Book Blast

Well, like so many others I am having to learn to do more with less. First, teacher assistants were cut on all but two workdays prior to the start of school. My assistant was actually only with me one day during this time because of her mandatory attendance at a day long training for EC bus riders. That's right, she is being expected to ride the EC bus on a daily basis. This is a three hour ride that begins at 5:30 in the morning and is considered part of her 8 hour day. Of course, this means she is only in the library for 5 hours on a daily basis. This has really changed how we operate, but we are adapting. At my school, I operate as not only Media Coordinator, but Technology Facilitator and technician as well. While I cannot fix everything, I am the first stop for all technology troubleshooting. The most important concern for me in the midst of all of this change is making sure to maintain the instructional part of my program. Needless to say, the beginning of the year has already been incredibly tiring. So far this blog entry sounds like I just want to complain, but actually it is the exact opposite. I just felt you needed a picture of "a day in the life" especially since my Book Blast took priority over many of those other daily tasks. It is about reshaping priorities.

I recently read a blog entry on Shelf Consumed called It's a blast. It really made me think about how we could get books into the hands of our students faster. We had our own Book Blast which I think was a real success. All but one of our Language Arts teachers signed up, so we saw 35 classes this past week for 10 minute increments. Almost all of our classes were able to finish in 10 minutes, and I was able to connect with a large number of students by helping them find a book, making reading suggestions, etc. It was great. Not surprisingly, the classes that were not in and out within 10 minutes were the classes that my assistant was not available for. Those classes proved very difficult for me to help students and check them out in 10 minutes. I built on the idea from Shelf Consumed and made the event a lot of fun. We played party dance music during each class session. It was interesting to see kids bee-bopping (is that how you spell that?) to the music while browsing the stacks. I also gave away prizes. After students had checked out everyone was instructed to turn to p. 21 and if they had a pink or purple sticky note, they won a prize. I have some pens with our school name and a quote about reading. Teacher feedback was very positive and I am filing away this idea for the future.

Thoughts on Training

Due to my recent role as a presenter in several trainings, I have been forced to look at my own attitudes about staff development. Generally speaking, I would say that I like some staff development. As a whole, I see most training as valuable, but it is easy to let those other things get in the way. For example, the attitude that you have something else you could be doing. We often let those overwhelming parts of our job get in the way of our ability or desire to be lifelong learners. I love to learn and would say that most people know this about me. I do get frustrated when I have to sit through training that I already know how to do or that is extraordinarily boring. So what has being a presenter taught me?

First, keep in mind that often the presenter is generally not the one requiring you to attend the professional development activity. Being rude to this person only reflects badly on you. I would say that overall I have not found this to be an issue, but there is always at least one in a group. Here's a hint: Try to avoid sitting with those individuals. Sometimes that is impossible, but it can really help your outlook on a day long training.

In the past I have been very frustrated about sitting through professional development that was on a topic I already had a great deal of knowledge about. This has always seemed redundant and a waste of my time. However, being a trainer has changed my mind on this topic. Many of those who claim to have knowledge on the topic sometimes overestimate their skills or do not implement the practices into the classroom. This is a great opportunity to help these teachers to refine their skills and hopefully integrate the skill or strategy into their own classrooms. Additionally, as a participant I plan to be more positive about training regardless of my experience level. There are always new pieces of information that can be added to my knowledge base, but more importantly I can be an asset to the trainer. By being positive about the topic and helping those around us understand the professional development, we can all influence the attitudes of those within our school.

Looking forward to a positive, engaging year. Hope you are too.

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The Noise

Friday night I went to a Chinese restaurant and had dinner by myself. My mother always tells me how strange it is that I like to eat out or go to the movies by myself. As I sat there eating and reading on Friday, I thought about why I like to do these things by myself. I also happen to be reading "The Knife of Never Letting Go" at this time and I recognized a parallel between myself and the concept of "Noise" in the book. All the men in the book have Noise. What this essentially means is that their thoughts are open to everyone all the time, therefore no one ever experiences peace and quiet from the Noise of men. Yes, this has the potential to be sexist, but that is definitely not the focus.

