As I began this week, I had a retrospective attitude. Analyzing each task I've completed since this Practicum began was at the forefront of my mind. With that in mind, I spent Monday evening updating my PLN to reflect my current professional needs. By including links to blogs, social networking, podcasts, videos, websites, training materials, and professional articles, I've curated a robust and well-rounded set of resources to keep me abreast of the latest trends in my field.
As a school library media specialist in a very rural area of Georgia, I often feel isolated from my own kind, so to speak. Coming from a school classroom where professional development was mandatory and occurred on a weekly basis, I’ve often lamented the lack of professional learning that I receive in my new role as a librarian. The Personal Learning Network (PLN) that I am working to curate is the perfect answer to my feelings of isolation and lack of regular professional learning. Though I have only been a librarian for a short while, I’ve often been able to find much of the information that I need on the internet, yet did not make the connection that there was a legitimate method of curating resources to support me in the quest to perfect my craft. When choosing a curation tool for my PLN, I chose Symbaloo. Through my time in this program, I have used other content curation tools like List.ly, Scoop.it, Livebinders, and Rebel Mouse, but the ease of use of Symbaloo appealed to me--everything can be organized into tiles, grouped by topic, and provide a streamlined appearance in the end. While I continue my PLN development over the course of my career, I can make changes, including changes in the curation tool, when needed. The best way to describe a PLN to my colleagues would be: Through the use of my PLN, I will be able to glean information and collaborate with my peers, continually evolving into the resource that my teachers and students deserve. While the experience of creating my formal PLN has been short, my goal is to develop an invaluable collection of resources that focus on the areas of reading, technology integration, makerspaces, and information fluency. By personalizing my learning experiences through the use of a PLN, I now have, a specialized set of resources that I can reference at will, update regularly, and share with my peers. After reviewing the Wiki and PLN Starter Kit in FRIT 7234, I began the search for resources. To keep myself abreast of current trends, I have included resources that I have consulted for a while like Becky Nipper’s Twitter feed where she shares her journey as a school librarian. She always has something of value that I can use in my own position. Finding new resources through my search, I have also included RSS feeds such as ResearchBuzz which has the latest in information “about search engines, databases, social media, and more.” ResearchBuzz has myriad insights into information fluency and the changing landscape of research in the 21st century. Through my search of blogs, course resources, social media, and RSS feeds, I found valuable new additions to my PLN. Each resource provides vital insight into the profession and craft of school librarianship and has been curated with the intention of developing a lifelong devotion to learning and providing others with access to information.
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This week, our Region 9 Georgia Library Media Association (GLMA) representative reached out to begin planning our first GLMA meeting of the year. Usually we meet twice a year to discuss the latest updates in the library media world and bounce ideas off of each other. We will meet in late October this semester. Our region representative is great at encouraging us to be the best LMS each of us can be; she also is always an advocate for us in our professional lives. LMA's support for the School Librarian Evaluation Instrument implementation is invaluable to me as this year, I will be evaluated under the new process. Several of our members have suggested discussing the SLEI at our October meeting, so hopefully with will be an ongoing part of our collaborative meetings. This week also saw class visits from 6th, 7th, and 8th grade ELA classes. I'm so happy that independent reading is a focus for our school this year! It not only aligns with my profession goal under SLEI, but I'm passionate about getting young people reading as well! We circulated 374 books last week, which is tremendous for us, as we have 313 middle-school students! On Tuesday, when the 6th grade classes came in, I also hosted an escape room aligned with their figurative language standard. Students circulated to different stations where they engages in rigorous tasks that deepened their mastery of how figurative language impacts a text. I'm also getting a large Follett book order together for each school. This week, I created my lists online and filled out the purchase orders to send to the BOE for approval. Hopefully we will have some boxes showing up soon; there's nothing quite like the smell of a new box of books! Usually we do 2 big book orders each year. We select books for order by looking at our collection analysis results and making notes throughout the year of what needs replacing or where we need new books. We also take requests from students and teachers for what they would like purchased. My high schoolers are VERY vocal about what they would like to see in our library media center, so I love trying to make their dreams come true! Location: Wilkinson County Middle/High School Library Media Center
