Library Media Tech Talk

I just got back from attending the ISTE conference in San Antonio, Texas. It had been eight years since I attended an ISTE conference, and I had forgotten how massive of a gathering it is. My friend and colleague, Tracey Wong (@TraceyCarayol), had put in for us to present at the conference, and we were so excited to have another chance to speak together. We were also very fortunate to have the Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert Travel Program (MIEExpert) approve to send us to the conference since our session was accepted! Huge Conference Words can't describe how large of a conference ISTE has grown to be. We were told that approximately 21,000 were in attendance at the event. I enjoyed how many options there were for sessions. They offered breakout sessions, poster sessions, technology playgrounds, and the largest expo exhibits area I have ever experienced in my life. There was so much to do and see that I was constantly overwhelmed. For the remainder of the article, I wa...

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...

Teen Read Week crept up on us this year, but we were still able to pull off some special events for our learners. I want to take a moment to share some of the events we did in the library. Teen Read Week is sponsored each year by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). This year it was held from October 9-15, 2016. Get Caught Reading This is one of my favorite activities to do with our students. If we catch them reading, we snap a quick photo and collect their name for a prize drawing. I have done this sporadically for many years. In the future, we should send the photos to a custom hashtag on Twitter and Instagram. "Get Caught Reading" is always a blast! Skype With 1st Graders In the spring, I wrote about our connection with my teacher librarian friend (and MIEExpert), Karey Killian. We have been wanting to connect again this year, and we decided to make it happen during Teen Read Week. We picked a day that Karey had a first-grade class. She ...

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'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 ...