One of the things I've noticed about businesses is that they are constantly changing to respond to the needs of their customers. This is a great practice to stay relevant as customers' needs tend to change over time. In the library, we can implement the same practices. In this blog article, I want to share one of the ways we have recently created a new service for our learning community that was inspired by local businesses.
Earlier this year, I was introduced to Wal-Mart Grocery Pickup. If you aren't familiar with it, this service allows customers to make a grocery list on an app, select the store they want to visit, select the time they want to pick up the groceries and pay online. When you arrive to get your groceries, a person comes out to your car (no matter what weather conditions exist) to place them into your trunk. The service has saved my wife and me so much time as busy teachers!
At the first part of the school year, we began discussing what this model could look like in the library. We decided to try a "book pickup" program for our students! To begin, we started with school email outreach. I sent an email to students informing them about the program. This is what was in the first email I sent out:
We had several students make requests right after I sent the email out to all grades in the high school. We noticed that those that used the service were learners that we don't typically see getting books in the library. Even though it was only a few students, they seemed very happy that we had reached out with the new program.
After several weeks, we decided it might be better to create a Google Form to share with students that wanted to make book pickup requests. This is the form we are currently using:
I sent the form to students via their school email. We had four orders within 30 minutes after it was shared! It has been fun to see students fill out the form and complete their orders. When we prepare their pickup order, we tie yarn around their book with a personal message (see below).
I will continue emailing periodic reminders to students that we have this service available. It will be interesting if it catches on with more students (and maybe even teachers). If you have a similar program for your students, please share it in the comments below!
I'm always looking for ways to share our library statistics. I have used an annual report as a means of doing this for many years. I fear that an annual report may not be enough. During the summer months, administrators and library stakeholders may not have time to look over the report as they are preparing for a new school year. This year, I'm experimenting with posting our monthly statistic snapshots on social media. I've already posted for the months of August and September. I'm using the same format each month so it is very easy to read.
I decided to share our library circulations (including textbooks), our classroom technology support contacts since troubleshooting is a large responsibility for us in the library, collaboration programs, and reservations. We are reporting the statistics for the month and for the cumulative for the fiscal year (see the example to the left).
The monthly posts I make on Facebook and Instagram have several photos in addition to the statistics. I also share screenshots from our library circulation and textbook circulation reports.
Our technology troubleshooting report screenshot
I post a screenshot of the Google Form pie chart showing how many technology contacts Kaitlyn Price (Kaitlyn is the co-librarian at Lakeside High) and I have made in addition to the number of work orders we have pushed up to the district technology team.
An example of my Facebook post
It is my hope that administrators, school board members, teachers, and parents will see these statistics and get a snapshot of what we do each day in the library. Perhaps, this can also serve as a return on their investments to the library program. If it enhances their perspective and they see value in the services we offer in the library, our mission has been accomplished. Another goal is for this snapshot to remind teachers of the services we offer when they view it on Facebook and Instagram. Many of the teachers at my school follow me on Instagram and have friended me on Facebook. This is a wonderful way for them to see what is happening in the library.
I will continue this method of sharing statistics during the current school year. It will be interesting to see how it may impact our learning community. If you have successful ways of sharing your monthly or yearly statistics, please, post them in the comments below.
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How Do We Share New Materials?
One of the challenges in our high school library is how to share new materials with our users. Displays are usually an effective way to show off new titles that are ready to circulate. Some of our student patrons don't alwayshave time to stop and look at our new book displays. Last year, we started brainstorming some other ways of outreach. One Solution: A Newsletter
We discussed the possibility of using a monthly newsletter to feature some of the new titles. You may remember from my previous article that we had also started putting all new arrivals on a Google Doc to share with students. We thought a newsletter could be an eye-catching addition. Many of our avid readers were already in our library Google Classroom, and the newsletter was an easy way to share a brief monthly digital document with them.
