Social Networking in the Library Media Center

      The use of social networking in schools is a much-debated topic, but as I began to research the use of it in media centers and in classrooms, I began to see what a positive impact it is having on student learning. there are numerous ways schools are using social networking to increase student involvement and achievement.  Some of these ways include professional development, community outreach, and parent communication.  I was very impressed to see that school media specialists are teaching both students and teachers to use social networking sites such as schoology.com and gaggle.com to create course assignments, provide distance-learning opportunities, and integrate real-world applications into learning.  Schools are also using social media for cross-cultural communication!  Many students are being exposed to learning opportunities with students in other countries that speak a variety of different languages.  Without social networking, this authentic learning experience would never take place.
      While we are all familiar with social networking sitess such as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube, there are many social networks dedicated to education.  These include Classroom 2.0, edWeb.net, LearnCentral, Tapped In, and TeachAde.  While these are not popular in schools yet, the more media specialists and teachers learn about them and use them in the classroom, the more powerful they will become as learning tools.
      Media specials use social media technology in their teaching and collaborating with students and teachers, but they also use it to collaborate with other media specialists and media centers.  The Online Public Access Catalogs (OPACs) are starting to provide social networking applications!  This is extremely important because now media specialists can integrate the electronic catalog into the latest technology available on the Internet.  Some popular social networking communities that are being developed and used by school media specialists include Fish4Info, Follett’s Destiny, SirsiDynix’s Enterprise, and Mandarin’s OPAC.  These invocative networks offer media specialists a multitude of tools that include user tagging, book reviews and ratings, social bookmarking to system wide catalogs, and sophisticated search engines.  To me, I think the most interesting tool would be in Follett’s Destiny, which offers students, teachers, and staff to chance to give ratings to books and submit text, audio, or video reviews!  School communities can recommend books to each other! I think that students and teachers would love to utilize this collaborative network.
      While social networking and media seem interesting and innovative now, I can only imagine what time will uncover.  New technologies are developing everyday, and I look forward to seeing how they will impact student and teacher learning!

The Facebook Phenomenon

The Facebook Phenomenon:

Using Social Networking to our advantage in the School Library Media Center

I say "Yes", to social networking in the school library media centers. Or should I say...  "Like!"  Social media and new technologies excite, engage, and motivate us all, and if we're going to reach our communities, we've got to stay current.  All of us spend some time in our day reading, writing, and communicating online.  It's important that media specialists and teachers take this trend and use it to our advantage. 

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) reported from their longitudinal study in 2008 that social networking tools are becoming more and more vital to students' educations.  The AASL president in 2008, Sara Kelly Johns, said, "Group collaboration and discussion are becoming more evident in the learning process. These processes create a community of learners where a student can help lead the educational process."

Facebook, Google+, and Twitter are the most popular worldwide of the social networking services, and are probably the least utilized in the schools.  These sites are blocked in many school districts, but could still be used to create a community of learners outside the school day.  The public relations from a presence of the school library on these sites could provide a positive influence for the whole school program. Since Facebook is on top right now, I'll focus on it in this blog post. 

Facebook has been around since 2004. Since so many people are on Facebook, it's free, and it's important for a library to be open and available to parents and students alike, I think it's a no-brainer on whether a library should have a Facebook site. There are many websites with suggestions on what to put on a Facebook site and one I liked that included many common sense ideas is http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/features/05272011/facebook-libraries   

While written with public libraries in mind, many of the ideas are applicable to school media centers.  Some of the items suggested for Facebook pages for libraries include:

1.  Post things designed to invite conversation.

2.  Update frequently and regularly.  Keep it interesting.

3.  Post personable status updates.  Phrase the status like something you would say in conversation to invite response.

4.  Be witty and share interesting stuff about your library.

5.  Use an "invite" link to encourage people on school websites to become fans of your library Facebook page. 

Let's use Facebook and other social media to our advantage in the School Library Media Center!

Katie Harris, Team 2 

Media Center Webpages

Web pages for media centers have a lot of benefits.  I really liked the article by Davide Warlick.  Media Center web pages should help us do our jobs.  Students and teachers should be able to go to our web page and get information they need to continue working and answer their questions.  The article made several good points that everyone should consider when creating their web pages:
1. Ask your self why?  Why are you creating the web page and what do you want it to do? Make sure you achieve this.
2. Does it help you do your job?  It should allow students and staff to access needed information or learn needed information.
3. Who is your target audience?  Design it for them.  Make it appeal to them and answer questions they would have.
4. Design your web page for easy access of information
5. The layout should be scannable. We don't go to the web to read, we go for information and to answer questions.  If we wanted to read we would check out a book.
6. Use bullets and indenting to organize information, keep paragraphs short and to the point
7. Make sure students and staff can find your web page, have a prominent link
8. Refer students and staff to your web page
9. Post commonly asked questions and answer to your web page

After viewing a number of media center web pages, including the links listed by Dr. Cooper I have a lot of new ideas for my own web page.  I really liked the web page by the middle school media specialist.  It had information organized in a manner that students and teachers could find what they were looking for.  The graphics and color were appealing.  The information answered a lot of commonly asked questions.  You could easily navigate from page to page and back to home.  The resources were great!

I think the most important point that was made in all of the readings is that the web page should help you do your job.  There is usually only one media specialist per school and we can not be every where all of the time.  The web page is a great way to communicate with students and staff and disseminate commonly needed information.

Wikis

A wiki is a web site that allows users to add and update content on the site using their own Web browser. This is made possible by Wiki software that runs on the Web server. Wikis end up being created mainly by a collaborative effort of the site visitors. One of the largest wikis is Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

The term "wiki" comes from the Hawaiian phrase, "wiki wiki," which means "super fast." I guess thousands of people adding to a wiki could make it grow "super fast."  Anyone else have any ideas about the name?

Educators might find wikis useful for:
1. expanding parent involvement and interest in their classrooms
2. collaboration
3.  portfolios 
4. provide students with direct and immediate access to a site’s
    content, for group editing or other collaborative project activities
5. promote “pride of authorship” and ownership in the team’s activities
6. enhance the teaching and learning experience
7. stay connected with students and parents
8. personal webpages
9. homework assignments
10. sharing and posting large files

Podcasting in the Media Center

                Podcasting is a wonderful technology tool that can be implemented into any media center or classroom with students as young as prek and kindergarten.  The term “podcast” was invented years ago with by combining the words IPod and Broadcast, but in more recent years there are numerous tools that can be used to create the online audio showcase. There are many ways podcasts can be created; many of which are free tools available on the internet.

The ways a media specialist or teacher can implement podcasting into the curriculum are endless!  While media specialists can teach students to podcast during their media lessons, I feel that the best way to reach the school population is by training the teachers on how to create podcasts and use them in their classroom.  Teachers and media specialists can use podcasts to showcase literacy skills such writing and reading fluency although podcasts are not just for the language arts curriculum.  Teachers can incorporate social studies, science, and math as well.  For social studies, students can research certain topics in history and create “radio broadcasts” from that time period.  They can also pretend to “interview” famous historical figures.  In science, students can go through the scientific process of an experiment and podcast their findings.  In math, students can discuss problem solving strategies or practice their math facts.  Teachers in the areas of art, music, and physical education can even participate!

I feel that it is our job as library media specialists to research current ways to implement technology in our schools and provide teachers with the training and support they need to implement that technology into the classroom.  I feel that podcasting is such an inexpensive, fun, and EASY way to share technology with the students in any area of the curriculum. All it takes is a microphone and a computer to bring an individual voice to any child.  What a way to engage students to take ownership of their learning!