Tiger Library Report
November/December 2014
WHAT'S NEW THIS MONTH?
New Teaching Station!
Ken at KLA
Ken presented to the Kansas Library Association in Wichita, KS, on building community relations through use of the American Library Association Presidential Initiative The Promise of Libraries Transforming Communities. Methods and tool were shared and discussed that would be beneficial in working with school communities.
TECH TOOLS IN THE BVHS LIBRARY
BVHS COLLABORATION
Spanish 2.5: Mi Ninez Videos, Audio Responses
In early November students in Senora Martinat and Senor Matson's Spanish 2.5 classes created videos of images from their childhoods. The students used Photo Story 3 to upload their images and created a voice over (en EspaƱol, of course!) for the project. We initially wanted to upload the videos to Google Drive and share them as links in a School Center forum, but the sharing settings in the district's Google Drive were not cooperating. We worked around this issue eventually got everything working for the next time we try this idea!
Honors Biology: Turnitin.com
After some very intensive collaboration with the HBio year-long research project, we finally wrapped up our instruction by covering Turnitin.com originality reports and coming full circle to review the paraphrasing techniques we taught at the beginning of the unit. Once teachers had the chance to begin looking at the products the students submitted, we met with them during PLC to reflect on the changes we'd made in our own instruction since last year. Though we all felt there was much to be improved, the changes we began to implement were helpful and necessary. In the future, we would like to continue to break down the research process for students, as well as move some of the skills we covered into ELA classes to re-enforce their transferability.
HELA 9: Web Evaluation
We completed the same web evaluation lesson and activity with HELA 9 this quarter that we did with ELA 9 earlier in the semester. Students learned about the features of credible websites and used Padlet to practice evaluating web sources in preparation for some informal research over The Odyssey. Once their research was complete, students used Smore to present their findings to the class.
Direct Smore Instruction
Student Collaboration in Padlet
Evaluating Websites
Spanish 4: Tour Builder
We worked with Kathryn Sanfle in introducing Tour Builder to her class. Students learned ways to manipulate the software in order to modify their (Spanish) verbal presentation to the class.
Beginning Acting: Theatre History
This year we repeated a project that we used with last year's beginning acting classes. Instead of writing a paper or creating a presentation to present research, students designed and performed a scene based on a particular period in theatre history. Once students presented these scenes, they acted as a panel, answering questions from the audience and explaining their artistic decisions and how the related to the research they conducted. All information was provided orally, save a works cited page each group submitted.
Government: APA Formatting
We have worked with Brian Mowry's senior Government classes all semester on a large research paper. We previously covered intensive preliminary research steps in the beginning and taught them to use online research organization and citation resources. Once they had completed research and gathered resources, we covered APA formatting and helped students cite sources correctly. We received several comments from students explaining the usefulness of our support, and we look forward to expanding our collaboration with Government teachers next semester.
Spanish 4: WeVideo
ELA 11: This I Believe Podcast
Our final large project of the year was aimed at supporting the ELA 11 team and their students as they created podcasts for their "This I Believe" statements. Each student chose a character from a book they'd read this semester and wrote a short statement for them. Then, they recorded their podcasts in Audacity and uploaded them into Soundcloud to be shared as a link in School Center. The final day of the project was designated to students listening to 5-6 peers' projects and leaving comments in a forum. Students will use the knowledge and the feedback they received on another multimedia project in the Spring.
Fall 2014 Student Survey Results
We sent out both staff and student surveys this month to gain feedback on how effective our program is for students and teachers and see what additional resources might be helpful to them. We are, overall, very proud of the results. We found that students are happy with the physical layout of the library and find us helpful and friendly. We also included questions on what digital literacy skills they felt most/least comfortable with in order to narrow our focus on specific skills. We will use these findings, as well as findings from a staff survey to make instructional, collection management, and professional development decisions for next semester.
Positive Points:
- Welcoming atmosphere
- Improvement of student learning through collaboration
- Greater use of libguides for units
- More technology integration
- Appreciation of extended hours and overall student support
Food for Thought:
- More current book selection in collection
- Greater opportunities for staff PD
- Better communication of library resources to staff
- Better space for audio/visual media creation
November/December Usage Statistics
- Library Collection: 129
- ELA Collection: 52
Library Bookings
- Library right and left sides: 201
- Professional Library: 64
- Class Collaboration: 20