Library Media Tech Talk

One of the things I've noticed about businesses is that they are constantly changing to respond to the needs of their customers. This is a great practice to stay relevant as customers' needs tend to change over time. In the library, we can implement the same practices. In this blog article, I want to share one of the ways we have recently created a new service for our learning community that was inspired by local businesses. Earlier this year, I was introduced to Wal-Mart Grocery Pickup. If you aren't familiar with it, this service allows customers to make a grocery list on an app, select the store they want to visit, select the time they want to pick up the groceries and pay online. When you arrive to get your groceries, a person comes out to your car (no matter what weather conditions exist) to place them into your trunk. The service has saved my wife and me so much time as busy teachers! At the first part of the school year, we began discussing what this model co...

I'm always looking for ways to share our library statistics. I have used an annual report as a means of doing this for many years. I fear that an annual report may not be enough. During the summer months, administrators and library stakeholders may not have time to look over the report as they are preparing for a new school year. This year, I'm experimenting with posting our monthly statistic snapshots on social media. I've already posted for the months of August and September. I'm using the same format each month so it is very easy to read. I decided to share our library circulations (including textbooks), our classroom technology support contacts since troubleshooting is a large responsibility for us in the library, collaboration programs, and reservations. We are reporting the statistics for the month and for the cumulative for the fiscal year (see the example to the left). The monthly posts I make on Facebook and Instagram have several photos in addition to ...

How Do We Share New Materials? One of the challenges in our high school library is how to share new materials with our users. Displays are usually an effective way to show off new titles that are ready to circulate. Some of our student patrons don't always   have time to stop and look at our new book displays. Last year, we started brainstorming some other ways of outreach. One Solution: A Newsletter We discussed the possibility of using a monthly newsletter to feature some of the new titles. You may remember from my previous article that we had also started putting all new arrivals on a Google Doc to share with students. We thought a newsletter could be an eye-catching addition. Many of our avid readers were already in our library Google Classroom, and the newsletter was an easy way to share a brief monthly digital document with them. An example of Peggy's work Powerpoint to the Rescue Peggy, one of our paraprofessional assistants, had previously experimented w...

It seems there is no end to the list of new books that are released by publishers each month. On top of being a literacy specialist, teacher librarians also must manage the facility and student visitors, collaborate, create programming, market library services, serve as school technology support, and many other duties. If you have found it a challenge to keep up with new books as a result of these numerous job tasks, I want to share a simple way that changed our practice in the school library last year. The Struggle I find it difficult to read as a result of the many daily tasks I experience as a teacher librarian. This is a fact I have worried about for several years. I've been working hard over the summer to read more, and I'm very proud to say that this will be a continuing priority for the new school year. The simple fact is that it is impossible to "sell" students on book titles if we can't speak about them with knowledge and passion! There is something...

I have written about our journey with annual library reports many times in the past. If you have never shared an annual report with your library stakeholders, please, consider creating one this year. Library annual reports can convey a lot of information as an advocacy piece for your program, and it can help change the perspective of what you do each day. Reports can also speak to administrators using data and statistics. It is important to provide a return on their investments in library resources and staff. Changes for the 2017-2018 Report We chose to streamline our report to contain both library and textbook circulation statistics, teacher collaborations, and tech work orders. (We serve as technology support in our building.) Photos of new collaborations and linked blog article reflections of those events are also included. Hopefully, this will help some of our stakeholders find our two library blogs and read more reflections from our school library adventures. Things We Wil...

This has been one of the most active years for me professionally. I'm nearing the end of a third master's degree program with an ALA accredited MLIS. There have been several opportunities to publish over the past year. All these activities have made it difficult to write blog articles as frequently as I would like. I simply had to make time to write a reflection about my first time to attend an American Library Association Annual Conference! I am very grateful to the Lakeside School District for sending me, and I want to share some of my big takeaways from the event. I will also share what I hope to bring back to campus this year as a result of the experience. Michelle Obama It was very exciting to hear Michelle Obama speak in the opening session of the ALA conference! She spoke primarily about her new book, Becoming , a memoir about her life.  I recall that she talked about the importance of the library in her life when she was growing up. She reflected about reading t...

One evening in January 2018, I began receiving several teacher librarian followers on Twitter from Beijing, China. After interacting with a few of them on Twitter, I discovered that Joyce Valenza was presenting at a conference there and had mentioned our library program at Lakeside High School. I was am so grateful she did this because it led to something special for our learners. It didn't take long to start conversing with Kristen Billings, a teacher librarian in Beijing. We started discussing the possibilities of an international collaboration. I returned to school the next day and talked to Mr. Keith Todd, one of our 9th-grade Civics and Geography teachers at Lakeside, about some type of international connection for his students. He had witnessed our recent 8th-grade maker collaboration with social studies classes,  and he had the desire to have his students create some type of product to share with our new friends in Beijing. I introduced Kristen and Keith to Flipgrid, and...