We've been super-busy in the media center this school year! It's easy to let the days fly by, never really knowing whether or not you're making an impact on students or the school. That's why we decided to take a few minutes (well, days really) to put together our version of the Twelve Days of Media.
Watch the video!
Now, how about some explanation?
208 heat tickets (and counting!) Each time a computer needs repair or reconfiguration that we can't perform at the school level, we submit a ticket to the help desk. It's time consuming, but important to keep our technology up and running.
Eleven Lincolns Leaping A couple of years ago, Mrs. Fiedler bought a cut-out of Abe Lincoln that stood next to our biographies. Over time, he got a little bent up, and we were ready to trash poor Abe. Mrs. Fiedler had the great idea to prank Ms. Schaefer by leaving Lincoln in her classroom. Since then, many teachers have been "Lincolned" by finding Abe in unexpected places. See, librarians CAN have fun!
21 Videoconferences Ms. Fiedler has collaborated with many teachers to videoconference/Skype with people from around the world. A class in India who performed dances and watched our students dance, a woman from a refugee camp, someone from the Immigration Council, a Vietnam Vet, a professor at Rutgers Univ., an expert from WiseOceans. That's just a sampling of how we've helped open the world to our students.
210 Hours of Leopard Time That's just a rough estimate. The increase to 30 minutes of remediation/enrichment Leopard Time has meant great things, especially for 6th grade students, whose book checkout is up 42% over this time last year. Some days, Mrs. Mackanic seems buried under books!
57 New Teacher iPads We were able to order, purchase, set up, catalog and distribute new iPads to 57 teachers who indicated they had a plan to use them effectively in student instruction. Those, along with our school's iPads for students, has led to more digital learning with apps and Google Drive.
46 Literacy Lessons In addition to the 40 library orientation classes and 40 tech orientation classes at the beginning of the year, we've taught a bunch of literacy lessons. Some of these have been about finding good online resources, evaluating websites to get the best information, and citing sources, and other have focused on how to choose good literature from the media center. These are all crucial skills our students need to be life long learners.
120 Genius Hours This is just a guess, but we've worked closely with 8th grade language arts students to help make their year-long Genius Hour projects successful. From choosing topics to ideas for a final product, we've instructed students in groups and conferenced one-on-one to help 8th graders aim big and find something they are passionate about.
36 Minions Minded! Mrs. Fiedler may sometimes feel like she's herding cats, but her Media Minion club is packed with the smartest, most tech-minded kids we've ever seem. Whether they are working with Google Cardboard, organizing our carts of wireless laptops, or playing board games at a party, they are always having fun.
Four Trailers Outfitted With Technology This is one of those unseen functions we serve. This summer, four mobile classrooms showed up, to help with our overcrowding. No one else realizes this, but someone has to make sure the technology infrastructure is installed, get computers and printers for the classrooms, and oversee that everything gets done so the trailers are fully functional. That someone is us.
99 New CIP Teacher Laptops On a similar note, each certified teacher in WCPSS received a new laptop at the beginning of the school year, purchased with recent bond money. This was a tremendous amount of work for us, as we got them ready to be handed out. We were required to collect two signed forms from every teacher, change the old laptops in our computer inventory and library catalog, add the new laptops to the computer inventory and library catalog, barcode the new ones and check them out to teachers, and get the old ones ready to be used by students. It's one of those things that has to be done, but no one has a clue how much time it takes.
20 Hours of Code Twenty classes came in to participate in Hour of Code, a global movement to get students interested in coding and computer programming.
One Gene Yang Author Visit We were so lucky to have the award-winning author of American Born Chinese come to speak with 7th graders who had read his book. We're grateful to Quail Ridge Books and Music who sponsored the visit. The students LOVED his talk and we loved having him at MPMS.
Well, that's the whole song, but not the whole of what we've done the first half of the school year. We're not ready to rest on our laurels just yet. Stay tuned for much more from the MPMS media center.
Watch the video!
Now, how about some explanation?
208 heat tickets (and counting!) Each time a computer needs repair or reconfiguration that we can't perform at the school level, we submit a ticket to the help desk. It's time consuming, but important to keep our technology up and running.
Eleven Lincolns Leaping A couple of years ago, Mrs. Fiedler bought a cut-out of Abe Lincoln that stood next to our biographies. Over time, he got a little bent up, and we were ready to trash poor Abe. Mrs. Fiedler had the great idea to prank Ms. Schaefer by leaving Lincoln in her classroom. Since then, many teachers have been "Lincolned" by finding Abe in unexpected places. See, librarians CAN have fun!
21 Videoconferences Ms. Fiedler has collaborated with many teachers to videoconference/Skype with people from around the world. A class in India who performed dances and watched our students dance, a woman from a refugee camp, someone from the Immigration Council, a Vietnam Vet, a professor at Rutgers Univ., an expert from WiseOceans. That's just a sampling of how we've helped open the world to our students.
210 Hours of Leopard Time That's just a rough estimate. The increase to 30 minutes of remediation/enrichment Leopard Time has meant great things, especially for 6th grade students, whose book checkout is up 42% over this time last year. Some days, Mrs. Mackanic seems buried under books!
57 New Teacher iPads We were able to order, purchase, set up, catalog and distribute new iPads to 57 teachers who indicated they had a plan to use them effectively in student instruction. Those, along with our school's iPads for students, has led to more digital learning with apps and Google Drive.
46 Literacy Lessons In addition to the 40 library orientation classes and 40 tech orientation classes at the beginning of the year, we've taught a bunch of literacy lessons. Some of these have been about finding good online resources, evaluating websites to get the best information, and citing sources, and other have focused on how to choose good literature from the media center. These are all crucial skills our students need to be life long learners.
120 Genius Hours This is just a guess, but we've worked closely with 8th grade language arts students to help make their year-long Genius Hour projects successful. From choosing topics to ideas for a final product, we've instructed students in groups and conferenced one-on-one to help 8th graders aim big and find something they are passionate about.
36 Minions Minded! Mrs. Fiedler may sometimes feel like she's herding cats, but her Media Minion club is packed with the smartest, most tech-minded kids we've ever seem. Whether they are working with Google Cardboard, organizing our carts of wireless laptops, or playing board games at a party, they are always having fun.
Four Trailers Outfitted With Technology This is one of those unseen functions we serve. This summer, four mobile classrooms showed up, to help with our overcrowding. No one else realizes this, but someone has to make sure the technology infrastructure is installed, get computers and printers for the classrooms, and oversee that everything gets done so the trailers are fully functional. That someone is us.
99 New CIP Teacher Laptops On a similar note, each certified teacher in WCPSS received a new laptop at the beginning of the school year, purchased with recent bond money. This was a tremendous amount of work for us, as we got them ready to be handed out. We were required to collect two signed forms from every teacher, change the old laptops in our computer inventory and library catalog, add the new laptops to the computer inventory and library catalog, barcode the new ones and check them out to teachers, and get the old ones ready to be used by students. It's one of those things that has to be done, but no one has a clue how much time it takes.
20 Hours of Code Twenty classes came in to participate in Hour of Code, a global movement to get students interested in coding and computer programming.
One Gene Yang Author Visit We were so lucky to have the award-winning author of American Born Chinese come to speak with 7th graders who had read his book. We're grateful to Quail Ridge Books and Music who sponsored the visit. The students LOVED his talk and we loved having him at MPMS.
Well, that's the whole song, but not the whole of what we've done the first half of the school year. We're not ready to rest on our laurels just yet. Stay tuned for much more from the MPMS media center.