"Lately I’ve begun to think about the fact that when we are teaching with images, we are not just teaching by using the images, or teaching about the images we use. We are teaching students how to handle images responsibly: how to find them, caption them, cite them as sources, understand their associated metadata. And with that comes the fact that we need to be teaching students how to use images responsibly within a world of copyrights and the use of materials created by others."
- Steven Volk in Teaching Students How to Use Images Responsibly

I've been thinking about this as well, as I have too many students ask me to print photos, then when asked where they got them, they say 'Google'. I may need to get on the announcements a few times a month & say 'Google is a search engine, not a source', but if you could help reinforce that, we'll be doing our students and their future professors/employers a big favor.
Most images with Copyright protection can still be used in a classroom setting, but attribution is always good, and students need to understand that these materials aren't fair game just because they're online. The flip side of that is for them to be aware that any images they put online might be taken, modified, and published by others, so they need to be careful about what they share. 
So - here is a 5 minute screencast about this topic:
https://drive.google.com/a/pamlicoschools.org/file/d/1eGto26SeWbB9uu7zKEK8teXSbdKgLgbD/view?usp=sharing
And here's a good source of info about images and Fair Use: http://library.owu.edu/Images/Images_FairUse
Hope this is helpful!

Our shared collection is no more. In this post, I explain to our community why this was necessary. This was in response to a post on TownDock which got moved to the beginning of the attached link.

In reference to the TownDock post of March 30th regarding the library, I appreciate the opportunity to clarify a few points.
The Pamlico County Public Library is housed within the high school and pays a nominal rent to the school district for the use of the space. At the time it was built, there weren’t many differences between the purposes of a public library and a school library. 

But school libraries are no longer the quiet study halls of our youth. 21st century school libraries are the heart and hub of the school. They aren’t just about books; they’re about technology, collaboration, and creativity. They contain areas for STEM exploration (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), creating multimedia presentations, and having Skype calls with authors and experts around the world. 

These activities involve a lot of movement, discussion, and active engagement. Public library patrons have made complaints about such student activity in the library. School administrators have been working with public library board members for years to come up with solutions to address our diverging needs. 

Additionally, the school has struggled with how to make the library available to students while still keeping them safe in the public space. Recently, a swipe card system was put into place which keeps the public out of the school building, but has also made the library less accessible to students and staff. 

Because our public library is part of a regional library system and the school collection was shared with the public library, books purchased with school funds for student or staff use were required to circulate to all ten public libraries in the region on a first-come, first-served basis. Meanwhile, our students were paying fines to the library system for books that were owned by the school. For these reasons, among others, the school decided to separate our collection from the public collection. This gives us the ability to use our own circulation system, allowing us to integrate digital resources and to more readily meet the curricular needs of our school.

In order to maintain this separate collection, meet the demands of a 21st century school library program, and address student safety issues, we need a space within the library that is not open to the public. The room that has recently been the children’s room opens directly to the school, so can be safely accessed without a swipe pass, and was in fact used by the school system for decades. 

You may recall that at the beginning of this school year, the library was rearranged and what had been the young adult room was converted into a quiet study space. This move was done in one week without closing down the library. That is why, once it was agreed by both school and library administrators that it made sense for the school to reclaim the former children’s room, a month’s notice seemed sufficient. So on February 16th, a formal request was made for the school to be granted use of that room by March 15th. 

While it is unfortunate that on March 29th the library temporarily closed, the decision to do so was not because they had little notice. I recognize that the public library is a valuable resource to our community. I hope the citizens of Pamlico County agree that we also have a responsibility to do what is best for our students. 

Thank you, 
Jen Baker, MLS
School Library Media Coordinator
Pamlico County High School

Eventually I'll incorporate infographics, but for now, I'm just going to drop some data here.

Total # students in library this week (Short week due to Teacher Workday):  570 ( 351 during CANES Lunch)
Books in: ~122    Books out: ~ 151  (this is how many were documented, may be low, does not include renewals)
Provided print/digital resources for 6 teachers
Supervised 58 students doing class projects
Helped students print 23 documents for classes
Provided reader's advisory and/or holds services for 36 students
Provided research, citation, or project assistance for 49 students
265 hits on canesmedia.org

Enrichment activities provided/utilized: Chess + board games during CANES lunch and after school, sensory materials to explore, brought African Dwarf frogs to the library this week - naming contest in progress, LaQ building supplies, color printing,  periodicals, Ripley's & Guiness books, animated short videos during CANES lunch on Halloween.

When I tell other librarians that I work at a combined public and high school library, the question I hear most often is "How does that work?". This post is intended to address that question.

