Twitter: Have I told you lately that I love you?

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I just love Twitter. It has helped me so much to create my PLN and in turn has changed my professional life. I wasn’t much of a Twitter user until I attended ISTE last summer. Then I really “Got It” and threw myself completely onto the Twitter bandwagon. If you would have asked me what the single most important source for my professional development was last year, I would have said my Google Reader — hands down. I still use my reader, but not like I use Twitter — CONSTANTLY!

While taking a little break from processing a cart of beautiful, brand new books (I have a rough life, I know), I ran over to Tagxedo to create a little tag cloud  from my Twitter account. It sums up my Twitterverse well!

I LOVE: books, reading, students, teachers, gwynethjones (naturally, she’s my hero), ISTE, sharing, and feeling happy 🙂

Plus I overuse the words “seriously” and “yay.” But seriously…YAY! for Twitter and Tagxedo!!!

And if you don’t follow me on Twitter, then start now: @librarian_tiff

Realization

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  • I want my district to use Google Apps for Education.
  • I want to make a Facebook page for my school and my library.
  • I want better websites for the school/library/district.
  • I want the filters to stop choking us to death.
  • I want more teachers to come to me for collaborative projects.
  • I want to be able to share what my students create online.
  • I want my students to share their learning experiences with the world.
  • I want my district to really understand the importance of having our students create positive digital footprints NOW.

Basically, I want everyone to think like I do. Or at least listen to me and understand. But I really just want them to think like me, because OBVIOUSLY I’m right.

This has been my basic thought process up until this past week. I spend a lot of time thinking about how I want to change the world (or my school and district) and how I can get what I want. Unrealistic, I know. I sometimes have inflated ideas of myself and what I’m capable of. I chalk that up to my upbringing, which I’m extremely thankful for. I have the best parents ever — they gave me the best opportunities and extremely high self-esteem. Anyone who spends a lot of time around me knows I’m pretty spoiled. I don’t think I was overly spoiled as a child, but as an adult I’m used to things working out in my favor. I think this is why I have the expectation that I can force things into working out the way I want them to. Over the last few days, I’ve come to the realization that I need to change this way of thinking.

Realization – the state of understanding or becoming aware of something (as defined by Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary)

Now I’m not saying that I’m about to stop plotting and pushing for change. That just isn’t going to happen. Instead, I need to focus the bulk of my thoughts and planning on ways that I can help my teachers and students. I need to focus a lot less on what I don’t have but desperately want. Instead, my focus needs to be on working with what I have to support my students and teachers the best way possible.

  • I will help my students and teachers find success with the tools we have available.
  • I will show my students and teachers ways they can use these tools to create and share.
  • I will find ways to incorporate digital citizenship and making a positive digital footprint into as many activities as possible.
  • I will share our accomplishments and successes with the administration to show what we can do.

Obviously, I can’t just forget about my “wants.” What I hope to do instead is to focus on what I can do — what I WILL do — and use that to support what we could do.

Library Scavenger Hunt

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I’m feeling guilty for being a blog slacker, but it’s been crazy with state testing and finishing this semester of grad school.

So I do have something quick to share. Doing a library scavenger hunt seems like a requirement. I haven’t done one before because, well, it seemed boring. Then the other day I had a thought. I’m obsessed with my Go Animate avatar. She’s the cutest thing EVER. My kids love her too. So I incorporated her into our hunt! I hid 25 little Tiffs (all in different poses) around the library. Students raced to find all of the little librarians and describe each location. The kids loved it! Fun times 🙂

CMS Library’s Limited Time Offer!

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This is the title of an email I sent to my teachers today. I’ve done an obscene amount of weeding in the fiction section and I’m trying to give away as many of the books as I can to classroom libraries. In hopes of enticing teachers to take books, I sent this infomercial style email. The teachers got a laugh out of it, so I thought I’d share it:

Teachers —
 
I know that you are all VERY excited about testing next week. Especially since you are going to have the incredible opportunity to spend some quality time with your homeroom students. Some of your students are going to have a nice chunk of time to do some reading after completing their tests. I would like to think that ALL of our precious darlings are going to have a library book that they are already engrossed in and can’t wait to read. Sadly, I know this won’t be the case. In fact, there may even be a child that gives you that deer-in-headlights stare when you ask where their book is.
 
THANKFULLY, I have the solution to this annoying little problem. I have plenty of give away books that you can have for those times when your students have somehow managed to not have a book on hand!
 
