Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Preparing a Professional Portfolio
Preparing the Professional Portfolio has been an on-going task this semester. I feel a bit overwhelmed right now trying to keep up with what is a portfolio requirement and what is a practicum requirement. It seems that many of the practicum requirements will fit in my portfolio, but not all of them.
I hope that I'm on the right track with my portfolio...right now I've got the wiki page set up and I've got most of the evidence uploaded to the page. I need to work on the reflections, my resume, and my philosophy between now and the due date (May 4th). I like the wiki format for this portfolio. I've been using wikispaces.com and it has been going smoothly, so far! I hope it continues :)
Monthly Report for Principal
Media Center Evaluation
As I reviewed the Georgia DOE 2008 Library Media Program Self Evaluation Rubric, I found that our strengths were in Categories 1 (Student Achievement and Instruction) and 3 (Facilities, Access, and Resources). This is were I felt that we had the most proficient and exemplary marks.
Category 2 (Staffing) is probably an area where we should improve, but I don't know that we really don't have much input to make any changes. However, I'm sure that most media specialists feel the same way. In fact, we probably have it pretty good compared to some other schools. We have 2 media specialists and 1 media clerk in our school of approximately 1700 students. That sounds good, I think. However, in my first year as a media specialist I was most over whelmed by all the extracurricular duties. We (the other media specialist I work with and the media clerk) often had to neglect our school library duties in order to get the extra-curricular duties accomplished.
Here is a list of all the extra duties that we (as a department) take care of:
- Junior Class Sponsor
- Senior Prom
- Senior Week
- Homecoming
- Ring Ceremony
- Honors Night
- Relay for Life
- Fixed Assets (starting next year)
I don't know if that looks like a long list to someone who has never planned any of these events, but I can tell you from experience that most of these events take countless hours of time to plan and organize for a school our size. Prom, for example, doesn't mean that we just decorate the venue; we sell tickets out of the media center, paint the wall hangings in the media center, store the props in the media center, and many other things. Honors Night was the equivalent of planning my wedding! I sent nearly 300 invitations, prepared the program, prepared and organized the presentations, organized the special awards and gifts, kept up with RSVPs, prepared the 500 slide power point (with pictures...), etc.
I don't mean to sound whiny by describing all of this, but I just want to make a point that there is a large portion of our time that is spent doing other things. If we were "just media specialists" it would be an easier job...but we kind of do it all :) This is simply on area where we could improve, but probably won't.
I think that we are proficient in Category 4 ( Administrative Support) and 5 (Staff Development) overall. The main areas where we should improve here is in meeting with our administrators more frequently. I feel that we have their support, though.
Grant Application
Here is the application that I completed for the grant.
April 29, 2009-
Today I finished the application and mailed it to the Junior League of Augusta. It is due July 2009, so I probably won't hear back from them until after that date. It is now even more important to me that we get an educational blogging subscription, because the free bloggers were recently blocked by our county internet filters! I went to read our class blog the other day, and the screen that flashed before my eyes said it was prohibited and considered to be "pornography". The county wants us to use the paid subscriptions so that the teachers have more control over the blogs.
I've been trying to figure out how to upload the application to my blog...but I haven't had much luck. I'll scan the document and upload it as a picture tomorrow :) Here is a link to the web site:
http://www.jlaugusta.org/UserArea/StaticPages/20092010ACEAWARDS.asp for more information about the grant I chose.
I've found the grant I want to write! I'm going to write a grant for Edublog. The grant is called the ACE award and it is awarded by The Junior League of Augusta for creative and innovative projects. I'll begin working on the grant soon, but I'm glad to have finally found one that fits!
Weeding
For example, as our students are working on annotated bibliographies this past week we noticed that the we have 5 copies of the old MLA Handbook and only 2 copies of the new edition. So, we took the old editions off the shelf and ordered a few more of the new editions.
On our last teacher work day we weeded a large number of old paperbacks that were yellowed, torn, and rarely checked out. We continually order new fiction books for our students, so this just involved cleaning off the shelves. We have a great fiction section that is updated monthly--if not weekly! There were a few of the old paperbacks that were "classics" so we just ordered newer copies of those titles to replace the old copies.
Catalog Experience
Attending Department, Media, and Technology Meetings
I've attended several department and media meetings throughout this semester. Our media meetings occur monthly and they are a combination of business and professional development. Usually we meet for the first hour to discuss media issues in the county and then the second hour is devoted to some sort of professional development. We have had professional development sessions on social bookmarking, wiki pages (using PB wiki), book fairs, and book vendors.
