Hello March!

I thought February went by quickly.  Yikes!  Where did March go?  We have been plugging along here at the DHS Library.  March brought with it many events, classes, and always lots of fun.

Before Spring Break, we saw 12 junior classes researching the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.  We helped administer the TAKS test, and we organized our Winter Olympics event for the evening of March 4th.  That is our Open House night for Texas Public Schools' Week.  We always try to do something free and fun in the library.  We realize it was a couple of weeks late, but we decided to have our own Winter Olympics. We had multiple arts and crafts, pass the trophy, snowball/basket game, decorate your own cookie station, hockey, iPad games, and face painting.

A lot of our inspiration came from Pinterest, of course.  Here is a link to our Winter Olympics Board. At the arts and crafts tables, we had a Winter Olympics word puzzle, a couple of different color pages, strips of construction paper so the students could make their own Olympic rings, and a station with lanyards and badge holders so the students could create and decorate their Olympic credentials.

Pass the Trophy was much like "hot potato."  The students were placed in a circle and passes the trophy to the music.  When the music stopped, the student with the trophy picked a prize.  Our prizes were donated from our local Barnes and Noble rep. (Thanks Suzanne Howell).

Our Snowball Basket Toss was actually white socks that the students tried to put into a set of wood baskets.  The prize was lifesavers.  They seemed to fit the Olympic rings theme.

We had sugar cookies with white frosting (to represent snow), and then the students could add M&Ms to their cookie to recreate the Olympic rings.  In the hockey area, we had those elementary scooters that the kids sit on.  We had plastic hockey sticks, 2 goals, and a couple of pucks.  We borrowed these from one of our elementary schools.  Then the students could play a little 2 on 2 hockey.  An adult had to be at this station to make sure all equipment was used properly.

We loaded a couple of Winter Olympic apps onto the iPads for those students who preferred virtual hockey and other Olympic sports to the real thing. One was called "Winter Sports Games" and the other was "Monkey Ski," both free.

Then we were able to invite the National Art Honor Society to face paint for us.

On top of all that, our Guitar and Bass club cranked out some tunes for us throughout the evening.  Many of the faculty brought their own kids to see us as well as the students we fondly call our "library regulars."  It was a fun night.

After a much needed Spring Break, we hit the ground running again. Our 12 junior classes were finishing up their time in the library with us while 6 more junior class began their research journey.  While juggling those classes, we managed to hold our monthly Book Club meeting, our monthly Anime club meeting, and launched our Battle of the Books contest, which is our version of March Madness.

For more details about our March Madness contest, see the previous blog entitled "March Madness"


Whew!  Can't wait to see what April brings us. See you next time!

February: Short Month, Long List

I can't believe this month is almost over.  Where did it go?   Well...let's see. There was Black History Month.  TCEA was the first week of February.  Then we celebrated Valentine's Day for a week.  We have been promoting "Blind Date with a Book" for 2 weeks along with National Mustache Day on Feb. 24th and preparing for March Madness.  Of course we have seen a few classes here and there as well.  The Junior English classes have begun invading the library with their research on the 1960s, 70s, and 80s which is one of my favorites topics because of the costume.  We dress as hippies, and that is so much more comfortable than a pirate, a British King, or any of the others characters we have been in the past.  I'm not sure that I like the decades in which I grew up being a research topic though...makes me feel old.

For Black History Month, we had 2 different displays going.  We used our windows for inspirational quotes from famous black people as one.  All of the quotes came from Pinterest like this one, Rosa Parks. So we printed off about 20 different quotes, and had them hanging up. We also made up a book display and put a book mark in each of the books for students to keep when they checked out one of the books.

For those of you who have not been to the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA), I highly recommend it. It is some of the best technology professional development I have experienced thus far in my career.  I even created a Pinterest Board dedicated to TCEA this year because of all of the great sessions I encountered.  My 2 favorite were Twitter/Vines and building your own app.  I was planning to use Vines   with our "Blind Date with a Book" program, but to be honest, I ran out of time.  So I used Twitter and Facebook instead.  More on that later.  The build your own app session was great, and it was easy enough to do.  The DHS Library now has it's own app, but it is pretty simple for now.  As I learn more, I am hoping our app will become a better tool for our patrons.  I guess you could say this is our beta version.  The program we used to create the app is The AppBuilder.  Here is the DHS Library app,  http://myapp.is/DHSLibrary.  It's easy to download onto a phone or tablet by going to the site, hitting your download button and tap "add to home screen."  I'm going to try it with my juniors next week when they come in for research.  We'll see how popular it is.

