It's Coming!

What's coming?

Why, School Library Month, of course! (April is also National Poetry Month.)

This year, we will be celebrating SLM in style, with a contest! Where in the Library is Captain Corinth?

Each day on the announcements, a clue will be shared as to the location of the Captain in the library. It will also be on my twitter page and website barring any technological snafus. The first person to solve the clue and find the Captain wins! What's the prize? A spin on the prize wheel for free food cards to area restaurants.

😊

Happy hunting!

To Travels and Applications

I have an excellent excuse...I mean, REASON...for not blogging during February! It's difficult to write a blog entry when you have very spotty satellite WI-FI in the rural areas of Southeast Asia!

For a good part of the month of February I was either preparing for a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia, or I was there. This wonderful trip was a gift to my husband and me for our 25th Anniversary. We had a marvelous time.

One of the highlights (although I will admit it comes after the temples of Siem Reap and Angkor Wat) was visiting a Cambodian school.

Several things are important to remember about education in Cambodia: Pol Pot murdered millions of Cambodians in the 1970s. The victims were the educated: teachers, professors, engineers, doctors, lawyers, judges, and religious personnel. As a result of his "Year Zero" policies, an entire generation went uneducated simply because there was no one to teach them. Now, education is compulsory for grades 1-6; however, it costs money to attend a "public" school where the teacher is only two years above a secondary school graduate. (That's right. Education college takes only two years.) Uniforms, tuition, supplies...these are out of reach for many Cambodians so their children stay home.

Grades 7-12 are optional, and the time spent in school is usually only a half-day because of the lack of teachers. The secondary school we visited concentrates on teaching English and computer skills. Students attend the village school for half a day, and then attend this school the other half or in the evening. ("Half" is a misleading term; they are in school for 2-1/2 hours.) The problem with the English classes? The teachers have only some experience in reading the language, less in speaking it. Computers? Ten for a school of 500 students. Despite these obstacles, the school is doing amazing work.

Now that I'm back, I've had to work diligently on my DENSI 2018 application. What is DENSI? (pronounced den-s-eye) It's a summer institute by the Discovery Education Network. With new features like the studio boards, I hope to attend in order to learn all the ins-and-outs to share with my staff and district. The video is finished! (Yes, there is a video component to the application.) I've uploaded my application and now have to wait...as patiently as possible...

Harry Potter Newspaper, Anyone?

One of the interesting parts of being a librarian/media coordinator is learning new technology so that, as a digital learning guru in my district, I can teach my staff how to incorporate it into their teaching. At NCSLMA17, one session mentioned briefly a way to make Harry Potter styled newspapers for student projects and bulletin boards. This intrigued me, but they didn't really give directions so...

It became an investigative project for Library Science II. (This class has students look at various units from the perspective of a librarian.) The project was to create a newspaper and have two pictures that used the information from the conference to "make the pictures come alive" as they do in The Daily Prophet. How does this work?

First, articles are written on the subject matter. Students in a class could research singly or in groups. Once the articles are written, and placed in Google Docs if making a shared document, they need to attach the pictures.

Using the green screen first, they film the actions for the picture. If it is going to be a"talking" picture, they will need to be sure to have good sound quality. The background of this video will be the still picture in the newspaper. Once this has been filmed and saved, they will move over to the app. (We use iPads which made the entire process very easy.)

The Aurasma app, which is free for Android and iOS, is being used at our school under one school account in the media center for my classes. A teacher could create one account for his/her classes to make this easier and so students do not make individual accounts. The necessary pieces are uploaded to the app and then inserted as a picture in the newspaper.

Now, when looking at the newspaper when printed, all you see is the background of the video. For instance, if the article is a literature piece set in a "fairy tale" you could use Neuschwanstein Castle as the backdrop. Without going any further, the picture connects to the article as a "normal" photograph. The magic occurs when the picture is viewed through the Aurasma app using a camera or iPad....be sure to have the sound on if it has audio! Suddenly the picture changes from black and white to color, people appear and move! Voila! Your own magical newspaper.

If doing this with multiple articles, be sure to have students work in columns to make the entire piece have that effect on the viewer. These can be displayed on a bulletin board with a device nearby for viewing.

Community Movie Night and Book Drive

A few months ago, I was contacted by SSG Cepeda, a member of the Johnston County Leadership Team, in conjunction with The Partnership for Children of Johnston County, about the 1-2-3-4-5 Book Drive. This book drive is collecting new and gently read books for Johnston County schoolchildren in elementary schools. The goal is to gather 5 books per student, a very lofty and worthwhile goal!

With the permission of my principal, I began planning a Community Movie Night and Book Drive to help gather some books. It took a little while to get a date in place that didn't clash with athletic events, drama/band/chorus, or any of the events at our elementary and middle feeder schools. Finally we had a date...which happened to be my husband's birthday, but he was okay with this event taking place on that night.

