Week 12

Week 12: Experience Summary

My experience at Warren County Career Center was really great. I learned so many things about running a library and about how to get involved as a librarian in the teaching of the students. Mrs. Milner does a lot of collaborating and to do that collaborating took some time, but she has gotten to the point where teachers will come to her with ideas she can help with and she feels comfortable going to the teachers. I understand that this atmosphere and teacher-librarian relationship needs to be worked towards but having seen the results here at WCCC the results of that collaboration are really worth the work it takes to develop. I got a lot of practice working with the teachers and developing different lesson plans. One of the most rewarding parts of the practicum experience was working with the teachers, they were all really great and really open to collaborations from me as well. I was able to introduce a lot of fun, new Web 2.0 tools to the students and the teachers in the classroom and the reaction that I got from them was great. In an English class I introduced different Digital Storytelling tools to them and they really got a kick out of Creaza Cartoonist and many of them used it for their project. The other day I showed a group of English teachers an online game called Akinator; it's basically a 20 questions game with a web 'genie'  that can guess any fictional character even really obscure ones. The teachers really got a kick out of it, even yelling in amazement as they threw out random side characters from random plays and books that were really obscure and the Akinator got each one correct. One of the teachers even took the Akinator to her classroom and used it with her students who were all equally amazed. She came back to me later that day and thanked me so much for sending her the link, saying the students had a lot of fun and were yelling and amazed. The best part of the Akinator is it can be used as a great teaching tool. She had them do a character from The Great Gatsby first and the students have to know enough about the character they choose to answer all of the Akinator's questions about that character. Being able to make a difference in the classroom and to the teachers has been really rewarding. It was this level of collaboration that surprised me at the school, but seeing that it does happen and does work here I am more confident that I will be able to eventually reach that level of cooperation in my own library.

After completing my practicum at WCCC I am pretty confident that I will be able to successfully run a library. I feel very comfortable with the different management type duties that I will need to perform. I have done a lot of cataloging and have successfully helped pick new books that the students would like as well as weed out books that don't get a lot of student use or attention. The collection development and management side of the library is something that I am confident I will be able to handle well on my own. What I haven't got a whole lot of practice in is  advocating on the library's behalf and I think as a new librarian that is something that I will have to put a plan in place for; although a good first step would be to start building relationships with the teachers, I need to focus on advocating beyond the school building. Doing my practicum at Warren County Career Center really helped me to develop as a librarian and Mrs. Milner was able to give me a lot of feedback and help me to learn a lot. This was a great experience and has left me with several ideas of where I would want to take a library of my own.

Week 11

This week started out with cataloging a large group of new books that came in. I spent Monday and Tuesday going through and cataloging the books and then I spent most of Wednesday putting the stickers on, as well as wrapping the books and generally getting them ready to be shelved. This process was interrupted in spurts with other activities. 

On Tuesday, for example, it was the last Preschool Storytime of the year. Mrs. Milner ran it and I participated and acted as helper. The preschoolers weren't allowed to check out books since they wouldn't be coming back to the library so there were extra books read and a extra songs danced to. This was in addition to the two books, four songs, and craft that is usually done. The students had a good time with it and it was a little heartening to see that they were disappointed they wouldn't be checking out books. It's nice to see that programs such as Preschool Storytime do get little kids looking forward to library visits, books, and reading.

Thursday ended up being a bit of a maintenance day. My biggest project ended up being organizing a cabinet in the backroom. This started when a few students came in to check out the iPod dock for their teacher. I went to the back room and was able to find the dock, but even with the boys helping me look I couldn't find the charger to go with it. There were different wires, cords, and adapters lying everywhere on several shelves and it made things difficult to find, or even know what all was available. I ended up having to give the boys batteries to use with the dock. I spent the majority of the day going through the closet and organizing it. I separated the different wires out and put them in boxes and then labeled the shelves and the different items that were in there. It took awhile but it looks a lot better now and Mrs. Milner will be able to find things a lot more easily in the future. Also while going through the cabinets we found some items that could be put to use in the library and be made available for check out such as extra computer mice and a charger for the laptops. 