For Valentine's Day, we had the students help us make red and white paper chains that we hung from our ceiling.

We added two Valentine book displays.

Then the students decorated hearts for our windows, and on the day itself, we gave out kisses when students checked out books.  Those, of course, would be Hershey's Kisses, not actual ones.

Then we had a Valentine contest to match the famous couples to their books. We had one prize for the teachers and one for the students.

This year we decided to tackle "Blind Date with a Book."

It's been all over Pinterest for a couple of years, and we thought it was time to bring it to our school.  So the premise is to wrap up a variety of books so the students cannot see what book they are checking out.

After they check out the book, the students unwrap it and read it, no matter what they end up choosing.  So we added a few extras to that basic premise to make this program our own.  We decided that once they finish their book, the students have a chance to "rate their date."  Their rating form includes a place for them to put the title, what they like/don't like about the book, and on a scale from 1-10 to actually rate their "date."

Then the students can pick a book, puzzle, or trinket which for us is donated items from our local Barnes and Noble.  (Thanks Suzanne Howell in Cedar Hill)  We also categorized the books so that the students might not know the book, but they would at least have a hint. I thought we would come up with 5-6 categories, but we had 14.  That's where I thought I would create Vines and put them on Twitter and Facebook.  For those of you who have not been to Vine yet, it is a social network of 6 second videos where people post them and make comments.  Your Vine account can be connected to most other social media accounts if you wish.  It's worth the look even if you don't plan on making a video to post...highly entertaining!

Anyway, I was planning to create these 6 second videos to give hints to the students about the blind date books.  Then the students would have to go to Twitter or Facebook to find these videos.  Once we decided upon 14 topics, I nixed making 14 videos...even if they are only 6 seconds long.  Instead, I created hashtags for each topic and then listed the hints under these hashtags in both Twitter and Facebook.  Here are a few examples... #BDB14  #BDB10  #BDB05. So far I believe the students who are participating are having fun.

National Mustache Day was a big hit last year, and we brought it back again for this year.  It is pretty random, but the students seem to like it.  The premise is simple; check out a book and get a mustache.  Last year we promoted it with signs and a book display, see post here entitled "Love, Mustaches, and Hippies." This year, with all the other activities we were doing, mustache day was a bit more low key.  The students and teachers still enjoyed it though; that is what really matters.

Now, as March begins, we are gearing up for the bulk of the Junior research, Open House,and March Madness (Battle of the Books).  All of these events begin next week.  In addition, we are also housing a few displaced classes for the TAKS test. Needless to say we will be packed, and then there is Spring Break...so ready for a week off!

See you next time.  Thanks for stopping by!

Staff Development in the Library

Generally, January and February are the months we don't tend to see research classes.  This year we actually have 2 junior classes starting early, this week in fact.  So we are dividing our time between the classes that are coming and the other chores of spending our budget, cleaning up the card catalog, processing, book displays, etc.

In addition, this is the time we sit down and analyze our staff survey to create the staff development classes we want to offer to the teachers.  Our philosophy is to know our audience, and what better way to know than to just ask them what they want.  So we created a Google Form to briefly ask the staff what classes they wanted to attend.  Here is what that looked like... Teacher Survey 2013-14.

From that survey, here are the classes our teachers wanted...

Our next step was to set the staff development schedule, and that took some time.  We debated whether to hold 2 sessions at a time, one session at a time, or hold one session on multiple days.  In looking at some of our surveys in the past, we decided to go with one class on multiple days.  We operate on a modified block schedule, and we have an A day and a B day.  On A days, we see blocks 1, 2, 3, 4, & 8.  On B days, we see blocks 1, 5, 6, 7, & 8.  Some teachers have an instructional planning block on A days, some on B days, some on both days, and some not at all.  If we offer our classes all day and after school, two days in a row, we give all teachers the opportunity to come to our classes.  So our staff development schedule is set as follows...

Jan. 14 & 15 - School Fusion (Beginner)

Jan. 22 & 23 - School Fusion (Advanced)

Jan. 28 & 29 - Google Drive/Docs

Feb. 11 & 12 - Alternatives to PPT

Feb. 18 & 19 - Digital Tools

Feb. 25 & 26 - Twitter (Beginner)

School Fusion was not on our survey, but it is a district program.  We always have requests for School Fusion classes at the beginning of a semester.  School Fusion is the program for our teachers' websites.  So we began with those classes first.  

