Week 6--Thing 14 Tagging

This one I had done, but I guess I never wrote a post. Hence the helpfulness of numbering our posts.

Advantages to tagging:

--it's good for organizing posts

--it's useful if you want to go back to something that is buried months ago in a blog

--it provides viewers with hints about what may/may not be relevant to them

Disadvantages:

--the big one to me is the lack of standardization in the tagging which varies by who tags the item

Hmmm, librarians have long been organizers of information, but on the web everyone organizes according to their own thinking. This is part of what makes it such a vast space that has good, bad, shallow, deep, superficial, thought provoking, interesting and endless possibilities. In 10 years will we be looking back at this a laughing at the "primative" Web 2.0?

Week 6--Thing 13 Del.icio.us (Take 2)

The first time I tried this the video didn't work, and the page just seemed confusing to me. However, I'm really trying to do all 23 things before Saturday so I decided to try this one again.

Somehow, I must've been in a better place or something because it became clearer. I can see some real potential here especially when locating links for class projects. While I often mark things in my "favorites", I can never quite find them when I need them. I liked the way San Mateo Public Library organized theirs with the Dewey Classifications. A good way to reinforce the library organization tools applied to the web.

My favorite fun find was MiStupid.com This is much like the New York Public Library Desk Reference I kept handy in my math classroom for those off the wall teenager questions. It's got more ads than I like, but if I ever try to create my own del.icio.us account, I'll add it. (Yes, as an LMT I do know better ways to access information but part of that is knowing where the shortcuts are when you might need them!)

Week 9 Thing 22--eBooks and Audiobooks

Finally, something I knew already. With a 43 mile one-way commute the last two years, I became a big fan of the audiobook. This was especially true when I was still in the library because I could keep up with books that I might not want to read but were ok for listening. It was a great way for this math teacher turned librarian to catch up with the "required" reading of the students. The key thing with any audio book is the reader. A good reader has good voice inflection and keeps you wanting to listen and doesn't put you to sleep especially when driving.

I have had eBooks in my library collection which I think are very useful for reference books that students may only need a small portion of the book.

The World Ebook fair site was interesting. Of course free always equals out of copyright, but it's another good source of classics. In one of my RSS subscriptions from earlier in the summer, someone had recommended Daily Lit http://www.dailylit.com/. I posted this on my school blog last week and have subscribed to a Jane Austen book for a daily tidbit of literature to read.

Week 9--Thing 21 Podcasts

This was interesting. I ended up subscribing to a "teen literacy" podcast and Nancy Keane's podcast book reviews. Once again this seems like a matter of keeping up. There are so many possibilities and so many different ways to use technology to hook kids.

The middle school librarian in our district is going to try doing podcasts this year. I have met her briefly and I look forward to seeing how the process works for her.

This is one that I will put on the back burner for myself. Not that I am unwilling, but I think blogging and wikis may be my focus for now and may add videos and podcasting as time goes on. I may link to others' podcast or videos if I find things that are appropriate and/or useful. So much to try and never enough time. :-)

Welcoming

After a week of staff inservice in the new school district, WELCOMING would be my word to describe the experience.

Welcoming in a large sense because the community welcomed all new staff with a chamber of commerce reception with the mayor, chief of police, city council members etc. Similarly when the entire district staff met for the welcome back on Wednesday some of those same people were there again. The marine corps did a BBQ for the staff on Friday.

Welcoming in a medium sense in that the district office administrators and staff were in and out and around for all the new teacher training. An assistant superintendent did one of the training sessions. The superintendent stopped to check "how it was going" when we were sitting outside having lunch near his office. I've been in 3 other districts and I don't think I ever had a face-to-face encounter with the superintendent without it being a "formal" meeting of some kind.

Welcoming in a small sense because of the friendliness of the site staff. The willingness to answer questions and help out. Another new teacher who's a veteran of 17 years from New York had the same reaction.

Let's hope this trend continues because it sure is a good first impression.

Back--To--School

As I wind down the school library 2.0 (only a few more things to go) I figure this is as good a place as any to reflect on my experiences in the library in a new school.

Monday and Tuesday were "new teacher" inservice days. The first day was 1/2 at the district and 1/2 at the school site. Basically an overview of each. The second day was spent at the district on demographics, instructional strategies and the first days of school. As a 22 year veteran not headed into a classroom of students, day two was interesting but not very practical for me. Some great reminders of youthful enthusiasm for this profession we call teaching though.

