Sunday, April 13, 2008

PLA Conference

I had the tremendous pleasure of attending 4 days of the PLA conference held at the Minneapolis Convention Center at the end of March and just want to say that it was an opportunity I have rarely experienced. The networking and socializing with so many different public librarians from as far-reaching as Texas, Michingan and Boston as well as Virginia, and Eden Prairie, Mn. Through the many opportunities and sessions I attended, it afforded me a glimpse of the similarities, not differences that we experience very day in our jobs. I especially enjoyed the discussions regarding Teen services as that was of particular interest to me. I personally met 19 authors, received or purchased 14 individually signed novels, as well as the sharing of resources and Readers Advisory, Web 2.0 sessions. It reinforced my thinking and feelings about how important it is for us school librarians to support and communicate with our public libraries. We can become a valuable TEAM that delivers services and resources to our community and we can work together to make our programs successful and worthwhile.

Thing 16: MnLINK

I am a user of MnLink. But there are difficulties. I try to collaborate with my Chaska and Chanhassen Public Libraries but it takes a minimum of 3 weeks to bring other items in from libraries outside of our region. Almost daily, I am requesting or looking up materials for my students to obtain from either of these branches as many of my students have cars and can go immediately after school to pick up. We are fortunate, here in Chaska that we have a Union Library Catalog and get items from any library in our district in a minimum of 2 days, most within 1 say. Students really appreciate and it helps us in that we don't have to continue to purchase multiple copies of many resources.

Thing 15: Collaboration

Recently, I collaborated with a Business Marketing Class in my Chaska High School. I worked with this teacher in developing a Fair Use, Copyright and Intellectual Property lesson for her classroom, scheduled a classroom time to teach the lesson, and then followed with an evaluation of the lesson. I will be doing it again this quarter and from the evaluation, the teacher and I met and decided I could save her an additional day of teaching if I merely incorporated a couple of other things in my lesson on Intellectual Property - Patent/specifically Business Patent.
Went very well and will continue to collaborate and change as needed.
Barriers: Time to plan/allowing time away from Media Center to spend in classroom teaching -- pressures on Media Center staff during that time...when 3 classes booked at same time.
HUGE Benefits outweight barriers...students and staff aware that we are also teachers and information specialists and can save students and teachers time and energy that can be placed in other areas needing expertise. Especially important to do followup evaluation so the experience can be maximized. I can't ever remember not benefiting from the final evaluation and changes to be noted for future presentations prove invaluable.

Thing 14: Reliable Online Resources

Exploration and the time I spent reviewing many of these made me want to immediately create a pathfinder for such things as digital books online, ebooks, famous poets and poems, folklore, mythology, William Shakespeare in entirety in print online...and most especially and useful to me immediately is the ipl site for literary criticism. A site that my high school language arts teachers will use over and over again. What a wealth of criticism organized in an extremely useful and easy way. I'm excited and overwhelmed at the same time. YEAH to MILI for forcing (encouraging and presenting) these wonderful tools for exploration in such a useful way. This year I have found Britannica has really come a long way with improvement to their online encyclopedia...I especially like Best of the Web on the right hand side...their links for example under "Afghanistan" are awesome and can save lots and lots of time browsing in Google. Another thing I noticed this week on SIRS Researcher is that they are not including weblinks to their topics as well as the Primary Sources. And for countries, our subscribtion database "CountryWatch" is excellent" with the useful sidebars and easy access cultural and political pieces included.

Thing 13: Subscription Databases

Haven't spent as much time as I should using EBSCOHOST, so I viewed the Webinar by Beth Staats using Academic Search Premiere and EBSCOHOST. Liked being able to set up personalized folders for searches, Journal alerts for which I have set up Journal alerts for LMC, VOYA and Library Journal in MasterFile Premiere. Was interesting to learn about the development of LISTA and look forward to more on that. AND set up two (2) new Favorites...books.google.com where books can be accessed online such as poetry, Grimms Fairy Tales, and many other classic titles. I also enjoyed viewing and using Galeschools and learned all sorts of information on grants available to schools, libraries and teachers tabs with special programs. Just being able to learn how to use and navigate in this complex database will prove helpful for searching for and teaching patrons where to find the best resources and how much more is available if we spend a little more time learning about these databases...and the best news: they're FREE!

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Thing 12

In using the terms "intellectual freedom" in these databases and meta search engines, I really didn't find a whole lot of difference...some were much more difficult to get to the information I was really looking for like kartOO but I think what makes the most sense to me is to use something that is easiest and most comfortable for the user. I hadn't used Dogpile in a while but this seemed the most similar to Google which I am most familiar with. I did like the way clusty created the clusters that made it really easier to sort the sites. Will need to practice more and use with more topics to really become familiar with all of these.

