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.