Library Media Tech Talk

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was an exciting experience for many reasons. It was my first time to travel out of state to deliver a keynote and also my first visit to Iowa. In this blog article, I want to reflect on the experience and the excitement I witnessed that was generated in a room full of 58 Iowa teacher librarians. During the fall of 2017, my friend and colleague, Lynn Kleinmeyer (@THLibrariZen), began telling me about a full day of professional development she was planning. Lynn is a Digital Learning Consultant at Grant Wood Area Education Agency in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She wanted the experience to motivate local teacher librarians to utilize the Future Ready Librarian Framework and also be stronger advocates for their programs. When she asked me to consider traveling to Iowa to deliver a keynote and breakout sessions, I quickly accepted! It is always an honor to visit another state to share best practices and learn together. Lynn and ...

I've been thinking about how our school library program is different from the programs I experienced as a student. I've also been wondering how many other programs are moving away from the traditional "old school" library stereotype of yesteryear. How many movies have you seen where librarians are portrayed as people whose main mission seems to be stamping books and shushing patrons? How can we change this perception? I wonder how many school librarians are moving out of their comfort zones for students but aren't telling anyone about it. What might happen if these teacher librarians told their stories?  I'll share three methods that could change everything if we adopt them. 1. Embrace and Practice the Future Ready Librarians Framework I've written about this previously , and I still think the Future Ready Librarians Framework is a key component to librarians/ libraries staying relevant. (I'm also beginning to dig into the new AASL Standards- m...

Last week, I received a message from Iro Stefopoulou (@iro_st) asking if I could connect with her via Skype. Iro is a Skype Master Teacher and she lives in the United Kingdom. After a few quick exchanges via email and Skype messaging, we finally met using our webcams. What happened next totally opened up a number of possibilities for us to connect our school using programs that Skype and Microsoft are providing to educators! I want to share some of the highlights that you might want to check out. Microsoft Educator Community The links and resources that Iro shared with me are located on the Microsoft Educator Community website . If you haven't visited this site before, you are missing out on some great opportunities. I'm so glad Iro reminded me of this resource in our Skype session. I get so busy in my job that I forget to check it for the latest offerings. For this article, I will focus on activities that feature Skype in the Classroom. It has been so powerful to hel...

A New Year With New Goals It is always exciting to return to school after the start of the new year. The rollover of the calendar represents an opportunity to change and evolve as we work to improve our craft in education. Pick Future Ready Components To Target We all have different strengths as teacher librarians. Perhaps we should resolve to focus on Future Ready components that promote our strengths as the new year begins. The components I want to explore as we return to school follow below: Empower Students As Creators In recent years, I have witnessed the power of encouraging students to create. Many times, teacher librarians might be the only adults providing opportunities for learners to innovate in designated school spaces. This doesn't only mean in a makerspace. I frequently have students that bring me stories they have written. They also tell me about manga fiction they are wanting to write and draw. These are perfect chances for us to show interest in studen...

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...