Voki - version 3

Book Talker

I had thought that perhaps after seeing Sean's Voki Panda that perhaps I could manage to create Spin and Twirl the Hurricane mascots that Alana DeVito created for us.  I am not so sure now.  I am even more impressed with your efforts Sean.  

Imagine, dream, believe, read ...you can have it all.

What are your dreams for your next reading adventure?  

Librarian Brings Kindles into the Classroom

Kathy Parker did a fine job sharing her experience with 7th and 8th graders and thier use of the Kindles in her article, Librarian Brings Kindles into the Classroom and I can definitely see the appeal of Kindles especially in the middle and upper levels, but the "unknown" recurring costs would seem to preclude most library budgets from being able to have them.  The other factor that I've wondered about is "keeping them".  You'd want any child to be able to check it out to use, but there are some children who have recurring damages to print books whether it is by themselves or family members and others who may be homeless, in shelters or in other situations where having either a "safe place" to keep the kindle or being able to keep much of anything due to space restrictions and recurring moves might make them less than ideal candidates for checking out a kindle, yet they are memebers of one of the groups of people who might benefit most from the use of the school technology.  As technology continues to explode, reductions in internal size and costs to produce the item, and with the creation of the "Tuffy-style" Kindle, Kindles will become more affordable for a widening range of Media Centers. 

Another consideration, is that currently DPS school media collections are shared in Destiny for cataloguing purposes and as individual inter-library loan checkouts.  As e-books become more of the norm, will the schools continue to have their own purchases or will the schools join to purchase items or even have just a central DPS entity purchase for the "group" to use and have a DPS e-library like the Durham County Library currently does?  For the upper grades, this will probably become the norm, but for the elementary crowd, there is still a need for printed books.  An example is the Birthday Book Giveaway that we do at Hillandale.  Each child comes to the Media Center on the giveaway date for their birth month and chooses a desired book from 25-75 possibilities.  Many teachers and parents have commented on the positive reactions of receiving and sharing the pleasure of getting the book with family and classmates that the children experienced.  The excitement and feel of a new book that you get to select just wouldn't be the same with a download.

Librarian Brings Kindles into the Classroom

Media Center Changes

From the article The Media Center:  From Musty Old Library to 21 Centeury Program by Mary Alice Anderson, Multimedia Schools, January 2004  http://homepage.mac.com/maryalicea/Sites/Anderson/MMS/Musty_Library_0104.pdf we can see that change is possible for any Media Center, even the one set back in what seems "dinosaur times".  She is also right that communication, collaboration and energy are the keys for change.  Communication being the most important.  Collaboration is a close second. In my media center, I tried improving the "small group literacy books", i.e. "bagged books" by changing the call numbers first to more of a "Dewey-style" (E CON, F CAP, E 583 BEC, etc), but it didn't fit the needs of my adult patrons or myself in locating these books.  The reason, because the book's reading level was the most important part of the call number.  Wanting to use Destiny (the online catalog) and its capabilities in creating call number labels for the entire section's shelf list of 450 titles and being limited by the field selection choices available and the need to create labels that would be "teacher friendly" I opted for creating call numbers that were non-Dewey.  The Fiction side call numbers are:  BS FIC A-1 Dino (fiction, level, and first word of the title up to 5 characters) and BS NONF M-20 Explo (Nonfiction, level, and first word of the title up to 5 characters).  The leveling does not include Lexiles unfortunately because it is not a field that is easily reached via reports.  Perhaps with nudging, Follett will include lexiles as a choice in future releases.  We shall see if it helps the teachers when I unveil it in August in a training session.  (Note: these do not include books in the Bookroom that go with the LA adoption, but with the booksets that remained in the MC collection although it could be used in there.)
Another area of change for me is the use of a Document Reader.  One of our teachers won the DPS Technology Showcase Document Reader and after that I wanted one in the Media Center to use with the kids.  Online we searched how we could create one to use in the Media Center on the cheap.  See http://help.conroeisd.net/hardware/eyecamd/ver1 (Conroe ISD Technology to set up the EyeCamD document camera and for many other helpful technology issues) and http://www.friedtechnology.com/2010/03/update-document-camera-under-100-now.html for instructions on how to make one.  It works great for small books and other things.  For the larger picture books, the distance between the book and the camera needs to be heightened.  I am still working on that one, but I am hoping that this helps the kids all be able to see what's being read better than last year.  On to the future one step at a time.
What are your solutions for dealing with an underwealth of technology?

Why Blog?

It is generally better not to recreate the wheel.  People sharing information can often reduce the time and suffering of others following the same pathway.  There are many forms of communication and in those various formats different types of information can optimally be shared.  Quite often if you experiment with a number of avenues, there will be one or two favorite pathways that you will be drawn to utilize.  I am in search of those favorite pathways of communication.