Saturday, November 12, 2016

Thing 1: Blogging

Hi!  I'm Wendy.  I am in my 24th year as an LMS at Schoharie Elementary School which is a preK-6 building.

I am taking part in this program because I always learn so much that I can apply to work and at home.  It is fun and I can take the course in my jammies if I want!

I looked at https://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/ first, but I really wanted to see some elementary school library blogs.  I took a look at http://mscassidysclass.edublogs.org/.  It is neat how it details what the class is doing.  Parents would probably love that.  The photos really make the blog alive.  Unfortunately, because of a change in procedure this year, there are only 2 or possibly 3 classes in the entire school that I could photograph.  Perhaps if we successfully lobby for a change, we could get it so that we could do a parents-only accessible blog -maybe via Google Classroom.

I then followed the link to 23 Great Library Blogs and chose the elementary school ones.  I looked at the England Library blog.  I liked their book fair advertisements on the blog, but I already advertise on my website.  I liked the August-September Library Use statistics.  While I realize that they don't show how we help the students learn, I think that realizing how much traffic we get is valuable.  I should remember what they used to make that "poster," but it escapes me at the moment.  It is eye-catching.
The giveaways were the most interesting thing I saw.  They are a way to get traffic and I especially liked how they explained how to comment, "Write a comment on THIS post.  Your comment should include your FIRST NAMELAST INITIAL, what GRADE you’re going to be in THIS year, and a message for Mrs. Kupersztoch!  Do not leave any other personal information in your comment!  Do not post your e-mail address. Only one entry per student will be accepted, and only England Elementary students are eligible to participate.  Every comment has to be approved in order to appear on the website, so if you don’t see your comment right away, don’t worry!"
I guess the best takeaway for me was the fact that their blog is not daily or weekly, so it is not as overwhelming as some I have seen.

Next, I looked at the Falmouth Library blog.  It had lots of news, including statistics.  I REALLY liked their top 10 book checkouts.  My kids would really like that.  I know that Destiny has that feature, but I'm not sure that it is just our school and not the entire system.  Also, it includes things that teachers check out.  It wouldn't be too hard to make a report of the top 10 because students LOVE top 10 lists.  
I also liked her A Year in Review.  Lately I am always so busy that I haven't been doing yearly reports, but I should.  Her format seemed good. It actually would be a good thing for newbies to look at to see what a library can be.  

Then, I looked at the Ogle Elementary blog.  The Musical Chairs Book Tasting was interesting.  It is similar to the Book Speed Dating I have heard about here.  I think it could be easily done without the ipads which is good because we don't have them.  I also wonder if I could do it with my computers with book trailers set for them to watch.
I liked the Leaf Man creatures lesson that she did with kindergarten.  I would have to modify it for preK.  I have to look at the Highlights Leaf Creatures site.  The art teacher might be interested as well.  She is trying to incorporate more writing and technology in her lessons, especially since she now teaches the students for an hour!
I liked seeing how she incorporated Kahoots into her lessons.  I can't wait for the SMART Schools Bond Act money to come so that we will have more technology to use with the students!
Her lessons were interesting and I'm sure that the students have a lot of fun, but they seem strangely disconnected.  Like there is no obvious path that they are following.  I think that it really helps my students that they know that the small steps we take together are for some bigger purpose each year.  We have a major project in the spring that the earlier lessons prepare them for.  We constantly talk about how what we are learning fits into the bigger goal of the year and fits into their future education and life.

In general, I guess this Thing taught me that I shouldn't be so worried about blogging.  It took me a while to jump into having a website.  Maybe it is time to start a blog.  The next question will be how best to do it because sooo many sites are blocked at school. Is there a way I can created one through Google Apps for Education?  That way it would be following our technology goals. Hmmmm.