On a daily basis I am surrounded by Noise. Some good and some bad, but Noise nonetheless. Within my job the day is a constant interruption, jumping from one task to the next. Sometimes my schedule for the day is totally defunct, and my goals for the day are constantly changing. Those are the days that I feel like I have worked all day and accomplished nothing, but I guess I really need to change my perspective and ask myself if I helped someone else with their goals of the day. This time of year it is easy to fall into that abyss of negativity, especially with all those tasks that this time of year brings and that I dread so much: AMTR, fixed assets inventory, book inventory, getting all students to turn in their books (if anyone has the perfect solution to this problem, I would love to hear it), and so much more.

You are probably reading this and asking yourself how this all ties together. Well, those times when I go to dinner or a movie by myself is a time that I can totally revel in the peace and quiet. It lets me escape the Noise and do something just for me. So many of us are consumed with work that we forget to take time for ourselves. Well, I say you will only be better at your job by taking time just for you. Try it, I promise all the Noise will be there when you come back to reality.

History Our Way

I am so excited about the project I am starting with some 8th grade social studies classes. The classroom teacher and I have been planning this awhile, and it is hard to believe it is finally time to begin. The goal is to have students complete a research project on an important person, event or invention related to American history. The teacher came to me with a plan to do a menu-related project and it has evolved from that point. I have to admit some portions of this project are intimidating, because neither of us have implemented some of the elements into our instruction before. I have even created my first LiveBinder for this project as a resource for students. Check it out -- http://livebinders.com/edit?id=79153. I will be providing students the link to the LiveBinder in URL format and QR code. This will be the first time I have formally introduced QR Codes, so I will be interested to see how it goes. While we will not be paperless, we are going to try and use as little paper as possible.

Looking forward to a busy and fun day tomorrow.

Pre-Service Teacher Visit

Today our school hosted a group of 20 pre-service teachers from colleges and universities in our state. These students are currently juniors, and we had one hour to share with them how technology is being used in our school. That is a great deal of information to impart in such a short amount of time. Our instructional coach and I partnered together to organize this presentation. We began with a Prezi that introduced our school and various technology tools that we are utilizing with our students. The group was then divided up and sent to three different locations. One group went to a math classroom using CPS, one classroom where students highlighted projects they have completed, and one group stayed in the Media Center. These sessions were approximately thirteen minutes and during the session in the Media Center another teacher highlighed our use of Gaggle while I shared student work samples including Photostory, Flip videos, and podcasts. I also discussed the importance of utilizing your school's Media Coordinator and/or Tech Facilitator.

Student reflections and questions really made me ask some serious questions about pre-service education. While I believe these students have a great deal of technology knowledge that they use on a daily basis, I am not certain that they have been taught how to apply those to the classroom. I was surprised by how many were not familiar with tools like Prezi or Photostory. They wanted to know more about how to access this technology, how to advocate for the technology in their classrooms, and the logistics of planning technology lessons related to these tools.

All of the discussions of the day really made me wonder if pre-service teacher education is neglecting to prepare students for the role of technology in the classroom. Is it fair to say that we have to hope that these students have a cooperating teacher that utilizes technology in the classroom or that they will be forced to learn it on their own in the end? I just hope that there is a Media Coordinator or Technology Facilitator at their future schools to help them traverse technology integration.

NCTIES and Twitter: A Conference Evolution

My first time attending NCTIES was great. I was able to gain so many new ideas and tools to utilize with students and teachers. Before I say anything else about my conference experience, I have to tell you a little bit about my conference habits.

First, I am a session hopper. This does not mean that the session I am attending is bad, it is just something I do. There are always multiple sessions I would like to attend, so I try to attend several during each hour. In fact, during this conference there was only one session that I stayed for in its entirety--QR Codes and why they matter to education. I have so many ideas for QR codes and was able to add to those by attending this session. Ok, back to the topic, session hopping. I have done this at conferences for as long as I remember. To further feed my session hopping problem, I have thrown Twitter into the mix!

This was the first conference where I used Twitter actively throughout. Wow! I will never again be without Twitter at a conference. It let me keep up with so much more than I could have ever done before with my session hopping. I was able to "see" what was going on at many different locations at the convention center. Twitter also saved me from a less than exciting session. I was not particularly enjoying one session and with prompting from Twitter I relocated.

I still have a lot to learn about the language of Twitter, but I truly see the added benefits of using Twitter to improve personal learning. I am sure I will have more posts in the days to come about my NCTIES experience, but nothing can surpass the role of Twitter for this conference.