Forum Newsletter - Massachusetts School Library Association

Which Way to OverDrive?: Preparing High School Students for Independent Online Book Access

5/4/2021

Deborah Kreiser-Francis is the Library Media Specialist at Falls and Community Elementary Schools, in North Attleborough, MA.

Libraries are my (very beloved) second career, and it has been a peripatetic route to get here. To make a convoluted story shorter, with my MLIS I was able to qualify for a provisional Library Media Specialist certificate, but needed to complete a teacher prep program to meet the DESE requirements to move up to my initial LMS K-12 certification.

So, although I have four years working as an elementary LMS, I still needed to enroll in an official School Library Teacher program. I chose Simmons, where I needed to complete a series of courses, in addition to a secondary-level practicum. Lucky for me, Diane McKamy, North Attleborough High School (NAHS) librarian extraordinaire, was willing to take me on as a student teacher this semester.

While reviewing the practicum requirements, I immediately focused on what Simmons calls the Major Project, a unit with a minimum of four lessons. Brainstorming a bit, I considered what would be most practical for our current learning situation. With North Attleborough Public Schools, along with many others, in hybrid or remote learning modes, it made sense to me to figure out how students could still access reading materials, regardless of their location.

Tech Column: Google Tips and Tricks

5/4/2021

Margaret Kane Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School.

One of the long-standing jokes in my house is that Mom knows everything - or if I don’t, I can find out the answer to everything faster than anyone else. Of course! That’s one of the perks of being a librarian - we’re good at searching for information, whether it’s in a database, or just out there on the web. And whether you have been using search engines since the days of Alta Vista, or have grown up in the age of Google we can all use more tips and tricks to become better searchers - and preserve that librarian mystique of “best Internet searchers”.

Family Outreach During Remote Learning

2/23/2021

Jennifer St. Michel is the Library Media Specialist at the Dr. Kevin M. Hurley Middle School in Seekonk, MA.

Being a school librarian means wearing many hats. We manage our libraries, create engaging learning opportunities for our students, curate high quality resources for our teachers, and promote the ethical and appropriate use of technology. Our services have been primarily offered to our teachers, students, and administrators. When the pandemic became widespread in March 2020, my school quickly pivoted from a traditional face to face delivery model to a fully online curriculum. With this change in delivery, I found a new hat to wear: a new audience in need of assistance - parents.

Tech Column: Virtual Escape Rooms

2/23/2021

Margaret Kane Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School
and a winner of a 2020 Super Librarian Award.

When our library team learned that our high school would be starting the year fully remote, one of our first concerns was how we would introduce ourselves and our services to our incoming ninth graders. Normally we do a full class orientation, where new students get a chance to meet us, explore our space, and get familiar with all we have to offer. Limiting that to a website and a Zoom made that difficult! The whole situation was making us feel trapped, so we thought, why not lean in, and design a digital escape room activity to welcome the new students?

Technology Column: Quarantine Projects to Tackle Now

5/12/2020

Margaret Kane Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School
and a winner of a 2020 Super Librarian Award.

What can you do when you can’t get into your library? It might seem like this is a time when projects can’t get done, after all, we don’t have access to anything in our libraries - no books, no displays, no maker spaces. But any quiet time you have right now can be an excellent opportunity to tend to digital projects that require mostly your attention and a computer.

You won’t necessarily be able to finish all of these - some are starters for projects that you can work on once you’re back. But getting all the online drudgery out of the way now means you’ll be able to focus on the fun part - the students and the books! - once you're back.

(And of course - some of us have no quiet time. Everyone’s home work space is different right now, so don’t feel guilty if you can’t get to these.)

Tech Column: Check Your Website for Accessibility Issues

2/11/2020

Margaret Kane Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School.

As librarians, it’s important to make sure our resources are accessible to all of our patrons. When designing the layout of your library, you’ve probably thought about physical accessibility. Are exits and entrances wheelchair accessible, will people with disabilities be able to work comfortably at tables or reach printers? Did you know you also need to evaluate your website for accessibility?

