Library Media Tech Talk

Over the past few years, some of the most exciting activities we have held in the library have been Skype connections. From Mystery Skype to virtual tours of national parks , our teachers and learners never seem to get tired of connecting to distant places. One of the most recent connections was with a young author in another state! How We Connected I remember running across teen author, Ashley Royer (@RTFbook), on an Internet search last year as we were looking for potential connections for our students. After reading about her, I discovered she had accumulated lots of fans on Wattpad and later became a published author. Her book, Remember to Forget , has been in publication since 2016. I decided to connect with Ashley via Twitter during the spring of 2017 to get more information about her book. She actually signed the copies we purchased. Since the end of the school year was quickly approaching, we were never able to connect her with our students. This...

Krystyna visits with Robyn Hrivnatz via Skype The 2016-2017 school year has been the most powerful for connections using Skype in the library. Several classes have utilized our services to Mystery Skype or just to connect and collaborate. I have noticed a change in our learning community since these connections have become more frequent. First of all, students always seem to want more. They frequently ask, "When will we Skype again?" In addition, teachers are beginning to think beyond our state to connect their classes to far away states or countries. Presentations and Skype-a-Thon Earlier this year, I wrote about student makerspace presentations in the library for two education cooperatives that had visited us. Our learners did such a wonderful job, we started arranging for them to share their presentations with schools in other states via Skype. These students even had opportunities to present their innovations to the Follett Corporation and Microsoft. During th...

Check Out This Blog's Table of Contents Here I remember Anna from the 2013-2014 school year. She would frequently come in the library during lunch free flow times. I recall that we were required to have students stay in the library during lunch until the bell rang to cut down on unsupervised traffic in the halls. One particular day, Anna expressed her feelings about this rule in a very rude way to two of our library staff. (That year, it was Mrs. Misti Bell and Mrs. Peggy Schaeffer). For some reason, I wasn't there at that particular time. (I had been called to a classroom to help with a tech issue most likely.) When I returned, both of them let me know about Anna's outburst. It would have been very easy to ignore Anna from this point on. Instead, I thought I would just be honest with her when the opportunity presented itself. One day, I caught her in the hall between classes, and I called her over. Instead of reprimanding her in a forceful way, I decided to tell her ...

Introduction This school year, we have already had four different Breakout EDU sessions for our learning community. The most recent was created for 8th grade library orientation. We also held a Breakout EDU session for our entire high school faculty. Prior to these sessions, we had a student led Breakout EDU session for our history department meeting. I haven't written about it because I wanted the student who created the Breakout EDU session to share this story through his own voice. I'm very excited to be joined in this article by an 11th grade student at Lakeside High School, Mr. Nathan Evans. Nathan and I are not related (in case you notice we share the same last name). He has been a regular in the LHS library since his 8th grade year. I should also mention that he has led book clubs in the library for the past two years. I am grateful that he continues to take leadership roles through library programming. I remember sharing with him that I had been charged wit...