So...flyers in the shape of bookmarks were made and distributed to the elementary schools. (Thanks to some great library assistants who cut them apart and bundled them for shipping in the courier service!) My tech facilitator created a digital flyer for the websites at the schools. I picked up the video, learned the system in the auditorium, had a club (The Technology Student Association...which does need donations for their robotics competition by the way) ready to sell concessions as their fundraiser, and the National Honor Society collecting books and ready for cleanup and then....

You know the saying about best-laid plans?

Then the basketball games against a big rival had to be moved up one night due to a possibility of inclement weather. While this might not have affected our attendance, I have a feeling it did have an impact of a slight bit at least.

Anyway, for those who came to the auditorium side of the school last night, we had a great time. The movie, Arthur Christmas, was funny and enjoyed by all. The TSA raised some money towards their robotics (although they are accepting donations of any amount if you are willing to help!), and we have a box of books for SSG Cepeda to collect on Monday. (We are still collecting books through April. Just bring them by the library!)

I learned a lot about hosting Community Movie Nights through this one, and I look forward to having another one, hopefully in the spring. Hope to see you there!

New Resource during Research Season

'Tis the Season to Do Research, Fa La La La La....

And so it begins! As always, the changing of the leaves, the smell of pumpkin spice, and the myriad of all things pumpkin (and all that early Christmas stuff thrown in) everywhere heralds the time of the great research migration of classes to the media center.

With old topics (and new!) coming to the media center, I have learned of a new resource as I help teach and guide students on their start of the different projects. Many students have never used databases or e-books for research (i.e.: freshmen) while others have forgotten their Boolean search techniques so I tailor each lesson for the particular project's requirements. With topics on prejudice during the 1920s-40s, genocide, world religions and so on, this gives a huge juxtaposition of presentations.

Thanks to one of our science teachers, I learned about a resource that has helped make these lessons interactive: Pear Deck. After creating my google presentation, I upload it into my peardeck.com account. Then I can add question slides. These can be short answer, yes/no, and multiple choice answers. With the questions imbedded in the lesson, students use their phones, the iPads, or chromebooks to follow along and participate in the lesson. What I really like is that the answers are saved with their names (they log in with their school email) so I have data from each presentation. Now I know who "gets" the Boolean search part of the lesson, especially important with freshmen who have never searched a database before. Everyone puts in a practice search on their topic and it appears on my iPad in real time. This is incredibly beneficial because I can give instant feedback.

Pear deck has a free and a paid account. My principal paid for teachers to have accounts, and we are so very fortunate he did. Thank you to Mr. Jones for sharing this resource, and thank you to Mr. Daniels for purchasing it for us! It has been wonderful to use!

Minion Invasion!

When someone mentions to the entire staff that I can handle technology issues while they are out (watch it, Mr. Wall!)...and then they mention the possibility of flames, noxious fumes or.....MINION INVASIONS of the computers, well, you never know what might happen!

AAAAGGGGHHHH!!

Open up a cart and what do you find?

Trying to hide behind the Smart Panel?

3-D Minions?

No More Copies of Minions!

Who ya gonna call? More Minions?

You can have the laminator. I'll give you that.

 They are everywhere!

Uh-oh!

Who made that mess in the server room? 

You'd better not mess with my microwave!

Time to call for copier repair! 

Look out! 

 They've gotten ahold of the master phone!

Looks like one is planning on impersonating Mr. Wall! 

Don't feed the minions!

They invaded alright! In fact, Mr. Wall, they seemed to have invaded your desk and all the technology in the library! (They can have the laminator, but they need to leave the microwave alone!)

Fun and Patriotic Times

We had a lot of fun with the Preamble Challenge. Thank you to our sponsors for helping make it a success! A shout-out once again to Char-grill of Clayton, Sheetz in Clayton, Dairy Queen in Clayton, Wendy's in Clayton, Subway at Flowers Plantation, and Bojangles of the Triangle for donating the prizes.

To begin, the history department, some members eagerly and others slightly hesitantly, joined the JROTC instructors in advertising our Preamble Challenge with a commercial. This collaborative effort earned praises from central services staff and looked great! Of course, I think Colonel Stallings and Sergeant McLaurin had the most fun based on the bloopers reel! You can judge the final product for yourselves:

Preamble Challenge Commercial #1

As the challenge approached, I decided I needed a second commercial. Because I filmed during the block with no media assistants, I had to start and stop the filming on my own, making my own bloopers reel rather interesting. The final product looked great...although I was walking on water...

Preamble Challenge Commercial #2

Finally, the Challenge Week was here! We had great participation from many students. Even some teachers joined in! While some students stumbled a little, for the most part everyone did a fabulous job. In fact, the 4th block Theater Arts class performed a musical version, arranged and accompanied by Mrs. Nixon on guitar. It was wonderful. Although I can't put all of them together into a video (it would be WAAAAAY too long!), here are some highlights of the challenge!