We do not have any classes the week of Feb. 3rd because Blanca, Karen, and I will be in Austin attending TCEA.  This is the 1st year in the past 7 or 8 years that we will just attend the conference and not present. That wasn't by design; we just missed the deadline.  We are planning to use our new knowledge from  TCEA to design the remaining February classes we have scheduled in our own library.  We are all excited about going. Austin...here we come!

See you next time.  Thanks for stopping by!

A Day in the Life of a High School Librarian

Happy New Year!  I can't believe it is already 2014.  As we gear up for a new semester, I thought I would share with you what happens in our library in a typical day...from my point of view.  This was my day today, January 8, 2014.

At 7am, we opened the doors to over 200 students who were checking out books, using a computer, playing chess, or just hanging out with their friends.  Classes start at 7:30am, and our task is to herd our students out the door between 7:25 and 8am to make sure they are not late for class.

At 7:30, my first class of the day showed up.  It was an audio/visual class researching topics for a newscast they had to prepare.  After conferencing with the teacher yesterday, we decided to narrow the search to news clips, newspaper articles, and magazine articles.  The students could research whatever they found newsworthy from our country's recent cold snap to Manziel announcing his intent to play for the NFL.  The teacher wanted her students to use both databases and websites.  So I decided to highlight 2 of our databases, EBSCO and NBC Learn, as well as a few reputable websites like CNN, MSNBC, ESPN, and Biography.com.  My part of the class included navigating to the library website, showing the students how to use our databases, demonstrating how to either save the articles or print them, and then mentioning the other websites they should try.  Afterwards, I stayed with the class during their independent research time to help those who had questions.  I taught 3 of those classes today.

In addition to these classes, I had 2 other tasks to accomplish today.  First up...staff development.  Blanca, Karen, and I planned our staff development schedule for January and February based on the campus interest survey we sent out in the fall.  This is the 2nd year we created the interest survey in Google docs.  Before that, we used Survey Monkey.  Here is a link to this year's survey... 2013-14 DHS Survey

So based upon the 100+ teachers who responded to our survey, these are the staff development topics our campus wanted...

Using this information, we set up a calendar to address the top 4 topics (social media, Google drive, alternatives to ppt, and digital tools) along with 2 more classes on School Fusion (district website).  School Fusion wasn't a part of our survey, but all 3 of us had been receiving recent requests to hold more classes. After we set the calendar and decided who was going to teach which classes, I sent out a campus wide email to inform our staff, put the classes in our library calendar, and created them in Workshop so the teachers could register online for the classes they wanted to attend.

Second task of the day...register for TLA.  This included registration, hotel arrangements, finding a SUB to help Judy out while we are gone, and submitting an online form to seek our principal's permission to go.  In addition, we also reapplied for our annual TLA membership.  After all those forms were filled out, I had to go back and fill out the payment request forms for each of those items.

Between the classes and the tasks, I assisted multiple students and teachers who came into the library looking for help. Some of the student crises we averted today included looking up passwords so students could have computer access, helping students locate books for their research, helping them use the document camera to trace political cartoons (economics project), helping them use the copy machine, the color printer, connecting their new devices to our wi-fi, and checking out iPads for after school use. We were open for an hour after school for student and faculty use.  Our morning crowd is always more, but we probably had about 100 students after school using our computers, looking for books, or just hanging out.

On the teacher side of things, I got a projector to work in one of our labs, fixed 2 computers in that same lab that weren't getting any power, showed a teacher how to turn on the desktop computer she wanted to use, helped another find a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and listened to 3 others who just needed to vent.  I have always said that the librarian is the "bartender" of the school. In the midst of all that, I did squeeze in a 20 minute lunch. 

Now take what I did today and multiple that by 4. There are 4 of us in that library, and each of us stays busy.  For instance today, between helping students and teachers, Blanca changed out one of our book displays...(just in time for the Awards Shows - Books that have been made into movies)

talked to multiple vendors, ordered eBooks to complete our latest grant, helped me map out our staff development, registered for TLA, and organized our Book Club field trip, which is YAK Fest in Keller. Karen delivered mobile labs, reserved mobile labs for a few teachers, delivered a projector to an Admin meeting, detangled a couple of mobile labs that were returned but not properly stored, shelved 2 full carts of books, assisted some teachers by troubleshooting laptop issues, helped me map out staff development, registered for TLA, and opened up our latest order and put in a help request for maintenance to come put our new bar stools together.  Judy, our clerk who diligently guards the front door to make sure all students have their ID and a proper pass, also encouraged students to help us decorate the library by cutting out snowflakes, took down the last of our Christmas decorations, and shelved 3 carts of books.  

