Diversity in the Media Center

Diversity means how we differ in terms of race, religion, culture, gender, sexual orientation, ability, or other forms. Schools are changing and are now faced with educating a diverse population of students with learning issues. As part of the public school education, the media program is made available to all students. Therefore, I think that the media program should support diversity regardless of how children differ, to develop literacy skills. As educators, we must be prepared to accommodate all children in this changing society.

Most of the centers that I’ve visited do provide a collection of print and electronic resources to address different ethnic group awareness and interests. Although, what’s offered would largely depend upon the population of the school. So far, I haven’t seen any assistive technology for students with disabilities. Again, that would also depend on whether there is a need for it.

Media specialists could find ways to accommodate students with diverse needs with technology resources. A listening station with a CD player and headset could be set up for ESL students. Free visual and audio software could be downloaded for visual and hearing impaired students. Web pages could be developed to include print and online resources to address different forms diversity as well. Students could use these resources at school and at home. Our school district uses SOLO for our special needs students. SOLO is an assistive technology software that includes a text reader. The Technology Specialist could install this software on one of the computers in the media center. The Media Specialist could also collaborate with the teacher and the Assistive Technology Specialist for the school district to install devices like a switch on a computer. These devices could assist students with speech and physical impairments.

It is important that we understand our students with diverse needs and help by creating a supportive learning environment that allows for opportunities to learn.

e-books and Digital Storytelling

Some thoughts on e-books are that it would be awesome if a company could create a version that would allow it to be affordable to all students (of course this will probably never occur). Then students could have their own e-book and have access to the e-book collection that the media center could purchase or the media center could have access to the 33,000 free e-books through Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page ) and then students could check out their own books and it would be automatically returned to the media center at the due date. There would be no concern for losing the books and never getting them back. The e-book would be the property of the student so it would be their responsibility to care for it. There is also a possibility that a grant could be written to acquire the money to purchase some e-books.

Some concern with the e-book seems to be that because of its creation there is a possibility of it replacing physical copies of books and then the media center will have nothing to shelve. I honestly do not see that this would happen. There is always going to be a need for having an actual book that you can hold on to and put in your bookshelf. I personally prefer to read from an actual book but e-books could be a great addition to a media center, especially in today’s generation. Children today have been raised on technology so it is natural for them to gravitate to an e-book. My daughter has her own Kindle that she reads often but yet she still enjoys reading actual books also.

The benefit of an e-book is that it can hold a lot of books (up to 3,500 for the new Kindle) in a small compact system and it is easily portable. With e-books you can access over 725,000 books including audio books, periodicals, and blogs (information retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002Y27P3M/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=6533262216&ref=pd_sl_1aem4eussc_e ). Some e-books have a read-to-me feature that converts text to speech; this could be extremely helpful to ESOL students. These are all great features that make e-books attractive; I still do not think that they will ever replace hard copy books, especially picture books. Who doesn’t love to sit down with children and share with them a wonderful story with beautiful pictures out of a picture book? There is something special about this and I do not think that holding an electronic device and reading it to children would have the same feeling.

I spent a day at a middle school media center this week and the media specialist stated that she currently does not have any physical e-books, she would love to get some but the budget does not allow it right now. They do however use the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Digital Library of Georgia, the Encyclopedia Universal en Espanol, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, of which all of these resources can be accessed through their school webpage.

Just as e-books could be a great addition to a media center, digital storytelling could be a great resource that teachers and students could create. Teachers could create a digital story that is 5-10 minutes long that would introduce students to the topic that is going to be taught, this could be a great way to grab the students attention and get them interested in the lesson. Students could also use digital stories to present the information that they have learned on a topic. This would be a great way to display this information. The media center could assist by having a tutorial posted on their webpage going through the steps of how to create a digital story. They could also post digital stories on their website that others could see and comment on.

There is so much technology that is available to media centers today and the key is to be able to figure out which technology will be able to enhance instruction without taking a lot of time away from the educational process. Anything that can grab a students’ attention and make them want to read and learn new things we should be incorporating into our media programs.