Proper design and coding allows people with disabilities to navigate and interact with websites, and access the information and materials you’ve curated there. The World Wide Web Consortium has laid out guidelines for accessibility in its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and the American Library Association recommends that libraries comply with them.

Technology Column: Getting Students Oriented

10/8/2019

Margaret Kane Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School.

Welcome back! It’s the start of a new school year, and you know what that means - library orientation. When the library team at my school sat down to plan, we decided we needed a new activity, but weren’t sure what to do. So we did a little backwards design, focusing on what we really wanted the students to walk away from the library having done or seen. Reviewing our list, we realized that many of the items simply involved getting them out into our space so they could see all the different areas and options available.

While we were talking about activity ideas, I remembered a project I had done with elementary students when they were learning about maps in social studies. Students were given an unlabeled map of the library and had to fill it in - forcing them to walk around the space and really study what was there. We could definitely make this work for high school students, but I knew right away we’d need to make it a digital assessment - reviewing maps from a few fourth grade teams is one thing, but 500 high school students needs to be something you can handle online!

Using Technology to Promote Reading at the High School Level

5/7/2019

Janice Alpert is the Library Media Specialist at Lynnfield High School
and received the 2019 Peggy Hallisey Lifetime Achievement Award

“There are many little ways to enlarge your world. Love of books is the best of all.” – Jacqueline Kennedy

Enticing students to read has become a difficult endeavor especially at the high school level. Books are in competition with homework, sports, clubs, jobs and let's not forget, social media, video games, and YouTube videos. Every time new books come in to the library media center, I try to think of ways to display them in an appealing and attractive way. I’m constantly brainstorming about what would stop a teenager in his/her tracks and draw attention away from the screen of a phone and towards a new book release.

Technology Column: Screencastify: A Tool for Both Students and Teachers

5/7/2019

Margaret Kane Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School.

Our school district has recently begun the move toward one to one technology devices. While having devices readily available for every student is great for tech projects, one issue that we’ve run into is the transition from an Apple school, where students traditionally worked on Mac desktops, laptops and iPads, to Chromebooks as the primary student devices. In some cases we need to find new tools for our favorite projects, and make sure they’re either web-based or work as Chrome apps.

We had done a few videos projects in the past, so when we began looking for tools for the Chromebooks, we knew we would want something to allow for screencasting. There are many options for this; the tool we’ve been using the most is Screencastify.

Greenlodge News

5/7/2019

Sarah Bickel is the School Library Media Specialist at Greenlodge Elementary School in Dedham
and a recipient of a 2019 MSLA President's Award.

After many iterations of school announcements, we have found success (for now)! Greenlodge News is a weekly news video for and about the school created by fifth grade students. Our news reporters spend a week preparing each episode before it airs for the school community and town. In addition to collaborating with peers to interview and write up news reports, produce a video product, and use a green screen, students are more confident and self-reflective because of the experience!

Creating independent reading opportunities in Vocational Technical Programs

5/7/2019

Ariel Dagan is the Library Media Specialist at Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical School in Franklin, MA and
received a 2019 President's Award.

The following is a letter, written by partner teacher Suzanne Dodakian, describing the independent reading initiative that Ariel Dagan has started at his vocational school.

In October of 2016, Mr. Dagan instituted an Independent Reading through Book Love exploration with the Grade 10 students in Medical Careers. This was a very important initiative, which involved the students taking an initial survey to measure their personal reading starting point. They, then, were able to select genres of reading material that were of interest while being able to swap a book if they did not care for it. Students then completed a book form and tracked individual progress through fun game challenges. This Book Love initiative was met with enthusiasm for the majority of the Grade 10 students.

Tech Column: Tidying Up Your Digital Reading Piles

2/12/2019

Margaret Kane Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School.

