Library Media Tech Talk

The Lakeside High School Jazz Band performs in the library during lunch I love trying new things in the library as we approach the end of the school year. Students and teachers are weary of the normal "grind" with end of year activities and testing. I was so glad to get a text message from one of our band directors asking me to check dates in the library for the jazz band to perform during lunch! We jumped at this opportunity to have live music in the library! The jazz band could only perform during our grades 10-12 lunch period, but that was fine. We knew we could come up with something else for the grades 8 and 9 lunch period. The jazz band performed big band classics along with more modern, popular tunes. Our student patrons certainly enjoyed this change of pace! They also invited me to play a solo with them (I was a band director for 12 years, and I still enjoy playing the saxophone!). Students have enjoyed "Vintage Vinyl Cafe" for 3 years now! ...

I was greatly inspired by a TL Virtual Cafe session I attended online a few weeks ago (thanks to the Twitter PD community at #tlchat). After hearing so many great ideas from library media specialists/ teacher librarians from all over the country, I decided to give it a try in our own school library. We have been slowly assembling all the needed pieces to start a Makerspace this year! We had planned to have this program during our two lunch sessions (1st lunch- grades 10-12 and 2nd lunch grades 8 and 9). A last minute schedule change kept us from having the program for grades 10-12 this time. We decided to have 5 Makerspace stations in the library. They were all very successful, and the students that participated were very engaged. We had a 3D printer station led by two of our students from EAST. They had designed a replica of the Willis Tower (formally the Sears Tower) using Google Sketch Up Make and Netfabb. We decided to print several of these, and we gave them away at the...

📌 Updated May 2026: Skype was discontinued in May 2025. The activity described below works equally well with Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or Zoom. See the note at the bottom for current platform recommendations. I have heard of Mystery Skype sessions and Mystery Hangouts for many months while trolling social media. A few weeks ago, Heidi Harris (@heidibobeidi), a teacher in Lincoln, Maine contacted me on Twitter to see if we were available for a Mystery Skype session. I checked with our 8th grade social studies teacher, Mr. Brooks Lee, to see if he would be interested in allowing one of his classes to participate in the event. He was very intrigued by the idea, so I set out to investigate exactly how one of these sessions needed to work. Mrs. Harris was very helpful and shared with me a typical way to setup the library (or classroom) for the activity. We decided to set up these station areas in the library: Inquirers/ Responders (all at the webcam), Atlas Checkers, Google Map C...

A few weeks ago, I shared about our inspirational quotes Twitter program. Go  here  if you didn't get to read it! Since that time, I have continued to Tweet successful people and celebrities for inspirational quotes to share with our learning community. Others on our faculty have even joined in this activity! Our high school principal and two other teachers have Tweeted out to get inspirational Tweets from successful people in their networks. In addition, we have started receiving positive Tweets from recent Lakeside High School alumni. To show off these Tweets, one of our library assistants (Mrs. Peggy Schaeffer) came up with a great iPhone display to hang on the library walls and doors! Mrs. Schaeffer put small text balloons in the messages to identify the name and position of the people that sent the Tweets. She used the #inspiration hashtag on signs to attract attention. Students have been stopping to read the Tweets ever since we posted them...