Salem Library Blog Awards

Wow! I'm honored to be on the nominated list for Newcomers on the Salem Library Blog Awards. Thanks to Fran Bullington for her nomination. I began my blogging journey as a way to reflect on my first year and share my experiences so that others could learn from my mistakes. As my first year draws to an end I am grateful for the gifts this blog has given me, including connecting me with other librarians, encouraging me in those moments of fatigue, and allowing me to prepare for another great year in the library.

If you are looking for an update to your blog roll these lists are a helpful resource.

Thanks to everyone in my PLN for their support and encouragement this year!

1 of 361 at NLLD

I was honored to represent librarians, educators, South Carolina, and my state organization, SCASL, at National Library Legislative Day in Washington, DC. According to ALA there were 361 in attendance. There was a delegation from SC of nine librarians representing public, academic, and school libraries.

On Monday the ALA staff presented briefings on recent library legislation and informed us of what bills we should try to address with our representatives. Of main concern for school librarians is the Library and Technology Services Act (LSTA), the Improving Literacy through School Libraries (ILSL), E-Rate funding and the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, formerly NCLB). Monday evening I chatted with three staff members from Senator Jim Demint's office at a reception hosted by ALA.

On Tuesday we stormed the Capitol to meet with our legislators. I was prepared for these meetings. At the advice of the wonderful Fran Bullington, I created a cheat sheet of our SC legislators that included a photo, title, district served, committees, and any other pertinent information that would help us tailor our message to their goals and priorities. For example one of our representatives is married to a retired librarian, while another boasted a 100% voting record on social issues. This information helped me to prepare and our delegation leader even had copies made for entire delegation. Next year I want to add information from the ALA scorecard webpage and a district map of our state. The sheet also had statistics that I could use in the meetings.

For our meetings we came bearing gifts. I brought notes from my students and elementary students from West Pelzer Elementary. Thanks to the awesome Carla Nash for getting those! Our students wrote notes about why libraries were important to them on little dollar bill notes. I wanted to make the point that these funding decisions are about our students and their votes impact SC children. This was another great idea from Fran. I also found a statistic that states "Americans spend more than two and a half times on salty snacks than they do on libraries." I printed this on address labels and stuck it to little packs of peanuts. I found more statistics about the cost effectiveness of libraries on the ALA Advocacy page and printed those on a notecard that I attached to a little bag of "gold" gum.

My first meeting was with the office of Representative Jeff Duncan and my fellow school librarian, Kathy Sutusky, went to Representative Tim Scott's office. The student notes were a big hit with the staff and I hope that it helped us make our point. I can't say that we had any major revelations about libraries or concrete assurances regarding funding, but I do feel good knowing that we voiced our concerns for libraries. Unfortunately due to travel arrangements I could not visit more offices, but the delegation took the notes and gifts with them to share. They reported to me later that they were a great tool as the visits continued. One of the public librarians said he was inspired by our visual aids and had ideas for next year.

One of the major issues that has haunted me since I left is that we are not doing enough to show the non-librarian community what we do. We must do a better job showing the impact we have on student achievement.

What can you do?

Write your legislators requesting that they fund LSTA, ILSL, E-rate and that they vote to include school librarians in the reauthorization of ESEA.

Call a parent each day to build the home-school connection.

Create a monthly report to share with your principal.

Create an annual report to share with teachers, administrators, district personnel, school board, local government and community.

Use assessments like TRAILS to show your impact.

Participate in Snapshot Day and use that data to highlight our services and impact.

What other ideas do you have?

I'm a Winner!

photo © 2009 Antonio Domingo | more info (via: Wylio)

I am very excited to be one of the winners of an Echo Smartpen education bundle from Livescribe. To celebrate Teacher Appreciation week Livescribe hosted a contest on Twitter. Winners had to be the first to answer a trivia question about the smartpens. To see all of the winners check out the bios here. Follow them @Livescribek12 because they plan another contest this summer. Their site has many useful and short videos about how to use the pens and suggestions for using them in the most effective ways.