If you’re like me, you have an ongoing “to be read” problem. The magazines that just keep coming to the house, stacked on an end table because I’m totally going to look at that article my mom mentioned; the books piled up on my nightstand waiting for me at bed-time; today’s newspaper guilting me from its spot in the front hall (where it replaced the one from yesterday that just went into the recycling.)

And for most of us, the problem isn’t just physical. We’ve all got digital TBR piles as well: that blog that always has useful tips and tricks, the digital version of today’s paper, the article your colleague sent over that’s waiting in one of a hundred browser tabs. And that’s not to mention all the places you marked down once as an awesome resource and promptly forgot about.

For the online pile at least, I may have a solution: RSS readers, an old-school application in the online world, but for me, a life-saver. These apps gather updates from all over and store them in one place - news articles, blog posts, etc. Then they’re ready and waiting for you whenever you have a minute, just like that pile of magazines sitting on the coffee table.

Expanding the Scope of Technology Into the Meaningful Spaces of Students Lives

10/2/2018

Andrea Zampitella is the Library Media Specialist at Winchester High School and received a 2018 Super Librarian Award.

I started working at Winchester High School right before the school entered a three year renovation project. It was the perfect time for me to start because I was able to contribute my ideas to the design of the new library/media center. One of the rooms in the library was a designated space for a stationary computer lab. Winchester provides access to Chromebooks for student use and the school is moving towards a bring your own device model. The need for a stationary lab is becoming obsolete in my opinion. With help from our Technology Coordinator, Kathleen Grace, and various educational non-profits, such as The Winchester Rotary Club and The Winchester Foundation for Educational Excellence, we were able to transform that space into what is now known as the Creative Technology Center, our school’s makerspace.

Tech Column: Back-to-School Hacks

10/2/2018

Margaret Kane Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School.

Welcome back to a new school year! Lately my Instagram feed has been filled with “life-hacks” - little tips and tricks to help you complete tasks more easily. That got me thinking about my daily computer life - what are the tools I rely on? In this column, I’ll share with you some of my favorite Chrome extensions - small plug-in applications that you install into your Chrome browser to do one or two small -- but powerful -- tasks. Whether it’s something I use every day, or every once in a while, there are a few that I just can’t do without.

We All Have Different Roles to Play... And That Is Okay

10/2/2018

Colleen Simpson is the library media specialist at the Lester J. Gates Middle School in Scituate
and a 2018 President’s Award winner.

The question of what the space of the library means for learners is something that is often posed to librarians and certainly we can come up with a lot of answers. Maybe you built a makerspace and now you are maximizing a portion of your library for hands-on student activities. Perhaps you’ve added flexible seating and movable furniture where students are working in both high and low spaces, standing, sitting, even cycling while they read. One of the elements of our job is to take the space we have, and see every inch to its ultimate utilization.

What's All the Hype about HyperDocs?

10/2/2018

Mary Gaeta is the librarian at Our Lady of the Assumption School in Lynnfield,
and received a 2018 Super Librarian Award

Transformation achieved! I glance around the library and watch inquiry unfold. Some students, with their headphones on, are watching YouTube videos while others are reading. Two students are discussing our subject, Malala Yousafzai. There is learning buzz in all corners of the library. Students are actively pursuing information. This is our goal with HyperDocs - students taking charge of their learning and working at their own pace.

A HyperDoc is a document with links to articles, videos, images, podcasts, and more. It is a place to craft a research unit with students in mind. The term HyperDoc was created by Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton, and Sarah Landis. It is an interactive document crafted for student learning. It is not a static document like an online worksheet (Highfill 68). For me, the benefits of a HyperDoc are that it is student-directed with choice and it is self-paced.

Elementary Column: Evolution of a Relationship with Twitter

5/1/2018

Wendy Garland is the Librarian at Avery Elementary School, in Dedham.

As librarians many of us find ourselves operating in a vacuum. I am the sole librarian in my building. Our teacher colleagues have each other for support, but my colleagues are across town. Twitter has granted me the opportunity to connect with others, observe what they are doing, ask questions to the larger school librarian community, and grow as a professional. I attribute the growth in my teaching in large part to Twitter and the innumerable individuals that have influenced my journey.

