Social Reading and "Book Stuff"

Good Reads

I have been a member of Good Reads for quite some time, but I haven't been faithfully using it for the past year.  So many great tools and ideas, and so little time!  This topic encouraged me to get back on and explore Good Reads though.  I updated my books read shelf, which I appreciate having gathered.  Sometimes it can be quite challenging to remember the titles of books I read recently.  Maybe this is a sign that I am getting older, but I can definitely see myself using this shelf to recommend titles to students...if I can remember to keep it updated!  
I also added a widget to my website (like the one below) with my latest "Good Reads" activity, which could help me remember to keep it updated also.  I like the transparency as well, and hope it gives me some accountability to keep reading and sharing what I read.  

Social Media "book chats"

I love #2jennsbookclub!!  I joined my first discussion last April, and had a blast.  They have such thoughtful questions, and I always love the opportunity to connect and collaborate with other librarians and readers.  The format of these Twitter chats is both engaging and overwhelming- I love the interaction, but sometimes the timing is difficult and the speed of posts makes it hard to keep up.

 I wanted to try something like this with my book club, so I created a question image for our April book selections and shared it through different social medias that I use (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat) using our hashtag #LGreads.  I haven't gotten responses yet, but I hope to encourage this at our next meeting- perhaps modeling it during the meeting itself and then following up.  Our book group includes both junior and senior high students, so their experience with social media varies drastically.  In addition I created a book group within Good Reads, and included this discussion question there as well, for students who do not use social media at all, which I have several.  
I am also going to open this up to the larger school community with an online discussion comparing the book 13 Reasons Why and the Netflix show, while that is still a big topic of discussion.  I am hoping to launch that within the next two weeks.  

Reading Resources

Epic Reads is a resource that I use often, and the one I find most familiar to my readers.  This website is truly designed with teens in mind and seems to appeal to them.  They gravitate towards the format presented there, and sometimes share it with me.  Because of that, I try to stay familiar with what they are sharing and promoting.  While exploring it again during this project I discovered that you can create an account.  I haven't found the benefits of this account yet, but will continue to check back on what is new, and what I can provide my students through this resource.  

Library Reads was new to me, but I like the idea of hearing from other librarians on what is new each month, and keeping up to date on what is happening in the publishing world.  This is always a challenge, and anything to help along the way is appreciated.  I subscribed to their newsletter, and look forward to receiving their updates.

Global Connections & Collaborations

This is one of the topics that I am most passionate about; I feel so strongly that we need to provide our students opportunities to hear from the broader world and speak to authentic audiences.  One of my goals is to continually broaden my students' worldview, and yet this is also an area that I struggle to work out the practical application.  There are so many opportunities to connect...and so many barriers to overcome.  With my own classroom I would persist through whatever barriers of time, language, and cultural barriers we faced.  Adding to this the element of collaboration it all becomes more complex.  Even with these barriers and complexities I am determined to continue seeking opportunities for our students to connect with the world beyond their classroom walls.  Having as many options and solutions for this as possible will help me achieve this goal.
Some of the ideas that stood out to me from the resources provided could be done within library programming, and others I will approach classroom teachers to collaborate on.

With Classes:

Mystery Skype- I have looked into doing with with geography, but haven't been able to interest any of our teachers on it.  Looking at it again, I am thinking we could approach this from an environmental/ science angle, and have students develop questions that focus on the biome in which other students live.

Quadblogging-  This is something that our English classes may be interested in, and if they are not I will explore as an option for my 10th grade Research Seminar class.  Perhaps we can incorporate this blogging element into our research questions to share with a real audience.  

Global Nomads Group- There are so many ideas here!  I have foreign language and global studies teachers who have been interested in connecting with classes of students in different countries, and I believe the resources and curriculum opportunities offered through this organization may help us overcome the logistical barriers that have prevented us from making more of these global connections.  

