Saturday, July 9, 2011

My first week

Squee!


That's my excited voice . . . excited that I am working as a school librarian!


The thing that surprises me is exactly how many different realms there are.  I am really found of Evernote as a tool to keep track of my shopping list and my husband's honey-do list and for work, my FIRES list.  Here's the different categories (so far):

  • High school library space
  • New cataloging software
  • Book order
  • Ereaders/ebooks
  • Schedule
  • Digital presence
  • Elementary library instruction
  • Elementary tech classes
  • Collaborating
  • Personal PD
  • Clean office
All but that last one has seen a lot of progress this week.  :)

But then a blog post I read will send me in a whole new direction.  Yesterday, it was this post by Doug Johnson.  He writes:

Unless you already have the e-reading devices in hand, cancel the order. Spend your money instead on e-books that can be read on as wide a range of students' own devices as possible. Take a hard look at Adobe Overdrive or FollettShelf. (I have no stock in either company.) The BYOD - bring your own device - are gaining footholds in a lot of districts where personally owned technologies that can be used to read e-books were previously forbidden.

I didn't go any further - but started making phone calls.  Since I work at a 1:1 laptop school, this is what makes sense.  I'll write more when we know where this is headed, but one of those two (not the one that costs $4,000 a year!) is very promising.

Then this morning, it was this post by Eliterate Librarian.  I did a featured collections project in my practicum (I wrote about it here) and now I'm really thinking doing this whole-library might be the way to go.  I think I'd phase it in first this year at the high school - we're doing a lot of changes to the space (I will post before and after pictures eventually), so it might be a good time to change this too.  Again, since we're 1:1, the nonfiction collection isn't as deep, and so this would make what is there more inviting.  I am definitely going to study up more on this.

I started creating our digital footprint - so far I have Twitter, a blog, Diigo, and Shelfari, but eventually will add Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube, Flickr, and probably more.  

So much to do!  It's hard not to feel like I'm playing whack-a-mole sometimes, but I can see even in a week, I've made a lot of progress. 

Love my life!


Photo by TPapi,"Seven Mole Fever."  Used under Creative Common License.  Retrieved online at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tpapi/2764694929/
   

5 comments:

  1. Don't forget goodreads...and that suggestion about doing the formats that cover more devices is spot on. Congrats so proud of you!

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  2. Thanks, Bri! I'm so excited about it all. It's so much fun and it's only going to get better, when the students are there and I get to know them. I'm going to do preschool storytime in the elementary like I did at the public library (yay!) and then of course book talking was really what I loved the most there. The only difference is we don't have the complete collection like that public library has, but that's my job now, to build the collection.

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  3. Your enthusiasm for your new job is so evident just reading your blog. I know it's been a journey to get to this point; congratulations!! It's clearly more than a "job", but something you love. Have a great year!

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  4. Mr. Blaine (you can't ever be anything but "Mr. Blaine" to me!), even if it took me awhile, I really did get here thanks to teachers like you. Maybe you don't remember, but you encouraged me with my goal of being a big city newspaper reporter and editor, never pointing out that a woman had never been editor of the NY Times and how could it possibly be me? Of course I didn't do that, but when I was 36 at back at school nearly at square one, it seemed unlikely in five years I'd have my master's degree and be a school librarian. But you didn't doubt me before, so why should I doubt myself now? It's okay to have an occasional lofty goal, and even greater when it comes to fruition like mine has.

    I just wish Linda could see me. :(

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  5. Hi, Christine. Thanks for the blog comment. Just added your blog to my feed. Can't wait to hear all about your first year. This is my second year so I'm right there with you. Are you in a K-12 school? Wow. How exciting. Good luck and have a great time. Welcome to the best profession in the world:)

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