An example of Peggy's work
Powerpoint to the Rescue
Peggy, one of our paraprofessional assistants, had previously experimented with Photoshop and Powerpoint. She decided to take on the task of building the newsletters in Powerpoint since she was familiar with it. Powerpoint is an easy platform for using graphics, clipart, text, and links. The task was fairly easy for her since she assists us in processing all new books. We were happy for her to pick her favorite titles and feature them in a newsletter. She also had the idea to video a few student booktalks and place them in the newsletters each month!
Save as a PDF
Peggy discovered that she could save the Powerpoint slide as a PDF document. After she created the PDF, we could preview it before sharing in our Google Classroom. This system worked great for us last year, and several of our students enjoyed seeing the newsletters. We also periodically shared the newsletters with teachers. It was a great outreach to inform our users of new materials! You can view examples of these newsletters here.
Next Steps
This year the goal is for students to create the newsletters. Peggy has already asked a few students to take on this task. I think it will be much more powerful for our learners to produce these documents. In addition, students can use these as artifacts of their work in the years to come. I hope a team of students will eventually assist in the production of this outreach program.
Powerpoint is not the only option for creating newsletters. One might try Google Slides, Microsoft Sway, or any publishing software. It is easy to create attractive digital publications with all the powerful software currently available. If you have a favorite tool, please, share it in the comments below. Other links that may interest you: Our 2017-2018 Annual Report
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It seems there is no end to the list of new books that are released by publishers each month. On top of being a literacy specialist, teacher librarians also must manage the facility and student visitors, collaborate, create programming, market library services, serve as school technology support, and many other duties. If you have found it a challenge to keep up with new books as a result of these numerous job tasks, I want to share a simple way that changed our practice in the school library last year.
The Struggle
I find it difficult to read as a result of the many daily tasks I experience as a teacher librarian. This is a fact I have worried about for several years. I've been working hard over the summer to read more, and I'm very proud to say that this will be a continuing priority for the new school year. The simple fact is that it is impossible to "sell" students on book titles if we can't speak about them with knowledge and passion! There is something very powerful about telling a student about a book that we have read and love. It is one of our most important tasks. We have used Junior Library Guild as a means of receiving new YA fiction titles for many years. In addition, we order books that are popular. We also make an effort to order appropriate titles that students and teachers request. But the question remains: "How do we truly know our book inventory?"
Google Docs to the Rescue
Last summer, I decided to use Google Docs as a way to record all our new incoming titles. I thought this could be a resource for placing the title and a brief summary of all the new titles we place in the collection. Kaitlyn Price, the co-librarian I work with at Lakeside High School, agreed that we could use this document in many ways. She and I both decided to sit down each month when book orders arrived and handle each book. We made this a regular practice throughout the school year. We decided to put the title, call number, genre, and summary information in each entry. While reviewing each title, we try to read a few chapters of the book in addition to the summary.
While this didn't help me memorize each title, I certainly had a much better handle on new titles each month. In addition, I could pull up the Google Doc at any time and do a search for any word in the document. This was especially helpful for titles that I couldn't remember. I may not recall the title, but I could enter a keyword in the find tool for the document and usually locate the book in question.
I have included links to the new title documents from last school year and our new one for 2018-2019 below.
Next Steps This method may not be for everyone, but it has certainly helped us do a much better job of becoming familiar with new titles in the library. It has also been a great document that we can share with teachers that might be interested in new titles. We have also shared it with our most avid readers so they can see what new titles have come in. We plan to continue this practice each month during this school year!
In my next blog article, I'll plan to show some of our monthly newsletter examples and how we share them with students. I hope these short "hacks" help you improve your service to students and teachers.
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I have written about our journey with annual library reports many times in the past. If you have never shared an annual report with your library stakeholders, please, consider creating one this year. Library annual reports can convey a lot of information as an advocacy piece for your program, and it can help change the perspective of what you do each day. Reports can also speak to administrators using data and statistics. It is important to provide a return on their investments in library resources and staff. Changes for the 2017-2018 Report
We chose to streamline our report to contain both library and textbook circulation statistics, teacher collaborations, and tech work orders. (We serve as technology support in our building.) Photos of new collaborations and linked blog article reflections of those events are also included. Hopefully, this will help some of our stakeholders find our two library blogs and read more reflections from our school library adventures.