Time: 7:30-3:30 daily, September 16-20, 2019 Total Hours: 40 This week, I worked on the normal hodgepodge of activities that occur in the LMC on a weekly basis. In addition to checking in and out books, continuing to weed the 500s section, and maintaining our facility, I worked on the website for one of my schools, dealt with some kinks in our ID badge system, and helped 8th grade math students transfer images to their Google Drives for a project. As we are implementing the PBIS (Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports) system this year, updating our website to reflect this change was of great importance. Not only did I create a new page for PBIS, but I summarized the system in a short narrative aligned with other schools in our district. Additionally, I included links to our PBIS resources so that website visitors have open access to all pertinent information. We also rolled out our student and staff IDs this week. My clerk and I are responsible for generating, disbursing, and monitoring IDs to both students and staff. This year, we created new templates to combat some issues we had with the old template last year. We create the database that the ID program links to, import pictures, print badges, punch them, group them according to grade level/department, distribute them, and then go through the process all over again for any student or staff member who does not have one. This is a lengthy and tedious process, but we hopefully have all IDs created and passed out at this point. As the year progresses, we will revisit this process for new students and staff each Friday morning. Lastly, I worked with 8th grade math students on transferring images of their projects to their Google Drives. We provided two options for transferring images: scanning to Drive as a PDF or emailing as JPEGs. Even though our students are part of the Google Generation and are so tech-savvy, they sometimes struggle with basic skills like transferring data from one device to another. By showing them how and then allowing them to practice, we teach them valuable skills that will contribute to their technology wheelhouse to be used ever after. When working with students on this skill, we talk about scanning apps, AirDrop, Google Drive apps, linking email accounts, and converting files. Location: Wilkinson County Middle/High School Library Media Center
Time: 7:30-3:30 daily, September 9-13, 2019 Total Hours: 40 To keep a steady stream of new books available for our students, a portion of our budget for books goes towards monthly subscriptions from Junior Library Guild. We subscribe to to several of the most popular categories for both middle and high school students. When each monthly subscription arrives, we process them with the following steps:
The importance of this process is that it helps ensure consistency with our accessions. We need to make sure that all books ordered are delivered and processed for the appropriate school. The security strips help us manage the "comings and goings" of the LMC's property. We can also determine the age of a title and which school it belongs to (since both middle and high school books are housed in our LMC) by looking at the barcode numbers as our accessions process allows for this by assigning specific barcode numbers each year. Shelving books in the "New" section allows our avid readers to easily access new materials that they have not seen before. I also spent a bit of time this week weeding our 500s section. Over the past two years, I have slowly engaged in an aggressive weed of our collection. The previous two LMSs made minimal weeds to our collection. From fiction, nonfiction, and reference, to old VCR carts and on-the-shoulder video cameras from the 80s, we were overrun with outdated materials. Because of this, we had over 30,000 titles for a patron base of 800. Students and teachers were overwhelmed by the vastness of the collection and intimidated by the process of selecting a book. Since we've begun our weeding, we have seen an increase in circulations and LMC traffic. Students are better able to independently find titles that they will read. So far, we have weeded our obsolete technology, teaching materials, and fiction sections. This year, I have started on the nonfiction section with the hopes of being finished before inventory begins in April. We since this is our first major weed in recent history, we are using the MUSTY method (misleading, ugly, superseded, trivial, your collection has no use) method, but hope to shift into the CREW (Continuous Review Evaluation and Weeding) method after our collection is brought more current and to a more manageable size. Location: Wilkinson County Middle/High School Library Media Center
Time: 7:30-3:30 daily, September 3-6, 2019 Total Hours: 32 Each August, the Wilkinson County School District hosts a Ride for Literacy event to raise funds to support literacy in our schools. We solicit support from the community, and all participants pay an entry fee as well. Students, teachers, and community come together to ride bicycles, walk, or run from our middle/high school campus to our primary/elementary campus, 1.5 miles away. This week was our eighth annual event. After the event, we host a pep rally in honor of literacy where students who participate are entered to win prizes, and the student at each school with the highest Lexile measure is recognized and rewarded. Cheerleaders cheer literacy cheers. Teachers dance to literacy-promoting songs. Staff and students perform skits. A good time is had by all in the name of promoting literate students who are globally competitive. As the middle/high LMS, I try daily to lead the charge for literacy in my schools and community. I not only support this event each year, but I facilitate reading events throughout the year that encourage students to develop lifelong reading habits. I'm excited to begin this year of literacy with my students! Location: Wilkinson County Middle/High School Library Media Center
Time: 7:30-3:30 daily, August 26-30, 2019 Total Hours: 40 Before I became a library media specialist (LMS), I taught middle school ELA and high school English. I once also took a job as an art teacher, but never had the opportunity to follow through with teaching art, as I was hired for my current position one week prior to the start of the school year. With those things in mind, it's no wonder that I love the combination of art and literature. I try to make the library media center (LMC) a visually appealing and welcoming space that students want to frequent, but doing so is made difficult by the age of our building. This week I decided to do something drastic! For nearly twenty years (since I was in middle school at this same school), a hot air balloon poster has hung in our high school entry way. No other LMS has taken the poster down because it was hung with sticky hook and loop that tore the sheetrock when anyone attempted to remove it. This week, with help from my clerk and interns, I took the old poster down, and replaced it with an author gallery walk! I found the most creative black and white prints of authors and quotes on Etsy and they now hang in our LMC! The hot air balloons now have a new home in an ELA classroom across the hall! Location: Wilkinson County Middle/High School Library Media Center
Time: 7:30-3:30 daily, August 19-23, 2019 Total Hours: 40 |
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