Library Media Tech Talk

This was a great year for the Library Media Tech Talk Blog! I created this blog in March 2014. I sincerely hope that my posts have been both interesting and helpful to all educators! As 2016 comes to a close, I want to share our most-read articles of the year. Top 5 most read blog posts of 2016 3265 pageviews: The Flexible School Library: Creating a 21st Century Space For Our Learners 2698 pageviews : How 6 Picture Frames Made A Difference In The School Library 2165 pageviews :  Create A Library Sign-In With Google Forms 1805 pageviews : Four Ways To Lead From The School Library 1757 pageviews : Library Orientation Breakout EDU Thank you for reading this blog! Happy New Year, friends! How we held the 2016 Skype-a-Thon in the library! My table of contents for the blog is here! I have a monthly email newsletter for the subscribers of the Library Media Tech Talk blog. If you are interested in exclusive content not appearing on the blog, b...

Carmen's class posing with  À ngels'  class and their ofrenda We had an opportunity to connect with  À ngels   Soriano and her class in Valencia, Spain back in  November to share about the Day of the Dead  event our Spanish classes had just celebrated. Mrs. Carmen Christner's AP Spanish class and Mr. Fryar's Spanish class had created ofrendas in the library  to show and explain to  À ngels ' students. Our students had the chance to practice speaking Spanish to  À ngels' learners. In addition,  À ngels' students had the chance to speak in English to our students. Both groups had the benefit of practicing their second languages!  The event went so well, Mrs. Christner and  À ngels   planned an additional connection. How We Set Up The Event Carmen and  À ngels plan their next connection via Skype I had known  À ngels  for months via our connection on Twitter. We are also both Microsoft Innov...

I recently learned about Open Educational Resources (OER) during a webinar session I attended in October. Since then, I have been exploring these resources and trying to find ways to introduce them to our teaching staff. I'm grateful to be joined by Lakeside High School teacher, Mr. Brooks Lee, in this blog article. What are Open Educational Resources? When I began hearing about OER, I started researching about these materials. I discovered that the purpose of OER is to provide educational materials that are open for educators to use freely. They are also meant for teachers to remix as needed. These are mostly openly licensed materials. From a teacher librarian standpoint, this is very exciting. It gives teachers the opportunity to custom curate and share materials for their learners. It also provides teacher librarians a chance to assist teachers by sharing training on OER materials. Teacher librarians can also serve as curators of content. This is an area I am ju...

In October, I had the privilege of co-presenting a TL Virtual Cafe Webinar about Future Ready Libraries. Since that time, I continue to think about the Future Ready movement. I have also been learning more about OER (Open Educational Resources) after hearing Andrew Marcinek (@andycinek) present about these important tools for teachers during the same TL Virtual Cafe Webinar session. I have enjoyed connecting our students to other schools this fall. Recently, we have been encouraging our students to connect to distant places for the purposes of reading to younger students, Mystery Skype, and student-led innovation presentations. We have also held several collaborative events in the school library. I want to use this space to talk about two of my favorite Future Ready Library components from the fall semester of 2016. Build Instructional Partnerships There are so many opportunities to build instructional partnerships in the school library. School libraries have numerous...

Check Out This Blog's Table of Contents Here I was selected as a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert in the fall of 2015. Shortly after receiving that honor, I learned about the global Skype-a-Thon event. This activity encourages educators to connect their classrooms to get as many virtual miles as possible over the two day period. During the Skype-a-Thon in 2015, we participated in a few Mystery Skype activities. It was a lot of fun for our learning community, and I knew I wanted to try to participate again in 2016. Test Skype connection (& selfie) with Robyn Hrivnatz   Planning We wanted to use the Skype-a-Thon event to give our learners an opportunity to connect with professionals outside of Arkansas during our lunch periods. There are typically 50-70 students in the library during lunch periods, so it is a perfect time to have programs like this. I began emailing colleagues to see who might be available to connect with our students. It didn't take...