Things We Will Add Next Time We keep a Google Form for student sign-in/ sign-out. I failed to put that in the report. Next year, I will make a note to include that statistic so stakeholders will view data indicating how many students visit the library during free flow times. I also should have shared how many books we added and removed from the collection. That statistic is easy to pull from the circulation system. I think that stakeholders would like to see evidence of how the collection changes through the year. To have a current collection, items must be added and discarded!
The Report (Completed on Sway):
Next Steps
This year we will be collecting tech support evidence when we assist teachers with classroom technology problems. This will show how many work orders we keep away from our district technology team. It will also show how much of an impact this service has on our building. You may have special services you provide in your building (in addition to librarianship job duties). Consider collecting data related to that job to share with your stakeholders. In our situation, seeing how much technical assistance we provide the building may help add value to our positions now and/ or in the future.
None of us in the education profession should think that we are always protected and/ or are owed a job position by a school. Assume no one knows what you do and find statistical ways to share the value of your job and your program. Try to approach each day and each year as if you have to re-apply for that job at the end of the year. How might students and teachers benefit from our professional actions if we all had that goal each day?
I have seen many examples of annual library reports over the years. Ultimately, every teacher librarian must select what data they want to share with their stakeholders. Remember, you know what is best for your audience. These data choices may change from year to year. The important thing is that you tell your library stories through some type of annual report. These stories are about student and teacher growth through the lens and services of the library. If you don't share these stories, who will?
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This has been one of the most active years for me professionally. I'm nearing the end of a third master's degree program with an ALA accredited MLIS. There have been several opportunities to publish over the past year. All these activities have made it difficult to write blog articles as frequently as I would like. I simply had to make time to write a reflection about my first time to attend an American Library Association Annual Conference! I am very grateful to the Lakeside School District for sending me, and I want to share some of my big takeaways from the event. I will also share what I hope to bring back to campus this year as a result of the experience. Michelle Obama
It was very exciting to hear Michelle Obama speak in the opening session of the ALA conference! She spoke primarily about her new book, Becoming, a memoir about her life. I recall that she talked about the importance of the library in her life when she was growing up. She reflected about reading to her kids when they were very young. Both she and President Obama made sure that they read together as a family. It was truly inspiring to hear from Michelle. Where else can we get opportunities to listen to prominent individuals and be inspired by their life stories? Conferences are truly important for many reasons, and this is one of them. I want to read her new book to learn more about her journey. 360 Library Tours and Teaching Teachers How to Use
One of the most interesting sessions I attended was about using 360 camera technology to create virtual library tours. I thought this was a great idea on many different levels. First, a 360 virtual library tour would be great for library orientation activities. It would give students an engaging and innovative way to learn about the library. Second, it would be a powerful advocacy piece since library stakeholders could "visit" the library through an interactive website like Thinglink. I want to know more about 360 tours and how they can be created. I've already been experimenting this summer! I'm certain that I will be sharing my progress here on the blog soon. I also want to use this technology to assist teachers to bring 360 resources to their curriculum! In the meantime, be sure to visit this website/ forum for more information.
AASL Best Apps & AASL Best Websites
I attended two separate sessions that featured all the top AASL picks for both apps and websites. You can view the AASL Best Apps here.The AASL Best Websites are located here. There were numerous resources on both lists that interested me. I was especially excited to see Tinkercad in the list of websites (I recently learned about it and am planning to use it with students this school year).
Library of Congress Databases
While walking through the exhibits, I stopped at the Library of Congress booth and learned about their many services. I often forget about the rich resources offered by the Library of Congress during the school year when things get hectic. I was very excited to learn about their numerous databases. While some of these databases require an onsite visit, many of them are free to access via their website. There were countless databases that would greatly serve our high school learners (especially students taking AP classes). Check out their lineup of databases here.
Meeting PLN Friends in Person
Cindy and I ran into Karyn and Paula several times at ALA!
