Wordfoto Shelf Signs

You probably already know that I changed my nonfiction to subject categories instead of Dewey. Part of this transition was creating new signs for each area. I have been trying to decide how I wanted to create the signs. I wanted something creative, fun, yet still functional. I considered a ComicLife style like The Daring Librarian, Spell with Flickr, and even plain Power Point with lots of clip art. Yesterday, after reading The Library Girl's post about Wordfoto, I knew this would be great.

I created the signs using the Wordfoto app on my iPad. The app was $1.99 and well worth it, even if I never use it again (although I think I'm addicted now). I found clip art for each subject category, added a new word group for each area and voila. I tried to find clip art that was similar to the genre labels on the spine of the books.

What do you think?

You can find all of the signs on my Flickr photostream, where they are available for you to download and use if you like. I'm going to print them and frame in a plain, black picture frame.

One of our school-wide projects next year is to create a Palmetto tree shaped collage (We're Palmetto Middle) that tells all about us. Each teacher will have the tree outside the classroom door. I made a Wordfoto of my face with the word "librarian" that I plan to put on my tree. I will probably be making lots more for our teachers when they see it. I may even purchase this app for our school iPods because I see potential for simple, student projects.

What kind of signs do you have in your library?

Getting a Grip on Series

It seems that there are more series than stand along books these days and it is difficult to keep up with all of them. I have discovered a new tool to help me keep them under control.

The site is FictFact.

I created a free account and have started "Following" the series that we have in the library. I am looking forward to being notified when a new book is released in these series and I plan to use this site to label all of my series books. There is a social networking aspect of the site that lets you connect with friends and see what they are reading, but I do not know that I will use that part of the site. The strength in the site for me is helping me keep my series orders current and labeling them in the correct order.

Thanks to Fran Bullington's post for inspiring me to label my series books. I hoped to begin the project before school ended, but I focused my time and energy on changing the nonfiction. If all goes well, I can start on this project during staff development time when students will be around to earn community service hours and help me tackle the job.

Maybe one day soon I can post an update that I am finished labeling them:) Fingers crossed.

How Do Others See You? Evaluating My Personal Brand

photo © 2010 Ross Tucknott | more info (via: Wylio)

Our third task in the 23 Things program is to consider our personal brand. My brand is mainly compromised of my blog, Twitter account, LinkedIn account and memberships in groups such as the Teacher Librarian Ning and Classroom 2.0. When I googled myself I was not surprised by the results. If I google just my name I have two results on the first page that are mine, my LinkedIn profile and my blog. I make an appearance on the second page of images. When I add SC to my name the entire first page of results is me. If I google Eliterate Librarian it is all me on the first page. I'm satisfied with that.

When I first started my blog I wanted to chose a name that combined my love of reading and technology. I remembered hearing the term "e-literate" during my graduate studies and liked the way it sounded with librarian. I wish I could remember where I heard the term so that I could give credit, but I don't. I never even wrote it down. It just got in my brain and stuck there at some point. This is the urban dictionary definition of "eliterate".

One weakness of my personal brand is that I do not use the same name identifier on every site. I try but sometimes it is taken. On most sites I am coxtl.

After reading some of the recommended posts and articles I feel like I have a decent understanding of my brand and how to monitor it; however, I do probably need to update my pictures to a close up shot. I have different pictures on Twitter, my blog, and several other sites. I should chose one nice picture to use in all of those places for uniformity.

One of the optional tasks was to ask others to post their thoughts on our blog. What do you think my blog says about my personal brand?

Mr. Dewey, I Bid you Adieu

In the past I have written posts regarding arrangement of my collection and my constant attempt to make the library as user friendly and accessible as possible. This is a goal that I believe all librarians can understand. For months I looked into various ways to organize a library's collection. After much consideration I decided to take the plunge and arrange non fiction by subject rather than Dewey. I have read several articles both for and against this arrangement. I have talked to my library friends both locally and members of my PLN in other states. Most expressed no interest in doing this in their library, but encouraged me to do what I thought was best for the students I serve. We know our students or patrons better than anyone else. Reading the experiences of others helped me to decide if this was something I wanted to do. I knew it would be a big project so I wanted to take my time in making this decision.

Here are my main motivations:

1. My middle school students don't understand Dewey.

Maybe this is my fault because I don't spend much time teaching Dewey. Maybe they don't completely understand decimals at all. Either way I do not have time to shelf and find every non fiction book that circulates. I do not have an assistant and even some of my student helpers never grasped Dewey even after I attempted to train them.