SPACE

The public has an outside entrance, and the school has an inside entrance.  The main area of the library houses the circulation desk and the adult collection (fiction, non-fiction, biography, video and audio).  There is a separate children's room and a separate young adult room which is about 600 square feet.  In addition, there is a meeting room, a tutoring room, several storage areas, and two offices, one for the public library director and one for me and my assistant.  My office is in the process of becoming the school's project room/makerspace.  I'll post more on that later.

COLLECTION

Our library is part of a three-county regional library system, so we share our collection with eight other libraries.  This has advantages and disadvantages.  When one of our teachers needs multiple copies of a title, I am usually able to round up quite a few just by pulling from other branches.  However, high-interest new books purchased by the school for our students also go out to patrons in other counties so may not be available to our students when they want them.  We have the largest collection of YA fiction in the region, but also the largest collection of young adult patrons, so it probably balances out.  One problem is that I can't really tell.  Because our circulation system was established with the shared collection, books owned by the public library and books owned by the high school aren't separated in the system, making it difficult to obtain circulation data.  

STAFF and POLICIES

I'm the high school media coordinator and have a full-time media assistant.  The public library has a full-time library director and a full-time children's librarian, along with several part-time and substitute library assistants.  There are usually 2-3 public library staff members in the library during the school day.  They help with circulation and reader's advisory when I am not available.  

The regional office handles cataloging and some of the processing.  They would prefer that I not make any changes to the way they have entered the records.  To make changes, I am supposed to send the books to them via courier. 

Students are bound by most of the regional library policies, such as circulation times, renewal limits, and fee accrual. Because the county library director understands the unique needs of our students, she allows some flexibility for them regarding ability to check out books when fines are owed or when books are overdue. 

COLLABORATION

One of the main advantages of sharing our space is the ease of collaboration between the school and the library. Teachers are able to easily converse with the public library director.  For example, the art teachers are able to coordinate student displays during their planning periods.  Resource requests are quickly addressed, such as when the Friends of the Library provided a set of books for a book club one of our English teachers started this semester.  Students help with the semi-annual library book sale and some of the holiday events. The Friends have a college scholarship that students who have been active at the library can apply for.  I am currently working with the public library to develop a database of community volunteers who can speak or provide special programming in our school or in the library, and a Teen Library Council representative will be attending Friends of the Library and Library Board meetings. 

MOVING FORWARD

We are gradually shifting from a traditional school library to a learning commons with a small makerspace.  Students regularly come into the library to work on group projects or videos.  During our new Smart Lunch (CANES Lunch), we often have more than fifty students in here.  They behave very well, but that many teenagers can be overwhelming for some of the public library's elderly patrons.  The number of complaints has been going down as the students get used to this privilege, and we frequently hear compliments!  I am working on inventorying the high school book collection and the catalogers are making formal notes so that the next time we change circulation systems, the high school collection can be set up as a virtual branch.  That will make it much easier for me to analyse data and to properly complete the annual report the state requires, as well as to set separate policies for the students and staff. 

Earlier this month, I visited 2 high school libraries in Buncombe County, then attended the NCSLMA conference. Having missed 3 1/2 days of school, last week was super-busy playing catch-up. Today was the first day that seemed like things were back in somewhat of a routine, but I'm already getting more input online through webinars and TL News Night.

So - here are just a few of the MANY ideas I brought back with me from all these various sources.

• Implement a student blog where they can share poems, stories, essays, artwork, videos, etc. - so they can participate in the library site and not have it be just a 'warehouse of information'.
  
• Price out plexiglass cut to table size so students can collaborate on them Hunt-Library-Style
• Post library learning targets that are about life skills, not library skills
• Create a digital toolbox to be a matchmaker between teachers/students & digital tools
• Share with the community ~ make library Twitter & Instagram accounts & use them (and the YouTube account) regularly
• Look for connections/extensions - lots of authors enjoy skyping with classes - set up some CANES lunch author Skypes. 
• Talk with the students about what they want to learn how to do - then make it happen in our creation center
• Set out one & done activities during CANES lunch - like Perler beads, design challenges, ColAR & magnetic poetry
• Get teachers to post what they're reading in the hallways to build reading culture in the schools - model reading challenging material & struggling with it!
• Schedule a Tech Tuesday for digital resources (NCWiseOwl & EasyBib)
• Plan for transformative, interactive displays: "help me pick out books that exemplify this quote:..."
• Focus less on helping students find resources & more on helping them know what to do with the resources
• Let kids figure out how to mount & move the green screen - design contest w/ budgets, etc. 
• Be aware of my lens & seek to understand the students' lenses.  Be intentional about actively promoting positive racial identity.
• Stream events in the library: ALA Youth Media Awards, Citizen Science, etc.
• Build community resource database w/ public librarian
• Make usage data sheet & keep track!

SO - that's just a fraction of the ideas I gained in the past 2 weeks.  There are still so many resources to sift through!  This will keep me busy for a while, though, and will help me develop my PDP goals (yes, I'm a little late on that!)