Part of attending conferences is the excitement of getting to meet and exchange ideas with your Personal Learning Network (PLN) in person! I didn't know what to expect at ALA since it serves all types of libraries. I ran into many different friends and colleagues while there. It is always inspiring to attend sessions and visit with top leaders in our profession like Joyce Valenza (@joycevalenza) and Tiffany Whitehead (@librarian_tiff).
It was fun to finally meet David Paige, Rebecca Morris (@rebeccajm87), and Liz Deskins (@lizbrary)from School Library Connection magazine. I have been grateful to work with them as a columnist for many years. We have always corresponded via email and getting to visit was a treat.
So glad to finally meet ND TL leader, Maggie Townsend!
I also got to see Katy, Texas TLs, Karyn Lewis (@ktlewis14) and Paula (@MrsLibrarian) again. They taught me about how to navigate the exhibits and how to locate sample free books to take back home to my learning community. I also ran across Bismarck, North Dakota TL leader, Maggie Townsend (@LHSTeacherCoach) in an OER session. Maggie is one of the moderators and organizers of #ndlibchat, and it was great to visit for a few moments in person. Prior to this, I had only known Maggie through #ndlibchat Twitter chats.
Meeting leaders and colleagues in our profession help us keep improving for our learning communities. If we surround ourselves with people that challenge us to improve, those we serve will surely benefit. Keep networking and learning from others.
So glad to finally meet SLC editor and colleague, Dr. Rebecca Morris
Meeting Authors
Our students love Neal Shusterman
I have never seen so many authors in one place in my ten-year career as a teacher librarian! I was able to get a photo of Neal Shusterman, Mary Downing Hahn, Claire Legrand, and Ransom Riggs. Each trip through the exhibits resulted in filling our bags with free copies of books. Most of these were pre-publication editions, and I can't wait to dig into them to see which titles we will want to order this school year.
I also plan to share the photos I took of authors with students, teachers, and administrators. I think it is powerful to show students that we have connected with some of their favorite authors! This is key to stimulating our culture of reading at school.
Sally Field
Another prominent speaker at the ALA conference was the actress, Sally Field. While she focused primarily on her new book, In Pieces, she also talked about the importance of literacy. Sally is an avid reader and writer. She discussed how she had been working on her current book for many years and finally decided to publish it. This is another title I would like to read. There is so much to learn from the journey of successful people when they share a memoir.
What I Will Bring Back School
There is so much that I learned at ALA, it is hard to focus on just the highlights. I definitely plan to use the information I learned in the 360 virtual library tour session. In fact, I've already been playing with our Ricoh 360 camera by taking photos of the library. I also went to several sessions about Open Educational Resources (OER) and am continuing to share that with teachers as they transition with one to one digital devices in the classroom. In addition, I have lots of books to give away to students and to consider for upcoming book orders. I hope I get to visit ALA again someday. It was a great experience!
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One evening in January 2018, I began receiving several teacher librarian followers on Twitter from Beijing, China. After interacting with a few of them on Twitter, I discovered that Joyce Valenza was presenting at a conference there and had mentioned our library program at Lakeside High School. I was am so grateful she did this because it led to something special for our learners. It didn't take long to start conversing with Kristen Billings, a teacher librarian in Beijing. We started discussing the possibilities of an international collaboration.
I returned to school the next day and talked to Mr. Keith Todd, one of our 9th-grade Civics and Geography teachers at Lakeside, about some type of international connection for his students. He had witnessed our recent 8th-grade maker collaboration with social studies classes, and he had the desire to have his students create some type of product to share with our new friends in Beijing. I introduced Kristen and Keith to Flipgrid, and the discussions continued. Both of these fine educators decided to allow Keith's students to teach North American geography to Kristen's students via videos they would create. They used the library spaces to create, and they also used some of our technology (cameras, iPads, tripods, etc). The reflections below tell the story from each of their perspectives.
Kristen's Reflection
ArkansasBeijing Project
I was so excited when Stony suggested I team up with a high school teacher on his team to plan and coordinate a geography exchange project with my Year 6 (Grade 5) students. I had never done anything like this before so I was very excited but also very nervous. We dived right in and Stony teamed me up with Keith Todd and his Grade 9 geography students.