Other highlights this week included weeding out some books. This was the first time that I'd weeded but as I was going through the shelves and putting books back I scanned for ones with covers that basically made it so no students would want to check them out. Winnie wanted these pulled anyways for the graphics students who are going to design new covers for them as a class project. I pulled several books and then once they were pulled I went through them to decide if they were worth a new cover or if they should just be weeded. I based my decision on content of the story (would it resonate with students today) and how long it had been in the library and if in that time it had been checked out. When available I also looked at the recommended age of the book, the younger ones I pulled because this school is for high school juniors and seniors so books for 10-and-up (and to an extent 12-and-up) are a bit on the young side as far as content goes. Looks were also a factor as that is what got the books pulled from the shelf in the first place.

Friday was spent doing some needed clerical work. I created a walk-through for students showing them how to receive emailed documents to the Kindle and to start the text-to-speech option that will read the stories out loud. I also created a list of the weeded books for Mrs. Milner to get her a head start on the paperwork involved with weeding. In addition I made a list of the books that needed new covers, just in case they need re-shelved and saved for the next school year. That way the list can be used as a reference, if needed, to easily find the books again.

Harlem Shake Video

This is the Harlem Shake video that was filmed the week before Spring Break in the Media Center. As you can see we had a lot of fun making it and the students had a great time doing it. This was over two weeks ago now and students still come in to the library asking to see the Harlem Shake video. Doing activities like this is a great way to get students wanting to be involved and wanting to come in to the library. I'm the one in the red shirt and the Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hat.

Week 10

This week was the week before Spring Break. The highlights of the week included teaching the Landscaping students to create a website using Weebly. I went over the information on how to create a website, the different features of weebly, and why having a website would be a good tool for a landscaping company. I started out the lesson by going over how to use the features of weebly and how to set up a weebly website. I gave them tips on keeping the website looking professional and we brainstormed ideas of some of the features that should be included on a business or portfolio website. The students for the most part were able to pick up what to do quickly and after going over the goal of the project I stayed in the room while they worked on it and answered any questions and helped with any troubleshooting. These lessons were the big point of the week and my advisor came and observed one of them. She did give me some very helpful advice and tips that I was able to incorporate the second time that I did the lesson and was able to improve it.

This week we also managed to finish filming the zombie library video. I took over the last day of filming and kept it moving through the last two periods and get everything done. The biggest challenge with the zombie video project was getting the whole thing moving and getting everything done. After discussing with the Drama teacher and Mrs. Milner, it seemed that part of the problem with the project was that after the initial excitement and brainstorming and fun died down it dragged on. I think that towards the end it could have gone a little smoother if we had kept it moving all along. Not that this is the easiest thing to do, but it got to the point where the students were not into it and not having fun with it and that made the whole project more difficult to do and a bit more aggravating for us. I think the overall project will turn out really cool though, and in doing something similar I would just try to consolidate the project.

Since it was the week before Spring Break we did a surprise for the substitute teacher on Friday in the Drama class. The substiotute that was there had worked with us in the library so we knew she would be comfortable with the situation. We had the drama students come down Thursday and practice, and then Friday morning the first thing we did for the day was do the Harlem Shake. It was a lot of fun and the students really got a kick out of doing it. One came with a banana costume, another had a clown outfit. We also filmed the whole thing and throughout the day students came in to watch it. It turned out very cute and the substitute also got a big laugh out of it. Doing stuff like the Harlem Shake and the zombie video can be fun for students and can really boost spirits and have students coming in to the library.

ALA/AASL Standards for Initial Preparation of School Librarians

Standard 4.1: Networking with the library community
Creating videos that help to promote the library and get students actively involved in the library and it's projects.

Standard 1.4: Integration of twenty-first century skills and learning standards
Using video as a means to promote the library. Also teaching landscaping students how to create websites they could use for business or portfolios.

Standard 1.3: Instructional partner
Help the landscaping teacher integrate useful technology into his program.

Week 9

This week once again started off with some cataloging. We got in some more new books so I put them all into the system, as well as wrapped them, and placed them on the New Books display that I made. I also taught several classes this week. Monday morning I worked with the Early Childhood Education and taught them how to create a Prezi. I used the "How to Make A Prezi" prezi that I created a few weeks ago to do it. They picked up on it really well and didn't seem to have many questions or problems with using Prezi after I went through it with them.

