SAGE Library News
August 26, 2014
Back to School
Welcome to the new school year! This is the first issue of the school year of SAGE Library News, the newsletter of the school library at Newbury Park High School. I hope you find the information useful. I suggest that you right-click on the links and choose "open link in new tab" so that you can get back to the newsletter easily.
This week's focus is on back-to-school tips like using video and Google Forms, as well a using social media for professional learning. Weekly columns include "Tuesday Tech Tips", "New Books", and a "Weekly Challenge".
Weekly Challenge
Each week there will be a challenge at the bottom of the newsletter for you to complete by the following Monday. The names of the challenge winners will be published in the next newsletter.
-- Sue Heraper, NPHS Teacher Librarian
Using Social Media for Professional Learning
Take advantage of Twitter to build a personal learning network. Even if you are fortunate to have a group of local teachers with whom you can network to share ideas and lessons, you can dramatically enlarge the expertise you draw on through online networks such as Twitter. Look for and follow hashtags that match your interests. You may want to follow @NPHS_principal or @NPHS_library. Jerry Blumengarten’s Cybrary Man’s website has a great page of Twitter for beginners tips.
edWeb
edWeb.net is a community built especially for educators and provides free webinars on a wide range of topics like assessment, game-based learning, mobile learning, techtools for the classroom, digital citizenship, and much more. You can attend the live webinars or watch the recordings that are archived.
Sign up to attend a free webinar LIVE.
Browse and search the free webinar archives.
Join a professional learning community.
Goodreads
Your library staff, Sue and Kira, are avid Goodreads users.
Earn graduate credit for professional reading
Wouldn’t it be nice if your professional reading led to career advancement and a higher salary? With the Read 2 Earn program, it could! Through Read 2 Earn, you can earn one semester unit of graduate credit from California Lutheran University when you read any Corwin book and successfully complete a written assignment. The SAGE library at NPHS has about 60 titles from Corwin that you can check out for free!
Educational technology event
Video in the classroom
Students love video, so a daily short film can be a great way to start the class. Check out PBS Learning Media’s Daily News Story videos, which includes supporting teaching materials. Another easy way to locate videos from the PBS Learning Media site is to browse the Newest Content or Most Popular categories. Other great places to locate videos include YouTube’s Education Channel, TeacherTube, and TED-Ed. Spend a little time finding regularly-updated YouTube channels you can draw on, such as John and Hank Green’s Vlog Brothers.
Tuesday Tech Tip: Google Forms
Get organized and save paperwork with Google Forms, which make is easy to capture information from your students and parents. You can incorporate short text, long text, multiple choice, check boxes, scales, and more as response options. You can use them in place of a printed class expectations agreement form, for surveys, in-class self-paced assignments, homework submissions, assessments, and more. You can even create forms you fill in yourself as you assess students. All data is time-stamped and goes to a Google spreadsheet you can then view, sort, and add notes to. There are lots of tutorials online to get you started with Google Forms. Here’s one from PBS Learning Media.
Textbook checkouts
Students were on campus last week to pick up their schedules and check out textbooks in the library. We thank our volunteers who helped make the process go smoothly, including teachers Darrin Carr and Leilani Alamillo.
We would like to finish the textbook checkout process as soon as possible so we can get the library back in order and resume regular library operations. Therefore, you may send students to the library during the first 15 minutes of the periods this week if they still need to check out textbooks. This week and next week we will not be open during student lunch, and will only be open for textbook transactions before school, during nutrition, and after school (until 2:30 PM).
New books
Create your own with smore
Weekly Challenge
1. Create a Twitter account and find some people you can follow who share your professional interests. Hint: look at @NPHS_principal
2. Take a look at edWeb and join one or more of the 36 professional learning communities.
3. Create an account with Goodreads and find some people to friend or follow. Hint: Sue Heraper will accept your friend request.
4. Create a Google Form to collect information from your students and/or parents.
Fill out this form for each challenge you complete. Your feedback is valuable. Winners will be announced next Tuesday.
SAGE Library
Email: sheraper@conejousd.org
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/sagelibrary/
Location: 456 N. Reino Rd. Newbury Park, CA 91320
Phone: (805) 498-3676
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Newbury-Park-High-School-Library/144832815607231
Twitter: @NPHSLibrary