We used Flipgrid initially to meet each other and begin the planning. Keith, luckily, had a clear vision of what he wanted his kids to do so that really helped me to think about how my students could not only learn from Keith’s students, but also participate and reciprocate the teaching and learning. We decided the kids would choose a topic related to their geographic location and do some research, create a video or a tool of some sort to share what they’d learn and then we’d use EasyBlog to post the content that could then be easily shared with my students in Beijing. Then my students did the same.
The projects were great! Some of the topics covered by the Arkansas students were North American slang, Soul Food, small town vs. big city, the history of blues, jazz and rap, American football. My kids posted back videos about the Great Wall, Chinese slang, food from different regions of China, different cultural aspects of Korean or Chinese culture, how to make dumplings. The kids posted introduction videos to meet each other on EasyBlog and were able to view and comment on each others’ posts.
It was a wonderful collaboration and my students really enjoyed it. The positives were:
·Global connections were definitely made
·Student agency was clear and strong as the children were allowed to choose their own topics. This is something that doesn’t happen very much in a British school so I think my kids really appreciated having choice in what they researched and how they presented their topics. ·It was really fun. I observed my students completely engaged and always enthusiastic to get to work. A lot of collaboration and cooperation had to happen in groups for them to accomplish the final task.
·We made use of current technology and app smashing. We were able to combine many programs and apps to make this happen, some very new to me and my students. Really great learning happened on this level: Flipgrid, EasyBlog, Google docs, YouTube…all sorts of tools were used in both the planning and the sharing as well as in the creating of the content. Well done us! For me this was a tiny step in using tech more in the library context and learning how to apply these apps and programs to move my planning and teaching into a more Future Ready direction.
·My students were very prepared to use the technology and very skilled at getting down to business when creating content.
What would I change or do differently next time?
The timing was difficult to manage. If this type of project was built into the calendar for both sides there would be more time to plan and execute the project with minimal impact on curriculum coverage. We needed much more time for our students to research and complete their tasks than we had anticipated and there was very little time for reflection or just general communication back and forth between the Arkansas groups and the Beijing groups to really build relationships, which I feel could have been a really valuable aspect and reason for doing the project to begin with. Next time I will have a look at my year-long plan in order to make sure I give the project enough time to be fully realized.
Working from the British system was challenging for me-inquiry-based learning is not a part of the British approach, which is very content-driven and teacher-driven. Students rarely have agency in their learning and therefore lack the inquiry skills necessary to ask really great questions and their research skills are lacking in that they do not have the ability to ask good questions and seek answers without Googling and copying and pasting. This could be perceived as a failure on the librarian’s part, however, the culture of the school is not such that it allows me to collaborate and work with teachers in planning and executing lessons that teach or emphasize these skills so it has been very challenging for me to move forward with this. Next year, a new school beckons and I will have more opportunity to embed these skills in context of current learning, not just taught as isolated skills with no connection to what the kids are learning.
Next time, I would like to have more interaction with the teachers in the execution of the plan. Working with teachers, making the project tie in more with something the students are working on, would have added extra depth. Due to the current ethos of the school, library lessons are viewed as 'extra' not 'added value'. This, combined with my limited access to the students in weekly half hour lessons made the project longer than it needed to be and didn't allow for me to have time to plan with my groups and then reflect. Because the project was kind of 'last minute' in the sense that it was not built into the calendar and we just got the idea and ran with it, and the fact that halfway through, I had to pack up and move my library and the Year 6 students begin their transition to the higher school at this time of the year, I didn't have the time to really follow through with the students and get their reflections and reactions to the project. Real planning and collaboration with classroom teachers to use the library lesson time more flexibly would have allowed for deeper learning and reflecting to occur.
Keith's Reflection
Arkansas-Beijing Project Reflection
I loved this project and how creative it allowed our students to be. The chance to interact with other students halfway around the world was amazing. The project provided very valuable experiences, e.g. life skills via group work, managing personalities, deadlines, technological difficulties, time management, etc. I would definitely assign a project like this again. Afterall, life is a group project and in virtually every profession or career, the skills that group work can teach will be a key element of success. For as wonderful as it was, however, if I have the opportunity to do this again, I have lots of things about it that I would like to change to try to make it even better.