Next post:  How this public/high school library works & thoughts about how to leverage that partnership for student learning.

Last spring,  Sedley Abercrombie invited me and two other school librarians to co-host a new Twitter chat she was starting for NC Teacher Librarians.  I've gained a lot from my Twitter PLN so I was eager to sign on!  One of the many connections I've made through #nctlchat was Tavia Clark, whose blog post inspired me to set up an accountability network for educators who want to blog more frequently.  With her help, the #nctlblog challenge was born.  It started on the first of September, and 3 weeks later, I have yet to post anything.

My procrastination made me think about the assignments we give our students and their struggles to complete them.  Do they understand what is expected of them?  Do they have the background skills and knowledge they need to approach the problem with confidence?  Are there social obstacles that we can eliminate or minimize?  Do we unknowingly set up hurdles that make assignments more difficult than they need to be?

The first challenge I've encountered has been the parameters I set for myself.  I wanted to separate my blog from my web page, so I created a new blogging site on Wordpress.  I already visit Weebly several times a week to update this site and the nctlchat site, so creating a separate site presented an unnecessary hurdle. How many hurdles do we set up for students by setting inflexible parameters?  By simply eliminating the distinction between sites, I make it so much easier for myself to meet my goals.  

This made me think about how we communicate with students.  So much at our school is done via email. We try to 'train' our students to check their email, and it is a good habit to get into.  My youngest has had that lesson reinforced now that she's in college and checking her email regularly has saved her from several bad grades and from traipsing across campus to attend classes that had been cancelled.  But if email is the only option we're providing our students, we're probably setting up hurdles.  I have a contact me form on my site, but I need to do more.  Michele Luhtala talked in last year's NCSLMA Keynote about having a Google phone number so that students could text her for help.  Remind 101 is another option.  Teachers Tech Workshop posted 7 Free Group Text Messaging Tools for Teachers with short reviews and links to each one.  I will be choosing at least one new communication method this week.

Another hurdle I've encountered has been my own perfectionism.  I want the posts I make to be exemplary, with engaging images, clever wording, and evidence of deep thought.  I'm a lousy photographer, my vocabulary choices tend to be ostentatious already, and my thought process runs wide rather than deep.  Accepting these limitations while striving to improve in those areas makes me feel a little vulnerable, but pushes me to leave that comfort zone and grow.  If I want to see that in our students, I need to be willing to experience it myself.  I need to take the risk to submit something that I'm not sure about and be willing to get negative feedback.

Still, do our grading practices encourage this type of growth?  If a student's efforts improve over the semester, can their grades reflect that, or does poor work at the beginning limit their potential for the rest of the term?  My husband does a lot of technical writing, and mistakes made in a report can be a problem, but a quick email can usually rectify any errors that were missed before the 'final' report was sent out.  While we don't want students to feel entitled to second chances, offering them on occasion isn't going to make them less prepared for the 'real world'.  

Finally, it's been a busy year so far and I've found myself more exhausted than normal when I get home.  I just want some down time to read, watch TV, and sleep.  Our kids need that, too.  We ask a lot of them.  I don't think I could get up and catch a bus at 6:30 every morning, then be expected to sit still and quiet for the better part of 7 hours no matter how engaging the content.  I need time to process what I'm taking in, time to have some choice about what I'm thinking, and time to prepare myself for challenges that are coming up in my day, not to mention time to deal with the drama that invariably arises when in close proximity to 500 teenagers and their overburdened teachers.

I think that's part of what our new 'Smart Lunch' offers: an hour in the middle of the day to regroup and recharge.  I've been trying to offer that to the 150-215 students who've been coming into the library during that hour over the past two weeks.  It's difficult to meet the needs of such a diverse group, but I think we're getting there.  Some students need to sit alone and read quietly.  Others want some time to just chill with their friends.  Some need a space to feel comfortable and loved in the middle of the day and seek time with their 'significant other' (those are my biggest challenge!). 

I had hoped to use the Canes Lunch time as a time to introduce Making/Tinkering to our kids, but I think for now, this unstructured time in the middle of the day is helping them in ways that can't be measured.  They've seemed more relaxed to me this year.  Hopefully, that is making their minds more flexible and open to new input, making their defense mechanisms a little less likely to kick in, making them feel more respected as individuals and therefore more willing to reach out of their own comfort zones, take their own risks, and grow.

So there you have it.  My first #nctlbog post.  I didn't address the suggestions we posted - the introduction of myself and my library or my goals for the year.  I suppose this could suffice as a post about the challenges I face in my library.  I am my own biggest challenge and my own biggest asset.  As I go through this year, my second full year of school librarianship, I want to apply what I know about myself, my profession, my school, and my students to focus my energy where it can do the most good. I want to take time to process what I learn.  I want to challenge my own assumptions.  Most of all, I want to stop trying so hard to be awesome.  I just want to be the school librarian that the students and staff at PCHS need me to be, whatever that happens to be each day. 

