Thing 22

Since I am a school librarian, having all my staff trained in 23 Things isn't really something I'd "do". That would be only my clerk. But I could see being a facilitator/administrator for the whole campus. I definitely think there are Things they know nothing about, even though our district is a technology rich one. Our superintendent had made it one of his goals to enrich our students' education with technology, so we have a plethora of laptops available to our students. What we need now is more support staff-- oh, I mean, ideas for how to intertwine technology into daily lesson plans. And with the competitive principal that I have, I don't think it'd be hard to convince her to embark on a project like this over the summer. I DON'T think they'd go for it during the year!!! I really think that's non-negotiable. Well, I'd have to enlist the aid of our campus Instructional Technology Specialist to do this, so I'd need to make sure she had done it all as well. So that timeframe isn't unreasonable in that aspect. I'll put it on my list of things to do, and see if another one of librarians gets one started in the meantime... Oh, but wait, some of these things were VERY library specific. How do you adapt them to teachers?

PODCASTS!

Wow, I feel so cutting edge- I've already made one! Go me! Sometime last year the idea came up and after one of my fellow middle school librarians made one and shared it, I decided it was time to create my own. I grabbed a book I'd reviewed and wrote out something, recorded it, and added music. It was easy! Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to put it here on my blog. I thought it turned out really cool. I played it for several classes when I was doing booktalks last year. I have to admit though, it felt weird to have no image whatsoever on the screen while they listened to it through the projector. I want to work on that detail.
Ok, so about my experiences browsing other podcasts this evening. I really like the idea that I saw of including a transcript with your podcast. That actually gives the audience two ways of getting the info, so that's smart. I was drawn to checking out how other middle school libraries are using podcasts. Obviously booktalks is one great way. The one school listed as using podcasts had broken links, so bummer on that. But i checked out the school that was middle and high combined and they had awesome examples. The audio tour is a great idea- the merchant librarian in me thought, how smart! I may have to do that. In fact, all those instructions I constantly have to repeat- I could just make a podcast and then have an FAQ page on my website... Another good idea was the interview where the teacher and librarian collaborated on recording students doing radio plays. The idea was cool, but having the two of them talk about how they did it seems more effective than a written out lesson plan. I wanted to check out one library's series on online resources- that also seems like a really good use of podcasting. But those weren't loading. bummer. I hate it when technology doesn't work. But I'm seeing at least that there are a lot more options out there for podcasts in my library and I'm inspired to try a few of them out.