The number one change I would make is to allow for more coordinated pre-planning time; preferably over a summer when other demands on our time would not be so pressing. Kristen and I put this project together on the fly, but in the future, it would be ideal for us to be able to have the summer to talk/write back and forth to initially plan how we would like the project to work and a set timeline. We ran the project with the Arkansas group going first and then the Beijing group going, but there was not really a reason to do it that way. Rather, it would have been easier for the Arkansas participants to maintain engagement with the Beijing participants if the projects were happening simultaneously rather than needing to take the time to in and out of class to remind students to remain engaged with what the other groups were accomplishing. Doing so also would have allowed the participants to establish relationships with one another. I would love to have the opportunity next time to do some pure cultural exchange, maybe even with a live Skype in time differences could be overcome, and then allow the different participants' groups to guide one another in topic selection rather than each side just picking their topics.
Ultimately, this project took eight instructional days to complete, and being able to pare that down will really be critical to preserving everything else I need to be able to cover in my curriculum as a few sacrifices had to be made to make room for this material. Possibly putting the students into groups, and then requiring them to pick and research their projects via coordinating with the other participants on their own time could save at least a couple of days.
Mr. Todd's student groups collaborated using Google Tools
Some of our issues were technological. On the Arkansas side, some of the video files after post-production were very large. A way to compress the video's size with a computer application (like handbrake) would be a good solution. I have also considered uploading the videos to YouTube and setting this up as unlisted videos so that only those with the link to the video would be able to see them, however, with some school's network filters, the other participants being able to see it could be very hit and miss.
We also had some share issues with students who make Google Slides and embedded their video files (not YouTube links, but actual video files) that they had saved in their Google Drives into their Google Slides. We eventually discovered that the share settings of the video must be changed in Google Drive so that anyone with the link can view it and changing the share settings just in Google Slides was insufficient.
I deployed this project across all of my classes which included pre-AP students and on-level students. I would definitely do so again, but on-level students by and large needed scaffolding and support than the work log along provided. A daily checklist would probably be the way to go, and better yet, one that we create as a class while exploring the directions packet. Several of the pre-AP groups struggled with ensuring that their groups were actually working and producing what they needed to be in order to make their final product a success.
I think my favorite part of this project was also the slipperiest part: trying to instill a desire in my students to produce a great project and to perform to the best of their ability, and not just try to "get it done." As always, some groups jumped in and needed very little direction. But, ALL groups really had to stretch themselves beyond the base academic skills that they were accustomed to using. Many of them also had what seemed to be their first opportunity to practice character skills. One of the best things was that many of the higher academic and character-based skills that students found themselves engaging in (or struggling with) are immediately transferable to other classes and to future jobs. Those skills included reading and following complex directions, reading all parts of a prompt, self-reliance, and collective responsibility. The project really revealed that those skills were areas of needed growth in several of my students and inspired me to really underscore those skills throughout the rest of my curriculum this year. I will definitely begin implementing many of the strategies we came up with week one next year, such as problem-solving techniques, receiving/checking school e-mails, receiving Google Classroom alerts for Android and Apple, Google Assistant/Siri uses for academics, e.g. reminders, Google Calendar, note-taking skills, annotation skills, the idea that "respect makes it easy," opportunity cost discussion/activities, learning styles, how learning happens, etc.
Ultimately, this project was a learning experience for everyone involved, Kristen and I most definitely included. But, those challenges are exactly what all of us need to keep stretching and keep growing. From a holistic perspective, this was easily my favorite thing that we did all year. Check out one of the student-created video examples below:
Next Steps
This was a wonderful experience for us in the library. The activity corresponded with several Future Ready Librarian standards (Builds Instructional Partnerships, Empowers Students as Creators, Collaborative Leadership, and Curates Digital Resources and Tools). We got to help build international friendships from the library. We also had several opportunities to assist students when they encountered problems with technology as apps were used together. I believe we have a great foundation to do more international connecting next year. I can't wait to see what is coming.
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