Library Media Tech Talk

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...

The last quarter of this year was full of PARCC testing. It was a challenge to have our usual library collaborative programs due to the library being used as a testing center. However, Mr. Brian Johnson, Library Media Specialist at Springdale Junior High and I managed to squeeze in one last Google Hangout before the school year ended. Last year we successfully started these Hangouts with our two schools. Brian appropriately named them "Lakeside Squared" since both of our schools bear the name Lakeside even though they are located more than 200 miles apart. We had been messaging each other for weeks trying to come up with something unique to bring our two schools together. We finally settled on bringing Spanish classes into our libraries for the Hangout. Springdale students peform their Telenovelas for us The goal was for the Springdale Spanish classes to share their Telenovelas (brief dramatic skits) via webcam. Over the course of our messaging and planning, it develope...