I'm sure if I asked each of them, they could name a few more tasks they did.  Again, this is a day in the life of our library from my point of view.  It takes a village to keep this library running, and I couldn't imagine having this job without them, all of them.

Thanks for stopping by!  See you next time.

Barnes and Noble + DHS Library = A Great Bookfair

This is our 3rd year to host a bookfair at Barnes and Noble, and I think we finally got it right.  Three years ago we were approached by the PTSA (Parent Teacher Student Association) to help with their Barnes and Noble bookfair.  We were to provide the in-store activities and part of the money they earned from the bookfair would be donated to the library.  It seemed like a win-win situation, and it was a lot of fun.  Last year, our PTSA was practically non-existent; therefore, we ran the bookfair on our own.  So when it came around for us to organize the bookfair again this year, it seemed second nature.

The way it works is to talk to your local Barnes and Noble rep and come up with a week you want to host a bookfair.  We inherited our dates from the PTSA who setup the bookfair before we did, and we happen to like that week and kept it.  Our bookfair starts the Saturday after Thanksgiving and runs for a week. Not a bad time for a bookfair...even if we do have to give up a Saturday to work.

I guess we could have activities running all week, but we usually organize all our events on the first day of the  bookfair, which is that Saturday.  This year we were present from 12-6pm.  In the past, we went from 10am-5pm, but it took us two years to figure out that there was not much foot traffic from 10-11:30am. Therefore we adjusted our times this year with much better participation.

Our activities included face painting, arts and crafts, a Pokemon tournament, an Anime Art Show, complimentary gift wrapping, cupcake decorating in the Cafe, story time, and a we had performance area  in the music/movies area.  Since there are only the 4 of us, we had to rely on volunteers to help run the different areas.  Since we have students in abundance who need community service hours, we have no trouble getting students to come and help that day.

Our National Art Honor Society was in charge of face painting this year.  The book club hosted 2 different story times.  Our Pokemon and Anime Clubs produced the art work for our Art Show and played in the Pokemon tournament.  The gift wrapping and Arts & Crafts were manned by student volunteers not associated with any club; they came on their own for the community service hours.  Here is an example of one of our Arts and Crafts products...found on Pinterest, of course.

Pinterest Link

The Barnes and Noble Cafe people were in charge of the cupcake decorating.  The only club who took advantage of our performance area this year was the DHS Guitar and Bass Club.  They hosted a lovely rock concert for us.  Last year we also had the Latin Club and Spanish Club sing Christmas Carols for us.

As I  said, this was our 3rd year to host, and we all said after it was over that this was the most laid back bookfair of the three.  Next week we will get our totals from the bookfair.  We usually receive 15% of what was identified as our bookfair.  It's a great way to earn money and have fun at the same time.  It is definitely a win-win partnership between the DHS Library and Barnes and Noble.

For more information about our bookfair, go to http://duncanvillehs.libguides.com/bookfair

                                             See you next time!  Thanks for stopping by.

Fall Fun in the Library

It's time for some "Fall Fun" in the library.  This year we went all out with a library carnival and multiple book displays.  Take a look...

For Parent Conference Night this year, we had a Library Carnival.  Last year at this time, we did an Angry Birds Night.  To see how that evening went, click here.

At the Library Carnival this year, we served popcorn and lemonade, 

had arts and crafts projects,

 iPad games, 

a book walk, (which is like a cake walk, only with books as prizes - all donated from Barnes and Noble)

face painting, 

and yes, we rented a Bounce House. 

Our library has really tall ceilings in three of our four classroom areas, and the bounce house fit perfectly into one of those.

In order to make sure everyone had a fair chance to visit all of the areas, we had a punch card that we gave to each person (student or adult) that came into the library.

The lead volunteer in each area had a hole punch.  So as the person visited the area, he/she received a punch for that place.  They could visit each station twice.  If they filled their punch card & turned it in, we gave the participants a piece of candy.  That was our system to keep any one area too crowded.  Now some siblings and parents gave their punch card to another members of their family or a friend.  We didn't care so much about that.  After all, not many parents want to jump in a bounce house!  Over all, it worked out very well. We had 200 visitors that evening.  We know because that is how many punch cards we gave out.

In addition to the carnival, we also decorated the library for Halloween.  OK...I say we, but it was mostly Blanca and Karen.  I found the inspiration on Pinterest, and they took it and ran, so to speak.