2. Pulling out fiction and biography was good for circulation.

Some people are surprised to hear that Dewey includes fiction. I think so many people are accustomed to fiction being a separate section that they think that Dewey did not originally include it. Having a separate section for fiction and biography increased circulation for these sections so it seems that arranging by subject may do the same for the rest of my non fiction.

3. I believe it will make the library more user friendly.

After polling my students, even my helpers and frequent library posse, they all were excited about the possibility of the change. I have had teachers and administrators (educated professionals) come in during the switch to see what I was up to and when they heard about it they were excited.

4. I want to appeal to the groups that check out non fiction the most.

My special education and reluctant readers are the groups I find browsing non fiction the most. I believe this change will make browsing easier for them (and everyone else).

As soon as I made up my mind I began the switch. The first step for me was getting the collection organized, weeded and inventoried. Looking back I would not have spent much time getting my Dewey in perfect order, but at the time I wasn't 100% committed yet. Then I ran a collection analysis. Using the collection analysis I looked at what subjects I had the most books in so that I could choose categories. Dewey is basically subject grouped anyway so I used these categories to determine what type of labels I would need. The report that helped me the most was the Collection Analysis (by 10s). Many of the groups were easy to group by subject. For example, all the 200s became Religion and the 700s became Art. I grouped some things together and wrote lots of little notes down. After reviewing the report and looking at the Book Industry Standards (BISAC) categories these are the categories I decided on: Animals, Arts & Crafts, Biography, Cars, Cooking, Crime, Family, Folktales, Health, History, Literature, Math, Multicultural, Music, Mythology, Nature, Poetry, Religion, Science, Space, Sports, Supernatural, and War.

I ordered genre labels for each of these categories. A few categories I had to rename so that it would fit with the labels available. There were no labels for Geography so I decided to group though with customs and holidays and create a Multicultural group. At this time I do not have subcategories because the size of my collection doesn't warrant this additional step; however, this is something I will consider for the future. History is my largest section and if I feel the need to further divide them I may do that. I may also subdivide Science if the need arises.

This decision did have its challenges. Deciding the category for some books was difficult. Should a dinosaur book be in science, history or animals? I looked at the Dewey number for guidance, asked my student helpers, and sometimes just made an executive decision.

I created an area in the library for each category and started sorting books into groups. I took one section at a time and changed the record in the computer, added the genre label and typed and added the new spine label. The spine labels changed from 940.53 WIL to NON WIL and then the History label. Then they were ready to be alphabetized and put back on the shelf. It sounds so simple when I write it but it took lots of time and several student helpers. In addition, I changed my label preferences with Follett so that I will only have to add the genre label for my new books. Another challenge will be collection analysis. Without Dewey it will be more time consuming to create a report; however, I can walk around the library and look at the shelves and see weaknesses much easier than before.

While I was making all of these changes I also decided to create a section for the anime/manga series, make new spine labels for the professional books (remove Dewey and replace with PROF SUBJECT Authors first 3 letters, EX. PROF SCIENCE WIL), move any remaining Story Collection to Fiction, remove the PB (Paperback) and E (Easy) labels from the collection by changing the record and replacing the spine label. My Cars, Cooking and Supernatural books are very popular and it wasn't until this change that I realized just how small these groups were. I will definitely order more for these areas.

I'm looking forward to seeing student reaction and looking at circulation for differences in non fiction numbers. I still need to finish up a small stack of War and put up the signs for each area. I have shelf markers from Demco that I plan to use, but I'm also looking at other options for making each category easy to find and see. I ordered lots of book stands so that I can display as many books face out as possible. I will post an update after the school year begins to share any positive reactions and any difficulties that may arise.

A few resources for your consideration:

Dewey Free Project Presentation: One public libraries journey as they converted their collection. Lots of great links inside the presentation.

An article about the library mentioned in the previous presentation from a catalogers view.

"It's Not About Dewey" from the Library Journal

"To Dewey or Not to Dewey" peer reviewed article

"It's Fine to Drop Dewey" from Library Journal

"The Dewey Dilemma" from Library Journal

We eRead: Impact On Our Students

photo © 2010 Zhao ! | more info (via: Wylio)

I've written previous posts on buying, setting up, and using Kindles with our students. Now I can report some of the data regarding using these devices.

Overview of the Program

This year we used six Kindles in a reading resource classroom. We have two 1st generation Kindles, one purchased by the previous librarian and one donated by our principal, one 2nd generation that I acquired through a Black Friday Lightning Deal on Amazon and three 3rd generation Kindles that we purchased using student council fundraiser proceeds. We loaded them with loads of free books and 15 purchased titles. These titles were chosen based on student requests and Lexile levels. Mini lessons on using the Kindles were given on an as needed basis by the reading resource teacher. Features such as the text to speech, dictionary and note/highlight option were the most used features of the device. Students read after completing their lessons in the resource classroom and every Wednesday in class. Reading logs were maintained by the students and a survey on reading motivation was administered before and after using the Kindles. The Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test was administered before and after using the Kindles. This test also provides Lexile ranges.

