The Books Arrive!

388 Cases containing almost 14,000 books arrived on Wednesday morning, unfortunately, the rain met the truck at the door!

Three of the pallets went through the front door on hand trucks and a flat truck. It looked to be a long, long delivery.
But, with the rain was coming down really hard and assessing the project, our wonderful principal, Kim Grengs, arranged space on the loading dock!
















The truck drove up and the rest of palletts were moved into the hall adjacent
to the media center.
The job went much faster because we had only a short distance to move the books by hand truck! In just 3 short hours, we had all the cases staged for unpacking and shelving!














I was sooooo tired, but the LMC looked poised on the threshold of something great!






















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Just One More Book!!

I have had this site on my rss feeder for quite a while and read with interest the weekly posts, but I had some time today and decided to explore the site. I'm glad I did!

Every person who reads to kids before bed has heard this cry. In our family, Solomon (who is now 5-years-old and starting kindergarten!) always tried to negotiate for "just one more book."
These days, he has two "youngers" (Abraham, 3-years-old, and Eden (who at three months has no words, yet) to help him convince whom ever is reading to read just one more book.

Luckily for me (and for you), there is a podcast and website that is dedicated to reviewing and discussing childrens books! If you haven't looked at this site, you should! The podcasts that I have listened to feature a variety of people, including kids, talking about the title.
The site is search-able by age level, by author, and subject category.

Whether you are looking for something to read to a child in your family, or a library professional, or teacher, there is something valuable here for you. Seriously, check it out!

Just One More Book!!


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Reader's Advisory

One of my favorite things about working as a media specialist is talking to students about books.
Learning what books they have read, and liked, and discussing what they might like to read next is one of the reasons I became a library media specialist.

Now that I am at a K-5 school, one challenge will be to get a better grasp on all that there is to offer reader's at the pre-reading, beginning reading, and transitional reading levels. I know about Fancy Nancy, Junie B., and Arthur, but there are many that I have yet to explore!

I am thrilled to find a newly launched website that will be a great help to any elementary and middle school level library media center staff. "A Book and A Hug" was created by Barb Langridge, and it is beautifully designed!

Barb has some excellent pointers on how to connect to boy readers, as well as reluctant readers of all shapes and sizes. I am sure that once you visit A Book and A Hug it will become a favorite resource. I think her four categories of guy readers is spot on target, and the search features works great!

Gearing up for MYRA

Check out my MYRA kick off commercial!

Riverview students in grades 3-5 will have the opportunity to participate in the Minnesota Youth Reading Awards (MYRA). Since this will be the first time I have participated in the award as an elementary media specialist, I expect there will be more excitement in the program than I have ever experienced, so I thought it would be fun to make a commercial to advertise it. I started one, then I found a commercial for a "Read it Forward" program (which, by the way, I would LOVE to do!) out of a school in Texas. This is an adaptation of that commercial.

More pictures of the new LMC

This is my office from the doorway.
I love having the side table
and plan to add a couple
of chairs for conferences.
The Cat in the Hat is made
of papermache and was a
gift from Kim Boe and students in D.L.











The poster above my bookcase
has been every classroom or office
since I was a student teacher.
It talks about following your dreams.

To the left of the bookcase is a
window that looks into the
media center.



These pictures are of my
lab classroom. It is in disarray,
but has 32 computers,
really nice chairs,
and a projector. Very nice!

More progress on the LMC!

Notice the huge skylight I don't know for sure, but my guess is that it is between 30 and 40 feet long! You may notice that there is no place for computers, but there will be! Notice the monitors on the circulation desk! We will have 8 computers on table just beyond the circ. desk. My media classroom with 30 computers, is adjacent to the LMC. I'll post those pictures next time!


A Smart Board will replace the white board. This area will have 8 round tables with chaird and a laptop on a cart for a classroom area. Through the windows is a large media workroom.

The view looking toward my office (look closely and you can see my cat-in-the-hat art), past the six free standing book cases that will house the fiction collection and along the 52 feet of shelving along the wall where part of the nonfiction collection will be.

Looking back toward the door where I stood to take the previous photo. Additions to this area will include a colorful area rug for students to lounge on while reading.

Standing in the same place as the previous photo. On the left side is another 52 feet of shelving that will hold nonfiction and reference. The four free standing bookcases on the left will hold the Everybody/Easy books. Each of the free standing bookcases are 9 feet long and double sided!


Another view of the wall bookcases and part of the circulation desk and four of the book trucks (there are several more in the media workroom!

Media Center in Progress

Ten, 9' long and 48in tall, book cases are being assembled this week!
As you can see there is loads of space...Even though I have ordered over 15,000 new books, I'm sure that I'll have room for many more!
I will have round tables in the foreground of the top picture for my classroom area.
I'll post more pictures as I have something to show!

My New Media Center

Next Thursday I will, officially, be the media specialist for Riverview Elementary School in Farmington, MN. We will have a student population of 675 students in grades k-5.

Riverview is a brand new elementary with a brand new media collection! I have ordered over 15,000 titles (so far) and have quite a few more to go! It has been a a few weeks of flooding myself with a fantastically, fun, frolicking, feast of fabulous books!

Last week we interviewed for my media assistant and offered the position to an affable and smiling woman who has worked as a special education paraprofessional in the district for many years. I think she will be perfect and am looking forward to working with her!

On interview day, I stopped into see the new media center and it is wonderful! It is huge and has an really large skylight that takes up most of the center of the ceiling! There will be 8 search computers in the media center, a classroom area with a Smart Board, a leisure reading area, and a media lab where I will teach many of my classes! There is also another media lab for classroom use!

As soon as I can, I'll post pictures of the transformation.

The trouble with Twitter

Dare I say it?

I am not a Twitter fan. I don't want everyone to know what I'm doing every minute of every day, and I don't want to know what everyone else is doing every minute of every day. This vid. expresses my Twitter thoughts pretty well.


Twouble with Twitter

Have you heard about Earth Hour?

The idea is that whole communities turn out all the lights for an hour across the world. I wonder just how much energy would be saved in that hour. I bet it is enormous!

8:30PM local time,
wherever you live on planet earth.
Saturday 28 March 2009
Earth Hour Home

I think where ever I am on Saturday evening,
I will join in this effort.
How about you?

Digital Pioneer - That's me!

Kathy Schrock posted this video on Facebook the other day and no their is a new Ning Group for Digital Pioneers. Are you a DP too?


Digital Pioneer: The Movie from Kathy Schrock on Vimeo.

Thing 25

Hmmm,
I guess I jumped the gun for thing 25 with the snowfall and blogcasting (see Gabcasting below). Oh well. The widget vidoes were well done and provided a good basic introduction to widgets. I had not been to Technorati before and enjoyed browsing there.

I have played quite a bit with widgets, but truthfully, I see most of them as a waste of time.
I have used the US map of places I've traveled and places my travel bug (with geocaching.com) has traveled. For this blog, the snow was fun, but I'm about done with it. I like having the Youtube videos based on my interests, but I don't care to advertise my music choices, countdown to anything, or play games via my blog, so am passing on most of the thousands (yes, really) og Blidgets, widgets, and gadgets.

I have used Animoto in a Powerpoint presentation and it worked well, but I'm not sure that it was worth the amount of time I put into it. It is doubtful that I will use it again because I am looking for things that do not add significantly to the time I put into a presentation.

I may add a comment box or a "Star" tool. I've looked at shout-out boxes, but the ones I seen are too big and gaudy. I guess I'll just keep looking.