The departmental meetings I've attended have been mainly with English teachers. We work very closely with the English Department at our school. The other departments I've meet with over the last few months are science and social studies. It is a great opportunity to hear what is going on in the classroom and share how our resources can be used.
Collaborative Unit Linking Information Literacy with Content Area
Student Production of Media Matierals Unit
I tied this project in with my wiki staff development project. Before doing my staff development, I wanted to "test the waters" with a couple of willing teachers. I started with one willing teacher and ended up with 4 teachers who were interested in working with me on getting their students to use wikis.
It was a great way for us to work together to figure out the kinks and gaps in our understanding of wikis and all that goes into using them with students. For example, the first wiki we did was extremely difficult to grade based on the rubric we created. We were trying to grade the student discussions and found that the students did a lot of their discussion on the telephone or in class--even though we had told them to discuss online so that the teacher could follow the path they took to get to the final product. She also wanted documentation of each student's participation within the group.
So, after spending almost 2 hours grading one class's wiki/discussion boards we decided we had to make some changes for the next time, and then I could pass that experience on to the the other teachers that I helped and ultimately to the staff development unit.
I've provided the links to some of these wiki pages below.
http://mixonenglish11.wikispaces.com/ - Harlem Renaissance Project
http://adollshousepage.wikispaces.com/ - Discussion of a novel read outside of class with background research information
http://mattice-p3.wikispaces.com/ - Harlem Renaissance Project
http://chase-p5.wikispaces.com/ - Collaborative group writing assignment; students wrote a thesis statement, introduction paragraph, and outline collaboratively
Staff Development Technology Lesson
My Staff Development Lesson has been completed and now I'm compiling and summarizing the teacher evaluations and nearly ready to turn it in to Dr. R.
January 21, 2009 -
In preparation for my Staff Development Lesson, I'm working with another teacher to incorporate the use of a class wiki with one of her research/writing projects. I've never actually used wikis with students before and I wanted to get some experience using them before doing a staff development lesson. I also thought it would be great if I had another teacher with me during the staff development who could describe her own experiences using a class wiki. Teachers would likely appreciate hearing from another teacher.
This week, I've been working with the students in Mrs. C's 4th and 5th period classes. I did an orientation of the class wiki where I walked them through the different tabs and functions that were available. A few of the students had used wikis before, but most had not. All of the students knew about Wikipedia, though. So, that was a great lead in for me to describe what a wiki is to them. I told them that it was basically a web page that members can easily edit.
The students seemed interested in this idea because they were going to be individually accountable for their contributions to the group project. Many students complain when they work in groups if someone isn't doing a fair share of work. With the wiki, the teacher can read all the group discussions and read the history to see exactly what each group member contributes.
One of Mrs. C's students exclaimed, "Crap!" when he first heard about this group wiki project. When asked what was wrong, he said, " Well, this is bad for me...but really good for Mrs. C. This is really a very smart way for Mrs. C to monitor our group work. No more sit back group time for me!"
Reading Enrichment/Enjoyment Unit
Reading Enrichment/Enjoyment Activities
At the beginning of the year, we encourage our students to visit the library for the enjoyment of reading a good book. Currently, we have a “Book Talk” program that we use with our “non-reader” students. When I say that these students are “non-readers", I mean that they are students who generally do not read for pleasure or for teachers! One of the reasons they avoid reading is because they are reading at lower levels than many of their peers. We have selected a variety of high interest books to grab these students and get them interested in reading. Many of the books we selected for this program have sequels. We hope that they will be interested enough in the first book to continue reading the rest of the sequels.
We start the Book Talk with a personal survey. Each student completes a survey about their interests. Then, we take these surveys and tailor the books that we will assign each student in hopes of finding a book that they will enjoy. We also try to assign at least two or three students per book so that they can talk with each other about the books. The point of this program is to get the students reading, we don’t test them or put pressure on them. Simply put, we find a book that we think they will enjoy and the teacher provides class time for them to read.
After two weeks, we put the students into groups according to the books they’ve read and give them discussion questions. This is where they get to have their book talk. They can talk about the book and they each answer the questions provided. The teacher gives them a 100 if they know enough about the book to discuss the questions. So, there is some incentive for those students who are driven by grades. In fact, the teachers usually offer extra credit for the students who continue reading. They choose a book, and then discuss with one of the media specialists to get extra credit. We keep up with the students who are in the program each semester and inform the teachers as they continue reading.