In the Library:

#GlobalSpeedChat- During our major spring library promotion/ contest of Bookopoly I will incorporate these challenges as some of the activities for students to complete to earn "property cards".  In addition to this program, I plan to include watching TED talks from the "Bridging Cultural Differences" playlist.  

Bridging Cultural Differences- This series of TED talks has provided me with ideas of people/ topics to feature in a library display/ social media series on this topic.  I am gathering resources to share in both the physical library and within our digital presence.

Global Nomads Group-  I subscribed to receive updates, so that I can proactively be looking for coming programs that could be stand alone experiences in the library, or that I can incorporate into collaborative instruction.  

In addition to the ideas that I gleaned above, I have also gathered hashtag ideas to explore, and added a column to my Tweetdeck on #globalclassroom to keep this at the forefront of my professional learning network and personal exploration.  The tools and resources I gathered from this lesson have been a real encouragement to me on a topic that I was beginning to get frustrated with achieving.  I am ready to continue being persistent now!

Connecting with Stakeholders

In thinking about how to share my evidence based practice and program goals with different stakeholders I am focusing on students, teachers, administrators, and the board of education. Through watching "Connecting with Stakeholders" and "Marketing Your Library Like Lady Gaga" I have explored the goals and priorities of each group, and ways in which I can reach each of them.  I focused on getting to know my stakeholders and methods to craft my message to reach each of them effectively.
In order to match audience with purpose I am exploring the needs and values of each of the groups separately.  I have gathered some information for each, and have additional ideas for how to gather more.  As I think through the priorities, needs and challenges faced by each of these groups I am also considering how to best craft my message to reach them through various media tools.

Students

Students want a comfortable space in which to learn and socialize.  They also want books/ materials that match their interest readily accessible.  I would like to gather more specific data on their needs and priorities through a brief student survey.  I am exploring the method in which I should conduct this survey to maximize on responses and student buy in.  I think providing a digital survey on iPads at our sign in desk is what I am leaning towards right now, although I want to also capture data from students who don't come to the library as frequently.
To share how we can and are responding to their needs I want to continue rotating displays and bulletin boards, but I would also like to add posters that share our circulation statistics (to battle the perception that students aren't reading, or that it isn't cool to read), both of our physical collection and our digital collection.  I also need to increase my use of social media.  Our library has a presence on Facebook and Instagram, as well as my professional presence on Twitter, but I need to harness this power more frequently, and find ways to point students to our web content.  I would like to increase student content shared on our social media tools as well as include them more frequently in programs and library events/ activities.  Once I get students following our social media I can build their engagement with the content provided for them there.

Teachers

Working closely with teachers, both collaboratively and through professional development, I know that they are concerned with student achievement, instructional implementation and meaningful professional development resources.  They are also pressed for time, so keeping things concise and purposeful is key to delivering a message to them.  To meet this need I have hosted "Power Lunches" to teach a new tool, share resources, or highlight an instructional technique.  In addition, I regularly send out a newsletter to our faculty providing resources.  I would like to expand the content in these newsletters to include evidence and data from the library, perhaps in an Infographic style.  In addition, creating a fresh ThingLink of resources would be valuable.

Administration

"Engage... Foster Potential... Inspire Achievement"

The priorities of our administrators is similar to our teachers, with a key focus on student achievement.  Although I work closely with our administration on the curriculum team, and am in constant conversation with them about how to best meet the needs of teachers and students, I realize that I haven't found a specific and concise way to showcase the role of the library in student achievement.  One area I would like to explore is the link between participation in our summer reading program and achievement on STAR reading assessments.  

In addition, our district is embarking on a Strategic Planning process, and I would like to participate on some level with the development of this plan and then look for direct connections I can make to the goals and vision that are developed out of it.  

Board of Education

The Board of Education will be focusing in large part on this Strategic Planning process, and it will be imperative that I can connect with them based on the goals set.  Before even embarking on this process, they have already asked us this year that when we present at Board meetings (departments present on a rotating basis), that our focus is on presenting evidence and data to communicate strengths and needs.  Although I am not scheduled to present formally this year, I will tailor my end of year report to address that request.

