Last Blog - 4/13 - 4/17

This week I have been working to complete all the work I have to do.  This has been an incredible journey learning the inner working of the media center and dealing with the challenges at hand.  Technology is certainly becoming a major focus at our school as we begin next week taking the Georgia Milestones test completely online.  We will be one of the first school systems to go completely online with the testing.  This I am sure will have major implications for library media specialists in the future.  I have certainly learned a lot from my mentor Ms. Peters.  One of the biggest things I have learned is that I do not know it all and it will take time to learn if I ever get the chance to work in the media center.  I will make sure to bring my passion for reading, working with students, and technology when that time comes.  Take care.  RR

Checklist Item 1 - Thematic Display

The thematic display using technology was done to encourage students to read!  Throughout the school students are given their lexile scores along with goals to improve upon their lexile abilities. In this display we took popular books that are frequently checked out and gave the students alternate books to read, thus the title.  If the students enjoyed reading a certain book, that book is linked to a similar book.  An interesting twist to this is that I used the app Aurasma and tablets located in the media center so that the students could actually view the book trailer on the new book.  Aurasma is an augmented reality app that brings things to life.  For a tutorial click here.

Checklist Item 5 - Media Center Activities Report

This checklist item was fun to complete.  I used Venngage to create the inforgraphic for the activities in the Camden Middle School media center for the month.  Some of the data was surprising to me.  I was surprised that the top three books checked out were all from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.  Number of visitors also was much higher than most people realized.  Finally, library fines or amount owed is very high.  These kinds of infographics can easilyl allow people to see what is going on in the media center.