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?
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ReplyDeleteThe "build your own" document camera is interesting. I only skimmed the instructions but I'll have to take a closer look. I have a document camera in the Media Center (Holt). It is the only one in the building except for one in kindergarten that never gets used (I have to look into that, I think they don't know how to use it.) I also get frustrated with getting a larger book under the document camera. In fact, it is really hard to get a 2 page spread in and sometimes that's really important. Sometimes it's just better to do it the old fashioned way so the kids get the beauty of the whole book. Also, I run into glare issues and sometimes have to tilt the book to correct the problem.
I've been making all kinds of changes in the Holt library, to the consternation of my assistant who has been at Holt for 20 years! I'm considering labeling our main collection by grade level to help guide the kids (and teachers love this). Since we used to be AR, we are probably just going to use colored dots that match the old AR labels. The only problem will be when there are three different grade levels listed depending on the publisher or testing service process. Here's why I'm not "lexiling" at this time: 1. the kids don't know their lexile levels; 2. the teachers don't know lexiles. In fact, I'm not sure where we stand as a district when it comes to lexiles and neither does my principal. I also can't seem to print a book title list from Destiny that includes grade or lexile level. When I get a chance, I'm going to call Destiny about the issue. I know librarians shouldn't really be leveling the library, but since I let kids take out more books than in the past, they will have plenty of "free choice".
Wow, I've written way too much for a "comment". We should email about the leveling issue - alison.lesueur@dpsnc.net.