 We had four different book displays in the library, for our Zombie and Undead books, our serial killer books, our scary books, and our Vampires/Mummy books.

We gave out candy to anyone who checked out a book that day. 

Of course, on the day in question, we were in costume. We wore our British History outfits because October 31st was also the Senior's first day of research.  So it was like killing two birds with one stone.  I love it when circumstances align like that.

At the end of the day, we gave away two buckets of candy to the winners of our Monster Mash game. During the week of Halloween we had a contest.  We gave our patrons 10 monsters, and they had to find the books from which they came.  We had one contest for the students and one for the adults.  

Here is Karen with our teacher winner, Ms. Roberts.

All in all it was a productive month.  To see our Pinterest board where we found our ideas, go to http://www.pinterest.com/dhslibrary/october-ideas/.

See you next time!  Thanks for stopping by.

It's Not All Fun and Games

As much as I like to talk about the "fun" stuff  we do in the library, it's not all fun and games.  Blanca, Karen, Judy and I work hard in order to justify the play.  Not a new concept for sure, but it fits.  After looking at our September statistics, we definitely did our fair share of teaching classes, helping students, and checking out books.  However, since we all enjoy what we do, even the work becomes the fun stuff.

Above are our stats for September.  It is the first month we collected data this year, and we were pleased with the results.

As far as the circulation stats and database searches, those numbers are self-explanatory.  We checked out 2,474 books this month, and the number of searches on each database varied with the end of month report each company sent us.

According to the report above, we saw 157 classes in the library last month.  A third of those were co-taught with the teacher, which usually includes us designing a Libguide for the class ahead of time.  Then we model how to use the Libguide once the students come to the library.  Here is an example of one of our current libguides that we used with a 12th Government class last month.  http://duncanvillehs.libguides.com/crights  

To see our most current Libguides, go to http://duncanvillehs.libguides.com/.  A libguide is what we previously referred to as a Pathfinder.  For those of you not in the library world, a pathfinder is a kind of bibliography of materials in our library targeted to a specific topic to help our patrons navigate through the materials we have.

These Libguides usually have a link to our card catalog, recommended databases according to the students' topics, recommended web tools for the students' presentations, and an MLA guide.  After we go over the Libguide, the teacher takes over the lesson, and we fall back to help.  In order for the co-teaching to happen seamlessly, we have quite a few conversations with the teacher before he/she comes to the library with students.  Many conversations initially start in person and evolve into a series of emails after that.  Those are the co-teach classes.

The other 2/3 of our classes this month did involve us, but we were not directly teaching the students.  In these classes, the librarian is either actively or passively facilitating the classes as they use our facility.  If we are actively facilitating, we are present with the class helping individual students, pulling a group for a Web 2.0 workshop, helping students find books, etc.  In order to prepare for our workshops and help the teacher and students, collaboration with the teacher in the form of emails or conversations is still part of our agenda, but the conversations are not as involved as the co-teach classes.

In some cases, the librarians are not as involved; these are the classes where we are passively facilitating. We are present to help with technology issues or a quick question.  No conversation or collaboration ahead of time is needed with these classes.

Our report also tracks the number of students that come through the door before school, during the day (with a pass from a teacher), and after school.  These students are in addition to and not a part of the 157 classes that we saw.  They scan their IDs into a database for us as they check in and out of the library, and we are able to pull reports by the hour, day, week, or month. Quite handy!  Thank you Dr. McHaney for designing that database for us.

Next on the list, we report the number of trainings we host in the library by week.  These can be our clubs, administrative meetings, department meetings, staff developments, etc.  We are not always running these meetings, but we do set up the area and make sure the technology is ready to go.

Technology check outs are pretty self-explanatory as well.  We track what we have and to whom we check it out.  Then the CIT requests are last.  As librarians, we are also Campus Instructional Technologists.  That means we are the first line of defense when a teacher has a piece of technology that is not working.  If one of the CITs is not able to fix it, the teacher opens a ticket with our technology help desk.  So the number in the report lets us and our audience know the number of items we were able to fix and not send to the tech department.

The first year we started collecting this information, I only shared with the library staff.  Since then, we have branched out and shared these reports with our campus administrative staff, some district administrative staff, and even a few school board members.  It never hurts to let others know what the month in the life of a librarian entails.

OK...next time I promise to go back to the fun stuff.  I just wanted you to get a picture of what is happening each month in addition to the programs and holiday fun we are having.  See why we have 3 librarians and a wonderful clerk to run this place?  One librarian would not be able to do this alone.

See you next time.  Thanks for stopping by.