Library Media Tech Talk

This has been one of the busiest summers ever in our high school library. I have made efforts to share many of the activities on social media. It is important to show the community and administration what is happening, even in the summer months, since they are investing in our program. I want to share a few things with you that occurred this week that changed my thinking. My First Attempt at Using HyperDocs I was recently sent with a team from my school to my first ever Google Summit. One of the most interesting tools I learned about while there was the HyperDoc. This type of shareable, innovative document could be a Google Doc (It could also easily be a Word Document if you are using Docs.com or Office 365). The presenter was Will Kimbley (@willkimbley), and he showed us examples from his classroom content. He had placed a mixture of text, links, and even quizzes within the HyperDocs that were shared with students in Google Classroom. When learners accessed the content, they were ...

I love attending conferences and professional development during the summer months since they really get me thinking about the upcoming school year. My wife Cindy and I just attended the Arkansas Association of School Librarians (ArASL) conference in Little Rock, Arkansas. It's also great to see librarian friends from around the state at these events. Reconnecting with old friends and making new friends are key at every conference. I have noticed that there always seem to be a few big takeaways from all conference sessions. I want to share a few of these points with you because they are important. First, I was thrilled to meet our keynote speaker, Nikki D. Robertson, at this conference. I've been following Nikki for quite a while on social media. As I recall, I first connected with her during a #TLChat session on Twitter months ago. I have enjoyed learning from Nikki through her blog , #TLChat, TL News Night, and TL Virtual Cafe .  Kaitlyn Price (my new partner LHS lib...

I'm very grateful to Microsoft for recently selecting me to be a Surface Expert. When I returned home from the Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert US Forum , a new Surface Pro 4 was waiting for me. I will be writing a series of blog posts this year sharing about my learning experiences with this new device. I can't wait to share what I learn with our learning community at Lakeside. In this post, I want to talk about my first activity with the new Surface this week. I connected with my friend,  À ngels  Soriano Sanchez, a teacher in Valencia, Spain. We used Skype Translator to communicate despite our language barrier (Spanish to English, etc). We decided to use Word Online to collaborate on this blog article to share our thoughts on this first experience. With tools like this, we can truly move toward the "schools without walls" concept and connect our students anywhere in the world . First Impressions of the Surface   It didn't take long for me to ...

I have been active on Twitter since the summer of 2014. During that time I have connected with thousands of passionate educators. We all share common bonds; we want to improve for our learners, and we love what we do. This summer, I had the opportunity to meet some members of my PLN (personal learning network). One would think this would be an intimidating event since we have never truly met in person. We had only sent short Twitter messages to each other, exchanged Voxer voice messages, and Skyped a few times. Read on to see what happened with each meeting. Lynn Kleinmeyer @THLibrariZen I connected with Lynn Kleinmeyer during the fall of 2015 during a Twitter education chat. Lynn is a teacher librarian in Iowa. We ended up connecting again in the spring semester. I remember our first webcam session was on one of her snow days. During the session, I gave her a tour of our newly renovated library. Lynn and I connected immediately. At a district library media specialist professional ...

101 MIEExperts in one room! Earlier this year, I wrote a blog post about joining the Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert (#MIEExpert) community . It has been a wonderful group to be a part of this year. About two months ago, I was invited to attend the Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert US Forum. It was very exciting to receive this invitation from Microsoft. I was honored to be one of the 101 chosen to attend the forum in Denver, Colorado from June 25-26, 2016. I want to take a few moments to reflect on the experience. Day 1 Highlights One of the most important takeaways from this experience was the power of connecting with other educators. The teachers in this group are brilliant and energized individuals. When you surround yourself with such great people, conversations take place that cause improvements in our practices as educators. I was grateful to meet Tracey Wong (a school librarian from New York) in person. Tracey is the mentor who helped me become a member of the...