We have found this program to be extremely successful. Most of the students involved tell us that they really enjoyed the books they read. There are always a few who don’t like the books we choose for them; we always tell them to pick out another book if they don’t find the book interesting. In fact, our circulation of these books has increased so dramatically that we had to order at least 5 more of each book and keep some of them off the main shelves so that we have enough to go around for the students in the program each semester. The only downside is that these high interest books are the most frequently lost or stolen books in the library collection.
Each year we try to add a few books to the list. We also pull other books from the shelf depending on the student interests. We are very flexible in how we assign the books.
Next year, we are adding a new component to this program. We are going to reach out to other subjects and higher level readers. For example, we plan on using Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer as an enrichment book for our environmental science classes. This is about how life on Earth would change if our moon were knocked out of orbit. Environmental and sociological principles permeate this book and spark great discussions for students.
Many teachers (other than English teachers) admit that they don’t have time to meet the Reading Standard for their areas:
GPS SCSh9 – Students will read a minimum of 25 grade-level appropriate books per year from a variety of subject disciplines and participate in discussions related to curricular learning in all areas.
I think that this new component to our Book Talk program will be helpful in meeting this often ignored standard.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Practicum Journal
Last summer I decided to go ahead and begin my practicum experience because a perfect opportunity opened up to help another media specialist open her new media center in a brand new middle school! It was a great opportunity to learn about everything involved in opening a new media center and to be a part of the organizational aspect of the media center. The text below are the journal entries where I recorded some of my experiences after helping to get the media center ready for the first day of school. We ultimately got the library ready in time!
June 30, 2008 -
I am doing my middle school hours at the new middle school in my county. The media specialist, Annie, just received her book and supplies orders today. The school is opening this fall. It is a beautiful new school, with many windows, stone accents on the outside of the building, and even columns in the media center. The media center is located on the second floor of the school and has a beautiful view of the woods across the street from the school.
When I arrived this morning, Annie gave me a tour of the new school. She had a long list of things she needed to get done before the teachers arrive on August 5. The first thing I did was go through her supplies from The Library Store to make sure everything she had ordered had arrived. Afterwards, I checked her RESA order (mainly basic office supplies) and made sure she had the essentials…such as staplers, pens, pencils, file folders, etc. When she made her big order, she was not given an amount to spend, so she wasn’t sure how much she should order. Then when they got her order, they told her they couldn’t pay for everything she had asked for on the budget. So, there is a lot that she ordered that she didn’t receive.
The second thing that happened this morning was that the elevator was broken making the task of carrying all the new books into the second floor media center a big chore! Luckily, a few of the baseball players from her husband’s school were there to carry all the boxes for us. When the books were shipped from Titlewave, they were placed on plats in a specific order so shelving them would be easier. However, when the boys had to carry them up the stairs they had to separate the plats and now they are all out of order! This will be the most time consuming thing we’ll have to do to get ready for the opening day.
I prepared the magazine storage area in one of the storage rooms by labeling the magazine racks and putting them in the proper place. Then we began shelving the Easy books. Hopefully those were the most time consuming to shelve because they were completely out of order in the boxes and we had to alphabetize them. I also searched for a less expensive wall rack for the bulletin board paper (craft paper) that will be in the teacher work area. Annie said they wouldn’t order the one she had picked out because it was too expensive. I found another one on-line that was about $75 less expensive.
The budget and ordering for a new media center is overwhelming! Unfortunately, Annie didn’t get much help from the county office as I would have expected. She said that she found another middle school media specialist in the county who was extremely helpful, though. I can imagine that was difficult! I look forward to helping Annie get things set up. It will be interesting to see everything that goes into it.
We unpacked 100 out of 189 boxes today! My back will surely be sore tomorrow J All the boxes were out of order, so we spent much of the time finding the boxes and putting them in the right order. We had a great assembly line going. One person shelving, another checking the inventory of each box, and another person arranging the books in the right order. It was a productive day!
July 2, 2008 –
We continued to unpack boxes and shelve books today. After today, we have the reference section and the 900’s to shelve yet. Really, my back is sore J We have yet to stamp the books and scan them into the computer. Annie has 10 days to all this work and I can’t imagine how she could have possibly done this on her own in that amount of time! We’ve had between 3 and 6 people at various times during the last 3 days working together and we’ve been working hard. I keep thinking how overwhelming it would have been to make such a big order. Now that the books are here, there are still quite a few books that were cataloged incorrectly, so Annie will have to fix some of them. That will be next week, though because everyone is going on vacation for the 4th of July holiday.