Tech Column: How to Technify Your Reading Challenge

5/1/2018

Margaret Kane Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School.

A Reading Challenge can be a great way to encourage independent or free reading in your school. At our school, we often tie our challenges to our House Cup contest, where homerooms compete to win points for one of the four houses in our school. We’ve tried several versions at our school: March Madness tournament of books, and a “shelfie” challenge where students submitted photos of themselves reading.

These contests have all been great ways to encourage reading and boost school spirit. When meeting with the House Cup team, I always try to see how we can use technology to spice up the contest (and make it easier to track and total our entries!).

This year, we wanted to encourage students to stretch their reading to new genres. We also wanted a way for the faculty to compete. We ended up with a category challenge: the library staff came up with 23 different categories of books (books set in the past, short story collections, memoirs, etc), and challenged the homerooms to see who could check off the most categories.

Today the School Library, Tomorrow the World

5/1/2018

Karen Sekiguchi is the Library Media Specialist at the Winthrop School in Ipswich
and received a 2018 Super Librarian Award.

For the first part of my career as an educator, I taught English as a Second Language in a variety of school and community settings. Now, as a school librarian, I have brought my interest in world cultures with me into my new role. Since becoming a librarian, I have looked for ways to connect students and teachers with peers in other locales, both near and far. Technology has made global connections possible in a way that did not exist when I started teaching. While my goal of reaching out to the world and connecting classrooms has remained the same over time, tech tools and social media have made finding and building those relationships possible in ways that were not available before.

For librarians interested in connecting their schools globally, many programs and resources are available, including both free offerings and those with a fee. Not only do these programs support and enrich the curriculum, but they also provide excellent opportunities to collaborate with classroom teachers. Currently, our third grade is participating in the ArtLink program run by Creative Connections, an organization in Connecticut. Our students have exchanged their art with schools in Uganda and Russia, and we have participated in three live video conferences with students in those countries. This opportunity was funded by a grant that I wrote with our art teacher, and it has been a true collaboration with the three classroom teachers, the art teacher, and the library. A similar program to ArtLink is Level Up Village, but the focus is STEAM instead of art. We are considering this exchange for next year.

Tech Column: New Partnerships in the Library

2/27/2018

Margaret Kane Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School.

Earlier this year, our library team was approached by some teachers with a typical request: students were beginning a new project, and would need to do some research in the library and possibly get some help producing a product to show their learning. But what made this an unusual project for us was the subject teachers who had come to us: the Physical Education department was trying a new idea, project based learning. PBL was new for them, and working with the PE staff was new for us.

The project centered on functional exercise: design a workout program to support a specific goal, such as rehabbing an injured muscle, or developing skills needed for a sport like increasing flexibility or core strength. Students worked in groups to choose their goal and then came down to the library to begin their project.

Secondary Column: Age of the Chromebook

2/27/2018

Zoe Keenan is the Library Media Specialist at Frontier Regional School in South Deerfield

One thing they do not teach you in library school is how to adjust your practice to fit the latest technology. It is the age of the Chromebook and I am meeting my match.

Chromebooks allow students to access the internet, explore databases and download eBooks, audiobooks and more. Our school has recently switched to a one-to-one program where every student has a Chromebook to use at school. This has been a wonderful step to teach all students technology skills and provide access to the internet for all of our students. Students can now access numerous learning tools for the classroom and resources without even stepping into the library. You now see my problem, right?

Our students grew up with technology, but that does not mean they use it responsibly or appropriately. Skills on using online tools, web searches and databases are key skills that need to be honed, but with Chromebooks being ever present, it is easy to assume that students already know these skills. Chromebooks can be a wonderful addition in the classroom, but teachers have to remember that this digital generation still needs to teach lessons on technology and research skills.

STEAM to Go!

2/27/2018

Emily Remer is the librarian at the Michael E. Smith Middle School in South Hadley, MA.