On Tuesday I did Preschool Storytime. It was a bit different this week, because there was make-up OGT testing going on in the library so there wasn't really any classes that could be done down here. That meant that I had to gather all the materials that I needed for Storytime and go to there room. The theme that I chose for this month was Rainy Days. I started off once again with a guess what's in the box game. I gave them three clues about the object and they were able to guess it (it was an umbrella). Then I read The Magic Raincoat by Ryan David, then we danced to two fun interactive songs; then we read the second story I had picked out, The Rainy Day by Patricia Lakin and danced to two more songs. The songs came from the CD's: Jim Gill Sings The Sneezing Songs and Other Contagious Tunes, Laurie Berkner: Victor Vito, and Greg and Steve: Kids In Action. After this we did a craft. I found an umbrella printable and had them glue colorful pieces of paper on it to make their own umbrellas. After they were done, if they finished early, they could draw who they wanted to keep dry under their umbrella. It was fun doing Storytime, it's really great seeing the little kids get excited and get all into it.

On Wednesday I worked with the Landscaping students and taught them how to use VoiceThread. I approached the Landscaping teacher last week and asked if he wanted me to show the students how to use VoiceThread and why it would be beneficial to his class. I told him that it could be an important tool used to showcase a project from start to finish and could work for student portfolios or class projects. Then on Wednesday I presented my "How To VoiceThread" VoiceThread with the class. I went through all the features with them and once done with mine we browsed through and looked at different VoiceThread's as a class to see how some of the features were used and worked. Next Wednesday, the Landscaping teacher and I plan to build on this information and teach them how to use Weebly to create a personal website that they could use for a business or a portfolio or however they see fit.

The other big thing of the week was on Friday I taught Early Childhood Education again. I went over how to do MLA citations, particularly using an online tool, Son of Citation Machine. Afterwards I taught them how to use SMART Notebook 11 to make activities that could then be put up on the SMART Board. I showed them a few activities that I had made and went over in detail how to use SMART Notebook and how to make their own activities. In the afternoon I taught the students how to use VoiceThread.

Throughout the week we have also been collaborating with the Drama class on the Zombie promotional video that we're creating for the library. It has been a fun and interesting process. Some of the students are a bit less likely to want to cooperate than others, but regardless of some of the coaxing that ends up being involved I think it will turn out to be a very entertaining video.

ALA/AASL Standards for Initial Preparation of School Librarians

Standard 1.2 Effective and knowledgeable teacher
Collaborated with teachers and introduced and new technology that will help students in the classroom and in the workplace.

Standard 1.4 Integration of twenty-first century skills and learning standards
 Teaching Landscaping students how to use Voicethread, SMART technology, and using video technology to promote the library through the zombie video.

Standard 1.1 Knowledge of learners and learning
Able to anticipate some of the problems that students may have with new technology and answer their questions or troubleshoot.

Standard 3.2 Access to information
 Showed ECE students where to find templates and other materials available through SMART Notebook.

Standard 3.3 Information techonology
Used SMART Notebook to further student learning and to give them the tools that they can use in the classroom.

Week 8

Week 8 March 4-8

On Monday of this week I went about cataloging a few new books that were available, and then Mrs. Milner showed me how she would like the iPad's to be cataloged. The iPad's, since they are an electronic resource needed to be done a bit more manually then other items. We found a MARC record that was what Winnie wanted through the INFOhio SmartPORT. Then we went in to the record and added and changed some information to match the product that Warren Country Career Center had specifically. Then I added all ten iPad's into the system, but each iPad needed it's serial and call number to the MARC record as well as to the actual catalog information. This was important in case of theft. In general, Monday was a day of catching up with some of the day-to-day jobs that the library needs to have done.