March 25, 2009 - Visiting an Elementary Book Fair
I just realized that I forgot to blog about this visit! I will try to remember all the details and document them now :)
I went back to the same elementary school as I did on March 9th. I really wanted to see a book fair because we tried to do a book fair at my school (which is a high school), but it completely flopped. We didn't make any money and we couldn't even find enough books on the list for our media center because they were all too low level. We ended up calling another media specialist in the county and asking her if she needed any books for her new middle school media center...she came with a big bag and a huge smile on her face! Anyway, that's another story... suffice it to say, I wanted to see a book fair that works!
I was impressed at what I saw! Mrs. G had all the books neatly displayed and the students were so enthusiastic about coming to the book fair and buying new books! Mrs. G told me that they had already made thousands of dollars (it was near the end of the fair) and that it had been successful. She had a parent night and many opportunities for students to come look at the books and come back again to purchase the books they wanted. She even had teacher wish lists that parents could purchase as donations. This is a great idea!
I really think the difference between the successful book fair and the unsuccessful book fair was that the books at our book fair were not exactly age appropriate, thus we had little enthusiasm from our high school students. It was great to see a book fair that worked. Next time we do a book fair at our high school, we will verify the number of young adult and adult selections (we only received a couple of tables of these items...it was mostly middle school level books).
March 9, 2009- Visiting the Elementary Media Center
Last Friday, I visited one of the local elementary school media centers and found myself amazed at how different life can be with the younger students! I arrived at 8:00 am to a quiet, small school. There were bagels and muffins on the lunchroom tables, a few young students entering the school, and teachers getting ready for the day. It was such a different pace from the fast paced mornings we have at our high school. The first thing Mrs. G does each Wednesday and Friday morning is air the morning news update with a group of fun and animated students. So, I was escorted to the taping room by one of the young students who was waiting for me in the media center.
After the show was finished, we went back to the media center, which was neat and very well organized, to prepare for the incoming classes. Today's lesson was with the 3rd grade classes. We were teaching them how to write a bibliography and use an information pathfinder in preparation for a project they were going to do. I didn't realize how much I assumed the students would know. For example, this was the first time many of these students ever used a laptop and we had to teach them how to use the touch pad and the mouse. The lesson was a success and the students were excited to use the information pathfinder.
Next time I visit that school, I will help get the book fair up and going. We tried a book fair at our school last semester and it was a huge let down, so I'm excited to see how another school does it. I left just before lunch so I could make it back to my school for our busy lunch period.
February 25, 2009-An Update
So, here it is February and I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the activities I have going on at the same time. I'm currently working on the unit lesson plan with the English teachers at my school. We are trying to develop a remediation tool using a wiki. We've given the students their benchmark test, analyzed the data, and are working on the actual wiki now.
Since I've introduced the wiki to a few teachers, there has really been an increase in interest. It seems that I've been spending the majority of my time working with teachers and students on their wiki pages! I'm excited to see the interest. I had planned on doing my staff development lesson on wikis, but before going to the entire faculty I wanted to work with a few teachers to get my feet wet, so to speak. It's been a great experience so far. I've had opportunities to work with numerous teachers on setting up pages, teaching the students how to use the pages, and helping teachers develop rubrics for grading student work on the wiki pages. We found that the discussions can be time consuming to grade and review-- so we are working to tweak that rubric to make it easier.
As you can see, my unit lesson plan and my staff development projects are starting to blend together.
January 16th, 2009 - GETTING STARTED
Today, between working with classes in the media center, I spent much of the day researching the use of wikis in schools and figuring out how to set up accounts for the students in Mrs. C's 4th period class. Trial and error was my method...very time consuming! FINALLY, I found how to set up student accounts without needing an email and I was able to get Mrs. C's class set up. :)
We are going to try it first with her 4th and 5th period gifted English classes. Mrs. J and another English teacher are going to watch as I introduce the wiki to the students on Tuesday. I will show the students the class wiki and give them their account information on Tuesday. They will be working in groups to write an introduction paragraph with thesis. We will go over some of the rules of the wiki activity and let them try it out in class on Tuesday. Mrs. C asked the students if they knew anything about wiki spaces in class today and it sounds like some of the students in the class have used wikis before; those who had never used them seemed very intrigued by the new kind of group project. Some were concerned and some were glad to know that Mrs. C would be able to see the history of who contributed what for the group project...at last a way to ensure that ALL members of the group participate! Or, at least a way to track who participates and who doesn't.
