Library Media Tech Talk

Check Out This Blog's Table of Contents Here I remember Anna from the 2013-2014 school year. She would frequently come in the library during lunch free flow times. I recall that we were required to have students stay in the library during lunch until the bell rang to cut down on unsupervised traffic in the halls. One particular day, Anna expressed her feelings about this rule in a very rude way to two of our library staff. (That year, it was Mrs. Misti Bell and Mrs. Peggy Schaeffer). For some reason, I wasn't there at that particular time. (I had been called to a classroom to help with a tech issue most likely.) When I returned, both of them let me know about Anna's outburst. It would have been very easy to ignore Anna from this point on. Instead, I thought I would just be honest with her when the opportunity presented itself. One day, I caught her in the hall between classes, and I called her over. Instead of reprimanding her in a forceful way, I decided to tell her ...

How Fearless Changed Everything In 2012, I learned about the book Fearless by Eric Blehm. The book shares about the life of Adam Brown, a Hot Springs resident and Lake Hamilton High School graduate. Brown overcame great obstacles to become a Navy SEAL. He gave his life while serving our country in 2010. Our 8th-grade English teachers asked me to read the book as part of their Common Core unit, "It Happened in the City". Students had been defining hero and who might be a hero.  Rather than simply conducting a traditional book talk , we decided to present the book as a military briefing. LHS Library Assistant Ray Borel and I were serving in the Arkansas Army National Guard at the time, so we decided to but on our uniforms to make the session more realistic to students. The response was overwhelmingly positive from both students and teachers. The program actually inspired a series of similar collaborations in grades 8-12 that continue to evolve at our school 4 year...

I learned about Minecraft while attending the Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert Forum in Denver this past summer. Earlier this year, I wrote about a few of our students that had shared their Minecraft skills in the library during the summer. We were all amazed at their passion and creativity during summer school classes. I. Jared and Shawn (Library Build) Lakeside Freshmen, Jared and Shawn, indicated they had an interest in Minecraft while I visited with them in summer school classes. I decided to let them use my Microsoft Surface to show me what they could do with Minecraft Education Edition. The two worked together and built the high school library in the digital environment. They enjoyed the process so much, they came to library during their off days from summer school. Over the days, they added electrical wiring and lighting in the library rooms. I made sure to show their work to teachers and administrators that visited the library. Everyone was amazed at the two summer sc...

I'm very excited to have Kaitlyn Price (@Kait_Price11), LHS Teacher Librarian, join me in this article about our recent adventures. We will share how our journey helped us learn that there are students in the library (and everywhere else in the school) that are just waiting to have to have their voices heard. These events truly changed our thinking. Dawson Education Cooperative Visit (Stony) We had an opportunity to host a training for teacher librarians in our area through the Dawson Education Cooperative. We were asked to show our newly renovated library facility, teach Breakout EDU, and show our innovation spaces. The schedule was as follows: 9:00           Welcome, introductions, and library tour 9:30           Breakout EDU puzzles 10:30-10:40 Break 10:45          Breakout EDU Discussion and Breakout EDU Digital 1...