Today, was the first day everyone was back to work. We had an opening welcome with the entire district staff where the "newbies" were introduced. Then the remainder of the day was our own to prep and get ready for Monday and students. I spent most of the day "nesting" and setting up my office. Since I didn't think I was going to have an office, I was very happy to be able to put my own mark on my space. The library was being used for registration until early afternoon, so I haven't had a chance to explore the shelves or look at the layout of the facility too much. Hopefully Friday when we have another day for planning and prepping.

Many staff came by to say hello which was very nice. It's always a good sign when people are so welcoming. Of course, none of the names are sticking yet, but I will get there.

Week 9--Thing 20 You Tube

This is one of those places that has so much it is almost overwhelming. Good searching strategies help make finding things better, but that is dependant on good tagging. There are some interesting uses of video out there. I found teacher tube as a little easier to navigate to "educational" videos. Once I located them on teacher tube, I went back to you tube for viewing because of the buffering slow down on teacher tube.

Here's my video selection. I just thought it was an interesting collage of various library videos I had watched.

Week 8--Thing 19 Library Thing

This was interesting. Saturday must be a popular time to do this because I got a lot of error messages in trying to add some of my books. I was too lazy to go fetch them from the other room, so I tried doing some by author. With Amazon as the source there are far more options to scroll through. It wasn't very efficient but if I were truely cataloging I would use the ISBN to get the right book in there.

Week 8--Thing 18 Zoho

I played around with Zoho and it seems very similar to Google docs. I tried uploading the same math worksheet from my summer class that I had uploaded in Google docs. Zoho couldn't handle the embedded math type images, so from that point Google was better.


I then played around with the presentation piece of Zoho and created a mini presentation on library information which can be seen here. I don't know that this is any better than uploading my own powerpoint which I knew how to do anyway. It has advantages for students who may not have access to the tools on their home computers.

Week 7--Thing 16 & 17 Wikis

Part 2: I played around with setting up a wiki at pbwiki. Today, I was at library summer camp at the Santa Clara County Office of Education and went to a wiki workshop where we did some hands on work with pbwiki. So after I came home I decided to play a little bit and see how it works. It's very user-friendly and easy to move around, I can see some potential here. If nothing else, I captured the name of the high school before anyone else.

I went to the sandbox and was going to add my two cents about using wikis for book reviews. Several other people had put in that idea, so I shared my google docs suggestion instead.

My brain is on overload with possibilities after reading the California Curriculum 2.0 suggestions. There are so many different things to do, how do we decide what to try first?

Week 7--Thing 16 Wikis

I've been stalled on this lately. Somehow I couldn't get into the week #6 things and decided to skip on over them and move on to week 7.

I see a lot of application for wikis in the library environment. I really enjoyed one I stumbled upon that had students posting book reviews. Also, I can envision using this as a collaborative tool with teachers for projects.

In classrooms, I see this as more applicable the humanities areas. When I was reassigned to the math classroom, I wanted to try a wiki but couldn't find a standard that would really work. I think the continual challenge is standards that don't account for new technologies. While is really the tool to achieving standards knowing how to incorporate the technology continues to be the challenge for so many.

I'm curious to see how "techy" my new school will be. From exploring the webpages, I don't know if the limits I see are the IT folks or the staff.

Week 6--Thing 15

"Libraries are not merely in communities, they are communities: they preserve and promote community memories; they provide mentors not only for the exploration of stored memory, but also for the creation of new artifacts of memory." (Schultz.)

I really liked this quote because I think it gets at the heart of library 2.0 and at what libraries represent. 2.0 is that creation of new memory and we need to rethink how that translates into a new way of service.

I think the challenge in education and collaborating with teachers is the overwhelming nature of the classroom. In classrooms with students that are of a new mindset our "old school" ways are making the job of the teacher much more challenging to keep ahead of the Ipod, cellphone or other gadget that is much more interesting and engaging. As librarians and technology leaders we need to help move forward to meet students at their experience levels.

Week 5--Thing 12 Rollyo

I can see where this might be a handy tool. I played around creating a search for the webstites I had in my favorites for finding booktitles. While it worked fine on the Rollyo Site it didn't work when I pasted the code into my blog.

The other interesting note was that I tried to play with Rollyo at school when my summer school students were taking a test. It's blocked by the filtering software, so I couldn't even get to it.

This may be a place where Google's custom search tool might be better. I played with that a little after someone posted about it on Calib. I used Tom Kaun's custom math search several times last spring when I was wanting activities to use in my classes.

Week 5 Thing 11--Google Docs

I decided to play with this option because of my summer school class. I'm using another blog as a webpage for assignments because I don't have server access at the new school yet. I've been frustrated because there wasn't a way to link documents because I didn't have a server to upload to, so absent students have to wait until they return to get the makeup work.