Now I know you are busy and the last think you are thinking about is running to the library to get some of these books. Lucky for you, I’m willing to deliver! Let me know about how many books you would like for your classroom library, and my workers will deliver them to you classroom. What a great deal, right?
 
If you respond to this email with the number of books you would like, you can expect your delivery within the next day or two. And if you’d like, I can even throw in a free set of encyclopedias!
 
Don’t delay! You won’t want to be faced with a lack-of-books situation next week!
 
Your librarian,
Tiff 🙂

I’m a Green Screen Machine!

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First of all….OMG I got a new green screen!!! It came in last week and we are LOVING it! I reorganized my “office” – as if I have time to be in office, what a joke! – and transformed it into a filming studio. Check it out:

Pretty sweet, huh? And those big black cases are full of cameras! We have sets of both digital cameras (with video feature) AND a new set of Flip cameras, which rock my socks. Plus we have tripods and all that good stuff that makes life easier. Yes, I know how lucky I am.

I also know how lucky I am to work with such great teachers. They know that nothing makes me happier than having them come by and want to work with me to plan some awesome tech project with their classes. I had the chance to show a quick little example of how the green screen works at our faculty meeting last week, and now the ideas are flowing freely.

The reason that I decided to buy the green screen was for my 7th grade ELA’s poetry projects. Last week, they spent a good bit of time in the library researching a poet. They used the information gathered from their research and from analyzing their poets work to create a Fakebook page for their poet. This “Fakebook” is the best I’ve seen, and I learned about it on Kelly Tenkely’s AWESOME blog.

The next phase of their project was to create a music video relating to poetry concepts or the poet they chose to research. Enter the Mighty Little Librarian — green screen machine! Each group came to the library, did a little practicing, then we recorded their music video in our new “studio”! The following day, the whole class came in to the library computer lab to do their editing. I introduced the students to JayCut to use the chroma key effects. They did such a great job! You can check out my two favorite videos here. I did do some touching up in iMovie since these are the ones I decided to share…I just couldn’t help myself. Isn’t it great?? I could watch this over and over and still laugh every time. This is why middle schoolers are the best.

I put my favorites in the Friday video today, and now everyone wants to use the green screen! We are going to have some fun projects throughout the rest of this year!

edcamp Louisiana

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So this has been in the works for quite a few months, but we are now at the point where we have a venue and can really start pushing out the word — we’re having edcamp Louisiana!!!

I’m very excited to work with Valerie Burton, Paula Naugle, Brian Mull, and Carl Gaines in organizing this awesome event, which is the first of its kind in Louisiana! The big event is going down on July 9th at the University of New Orleans (we have a date AND a venue!).

Paula has posted about edcamp Louisiana here, and Valerie has posted here. So of course I needed to do the same!

I just finished our flier, which I created using Comic Life. Check it out:

Interested in attending? Know someone from Louisiana who you think would love to attend? Go here to register!

YAY YAY YAY!!!

On my mind:

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My brain is full of thoughts today, but I need to get them out. This post will be random and maybe a little scattered, so heads up.

I’ve been completely occupied with my Google Apps push. We would benefit from technology changes in my school (we are above average but there’s room for growth), and my teachers have been very on board with this idea. I’m really trying to be realistic about this. Being realistic isn’t my natural state of mind, so I’ve really been trying to approach this from every possible angle. I had a really good discussion with my district tech guy, who is great about engaging in conversation with me about this type of thing and willing to take the time to talk it out/explain things to me when needed.

The biggest issue that I’ve foreseen is the email issue. I’ve been thinking that launching Docs first and going from there would be the best route. I don’t want us to prematurely go all in, have things get rocky, and have everyone bail on the idea. I know that no matter what, there are going to be problems — students will push the limits and take advantage, trying to get away with as much as they can. That’s just what middle schoolers do. We would have to set the guidelines, stick with them, and enforce them. But we all know that’s much easier said than done.

In my mind, it all boils down to teaching the kids to be smart online. We give them too much credit because they get out there (fearlessly) and figure things out — they are not computer/Internet experts, not by a long shot. Obviously it is our job to teach them necessary content and skills. But the world is changing. We’ve got to teach them to be effective users, synthesizers, and creators of information. Do this by integrating it in with core content — duh. But once again, easier said than done. A major shift has to happen. I get upset when I feel like we are selling our students short, when I know that they aren’t being equipped with the important tools and skills that they need. I don’t know how or when a major change is going to go down, but if a change in the fundamental ways we “do school” doesn’t happen, I’m afraid of what type of citizens schools will produce.