MakerSpaces (and Maker Carts) are being implemented by libraries across the nation to support the STEAM and Maker movements and to give students the opportunity to utilize tools, devices, and supplies they might otherwise never get to experience. However, despite the enthusiasm and increase in product availability, not all school libraries can accommodate a MakerSpace – they may not have the extra room, or open periods built into the schedule when students can freely use MakerSpace supplies, or staff to oversee the hundreds of small parts, or budgets large enough to purchase thousands of dollars of products, or ongoing funding to replace lost pieces or used supplies.

I was intrigued by the concept of MakerSpaces and how they could support STEAM learning when I started hearing about them a few years ago. I wanted to support STEAM learning through some kind of MakerSpace, but when I considered developing one, I came up with a number of problems that seemed to preclude housing a MakerSpace in my library. So, I took a page from public libraries that circulate nontraditional items like ukuleles, cake pans, and fishing poles, and created STEAM to Go.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet: That Is the Question

2/27/2018

Emily L. Warner is the Library Director at Notre Dame Academy in Hingham
and received a 2017 Web Seal of Excellence.

Today, various social media platforms are powerful tools which are used for many reasons: to connect with others, promote certain messages, and to bring social groups together being just a few. Most teenagers and young people today use social media platforms of all kinds for these reasons, to see what others are doing, and in some unfortunate cases, for negative purposes. Over the last year, Twitter has become even more popular, and often controversial, due to its prominence in our most recent Presidential election and in our current President’s first term in office.

On many levels, Twitter can be a great tool to use for promoting one’s agenda, speaking directly to one’s audience. However, one must be careful when using any social media, as it has the potential to cause trouble. In this article, I will be looking at how I use Twitter to promote my school library, various school-wide activities, and even provide a few messages of motivation! I am able to reach out to a wide and varied audience, especially tweens and young adults, as well as our faculty, staff, parents, and beyond.

Tech Column: Evaluating Your Ebooks, Why More Tech Isn’t Always the Answer

10/17/2017

Margaret Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School
and received a 2017 Web Seal of Excellence.

Over the past few years, our team has been evaluating ebook platforms, readership, and purchasing as part of our professional goal. We’ve conducted surveys, run promotions, tested multiple platforms and compared costs. And we’ve come to what might be considered an unexpected conclusion: for our school, and our readers, more tech was not the answer. After all that analysis, we decided to cut back on our ebook platforms to get the most bang for our buck.

There were many steps on our journey. First up was simply to measure awareness. We had ebooks, but did students and faculty know it? For students who were using ebooks, what platforms were they using, what technology? We needed this data to decide how to move forward.

Ignite Talk: Giving students a voice with Touchcast

10/17/2017

Laura Gardner is the Teacher Librarian at Dartmouth Middle School

One of the rules of an Ignite talk is to NOT talk about one tool and from my title it looks like I’m breaking that rule. We librarians are such rebels, aren’t we?

Over the last three years, the teachers and students in my school have created over 500 videos with our green screens and the free iPad app, Touchcast. We have four green screens in our library, three others around the school in classrooms and countless green tablecloths that go up in hallways and classrooms when we’re doing a big project. Several teachers now have their own channels. Some students even create their own videos at home, for extracurricular projects and of course, just for fun. This has fundamentally changed our school. The specific app isn’t what matters; it probably could have been any app. However, I do think Touchcast is the very best choice; not only for student projects, but also for flipping your classroom, school news shows and MakerSpace-style video creation. It is easy and fun to create videos that promote future ready libraries for every school. You can include video apps including polls, quotes, and pop-up images as evidence, all the while using green screens to create backgrounds such as news shows and of course, school libraries.

The Massachusetts School Library Association works to ensure every school has a school library program that is fully integrated at all grade levels across the curriculum and has a significant and measurable impact on student achievement….Read more…..and Learn more about MSLA

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P.O. Box 336. Wayland, MA 01778
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