Tuesday the entire day was spent in the Career Connections: Southwest Work Group meeting. This was a meeting of curriculum and career specialists all over the region to meet and plan the career connection learning strategies among grades 9-12 to the courses in each content area. I worked with two other people on connecting the social studies standards to the career connection learning strategies. This was an interesting process and a little enlightening on what, Ohio at least, has to go through to develop it's different standards. The day also proved to be good for networking. I got some pieces of advice for job hunting from the two other members of my group. We also exchanged ideas, and I showed them how to use Google forms and how the end results can be automatically tallied for you and presented colorfully in a bar graph. They really seemed to like this. One of the members even credited me with keeping them on-task and moving through the project. I felt comfortable enough within the group to submit my own ideas about different ways to connect the careers with the content area and we were able to have a discussion about the pros and cons and develop each others ideas. Overall it was a good experience, and I was happy to have taken part in it.

Other highlights of the week were teaching a make-up INFOhio lesson to Miss Cooper's 8th period class, but this time it was done in her room. This presented a few problems as her SMARTboard wouldn't let me click and the laptops had to be taken down to her room. Also with the zombie video project we started blocking and running through the scenes with the 'actors'. We also had a few students from the class that's videotaping it come down and see if our blocking was feasible with their cameras and if they liked the angles and such. I was supposed to give the copyright lesson that I had created to Miss Cooper's class on Friday, but because of a Snow Day it has been canceled. I will have to talk to her to see if she'd like to reschedule. Instead, Friday was spent planning things for the upcoming week. There are a few Early Childhood Education classes coming in to do projects with technologies that need to be taught to them and that needs planned out, as well as Preschool story time. The extra day of planning is nice, although I must admit to being a bit disappointed about the Copyright lesson, I was excited about it. Hopefully it will be able to be arranged to be done in the future, but if not at least I've got some lessons that can be adapted and done at other schools. Also this week I developed a brief survey for students to take, most likely in their English classes. The survey just asks some basic questions about their genre preferences and their likes in TV shows, movies, and books. This is done as a basis for research into what types of genres the students enjoy reading. That way the library can see if there's a gap in any one area and work to close that gap when it comes time to purchase books. It will be useful to have the information for collection development purposes.

ALA/AASL Standards for Initial Preparation of School Librarians

Standard 4.1 Networking with the library community
Meeting with the Career Connections group gave me an opportunity to network with other educator's throughout the region and share resources.

Standard 5.4 Strategic Planning and Assessment
In the Career Connections meeting many of the ideas that I contributed involved using some of the tools available on INFOhio or other online resources, giving librarians the opportunity to collaborate on such projects.

Standard 5.1 Collections
I worked again on cataloging and had to catalog in different ways to get the most accurate information on iPad's in the system.

Standard 4.4 Advocacy
At the Career  Connections meeting one of the members of my group, as well as the facilitator, were from the Ohio Board of Education. By being a willing participant as well as staying on task and contributing good ideas they were able to see that a librarian can be an asset, or at the very least took positive notice of the role I played. This is an important step in advocating for a school library program.

Standard 3.4 Research and knowledge creation
I created a survey for students to take that will in essence find their favorite genres. This will help to improve the libraries collection development and help illuminate any areas that are lacking in books.

Week 7

Week 7 February 25-March 1

I caught up on some simple tasks that had just fallen by the wayside with the craziness that was cataloging last week. The first thing that I did was edit the Soren Bowie article so that it would be appropriate to distribute to students. I had gotten permission to edit and distribute the article last week from Soren after I found him on Facebook and messaged him. Below is a picture of the conversation that took place between myself and Soren as well as the edited article. From there I made up a lesson plan to teach students copyright. The copyright lesson plan is also included below. I'm rather excited to teach the copyright lesson because I've got a couple multimedia resources in addition to the Soren Bowie article that I think help to make the subject a little more fun and engaging for students. I also created a lesson plan (that was also part of a project for one of my classes) on using INFOhio databases to search for sources for research papers. As part of the class in addition to teaching the lesson I needed to gather evidence to see if the lesson was effective so I created a checklist/survey to see how well the students were understanding and liking INFOhio. My thoughts are the more students like INFOhio to more they understand the different features and how to use them. The checklist was created through Google forms and is below as well as a link that will go to the results of the survey.