Being someone who things about this so much, wants positive change so bad, there are days that I could make myself crazy over it all. I know where I want to see my school, I see schools who are there, but the actual task in creating a movement to bring about change is overwhelming. Where do you start? What’s the priority? How do you get others to overcome the fear to see what could be?

That’s the current state of my brain. And now the sun is setting, so it’s time to unplug and take the next 24 hours to recharge.

A Time for Rest

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I’ve enjoyed a wonderful week off school this week – gotta love Mardi Gras and south Louisiana!

I needed some time to chill, and that’s exactly what I did. After a great visit from my precious nieces, I spent the rest of the week at the beach! I was able to do some reading — Dead is the New Black, My Secret Hollywood Life, Vladimir Tod: Eighth Grade Bites, Crank, and Marked. These are all the first books of series that my students are devouring, so I’ve been needing to read them for myself. I see the appeal of all of them, good stuff indeed!

I also read (listened to, actually) Seth Godin’s Poke the Box, which was awesome! I’m ready to go back to school next week and START SOMETHING! Part of the problem I’ve had in the past is that I get burned out and distracted when I take on a new idea. I’ve got to find some balance, which has always been a struggle of mine. I need to start taking a step back from my techie obsession to participate in my personal life. After reading about the Sabbath Manifesto, I thought I would give this plan a shot. I’ve set up my guidelines (no computer, no social media, no texting, phone calls only under 5 minutes, no watching junk TV shows). I survived my first 24 hours, and I’m quite proud of myself. I’ll post again about this after a few weeks if things go well!

The Google Apps Revolution

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I love Google. People get all bitter because Google is so successful and, well, HUGE. I’m not bitter. Especially since I really want my district to take advantage of Google Apps for Education. I’ve been wanting this for a while now, but wasn’t sure how to go about starting this movement. I use Google Docs (particularly the forms feature) for everything. Recently, my teachers started using Google Docs for it’s collaborative features and they love it too! SCORE!

So this week, some things went down, we got our feathers ruffled, and I was able to pool some teachers together to get something started to try for change. After a meeting and some valuable conversations, there is a group of us that are hoping for the opportunity to get access to Google Apps for our teachers and students. How great would that be?!

This is all still in the very early stages. I am hopeful that we will be able to help our district move forward so that we can prepare our students in ways that they deserve. I work with unbelievable teachers — they could teach effectively with zero resources. However, they deserve the opportunity to teach in completely innovative ways, and I want to help them get there.

So this post is sort of vague and hopeful, but I felt like I should document where things stand right now.

Also, if you have resources that you think would be helpful (pros/cons to using Google Apps for Education OR anything that could provide a similar alternative), I would be extremely appreciative!

 

Success!!!

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This was an incredible week! I had more classes booked than I have any other week so far, which made me immensely happy. But the best part was that the visiting classes weren’t just doing library circulation and rolling out…teachers had me introducing their students to tech tools that I shared at the petting zoo and they want to use in their classes! SUCCESS!

Voki is a big hit, since it’s so quick and easy to use. Our 8th grade ELA classes have been working on their poetry unit, so several teachers are using Voki to have students create avatars to read their original poetry. One class completed their Voki’s with me in the library, and we had a blast! They had so much fun creating their avatars and using the text-to-speech option to have their poem read by their characters. They were so proud of and impressed with their finished products!

I also had one of my favorite teachers (that will be my roommate for ISTE!) come with her class to the library computer lab to create Go Animate cartoons using their vocabulary words. With a little more practice, they will definitely get the hang of using Go Animate and I know they will create more great cartoons!

I have four days of science classes scheduled for Glogster projects next week, too.

That’s a whole lot going on, right? It’s what I’ve dreamed of! I knew I needed to start keeping up with these great products that our students were creating with these awesome (FREE!) tech tools, so I created a new wiki. I’m wiki crazy, so sue me. I’ve professed my love for Wikispaces over and over, and I will continue to do so. This latest wiki will serve as a place to display and store examples of our students awesome web creations. You can check it out here, on the CMS Student Work wiki. I’ve already put a few samples under the Voki and Go Animate pages.

There was lots to be proud of this week. I’m proud of and grateful for my coworkers who are embracing my craziness and jumping on board so quickly. I’m proud of our students for the work they’re doing and the creating they will continue to do. I know that even more success is in our future.