I have written about my desire to use smartpens and now I am thrilled to give it a try. Sixth graders are currently working on booktalk scripts that I hope to turn into pencasts for our state junior book award nominees. I plan to train our teachers on using the device and hope that it will circulate throughout school and help our students learn many different subjects. You do not have to wait on the summer contest because the pen is not outrageously expensive. Last check on Amazon was $121.

Anyone else out there using this nifty tool?

Green With Envy: Using Chroma Key

Last year at the Upstate Technology Conference I had the pleasure of hearing the keynote from Hall Davidson of Discovery Education. One of the tools he mentioned was the chroma key feature found in video editing software. Most people are probably familiar with the "green screen" effect during the weather reports on news broadcasts and special effects for high budget films. Well, it doesn't take much money or technical ability to create this effect with your students. I knew that our students would love doing this and it was definitely something new to them, but I didn't try this until today.

A big thanks to the Mighty Little Librarian and her post "I'm A Green Screen Machine" because she reminded me of this tool and prompted me to give it a try. I was pleased to find that the software I wanted to use was free and not blocked. I used Jaycut, although there are other options out there. I purchased a bright green curtain from Walmart and pulled out one of our Flip cameras. With a little nudge my library helpers agreed to star in the video. I downloaded a few video clips from Discovery Education's United Streaming and wrote a very short script explaining the tool and how I could help teachers implement it in class. While I manned the book fair my student helpers recorded the video then I did the editing. I was pleased to find it very easy to do.

In Jaycut you need to upload the video clips first. Drag the green screen video to the Video A row and the other clips to the Video B row. I trimmed the Discovery Education videos to correspond with the script and moved them around where I wanted them. If you are familiar with MovieMaker you will find this software to be easy. To enable the Chroma Key effect, double click the green screen video clip, choose the Effects Tab, click Yes for Chroma Key, ensure the color selected matches your screen (green in my case, but it can be other colors), and adjust the sensitivity. I set the sensitivity to 40%. I really wanted to increase it to hide a wrinkle in the green curtain, but when I did it erased my student's white shirt and blond hair. Just play with this until you get it where you want it. I learned to make sure there are no major wrinkles in the curtain before you record. I also suggest having lots of green in the shot so that viewers can see the clips. In my case the only way they agreed to do the talking was together so you can't see much of the background.

I used video clips as a background and I did not want the audio. To remove the audio, double click the clips in Video B, select the Audio tab, reduce volume to 0%. You could use the audio if you wanted to mesh the clips with the audio from your students by trimming the clips and adjusting audio for each clip. You can also use an image as a background and then audio would not be a concern.

Please don't judge my video too harshly. It was a learning experience, but I had fun creating this little video and can't wait to try this with our students. Two teachers have already expressed interest in using this for a project. One of our science teachers plans to try this soon and one of our English teachers wants to use it to create book trailers.

Have you tried chroma key? What ideas do you have for using this in the classroom or library?

Green Screen Demo

Two New Advocacy Opportunities

There are two new advocacy opportunities in my future.

1. ALA National Library Legislative Day: I am lucky enough to be attending this event in Washington, D.C. with the president of our state library association. I am excited, but also a little nervous because I take this responsibility very seriously. Now, more than ever, advocating for libraries is essential. I have been preparing by reading up on library research and the background of our state congressmen.

2. Education Administration Graduate classes: After corresponding with a university professor, there are plans for our advocacy committee to visit some of the graduate classes. Having an audience with these future principals will be a great way for us to build connections and illustrate the importance of a strong library program.