This week Mrs. Milner, myself, and Mrs. Fandoni (who teaches English and some Drama classes) worked to plan out a video advertisement for the library based around a zombie theme. In addition to starting to plan out the story line with the kids and in conjunction with the other teachers, I also started to go over and teach the students the Thriller dance. This kind of fell to me. It's an interesting experience as I have very little dance background and don't actually consider myself a good dancer, but it seems that when I'm going through and practicing the dance with them the students themselves will get a little more involved with it. It takes a little more effort to keep the students under control with such an active activity and to make sure that everyone is up and involved but so far we've gotten through a decent portion of the dance. We are going off of a tutorial that I found online at YouTube, but every once in awhile I pause the video and go through the steps with all the kids. I count out the beats and walk them through what we learned asking them to tell me the next move and putting it all together. This seems to help them get the different moves down a bit better.

I've also started to notice that teachers in the school are comfortable coming to me and asking me questions as well. That seems to be where I need to be at. Other good news is that I've officially passed both the required Praxis tests that I was required to take.

Soren Bowie Permission/Edited Article

This is an image of the conversation that took place between myself and Soren Bowie where he gives me permission to edit and distribute his article.

The following is an image of the finished, edited article. I did not make many changes at all, just took out a few of the words or phrases that weren't appropriate for students.

The original article can be found at the following link.

INFOhio Lesson Plan

This is the INFOhio Lesson Plan that I designed and presented to students.

And this is the checklist/survey that I designed to see if students understood the concepts of the lesson. There understanding was mostly based on their ease of use and if they liked INFOhio and would use it again.

To see the results of the checklist/survey please click the following link. As shown through the various graphs (which since I used Google forms to create the checklist/survey are tallied and created automatically) the students overall understood the different features on INFOhio and why it is such a great research tool to use.

Copyright Lesson Plan

This is another lesson plan that I developed this week. It includes a lot of multimedia aspects that I think will help to engage students in a subject they might otherwise find dull and confusing. This lesson will be given to at least one class on Friday, March 8.

ALA/AASL Standards for Inital Preparation of School Librarians

Standard 3.3 Information Technology
Use of INFOhio and discussion of search techniques

Standard 1.2 Effective and knowledgeable teacher
Collaborated with teachers and introduced and reinforced information relevant to the research project in a way that would teach the students the subject and allow them to take the information and incorporate it into their own research

Standard 1.4 Integration of twenty-first century skills and learning standards
Took the information literacy and the use of technology i.e. INFOhio and incoporating it into the lesson

Standard 1.1 Knowledge of learners and learning
Able to anticipate possible shortfalls of the class setting and have methods in place to adapt the lesson to engage the students further

Standard 3.1 Efficient and ethical information-seeking behavior
The lesson focuses on showing students a more efficient way to seek reliable information for research projects

Standard 3.2 Access to information
Allows all students access to INFOhio, and show them how to use the resource and the benefits available with the resource, and grant them access to the resource for home-use

Standard 3.3 Information techonology
Used INFOhio to further student learning
Standard 5.2 Professional Ethics
Promoted digital citizenship and educating the school community in the ethical use of information and ideas

Standard 4.2 Professional development
Explored different internet resources that have good information and activities on copyright as well as explored the different features of the INFOhio program.

Standard 4.3 Leadership
Promoted the copyright lesson to teachers as a way to collaborate with the library/librarian for a way to promote student academic achievement. Had to pitch the lesson and push for it with several English teachers.

Standard 4.1: Networking with the library community
Edited the Soren Bowie article and shared with teachers in the school and sent the article to Mrs. Milner to share with the OELMA list serve and then contacted the author and got permission for some minor editing and distribution of the article

Week 6

Week 6 February 18-22

The majority of this week was spent on cataloging. A few boxes of new books had been ordered and had come in so I spent several days adding the new books to the system and running the reports that gave the required stickers for the books. Then I wrapped the hardback copies. It sounds like there's not a lot to do but when there are several books that all these steps need done to it can be a little time-consuming. I didn't mind cataloging, which is good because it is a required process that all librarians must do. The biggest problem I can see that it is a bit time-consuming and I could see that it might be difficult to do as the only librarian in the library with no aides or help. 

