November 2016 TL Announcements

What to Know@BVSD this Month!

Thanks Loran L., for hosting the November TL Workshop. It was exciting to get a look at Whittier International Elementary’s renovated library space, learn about the renovation process, and the impact the physical changes are having on the Whittier’s learning community.

Loran’s insights:

  

"The space is now conforming to our diverse needs, rather than the other way around...I didn't realize before the remodel how this would change the mood, excitement and care of the space. We love our library!"

Greatly appreciated the TLs that led workshops and discussions for the 21+ TLs that attended this month’s workshop meeting

• Arlene G. | Amazing Race
• Sara W. | SeeSaw 
• Kim B. | GAFE Summit Sync-up

Guest Blogger

Loran Lattes, Teacher Librarian Whittier

Reaching All Our Families

“... family tech nights. The goals included increasing the use of digital communication, increasing comfort with technology, and increasing parent understanding of our use of technology with students at Whittier.”

Read more...

OverDrive News & Updates

1,206 - current number of unique titles in OD as of Nov. 16, 2016.

Check out OD’s December Webcast series (each session is 45 min.):

• Session #1 Building Your Digital Collection - Dec. 6
• Session #2 Enhancing Your Digital Collection- Dec. 7
• Session #3 Helping Users Enjoy Your Digital Collection -Dec. 8

Past webcasts are available here.

OverDrive's Teacher Lounge Professional Development collection is available for all BVSD educators. Additionally, all BVSD educators can access the 1,184 titles in the student OverDrive collection. Please help spread the word among your staff members that these resources are available to them.

Elementary and MS OD Consortium members, please review the Lower Grade Level Access to Upper Grade Level OverDrive Titles Policy. We are working on a process for Elementary and MS TLs to request approval from their colleagues to make higher level titles available to their patrons but it will require 100% approval by all Elementary and MS Consortium TLs. We will post details about this on the BVS Overdrive Google group--stay tuned.

Events | Resources

Bi-Monthly Workshops & LIBinars

Sign up for Workshops and LIBinars via MyPassport.

MyPassport Code: 16312

January 10, Southern Hills Middle School  

• Tour of space and Q&A with Regina Hoskins
• Customer Service Tip(s) form host & attendees
• Getting Things Done!
• Coding for primary grades

Thursday, Dec. 1 | 4 PM LIBinar

First Come-First Serve Making

Denise Von Minden, TL @ Flagstaff Academy will discuss her efforts to bring making to her K-8 library. (Access link to join the live stream will be provided closer to broadcast dates.)

Saturday, Dec. 3 | 10 AM- 12 PM , Ft. Collins Creator Hub

FREE Educators for Youth Makers and Entrepreneurship Fall Meeting If you are an educator, administrator or facilitator in education who is interested in Youth Entrepreneurship or the Maker movement, this meeting is for you.

• Did you know there is a CU Boulder Libraries YouTube Channel? Check out the series of interviews with CU college students, Research Demystified. The video How We Feel About Research Today got me thinking about what our students would say about their levels of confidence with various resources they routinely use for research and their research skills in general. It would be interesting to duplicate these interviews with BVSD students at the end of their elementary, MS, and HS careers--ask them to reflect on the resources they accessed and research skills they acquired via their library interactions and experiences.

• Boulder Public Library (BPL) will host a Research Rendezvous, Saturday Dec. 3. --click here for details.

Guest Blogger - Loran Lattes

Reaching All Our Families

Loran Lattes-Teacher-Librarian, Whittier International Elementary

Whittier International Elementary has a wonderfully diverse community. We are an International Baccalaureate, Title 1 school with 25% of students learning English as a second language. While this is something to be celebrated, it also presents some hurdles including parent communication!

The Family Outreach Committee at Whittier came to our Tech Committee with an idea for a collaborative parent night. We knew from a survey that close to 100% of families have at least 1 device at home with Internet access (often a smart phone). However, many parents still did not have an email address registered with us. Together, our committees decided to hold Family Tech Nights. The goals included increasing the use of digital communication, increasing comfort with technology, and increasing parent understanding of our use of technology with students at Whittier.

Family Tech Night

We held our first parent tech night Thursday (Nov. 10). We contacted all families without an email address by phone and took reservations for 15 minute sessions that took place right before a presentation on Internet Safety. Additionally, we decided it was important to have 1:1 help available for our most reluctant users and we had translators available for the languages represented. We worked with six families during our first Family Tech Night.

Inspiring & Bonding

Participating in the tech sessions was inspiring and bonding. On the tech side, during the hour we were "open for business" we set up gmail accounts, sent and received practice email messages, set up accounts to always translate messages, looked at our school and district databases and other resources that can be used at home, and communicated student username and password information, On the community side, we worked together to find solutions, laughed, cursed our technology when things went wrong, laughed some more, made new friends, built trust, played charades at times when translators were busy, listened, spoke, taught, and learned.

Build Community

We plan to hold at least two more Family Tech Nights this school year. We hope to build comfort and skills with our most reluctant users of technology and, in the process, build our community of learners.

Small Shifts | Big Results Fairview

Small Shifts| Big Results

Maura Rhodes, Fairview HS Teacher Librarian & Team

With the bond for my school being a few more years away, I wanted to do some updates to the library space that didn’t cost a lot of money. Last year we finished installing some bamboo countertops and added more electrical outlets for phone and laptop charging. Some of the updates this summer included painting the entrance doors, transforming the librarian office into a collaboration room with large screen monitor and genrefying the fiction section.

Tapping My PLN

The painting and furniture moving for the first two projects was minor compared to tackling the genre project. I thought doing it over the summer would be an ideal time, since most of the books were returned. I have been to workshops, discussions and panels in my former state by two ground shaking librarians, Library Girl @Jennifer Legarde  and Jennifer Northrup@candidlibrarian. Tiffany Whitehead’s blog was also inspirational in her work with genrefying. I asked for advice from some of the high school librarians in BVSD and talked in depth to Beatrice at Monarch, as well as looking at her web site the monarch method. I knew, I didn't want to tackle the whole collection (non-fiction and fiction) at once, so I settled with what I thought would be good for Fairview.

Goals

The reasons for changing the fiction have been many fold, but my number one goal reason was to empower the students to find what they wanted more easily. My goal was to increase self-sufficiency for the students, without so many steps. Can you tell me where the mystery books are? Do you have any books like Hunger Games?

Results

I'm getting a lot of positive feedback from teachers and students. Students aren't wandering aimlessly around the books, but instead are finding what they want. It has been amazing to watch the students in the space and see them browsing the sections. The collaboration room is being used, slowly as students realize they can use it. A student that wanted to Skype with a professor and needed a quiet space and the newly created collaboration room was perfect for her. I haven't had any negative comments.

Resources

The actual process helped me get to know my library collection. Check out

Maura’s How-To Guide to Genrefying Your Fiction Collection. It includes a link to the process and resources I used to inform my work in this effort. Of course, if you search Pinterest or just Google the keywords genrefying school library, you will get a plethora of information.

Finally, checkout the slideshow I put together to promote the changes I made in the library to members of my learning community.