Summary of the Results

• Students read an average of 22 books (both print and Kindle books)
• 50% of the students rated their reading ability as not as well as their friends before using Kindles and after using the Kindles 83% rated themselves as about the same or better than their friends.
• Prior to using Kindles, 31% stated that they understand almost everything they read. This percentage jumped to 58% after using Kindles in class.
• Prior to using Kindles, 25% of the students rated themselves as a good reader, but after 58% rated themselves as good or very good readers.
• Students had an average increase of 12.6 points on the MAP test in English/Language Arts. One student had an increase of 27 points!
• Every student showed an increase in Lexile range after using the Kindles

We were very excited about the positive changes we saw in these students, both in standardized testing scores and in their perception of themselves as readers. Of course, not all of this can be attributed to the Kindles, because they did receive special education assistance in the reading resource classroom, but we do feel that some of these gains can be attributed to the introduction of the Kindle. We did not see these same gains in the other reading resource classrooms without Kindles nor did we see these changes in the small number of students from this class that chose not to use the device. Larger scientific studies would yield more reliable results, but for our own purposes this is enough to encourage us to continue using the devices and exploring the ways that they can help our students succeed.

Next year we hope to build on the program by using Kindles with the other reading resource classrooms and offering Kindles for check out to the regular education students through the library.

Does anyone else have data or anecdotal evidence to share about using ereaders with their students? I would love to hear about it.

Creating My Own PD This Summer

This summer I am participating in two self directed professional development series:

1. CPD 23 Things

2. Teacher Challenge

First I'll share a little about 23 Things for Professional Development. A team, including heavy hitters like Bobbi Newman, created "a self-directed course aimed at introducing you to a range of tools that could help your personal and professional development as a librarian, information professional or something else." To look at the entire list of 23 Things go here. If you would like to participate go here. I am familiar with many of the tools, but I hope to make more librarian connections, build my PLN, and get reenergized over the summer.

I have been visiting several of the other school librarians participating in the challenge. You can see the list of school librarians here and the entire list here. There are several creative blog names that caught my eye including Bookletting and Info Glut.

The Teacher Challenge is a free 30 day professional development challenge broken up into weekly challenges. I follow this blog throughout the year and they have great ideas and clear instructions for getting started. Even if you are a tech expert this site is a resource for sharing tools with other teachers that might be less experienced. On the left tool bar you will see a long list of previous posts that include tools like paper.li, Wallwisher, Photofilter and Toondoo. I am particularly interested in the Student Blogging challenge because a few of our teachers have expressed interest in creating student blogs next year.

Anyone else participating in these two PD courses? What summer PD will you be participating in this year?

Upstate Technology Conference Rewind and Review

The last two days I have been having a wonderful tech-filled time at the Upstate Technology Conference. This annual conference is completely free and full of wonderful presentations. This year I presented two sessions:

We eRead: Using Kindles in the Classroom & Harness the Power of Cell Phones

I had a great time presenting and continue to learn and improve. Unfortunately the session on improving presentations was at the same time as mine, but I will definitely be watching for those materials on the conference page.

I had the pleasure of seeing my librarian buddies strut their stuff. Fran Bullington led a session on using technology to "Ramp Up Reading". Lots of fun ideas like using digital frames to show off books, book apps, and Livescribe pencasts of book reviews. Kelly Knight, the Knight Reader, shared her strategies and successes on using blogs with her students. Check out her YA book blog and her school blog. She has really inspired me to do more with my school blog such as sharing reading lists for holidays and school events. This would especially be good for promoting non fiction titles. Cathy Jo Nelson had a packed house for her tech tip session. She really draws a crowd with her long list of ideas and suggestions. Heather Loy shared her expertise in Evernote and a session called "Web 2.0 Speed Dating". What a great way to share lots of tools in a fun, unexpected way.

I was very excited to see so many librarians presenting and many, many more in attendance.

I enjoy the time at conferences to catch up with my friends that I normally only see virtually. It was also fun to meet some of my PLN in person and continue to build those connections.

A few things that really stood out for me:

• the popularity of QR codes, both in sessions and on materials
• focus on mobile devices like phones, iPods and tablets
• lots of buzz about favorite apps

I had a good time and learned a few more tricks. I am a conference and webinar junkie so I am looking forward to a few virtual conferences this summer like the Reform Symposium. Maybe I will "see" some of you there.