Going through the previous two "Things" and this one in Cool Tools has helped me develop these plans, and I am in the process of gathering this type of meaningful data to include in an end of year report.

Evidence Based Practice: Collecting Data

While doing the first part of the Evidence Based Practice lesson (Getting Started), I broke down the different elements of my library goal/ vision using the mantra:

Growing Innovators, Building Community, and Connecting Globally

I developed areas within each of these elements that I would like to target for gathering evidence, and now I am working on creating the systems to begin implementing some of these practices.

Growing Innovators

I have created documents outlining the benchmark skills within my curriculum for each grade level.  These skills came from the curriculum development that my elementary colleague and I have done using the WISER model of inquiry, the Common Core Standards for writing that focus on research, and the New Literacies (outlined and presented by Heidi Hayes Jacobs).
The first step that I would like to complete is identifying the skills that I have already taught within each grade level, so that I can then work on filling the gaps.  This will provide me with the data that I need to take to teachers to ask them to work with me on teaching specific skills.

Link to 7th Grade Document

The second step will be identifying how the skills are being assessed, and then developing assessment strategies to target skills not yet being assessed.  I especially want to work on gathering formative assessment results and student survey data, such as the one I use with my Research Seminar students, looking at immediate use of skills, as well as long term use of the skills taught through inquiry instruction.
To begin looking at the effectiveness of the MakerSpace I will start by gathering information about how many students participate in the various challenges provided.  From this I will work towards breaking out the skills taught within each project/ challenge, and assessing how students demonstrate their understanding and mastery of these skills.

Building Community

In order to begin gathering evidence on the effectiveness of my literacy promotion I created a document to compare the books that I promote to their circulation statistics.  I know this isn't a perfect system, because there are a lot of factors being left out (like comparing the circulation statistics of books not directly promoted, long term check out rate, etc.), but it is a place to start anyways.  I am beginning with a count of the books promoted, the books from that list circulated within a month, and the books circulated within 3 months.

I have also begun a simple document to track student, faculty, and community participation in library programs and events.  On this document I will gather data that is both quantitative and qualitative in nature, because I don't want programming to be driven by numbers alone.  Our students have so many opportunities, and commitments that sometimes a very worthwhile program has a small number of participants, but there was a specific group being targeted and their needs are being met in this context.  I want to show the value of that as well.

I don't want to neglect the work I do with and for our faculty and professional development.  To this end I want to gather evidence to show how my work with teachers impacts their instruction as well.  To begin this process I am looking at the analytics of things I share with them, and then I will correlate this to collaborative work that we do together.  I use Smore to create newsletters for faculty, and they provide some great analytics to start
this process.
Before the year is over I would like to give students a simple survey about library instruction and programming, and the effectiveness of each, as well as what they would like to see added/ changed.  I am working on the best way to implement this to ensure thoughtful participation.  

Connecting Globally

My goals for connecting to community and the world will be measured by a simple look at the number of "outside" sources we connect to, either physically or virtually, and how many students were afforded these connections.  Down the road I would like to look at the impact these community and global connections make in student understanding.

There is so much to do it is easy to get overwhelmed, so I am trying to keep the gathering of evidence fairly simple.  I am hoping that if I do a little at a time the momentum will grow and it will feel less daunting.  I am excited to have evidence to support the priorities we have in our library program.

