Library Media Tech Talk

                                         June was an extraordinary month for this blog reaching nearly 25,000 views, our best month in twelve years. I'm grateful and honestly a little stunned. Here are the posts that resonated most with readers since January 2026: #1 What They Remember (1532 views) - One question written on a piece of bulletin board paper resulted in quantifiable evidence that the school library is important to students. It made me realize how important our jobs are in public schools. This piece was picked up and linked on ALA's American Libraries "Latest Library Links" back in May of this year. If you need a reminder of how important your work  is, give this a read. #2 Two Ways We Built Community in the School Library (607 views) - When I started working at MMS, I decided to make the library available to students before school. This resulted in a core group of ...

What if students could interview an AI pretending to be a literary character — and grade it?   It is indeed possible. This is how we tried it for the first time! I was so excited to have an immersive collaboration at Malvern Middle School based on The Outsiders novel. Mrs. Terah Rash and I created 4 learning stations to help bring the book and era to life for her 8th grade ELA classes. There was one additional station that we didn't have time to implement. Since learning more deeply about AI in 2025, I wanted to try a character emulation activity with students. The goal was to allow the AI to pretend to be Ponyboy Curtis and have the students evaluate the "performance" based on the accuracy according to the book character. In a world where most activities involve AI answering questions or simply producing a product for use, I wanted to turn the tables and have student evaluate the AI and what it did. I experimented with this in the video below before school started with s...

AI Basic Training: What Happened When a Librarian and Coach Brought the Army and AI to Middle School Coach Whitlow and I brought Army training culture into the library for a middle school AI best practices lesson. The handouts said UNCLASSIFIED TRAINING MATERIAL across the top. I was in Army camo. Coach Whitlow was in her camo. And her middle school class was about to get their first real lesson in AI best practices. That's how AI Basic Training was born. An Unexpected Conversation Coach Whitlow teaches Career Development and Tools at our middle school, in addition to her coaching responsibilities. Because of our different schedules, we had barely crossed paths before she approached me about doing a collaborative lesson on AI best practices. It happened while I was talking to the Vocabulary & Numeracy teacher, who is also a Coach. That coach and I had done several literacy based collaborations, and I can't help but wonder if she had told Coach Whitlow about our library anti...

Something kept nagging me to create an annual report this year, even as summer arrived. I'm glad I listened. Since returning to public school librarianship this year after 5 years away from the profession , I've been doing a lot of reflecting now that the school year has come to a close. At first, I didn't consider creating an annual report. In the past I used Microsoft Sway for library annual reports. I had almost talked myself out of it since summer is here. The results took me down a path of inspiration that I didn't expect. I'll explain more about how it impacted me to go down this thought path. Being my first year back, I was overwhelmed with the K-12 schedule. We had many celebrations through the year, increased circulation, steady foot traffic,  some powerful community building through RTI programming , and even some collaborations with teachers ( one that resulted in an Outsiders program  based on the S.E. Hinton novel!). I started writing these thoughts dow...

Complete transparency: my first year back in a school library was a challenge. After five years balancing roles as an Army National Guard Company Commander and a public library administrator, I had forgotten the sheer pace of the K-12 world. I traded administrative meetings for constant foot traffic and a 30-minute lunch crammed somewhere between checkout lines. But as the final weeks of the year arrived and the shelves began to fill back up for summer, I decided to try something new. I wanted to see the year through the lens of a student. How did the library impact them? What would they remember? The best way to find out is to ask! Field Day provided all-day traffic to the school library The Simple Prompt During Field Day, I rolled out a long sheet of bulletin board paper and wrote one simple question: "What will you remember most about the library from this school year?" I left out markers and let the students respond—some signed their names, others stayed anonymous. The f...

When I worked as a school librarian from 2008-2020, I always opened the library before school so that students can access the space and resources we have. When I started this new position in August of 2025, I decided to continue this practice of opening the library before school each day.   Creating a Morning Sanctuary The response was immediate. Within two weeks, word had spread, and we reached "capacity" by 7:40 AM most mornings. While having to cap numbers due to seating is a challenge, it is a "good problem" to have—it proves the demand for a safe, engaging morning space. To maintain a balance of productivity and fun, I curated a variety of "Morning Stations": Literacy: Independent reading and book discovery. Gaming: Strategic classics like Chess and Uno. Digital Learning: Educational gaming via Nitro Type, Gimkit, and Blooket. Makerspace: Hands-on building kits and puzzles. The Strategy: To manage hall traffic, I require students to stay until th...