Digital Citizenship, Digital Footprint & Digital Literacy

This year in the media center we are teaching a class called Digital Media to a small group of seventh graders.  We are teaching them how to make videos and take photos.  The products these students create will be featured on the morning news show, our school's social media outlets and our school yearbook.

We spent the first day getting to know each other and the second day talking about what we wanted to do in the class.  On Friday, we had our first digital literacy lesson.  We talked about what it means to be a digital citizen and our digital footprint.  I hope to create a Google Site that features the products our Digital Media students create.  The first project will be a video about their lives.  Students can share video clips and/or images of things or people meaningful to them.  I want them to think about what message they are sharing online about themselves before we get started.

I used a lesson found on Common Sense Media called Trillion Dollar Footprint to lead our discussion.  If you create a free account, you will be able to access all of the materials.  To help introduce the lesson, I entered my name in the Google search engine and we discussed the search results.  Everything that came up was related to school libraries, reading and technology.  They did not see pictures or posts about my family and friends.  I explained to them that this was intentional.  I respect my kids, friends, family and myself to be selective about how much I share about our personal lives online.

My plan is to embed lessons like this throughout our time together in class to help them understand how the media they create and share ties in with being a good digital citizen.  I recently read this article via Scoop.it, "No Longer a Luxury: Digital Literacy Can't Wait" by Troy Hicks and Kristen Hawley Turner.  Definitely a good read.  I am sharing it with teachers at my school because we are all teachers of digital literacy.  

Jumping in Feet First

Back in June, I had the privilege of attending ISTE in San Antonio, Texas.  What a great experience!!!  I learned so much that I had to unplug for a little while to let all the ideas come together for this school year.

Summer break is over!  Time to dust off my librarian hat and get to work.  First day back I was making videos and presenting to staff.  Jumping in feet first is the best way, sometimes.  

Those of us that attended ISTE were asked to share what we learned with the rest of the school.  Social Studies teacher Tyler Abernathy shared tips for using twitter and blogging.  Please check out his blog post for more information about his presentation.

Here is the list of resources that I shared with my colleagues:

Professor Garfield's X-treme Comics- I attended a session by ISTE's Special Interest Group for Literacy (siglit) where I learned about X-treme Comics, a web based comic generator.  There is a a free and paid version.  Students enjoy reading graphic novels.  I recently read several graphic novels this summer as part of our #bookbootcamp. With this tool, I can see teachers engaging students into writing and creating their own comics.  

Infographics- Teacher librarian Linda Doughtery shared her resources during the Digital Age Media Center Playground hosted by ISTE's Special Interest Group for Media Specialists (sigms).  Linda's presentation and website include so much information and resources for creating infographics.  I
saw my buddy fellow SC media specialist Tamara Cox's infographics included in this resource.  I'm ready to learn how to teach students to create this beautiful visual stories.

Digital Storytelling- ISTE's Special Interest Group for Digital Storytelling (sigds) also had a playground where we were able to play with different apps for each step of the digital storytelling process.  While researching the online resources posted by sigds, I came across Kathy Schrock's page 'Digital Storytelling Meets Common Core.'  I love librarians.  Common Core is all we are talking about this school year, so this will help me out.

Book Trailers- My Language Arts teacher partner in crime mentioned at the end of last school year that she wants her students to create book trailers.  Media specialist Julie Hembree shared resources for creating book trailers with young readers.  I think this will help us at the middle level get started teaching our students how to create engaging book trailers.

Aurasma- Media specialist Elissa Malespina shared resources for using the augmented reality app Aurasma in the classroom.  After seeing examples of Aurasma in action, I'm excited to try this out this year.

Videolicious- Technology education teacher Rob Zdrojewski presented "Students as mobile news reporters using videolicious iOS app." Another tool for using our class set of ipod touches.

Curation Tools- Media specialists Joyce Valenza, Michelle Luhtala, & Shannon Miller presented "Your School Library: Mobile, Flipped & Curated.  I plan to try out some different curation tools this year and create more videos for my teachers and students. 

What technology tools or projects do you plan to pursue this school year?

SC Midlands Summit 2013 and me

End of school in our district = SC Midlands Summit!  This annual conference was held last week on June 12-13 at Westwood High School in Blythewood, SC.  Check out the sessions and resources for this year's conference here.

I presented two different sessions.  Mrs. Brown and I presented together about the different projects we collaborated on this year in the media center.  Here is a link to our presentation titled "A Common Space."  Our collaborative journey started with our first literary cafe about The Outsiders which I first blogged about here.  The second presentation was about our school news show.  Here is a link to the the presentation titled "Broadcasting Live from Our School Studio."  

Presenting was definitely nerve wracking, but I was happy to meet other educators interested in learning from our experiences and being able to exchange ideas with them.  It was my first time ever presenting at a conference.  I will definitely do it again!!   

It's Monday! What are you reading? 06/17/13

Last week I finished reading:

Smart Girls Get What They Want by Sarah Strohmeyer- I liked this title.  It was funny, had some romance and a little drama.  Here is Mrs. ReaderPants' review of this title.  I like how she breaks it down.

Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park-   I would recommend this book to a high school audience.  This is a love story, but it also deals with family relationships and friendship.  As I was trying to figure out the audience of this book, I became curious to find the publisher of this book (I already returned my copy to the library) when I came across author Jessica Park's article about self-publishing.  Her story of why she self-published is interesting and informative.

Endangered by Eliot Schrefer- While visiting her mother who runs a bonobo sanctuary in the Congo, fourteen year old Sophie becomes separated from her mother.  She must learn to survive during a revolution and in the company of bonobos.  Great story!







How the Leopard Got his Spots: The Graphic Novel by Sean Tulien, Rudyard Kipling and Pedro Rodriguez

Marcell the Shell with Shoes On: Things about Me by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp

I started reading:

Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip by Jordan Sonnenblick

Here are some books I read during the last two weeks:

The Encyclopedia of Me by Karen Rivers  The format of this book is unique as the story is told through encyclopedia entries and lots of footnotes. 

Little White Duck: a childhood in China by Na Liu and Andres Vera Martinez

Bad Girls: Sirens, Jezebels, Murderesses, Thieves, & other Female Villains by Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple

Mister Death's Blue Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn

Stolen by Lucy Christopher- This story drew me in right away.  Interesting story.  

Getting the Word Out

As I thought about a title for this post, "Dancing in the Street" by David Bowie & Mick Jagger came to mind.   Being a kid in the 80's was the best!  I'm not dancing in the streets, but I am getting the word out in the streets about what is going on in our library.

My first line of communication is our school newsletter.  In our school newsletter, I share announcements about upcoming library events, research projects that involve the library, digital literacy articles from the internet and pictures of our students participating in library events & research.  Our school newsletter creator is awesome and always saves a spot for my library news.  I usually post the same information for the school newsletter to the announcement page on our school library website.  The school library website has been a great tool for sharing pictures, videos and library news.  I can easily update the home page with whatever information I want to feature at that time.

I send my principal and assistant principals quarterly reports sharing what we've been up to in the library.  I also send them an annual report.  I follow a basic format for all of my reports: program highlights, library statistics and information about collaborative projects.  If time permits, I include pictures and videos to help illustrate the data.  I also make the reports available on our school library website.  I share the link with parents in our school newsletter and the library website announcement page each time I add a new report.

In the past, I created a document with lots of information for my annual report.  This year I wanted to create an infographic after media specialist Fran Bullington shared how to do this on her blog Informania.  I tried Piktochart and it was pretty easy to figure out.  Thanks for sharing this great idea, Fran!!

Here is my annual report for 2012-2013 that I created using Piktochart:

I also help post information to our school Facebook, Twitter and Youtube accounts.  I like to post lots of "reading is important" type posts on these accounts, along with the usual school announcements.

I think sharing what we do in the library is important.  It does not take much time for me to put together a report because I keep track of everything on my calendars.  I pull library stats from the library circulation system.  I keep pictures filed by month.  I just have to make the commitment to sit down once a quarter for 30-45 minutes to put it all together and send it out to my various outlets.

Everyone in my school is supportive of our library program, but I still want to advocate for myself and what starts in the library.

How do you get the word out about what happens in your library?

Final report for 2012-2013!

The last few weeks of school were a bit of a whirlwind.  As I worked on a final collaboration with a teacher and end-of-year stuff, I was able to put together our fourth quarter report and our annual report. Completing a quarterly report really helps me keep track of everything we do in the library.  (I shared in a earlier post about how I share what we do in the library with my school community.)

Using Smore this school year definitely was a time saver.  It's easy to use and the final product is visually appealing.  This year I was able to compare our students visits, circulation and collaboration statistics to last year's statistics.  Doing this helps me see areas where I want to continue improving.  I also used this report as a place to share my reflections on the school year and my progress on the goals I set for the library program.

I would love to hear about and/or see annual reports for other media centers.

Happy summer and thanks for reading my little blog.

It's Monday! What are you reading? 5/27/13

Here is what I finished reading last week:

If I Stay by Gayle Forman- This book has lots of positive reviews on Goodreads, but I personally did not enjoy it.  The audiobook is only four CDs, but that was too long for me.  I think it has it's place in a high school library.  

Life Happens Next by Terry Trueman- Interesting story told from the view point of a young man with cerebal palsy.  Even though I had not read the previous titles also about the same main character (Stuck in Neutral & Cruise Control), I was still able to follow the story.

Rock God: The Legend of BJ Levine by Barnabas Miller- Very fast paced story with lots of odd ball characters.  

Crossing the Line (Border Town, #1) by Malin Alegria- I really like the way the author weaves in Spanish words throughout the story without sounding cheesy.  

The Accidental Genius of Weasel High by Rick Detorie

Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire- I'm not sure if this book if for high school or even some adults.  The romantic relationship is so dysfunctional, but I could not stop reading it.  I just had to know what was going to happen. 

Keep Holding On by Susane Colasanti- This story deals with bullying, sex, suicide, abusive parent, self esteem issues and overall tough times in high school. 

The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay

I read this book to my son: 

Mad Scientist (Babymouse #14)

I started reading:
The Encyclopedia of Me by Karen Rivers