I'll prepare for the lesson over the weekend. I'm a little nervous about Tuesday just because it still seems so new to me...but I guess this is the best way to learn ...just dig right in!
January 15, 2008 -
This week I have been thinking about what I wanted to teach for my professional development activity. I've now completed my first semester as a media specialist at LHS and I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable and knowledgeable about the many aspects of the new position. As I contemplate working with the teachers at my school, I remember how difficult it was last semester to get a couple of teachers (who were friends of mine) on board with having the students create an on-line newsletter for the culminating project in a genetics unit. Unfortunately, I was not successful last semester in convincing them that it was worth a try. As a result of that experience, I'm more careful now about introducing new technologies to the teachers at my school.
This time I went about it from a different angle. I've never used Wiki pages with students, but I am really interested in trying it out. Unfortunately, I don't feel comfortable using wikis at this point, but I really need to jump in and learn how to effectively incorporate them into teaching units. Maybe you can see my predicament already, I'd like to do my professional development activitiy on using wikis in the classroom, but I need practice! I need an opportunity to learn how to effectively use wikis with students.
So I decided to just be honest about my plan...I went to the English Department meeting this week and told the teachers about my desire to try out a new technology with students. I asked if anyone was interested in working with me to see how we could incorporate wikis into an upcoming unit. I gave the teachers a general description of wiki pages and a few ideas of how they have been frequently used by teachers with students.
To my surprise, I immediately had 2 teachers interested in trying it! They were both eager and also unfamiliar with wikis. So, we began talking about how we could incorporate the new technology into the teachers' next unit (both teachers teach 10th grade English). Now that we had a class of students, teacher, and a unit to work with, I began more in depth research on how we could use wiki spaces to allow the students to work collaboratively.
I opened a wiki space page for the teacher to show her how to do it and then we experimented with the page to become familiar with how it all worked. Mrs. C and Mrs. J were both very excited about trying something new. They were the perfect people to pilot the technology. My thought was that the three of us would work together and work out any of the kinks before I go before the faculty for the professional development.
My principal was hesitant at first, but interested to see how it worked. He was uncomfortable with students putting their work on the internet...he said that we definitely needed to create a permission slip that explained everything to the parents before going any further with our plans.
Wikis?
This week I have been thinking about what I wanted to teach for my professional development activity. I've now completed my first semester as a media specialist at LHS and I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable and knowledgeable about the many aspects of the new position. As I contemplate working with the teachers at my school, I remember how difficult it was last semester to get a couple of teachers (who were friends of mine) on board with having the students create an on-line newsletter for the culminating project in a genetics unit. Unfortunately, I was not successful last semester in convincing them that it was worth a try. As a result of that experience, I'm more carfeul now about introducing new technologies to the teachers at my school.
This time I went about it from a different angle. I've never used Wiki pages with students, but I am really interested in trying it out. Unfortunately, I don't feel comfortable using wikis at this point, but I really need to jump in and learn how to effectively incorporate them into teaching units. Maybe you can see my predicament already, I'd like to do my professional development activitiy on using wikis in the classroom, but I need practice! I need an opportunity to learn how to effectively use wikis with students.
So I decided to just be honest about my plan...I went to the English Department meeting this week and told the teachers about my desire to try out a new technology with students. I asked if anyone was interested in working with me to see how we could incorporate wikis into an upcoming unit. I gave the teachers a general description of wiki pages and a few ideas of how they have been frequently used by teachers with students.
To my surprise, I immediately had 2 teachers interested in trying it! They were both eager and also unfamiliar with wikis. So, we began talking about how we could incorporate the new technology into the teachers' next unit (both teachers teach 10th grade english). Now that we had a class of students, teacher, and a unit to work with, I began more in depth research on how we could use wikispaces to allow the students to work collaboratively.
I opened a wikispace page for the teacher to show her how to do it and then we experimented with the page to become familiar with how it all worked. Mrs. C and Mrs. J were both very excited about trying something new. They were the perfect people to pilot the technology. My thought was that the three of us would work together and work out any of the kinks before I go before the faculty for the professional development.
My principal was hesitant at first, but interested to see how it worked. He was uncomfortable with students putting their work on the internet...he said that we definitely needed to create a permission slip that explained everything to the parents before going any further with our plans.