What would you like to tell our government representatives? school administrators?

photo © 2008 Eric E Castro | more info (via: Wylio)

Welcoming 5th Graders

This week we have been having school tours for 5th grade students from our feeder elementary schools. I met briefly with the guidance counselor planning the event and asked her if I could speak with the groups for a few minutes during the tour. She said that no one else has ever offered to do anything for the tour and she would love it if I wanted time with them. I decided to create a video in Moviemaker that highlighted some of the programs and activities that we have done this year. I thought this would be the best option because if I had a class and couldn't take the time to stop and talk with each group they could still watch the video to get an idea about what we do and get excited about the library. I plan to visit the schools before we leave for the summer to tell them about our summer reading program. All of our schools are pretty close so I don't think this will be a problem and I believe that I will get a better response if I deliver the information personally. I created a parent scavenger hunt for our rising 6th grade students to complete with their families at an Open House event. Thanks to Google Translate and a quick check from our translator I also have a Spanish version. Of course, the library is on the tour and I'll pull out all the stops that night to make sure they all feel welcome and enthusiastic about our library program.

The students enjoyed the video and left with big smiles and lots of "This is cool!" comments.

How do you welcome new students?

South Carolina's Library Snapshot Day

SCASL's Library Snapshot Day Information

South Carolina school librarians impact the lives of their students daily. Whether working with entire classes or individuals, we enhance our students’ education. Study after study has proven the worth of effective school library programs led by certified school librarians. As of yet, South Carolina school libraries have not been featured in one of these studies. Let’s provide our administrators, district personnel, school board members, and state legislators with data that demonstrates the need to support school library programs in South Carolina!

The South Carolina Association of School Librarians is sponsoring a snapshot day of data for our school libraries. We ask that each school librarian choose a day in the month of April, National School Library Month, to collect data, anecdotes, testimonials, and photographs to submit to the SCASL Advocacy Committee. The committee will compile the data and other requested information and provide each South Carolina school librarian with a report that he/she will want to share with their school communities and state legislators. Together, we can provide a powerful picture of the impact our programs have.

How can I participate?

Please collect the following data to submit: A) General

1. Type of schedule: fixed, flexible, or combination

2. Number of students attending your school

3. Number of teachers on your staff

4. Number of school librarians on your staff

5. Number of full or part time library assistants on your staff

6. Number of computers in your school library and on mobile laptop labs

7. Number of items in your library’s collection

B) Data from one day in April (choose one of your busiest days!)

8. Number of individual students visiting the library (not with a class)

9. Number of classes visiting the library and the total number of students in those classes

10. Number of teachers visiting the library (with and without classes)

11. Number of classes the school librarian taught

12. Number of items circulated

13. Number of individual student computer uses

C) Anecdotes and Testimonials from one day in April

D) Photographs from one day in April

Where will I submit the data, anecdotes/testimonials, and photographs collected?

The data you collect for #1-13 above should be entered in this survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/scaslsnapshot

All photographs can either be uploaded to the SCASL Flickr Account or attached to an email sent to fran.bullington@gmail.com

When is the deadline for data and photo submittal?

Thursday, May 5th

Questions? Have questions about this initiative? Email fran.bullington@gmail.com

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My Snapshot Day

I held my Library Snapshot Day this week on a very busy day. I have a book fair going on, 5th grade tours and 6th grade classes all day. Collecting the information for the day was very easy. Many of the questions I could answer right away. I kept a record of visitors by making tally marks all day. I have a laptop at the door for sign in, but I knew there were visitors each day that "forget" to sign in so recording the numbers myself would be more accurate. Having the book fair actually reduced my numbers because I didn't have my usual lunchtime readers and computer gamers, but hopefully my shoppers made up for it a little. Recording circulation was simple because I pulled a report in Destiny. I did have to go back and add the A/V items because I wasn't sure if I should could the laptops and iPods as one check out for the day or one for each of the four classes that used them. I asked for a second opinion and decided to count them four times. I put out the SCASL surveys and had my student helpers ask others to complete the short questionnaire. I put a copy in each teacher's box as well, but only had two teachers complete them. It was affirming to read the nice quotes from my students.

In addition to answering the survey for SCASL my district is collecting the data so that we can create a Day in the Life video to share with our district office administrators, school board, community, parents, teachers, students and principals. We plan to use Animoto to create the video and spread the news about our impact on students.

Have you collected your data yet? I hope to see high levels of participation, especially in this critical time for education. What are you waiting for?

To read more about Snapshot Day check out Cathy Nelson's reflections on her day.