Evidence Based Practice- Getting Started

With a lot of recent changes in our administration and school board we are working on a clear school mission and goals.  This is something that I am so excited to see take shape for Lake George, and hope to see create a cohesive K-12 focus.
For the library program, I am very fortunate to have Bridget, my wonderful elementary counterpart, because we have spent much time together in the last years planning and reflecting together on what is most important to focus on and build into our library curriculum.  We have fully embraced the fact that "Reflection makes us better", and taken every opportunity to do that.  Through that reflection with both Bridget, my administration, and my curriculum team, I have focused in on the goals of my library program, and boiled it down to the following mantra:

"Growing Innovators, Building Community, Connecting Globally"

All of these stem from goals for instruction, programing and professional development, and I would like to use them as the base for gathering evidence to speak to the success of the high school library program.  These are big ideas and goals, and I am continuing to work through specific, concrete methods for identifying and gathering evidence.  I have started by breaking each of these big ideas into concrete goals for this school year:

Growing Innovators:

• Continue to develop inquiry skills in our students.
• Identify and gather meaningful data in our library program.
• Implement a badging system in the MakerSpace.

Building Community:

• Move forward on the redesign of our library learning commons.
• Create and work with a library advisory club
• Increase promotion of literacy

Connecting Globally:

• Begin to infuse lessons with design thinking concepts.
• Build authentic audiences
• Invite in real world voices

Next, I need to develop a plan to identify successes and failures in each area. Some thoughts I have brainstormed to this end are below:

Growing Innovators:

• Identifying benchmark lessons/ inquiry skills at different grade levels to identify "holes" in the implementation of our WISER inquiry curriculum.
• Participation numbers in the MakerSpace

Building Community:

• Literacy Promotion ---- Book Checkout (Do the books I promote/ display/ booktalk get checked out at a higher rate than other titles?)
• Numbers participating in library programs... though I also want to capture quality participation and not only quantitative data on this topic.  

Connecting Globally:

• Opportunities to implement Design Thinking 
• Participation from community members (both local and global) in library programs and/ or instruction.  

News Literacy

I was so excited when I saw this as one of the options this year, as it has been heavily on my mind.  In fact, my elementary colleague and I have talked about making this a focus of our curriculum development in this coming season.
The post by Joyce Valenzuela had so much food for thought and practical application that I have spent a lot of time just unpacking what she has there.
During this time I have been in the middle of a lengthy research project with seniors on "Public Policy".  It was an ideal opportunity to introduce these skills and critical thinking conversations.  I used the "How to Choose Your News" TEDEd video to introduce the idea.  Students responded to the question, "With freedom comes responsibility":  What does this mean in the context of news literacy and research?" Independently via Google Classroom, and then we had a discussion about how they have seen this in their own lives.  It will be interesting to see how this transfers to the sources they are gathering over this vacation week.  I find that students easily recognize that there is false news and questionable information all over the place, but are then resistant to the evaluation of their sources when it comes to the application of those skills.  A natural tendency to look for the path of least resistance.
I am looking forward to continuing to explore all of the resources and ideas in this "Thing" as we develop our curriculum with news literacy as a focus.

Thing 30: Reflection

So much great learning this year!!  I so appreciate the motivation and exposure to new tools that Cool Tools provides each year.  Once again I feel like taking this course has really impacted my library program as it prompted me to explore new things and not overthink them, but instead just dive in and try them.
I feel like my social media presence and website have definitely been impacted- I especially love having discovered Tint to embed a large Facebook widget to streamline my process of keeping everything up to date.  In addition I made the commitment to purchase Smore, so that I will be motivated to create and share regular updates for faculty and staff.
As I worked through the "Emerging Tech" thing I looked forward to next year, and used that to help inform my goal setting for next year.  I know that I will continue to utilize the tools and skills that I developed this year as I implement many of these things.  I will also use these goals to make my upcoming ISTE conference experience meaningful.  I even committed to sharing at the Librarian's Playground on day one of ISTE because of my goal to share more of what I do with my PLN.  I get so much from other people and feel like I am ready to start sharing some of what I do- I feel a little responsibility to give back... and that is another great reflection opportunity.
Many of the things I tried this year were first steps in larger projects and I look forward to continuing to move forward with the library MakerSpace, Learning Commons redesign, "Read the World" projects, etc...
Thanks so much for the inspiration!