Other highlights of the week include introducing Mrs. Milner to an article that I found on the Cracked.com humor site. It's titled "How Google Image Search Made Me a World-Famous Moron" and is written by Soren Bowie. The article can be found at this site. It's a great article that has to do with copyright and plagiarism and it has the added benefit of being funny. Mrs. Milner liked it so much that she shared it with the OELMA list serve, saying that I found out. The feedback from OELMA was great several people e-mailed back saying the enjoyed it. After some discussion with Mrs. Milner. I decided to try and contact the writer, Soren Bowie. I wanted to be able to share the article with students but there were a few curse words and a line or two of content that made it slightly inappropriate. I was able to find him on Facebook and friend requested him, he added me immediately and from there I was able to message him explaining the situation, complimenting his writing, and asking if he had an edited copy of the article that he would be willing to share. To my surprise and delight he messaged me back within a couple of hours. He said that he didn't have an edited copy that I could use as the Word document was filled with HTML but he did give me permission to edit and distribute the article anyway that I liked. I was absolutely thrilled. Mrs. Milner shared the good news with the OELMA list serve and told them that if they'd like an edited copy of the article to e-mail back. There were 6 requests for the edited version before an hour was up. It really was an exciting learning experience. It definitely showed me that it doesn't hurt to try and contact authors about their work. The worst thing that they can say is no. An image of the Facebook conversation between myself and Soren Bowie is below.

The rest of the week was spent preparing a Glogster. I was to go over how to make a Glogster with the Early Childhood Education group and made one based on what they would be required to do with their project. I'm a little back and forth on Glogster. There are definitely some cool features to the site but the education version at least was very glitchy. There was a lot of starting and stopping to the project and on several occasions there were some loading issues. On a few occasions I even had to close the website and restart it because it had froze. The project is below. 

Mrs. Milner and I also started working with Mrs. Frandoni's drama class. We're working with them and with the Digital Design group to put together a zombie movie promotional video for the library. It involves having a zombie invasion of the school and four students escape to the library and by holding up different books they make the zombies do different things, like a Michael Jackson biography makes the zombies start doing the Thriller. Over the course of a couple of days we, along with Mrs. Frandoni, conducted the Drama students in a brain-storming session to pick out the books that we would be using and to try and come up with different scenes from the books that the zombies would be made to do. The students have a good time with the project and it seems like it will be a great collaboration and a great project will come out of the end result.

Glogster

This is a Glogster I made using the education version of Glogster. It is simple to make and I did it along the guidelines that the Early Childhood Education teacher  gave her students the assignment. My lesson for Friday was going over how to create a Glogster and work the different features so they can create the same type of project I did with a different early childhood author. Glogster was an interesting site. There were a couple things that I didn't like about and while the concept is a great idea and a good way to organize information, the site was a little slow and glitchy. Mrs. Milner said that this could be because the education users were too big for the sites servers. She is not planning on paying for a Glogster subscription next year.

ALA/AASL Standards for Initial Preparation of School Librarians

Standard 4.1: Networking with the library community Sharing the Soren Bowie article with the OELMA list serve and then contacted the author and got permission for some minor editing and distribution of the article

Standard 5.1: Collections "Candidates organize school library collections according to current library cataloging and classification principles and standards" I spent a good part of the week cataloging and organizing the books that we got in into their appropriate sections and into the system accurately. This did involve some trial and error as some books I had put one place Mrs. Milner wanted in a different place.

Standard 1.4: Integration of twenty-first century skills and learning standards Teaching the use of Glogster to organize and display projects

Standard 1.3: Instructional partner Plan to teach the Early Childhood Education students about Glogster to help them with their lessons

Standard 3.2: Access to information "Candidates model and facilitate the legal and ethical codes of the profession". By getting permission to edit and distribute the article by Soren Bowie I demonstrated how to follow the legal and ethical codes in regards to copyright law. Also by getting permission for that particular article I will be able to facilitate discussion among teachers and students and develop lessons in regard to the subject.

Standard 5.4: Strategic Planning and Assessment Participated in a discussion, training, and a collaboration between the IT department, Mrs. Milner, and myself to incorporate the new iPad's into the library program and use the new resource in a manner that is effecting and also useful as well as safe for the students.