Thing 11

Interesting and informative time spent reviewing some new things I did not know about Google. I especially liked the currency exchange, and took time to look at some Google Videos with a very good one for Copyright instruction at http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=copyright&sitesearch which will prove helpful in my presentation that I am doing next week. I also spent some time in Google Calendar which I began using but couldn't save into my own desktop but will play around some more as I think this would be a very good way to keep track of my schedule because I could always check wherever I am. And I plan to help students who don't have Microsoft Word to use Google Documents which will allow easy exchange of information from home and school. I knew this was available but had never taken time to look at.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Thing 10 - Copyright & Plagiarism

Really am enjoying looking at this information as I am constantly asked questions and continually teaching lessons that need to incorporate this information. Looked at some new citation tools which will prove useful and can add to my webpage. Such as:
http://citationmachine.net/index.php?reqstyleid=1
http://www.easybib.com/
http://libweb.uoregon.edu/guides/citing/
And Copyright quizzes: (Great, have used these with teachers for Summer Bytes 2007)
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/p/peachj/edte230/copyright/quiz.htm (teachers)
http://plagiarism.umf.maine.edu/copyright/copy_infrin.html (students)
Plagairism Quiz: http://www.library.drexel.edu/resources/guides/plagiarism_quiz.pdf
Paraphrasing Quiz:
http://www.lib.sfu.ca/researchhelp/tutorials/interactive/plagiarism/tutorial/Plagiarism-Pretest-QUIZ.htm
Comments and Reflections:
It is always difficult to deal with the reality of copyright and plagiarism. Everyone thinks it won't happen to them. I feel my job is to inform and make aware but I never want to be the "COPYRIGHT" police. I am really pleased with the questions from our District Office, Technology Coordinators and Teachers who are continually asking for an interpretation of what is fair use. I firmly believe our District #112 is making strides in keeping within fair use guidelines. 10 years ago, everyone was violating copyright, everywhere. That is not the case anymore. With the opening of our new Chanhassen High School in 2009, everything we use will need digital rights and that is going to pose a whole new challenge as there will be no VHS, or TV monitors -- only computers and LCD projectors so the teaching materials utilized now in support of curriculum will all have to be made legal which of course, always comes down to money. There is never enough. And once a resource is used by a teacher, they do not like to give them up easily, without a good replacement. We are fortunate in our district to have a leg up on some great Video resources such as United Streaming, Online textbooks and Resources already being used to support curriculum....but this will be a big hurdle.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Thing 8

Dribbling provides many tools for embedding "Information Literacy Skills" into the curriculum. AND definitely should be added to our Summer Bytes courses for August, 2008. I think that I will create a section within my Web Page that will include these valuable tools so they can be more readily accessible to my staff and students. I didn't know what the term dribbling really mean until I went into this piece of our process. Valuable and I needed it yesterday.

Thing 7

I just used the RPC for my own presentation scheduled for 3/3/08. It is interesting and revealing to have such a valuable planning tool. I will include in all of my library media presentations in the future. This is extremely rewarding to learn about all these valuable tools - especially when I need all the help I can get in time management. WOW.

Thing 6

WOW...in trying to get caught up with my blogging and MILI stuff, I just gained and found several hours of research and copyright materials that I can use this next week in my Copyright and intellectual use presentations for a Marketing Class at CHS...and I found them in just 10 minutes of going to "Support Materials" in the Research Project Calculator. It will be fun to share this with teachers AND students as it helps teach the basic information literacy skills required within the framework of real-time research and curriculum guidelines. What a time-saver and helpful for us. Hadn't ever used it before but it will be on my Media Center web page for sure. Thanks MILI for helping gather and provide such useful tools.

Thing 4

Just this week, after contacting public librarians (Chanhassen - Suzanne Hunt) and (Chaska Librarian - Tim Olmstad) I scheduled them to come to CHS on 2/20 to allow our students to apply and sign up for a Public Library Card. I 've been asking students as I do my formal presentations and introductions to online resources how many students have public library cards. I noticed that very few hands went up. The public librarians were willing to come in during 4th block options and do a terrific interaction with CHS students explaining and discussing the many resources and online databases they would be able to access with their public library cards. They brought applications, upcoming teen events, and brochures explaining services and online databases available. The need for additional hours and support is constant as students at CHS can't always get assignments completed within school hours and really need additional places to go once they leave our school building. I learned some things about their support and resources available as well, and will continue to foster use and support for our teens and staff to access our public libraries.