Joyce Valenza posted a Tweet this morning, linking to her blog post about an open course on Digital Storytelling (http://ds106.us/).  It's a great site for many reasons, but I found something there I didn't know I needed.  It's a challenge called Daily Create.  Every day, for the past 835 days, there has been a new creative challenge posted.  Design a hazard symbol, write the last words of a famous person, take a photo of mis-matched socks in a public place.  Today's challenge was to create a book spine story.  I'd seen this idea before, probably on Pinterest, but today, having a few spare minutes, I decided to give it a try.  

Choosing the books was more difficult than I had thought it would be, and was somewhat hampered by our cataloging department's propensity for covering up part of a title with the spine label.  But I finally assembled my masterpiece and snapped a picture.  

I edited my picture in Paper Artist, which I had installed on my phone but never used.  The titles didn't show up well with some of the filters, but this one seemed to highlight them just enough.  The app was easy to use and made my poem into a more interesting image than it would have otherwise been.  

As I move toward summer break, which is quickly filling up with obligations, I realize that this challenge may be just what I need to stretch me a bit, both creatively and technologically.  So, I'm going to try Daily Create, but with a caveat.  If I feel uninspired by the day's Daily Create, I can substitute a project of my own using a tool I haven't yet tried.  I most likely won't post many of my efforts here. I may Tweet out some of them (@caneslibrarian), or I may keep  them to myself.  But I will be pushing myself to try something new, and hopefully making some discoveries along the way.

Edit:  I sent an e-mail to the English teachers after I wrote this post, letting them know this activity was available to their students. One of our English classes had to make an emergency visit to the library the next day due to electrical problems in the classroom.  She suggested I get the students to do this while she re-grouped.  The freshman English teacher brought her two honors classes in, too.  I guess this is an example of 'if you build it, they will come'.  Here are some of the poems created in the library.

When students conduct research online, they usually head straight to Google.  Depending on their search needs, that may be the best place to go.  (I'll be discussing advanced Google Searches soon)   Frequently, however, they would be better off searching a database, and we have access to plenty of those!

On our home screen are a few of our subscription services, but today I want to touch on one of the hidden treasures of NC Wiseowl. As we go through the school year, I'll continue sharing NC Wiseowl resources with you.


Let's start with Grolier Online.  It's one of the links on the left-hand side of the page.  Here's what you find when you click the link: 

Along the left are links to specialized databases within Grolier, such as the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana, Lands and Peoples, and the New Book of Popular Science. Each of these has great features and I will be discussing them in more depth in future posts.  For now, I just want to make sure you know they exist and are available!

Also on this page, you will find current topics in the news, what happened today in history, an atlas, and teacher resources.  There is also a search engine which will search all of the databases in Grolier Online.  When your results come up, you will be able to tell which database they came from and narrow your selections based on that, or based on media type.  You will also find links to authoritative internet sources that are appropriate for students.  

When you have a few extra minutes, take some time and look around NC Wiseowl.  There are so many treasures buried there - let's start uncovering them!  (Screenshots of the Grolier Online Databases are scrolling below.)

I first learned about NoveList when I was in library school, and it remains one of my favorite resources.  It is a readers' advisory database, which basically means that it does for books what Pandora does for music.  (If you aren't using Pandora, you should be!)  NoveList Plus breaks books down into components such as tone, writing style, subject and location to help you find other books with similar components.   

Start by searching for a book you've already read and liked.  NoveList Plus will pull up a brief description of the book where you will find links to title read-alikes and author read-alikes.  There will also be a link to the author's other books (if any). For more detailed information, click on the book's title and you will be taken to a new page.  Along the side of the page, you will see hyperlinked read-alikes for that title.  Or, you can choose what aspects of the book appealed to you and NoveList Plus will look for other titles that contain the same components.  

NoveList Plus also maintains 'Best of' lists for easy browsing, 'If you like...' suggestions for popular titles, and multiple lists by genre or topic.  Genres are often broken down into subgenre.  For example, the romance for teens genre is broken down into contemporary, paranormal, fantasy and classic.

NoveList Plus is available free through NCLive to all North Carolina residents who have a library card. Click on the 'Books and Literature' link and then scroll down to click on NoveList Plus.  You will probably be asked to log in at this point.  Choose your home library from the drop-down menu.  You will need to contact your library for the password, but in our region, the password is your library card number.  

If you are a public school student or staff member, you can also access NoveList Plus through NCWiseowl.  Click on 'High School Zone' and look for the NoveList link along the left hand links list.

If you love to read, you will love NoveList, but even if you only read when you have to, NoveList can help you find a book you look forward to reading.