Technology Training

To teachers, professional development means more time taken away from an already busy schedule. At my school, a middle school, professional development is mandatory on Fridays. Teachers are reluctant to attend, because it’s usually something else that they might have to do and the amount of time involved is another issue. Technology is usually not included on the agenda. Occasionally, the media specialist sends an email to teachers about learning new technology like Animoto to use in their classrooms. Teachers are invited to the media center during planning times or after school on certain days for training. In speaking with the media specialist, many teachers do not respond due to time constraints. However, he does post technology tools and cool websites for the classroom on the school's media center web page. The media specialist does not offer technology training workshops since we have a Tech Specialist, and she usually keeps the staff abreast of technology training in the District. The Tech Specialist also sends out Tech Tips through the school’s email.
Moreover, since teachers are busy during and after school, as a media specialist I would request to briefly meet with teachers during their regular scheduled meetings. Beforehand, I would find out what technology topics teachers would be interested in learning by conducting a survey. Based on the results, I would do a quick overview of the topic at the meeting and follow-up with “How to Tutorials” on the media center’s web page for teachers to learn at school or at home in their spare time. Teaching strategies, requests, feedback will also be a part of the webpage along with links to the technology tools.
Dos and Don’ts to consider:
Do offer continuous support.
Do offer quick and simple training.
Do a needs assessment to determine the needs of teachers.
Don’t offer technology training that’s not relevant.
Don’t make training lengthy and overwhelming.
Don’t just teach how to use the technology, but also how to use it in the classroom.

Video Distribution Systems and Georgia Public Broadcasting

Video Distributions Systems
Our Closed Circuit Cable System is known as Student Access Television (SATV). There are two channels that are broadcasted from the media center by the media specialist. The morning announcements are on from 7:55 to 8:00. Occasionally, it might run few minutes longer for special announcements from the principal or for the promotion of a big upcoming event. The show is broadcasted live on channel five in every homeroom by Closed Circuit TV. Channel nine is used for special programming to show recorded events like the Olympics from previous years, movies during the Olympics, information on the Constitution, and President Obama’s speech. Students from any grade level can submit an application to be up front or behind the scenes. Three students are selected to read the announcements and one for behind the scenes. The scripts and recordings are prepared by the media specialist. The opening scene starts with a picture of the school and background music followed by the pledge and daily reflection. Then the announcements are read and usually include after school events, lunch menu, sports tryouts, and reminders. Teachers do not have any input, but can send in requests to the media specialist to have club meeting dates and times or sports tryouts announced. The media specialist adds short clips at the end showing students participating in various activities throughout the day. Student participation in SATV is fun and exciting, and they're learning public speaking skills.

Georgia Public Broadcasting Digital Library
Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) Digital Library offers a wide collection of resources for students and educators. PBS is the only other channel that’s available for our students to view. Georgia Stories under the education link includes Podcasts, Georgia Performance Standards linked to video segments, field trips, historical documents, teaching resources, study guides, and an Index. The information can be accessed individually or by viewing all the content related to a subject. The site also has a variety of educational programs and activities for kids like the Salsa episodes that are in both English and Spanish. The Teacher’s Domain has free resources for the K-12 classrooms and professional learning. I did not know that these resources were available on GPB. Raising Readers for PBS Kids and Parent Resources are additional useful educational resources. United Streaming is available at our school. I now can access it by going to gpb.unitedstreaming.com.

Social Networking in the Media Center?

What an interesting concept. My initial response was you have got to be kidding me, what a waste of time. But upon further research many ideas have come to mind on how using social networking tools could be useful to a media center.

Let’s face it the 21^st Century Learner is constantly coming into contact with numerous social networking tools. We as media specialist are in the business of teaching and training students and teachers in how to use the Web 2.0 social networking applications that are available to them. Because of this it becomes extremely important for us to know the types of technology that they are coming into contact with and to inform them of the best way to utilize it. So far I have not seen any media center utilizing social networking sites. I believe that is because I have only been around elementary schools. I think that the higher up that you go in education these become more utilized tools.

The article Social Networking and Your Library OPAC! Written by Barbara Fiehn http://www.mmischools.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=59618 ) discussed ways in which social networking is being integrated into the OPAC. She discussed how Christopher Harris has created a library portal (Fish4Info, http://fish4info.org/gofish ) that “provides about half of the BOCES libraries the capability to append pathfinders, calendars, students’ book reviews, tagging, book ratings, and social bookmarking to the system wide catalog.” Including it with the OPAC would be a great way for stakeholders to have access to many Web 2.0 applications.