I decided to upload an existing worksheet to google docs so I could see the quality and how it might work in the classroom setting. While the math symbols didn't translate perfectly, it's acceptable enough for the student who is absent or lost a paper. It would work for documents that are straight text.

I can see a lot of positives here for collaboration. You can make the documents available to others for editing. Working with a teacher collaborator you could both edit in real time and not have to worry about emailing back and forth newly edited versions.

Another possibility is to have some "standard" worksheets that teachers might want to use across the curriculum. They could then have easy access and be able to edit and modify for their own headers.

As a classroom teacher I was often borrowing from colleagues, but would often retype or literally cut and paste to make it fit my class. This would be a great way for teachers within the same department to share documents. While many schools have common server files, staff cannot always access those files from home.

The possibilities here are endless.

Week 5--Thing 10 Image Generator

I have five days off to play, so decided to not grade papers tonight but am playing on the computer instead.

First: Here's a sketch of my cat from the sketch generator. It actually looks much better than the original photo.



Second: I like the Name in Lights generator. This would be fun on the library page just to attract attention. Even though I copied the "silent animation" there is still sound. (so I'm taking it down because every time I go to this page I here popping sounds and it's annoying me). In addition there are illegal fireworks going off near by. I haven't heard the sirens yet, but I expect them any minute. The cat has run for cover.

Week 4 Thing 9--Locating Useful Blogs

This was an interesting task. I looked at a lot of different blogs using the different search techniques suggested. Maybe, I'm overly picky, but I don't see much point in adding ones to my reader for things I don't think I'll really use. I ended up adding feeds that are for pages I was already familiar with and utilize. Which makes sense, if they were useful when I marked them as a "favorite" then receiving the feed makes it easier to keep up with changes and new ideas.

I thought I'd spend a short amount of time doing this, but the last time I looked at the clock it was 4 p.m. and now it's 6 p.m. This tech stuff sure eats up the time. I'm getting off the computer now, fixing dinner, and checking out the news via the TV.

Week 4 Thing 8 RSS Feeds

I've barely started with this one and understanding how this works. I created a google reader page, but if I'm understanding correctly I have to login to this just like I do my email. That means another something to "check" which I may or may not remember to do. I have three email addresses to check as it is and four when school is in session. I did play with the RSS button on my Internet Explorer Tool Bar and added there too, so I will experiment this week.

I start teaching summer school tomorrow, so I don't know when I will get back to this. Somehow I start on this and then get distracted by some new discovery and the next thing I know I've been at it for two hours and don't feel like I've accomplished anything substantial.

I did some exploring with the RSS calendar site. This may be a great tool for communicating library availability to staff...I used an online calendar for keeping track before, but this could be a good tool. I played around with adding it to my blog page. This could be a great addition to my library toolbox.

Week 3 Thing 7--Technology

I was on an Alaskan Cruise last week, so technology was the last thing on my mind. Except that I loved having my digital camera to just keep snapping pictures. Unlike rolls of film which have a limit--139 pictures fit on one chip. Also, I enjoy uploading the pictures to my computer and having them as my screen saver, so that when certain things pop up I can smile. I see the pictures much more often this way then when I put them into a photo album.

My other favorite "new" technology has been my TIVO that I invested in this year. I know I'm slow at adopting some things, but the abiltiy to reverse and pause a show as I'm watching is great when I'm interrupted. Plus, I can record shows that have "buzz" that I might not take time to watch when they are on.

Week 3 Thing #6 Magazine Cover

Magazine Cover
Originally uploaded by lamc

Here's a magazine cover made with one of my banned books images. I'm not thrilled with the colors, but that could be easily corrected.

I can see using this feature to create signs for the library to capture students' attention.

Week #3 Thing #5b Caging the books

Caging the books
Originally uploaded by lamc

This is one of the photos from banned books week that I put into a set on flickr.

Week 3--Thing #5 Flickr

I've just begun playing with Flickr. One thing that is weird, but maybe I just haven't figured it out is that when you look at photo groups you have to go backwards. I've uploaded some photos from when I was still in the library, but haven't figured out how to share the link to them yet. More to play with later.

Week 1--Thing #2 Post

Of the 7 1/2 Habits "having confidence" is probably my biggest challenge. I know that I can do it, but I often question whether I'm doing it well enough. Also, I often lose sight of the goal or don't remember to set the goal clearly enough.

To that end--My goal is to become more familiar with the technologies so that I can incorporate them in my RETURN to the library in August!

It's probably easiest for me to accept responsibility. I have to do it, no one else can do it for me.

Week 2--Thing 3 Setting Up the Blog

I've done some of this before but never with consistency. This will be a good way to transition back to library world from the classroom.