Library Media Tech Talk

Several months ago, I wrote about ways to connect your library with Skype.  If you haven't read that piece, take a moment to get familiar with Skype in the Classroom and the cool connection possibilities they offer. Since writing that article, I have had the opportunity to have some wonderful virtual tours with National Parks around the United States. I would like to share how we did this with several 9th-grade Geography classes during the spring semester of 2017. The Need Geography was offered to 9th-grade students during the second semester of the 2016-2017 school year. Two of the teachers that would be presenting these classes came to me because they knew we frequently connected via Skype in the library. They asked if we could help them connect to National Parks around the country as part of their classes. The teachers knew this would be a wonderful way to expose students to different land forms and places around the country in a new way. I was very excited to...

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...

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...

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...

We have made several exciting connections via Skype during the fall of 2016. I want to share about three connections we have made in the last few weeks. These are all special to me for different reasons, and I will share about the significance of each. What is amazing about each of these events is that they wouldn't have happened if not for the magic of social media. If you are not a connected educator, I hope these stories will convince you to start connecting (for your growth and for your learning community). Connecting With Shannon Miller I have previously shared that Shannon McClintock Miller inspired me to create this blog and to become a connected teacher librarian. I heard her speak at the Arkansas Association of Instructional Media Conference in 2014. Since taking up these practices that year (and learning more about Twitter through our assistant principal, Mathew Thornton), my professional life has forever changed. I've been blessed with thousands of new educator f...

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 ...