After reading some articles on social networking I have come up with some ideas on how to incorporate it into the media center.

1.       Create a Facebook account and befriend students. You could tell about upcoming library events on it.

2.       Teach grade levels how to create a blog and then allow them to participate in a discussion about a particular book that they have to read. The media specialist and teachers could pose questions and the students could discuss them.

3.       Join Flickr and post pictures from media center events on the site and befriend students and parents. Teachers could also join and post pictures from their particular classes.

4.       Start a media center blog on book reviews. Choose a book to read and then after 2 weeks start a book discussion.

5.       Start up a blog during the summer, “The best book I read so far this summer is…”. This will allow students to communicate during the summer and read some great books that they can share with others.

With all Web 2.0 social networking tools there are numerous possibilities of how you can use them. The point of the matter is that we need to be using them because students are using social networking sites on a daily basis and this is a great way to reach out and connect to them. By utilizing the social networking sites as educational tools it allows learning to be fun for students.

Should We DumpThe Media Center Web Page And Make It A Blog Or A Wiki?

Creating and maintaing a school's library website requires experience and time. Many Media specialists don't have the skills to build a website nor the time to maintain one. In addition, school districts impose many restrictions on web sites, which make it difficult to be controlled by the media sprcialist. Both blogs and wikis allow immediate publishing and editing, whereas the traditional web page sites require that the update and pages be uploaded through a file transfer protocol. Due to the time involved, web pages are not updated to keep up with current information.
Blogs and wikis are alternatives to web pages as sources for online promotion of the media program. They are great collaborative tools. You can easily create new pages and add links to resources without having any prior experience. Information can be added in a timely manner. They can be maintained by someone other than the media specialist, like parent volunteers. Both have excellent security measures as to participation and usage. Most of the applications are readily available, free, and can be accessed from a location other than school.
With time, cost, and restriction being factors in media web page design, media specialists are creating blogs and wikis to povide information to it users. They are becoming more popular and may be the answer to traditional web pages. I think they will work well with media specialists that are reluctant to use technology.

Here's an example of a library blog: http://blossomwoodlibrary.edublogs.org/

Using a WIKI in a Media Center

     Originally when I started thinking about using a WIKI in a media center I thought there is no way that I would. The reason that I do not like using a WIKI is the aspect that anyone can change the content. Now that I have done more research on WIKI’s, I have found out some great uses for them.

     Becky Small had some great ideas about how to use WIKI’s. Some of her examples were to do Science Fair Projects, Collaborative Textbooks, Student Portfolios, WIKI Organization, Collaborative Understanding, and Collaboration between teachers, and Literature Circle in Elementary Schools (http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/wiki_in_a_K-12_classroom). Amy Bowllan created a lesson plan on the book The Mzungu Boy and designed it as a WIKI (themzunguboy.wetpaint.com). This is a great idea to allow students to engage interactively with a lesson. Both of these ladies had some good ideas of how to use a WIKI but I still was not convinced that a WIKI would be that beneficial in a media center until I checked out the Decatur High School’s Library WIKI (http://dhs.wikispaces.com). What a great way to compile a lot of resources into one place. The things that impressed me about it were the pathfinders and the professional links. There were so many useful resources that teachers and students could use which was really great. Some ideas for creating a WIKI would be to:

·         Tell about your media center.

·         Have a link for upcoming events.

·         Have a link showing pictures of events that have taken place.

·         Have links for every subject area that teachers and students could use when they are searching for materials. When teachers find an excellent website they can add them to the list.

·         You could have a link to your library catalog and also to the public library (in case you do not have resources that stakeholders are looking for).

·         Have a link to book reviews to encourage checking out books that have slow circulation.

·         Have a link to book reviews that student can write.

·         Put tips on how to solve different technology issues and other stakeholders could add to this when they solve an issue.

     So as you can see there are many possibilities of how a WIKI could be used in a media center. A WIKI is definitely useful if you have information that needs to be readily accessible to many different users. Individuals could access the WIKI from any computer which makes it extremely convenient. Since anyone can create and edit content on a WIKI it will be extremely important to have someone that is in charge of checking the WIKI on a regular basis to make sure that nothing important is getting deleted and to make sure that there is not any inappropriate content being added to the WIKI.