January is not usually packed with reseach classes, but amazingly enough, we are still quite busy. There is a lot of planning to be done for the Spring. We are spending what is left of our budget, introducing Nooks to our circulation, creating book displays, helping both staff and students who come see us, taking care of technology issues, and running a Twitter contest to enlist more followers after creating a Twitter handle for the DHS Library, which is @dhs_library. Then there are the presentations and staff development classes we are designing.
In addition to our TCEA presentation we are making in Austin next week, and the presentation we are making for our district Showcase on Feb. 18th, we are also analyzing a staff survey we sent out last week. I created the survey in Google Forms because, to be quite honest, I hadn't done that before; I usually use Survey Monkey. When we went to Keller's YAK Fest a couple of weeks back, the librarians there convinced us that Google Forms was the way to go. The free Survey Monkey only allows 100 responses, and Google Forms has no limit that I have hit yet.
On our survey, the librarians wanted to know how we could focus our efforts this semester to help. If you are interested in what we asked, here is a link to our form...
Staff Survey Link
I set up the survey to be anonymous so more people would be willing to answer it, but I did ask for the subject they taught; I was curious to see if every department was represented. We did indeed have many teachers from different departments answer our survey. Yay! I do have to mention this side note...although the survey was anonymous, we were amazed by the number of teachers who came by to see if we could guess which set of responses were theirs. LOL!
After analyzing our results, we decided to focus on staff development, and here were our results...
Alternatives to PPTs = 21%
School Fusion = 15%
Web 2.0 Tools that are subject specific = 15%
Flipped Learning Model of Instruction = 13%
Pinterest = 12%
Twitter = 8%
Organizing a Research project = 7%
Word 2010 & Win 7 = 6%
Google Docs = 2%
- Saving You Tube videos = .5%
CPS Clickers = .5%
We are planning to tackle "Alternatives to PPT" first for obvious reasons, and we are going to take advantage of our library space and offer classes there. We plan to offer a different digital tool each week (on Mondays) in February during all blocks and after school. For some teachers, that will be enough. We are going to offer to teach the class to their students as well, if they feel like spending some time with us in the library. We hope that in offering to teach the classes to the students, those teachers who are intimidated by new technology will have the protection of adverse consequences they need. AND the students get the exposure to a new tool. It's win-win.
Our first Alternative PPT class is Kizoa, http://www.kizoa.com/ . Karen is using this one in our TCEA presentation next week. After that, we are going to introduce the staff to Spicynodes, http://www.spicynodes.org/. I am using this tool in our TCEA presentation. Blanca hasn't announced her tool of choice yet. She is hoping to learn about a new tool at the technology conference next week.
The next class the staff wants is School Fusion. For those of you who are not familiar, School Fusion is an interactive website that our teachers use for class. We plan to address this topic during our sessions at the District Showcase on Feb. 18th. Then we are thinking of a monthly work session after school to give the teachers a safe environment to explore. Here is our library School Fusion page http://library-services.dhs.duncanvilleisd.org .
The 3rd class the staff wants is Web2.0 tools that are subject specific. So we are going to start with the 4 core, English, S.S., Science, and Math (with different tools for each topic within a subject...i.e. Chemistry, Biology, Physics within Science). Then we are going to do Fine Arts and Sp. Ed. We plan to create a LibGuide for each area, and then giving the link to that LibGuide to the appropriate teachers. After the teachers explore the LibGuide, we will then offer a class, if 4 or more teachers are interested, to guide them through the resources. If you are not familiar with LibGuides, they are the best. Blanca went to a LibGuides session at the Texas Library Association (TLA) conference 2 years ago, and she convinced us to buy this product. They are great. Think of it like a digital Pathfinder. Many colleges and some high schools have these. Here is a link to our LibGuides site if you are interested http://duncanvillehs.libguides.com/ . If you are a librarian, I encourage you to take a look, and no, I am not receiving an compensation from the company for this.
So to say January is our slow time of year is a matter of opinion. See you next time!
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