Library Website Creation

I feel equal parts of excitement and being overwhelmed when I think of making my library website. I’d love to be given the gift of two solid days with no distractions just to work on a site!

I’ve looked around at a lot of sites and made notes on what I’d like to have on my site, but it is unrealistic, in terms of quantity, so boiling it down to five of the most critical things to have on the site is a helpful assignment.

I have a lot of links on my Follett/OPAC page that address much of what was discussed in the assignment article (so helpful to read and to have!). There are some holes, but basically, if I could turn that page into an appealing, fun site with graphics and moving parts, I’d have a good start on a website.

Five Essential Sections for the Gastineau Elementary Library Website

1) General Info – including library hours (and librarian availability and class schedule), photos and short bios on myself and the Library Assistant, mission statement, policies (including behavior) and procedures, contact info, link to the Gastineau School webpage, library map and virtual tour, circulation procedures, OPAC

2) Student Section – links to the Juneau Public Libraries and State Library, Novelist, Destiny Quest, research info (e.g. Big Six, Easy bib, research tutorials), Scholastic Book Fairs, website evaluation, Battle of the Books website, Dewey tutorials, TumbleBooks, favorite author sites, etc.

3) Reference Section – e.g. Alaska Digital Pipeline, Khan Academy, Wikipedia, Dictionary.com, World Book Online, Infoplease Almanac, Atlas.com, Nat. Geo. For Kids, PebbleGo Science and Biographies, etc. I also will include guides for doing searches/research. Some links are to free resources, some are subscription-based.

4) Teacher Section – curriculum links (Kathy Schrock’s “Guide for Educators” site lookss good) with relevant resources for standards and benchmarks included in lesson plans, technology tools, Alaska EED site, an area where suggestions can be made and lessons shared

5) Reading Excitement Section – book of the week highlighted, new books in the library, new technology uses in reading, word of the week, author of the week, links to particularly good reading sites, book reviews, student reading successes, etc.

This feels like just a start and it is already too much! I really liked the Broadwater Elementary Library site in the Helena School District – so user friendly for kids. I tend to like something that doesn’t look overwhelming or too busy, but I don’t know how to get everything in, since there is so much to include, and keep it simple at the same time. Organization is key. I think breaking down each of the five sections above into an outline form is best.

School Nurses

In an effort to balance the Juneau School District budget, which has a projected six million dollar shortfall for the 2012/2013 school year, the administration is proposing getting rid of all but one or two nursing positions, and replacing them with health assistants. Staff is concerned about the safety of medically fragile students, should this change come to pass.

RSS

First, yes, I definitely see the value of aggregating information sources; RSS clearly is a marvelous tool for this. Second, I have to say when I read the author's exaltations about being able to track "about 80 feeds of info daily, from bloggers, newspapers, search engines, and more", (bottom page 72 in our text), my eyebrows raised. Then, after reading the next sentence, "I have read or skimmed literally tens of thousands of posts", I let out a gasp. I know there is an avalanche of information at our doorsteps and that Information Literacy skills need to include the ability to sift through this information and to scan; I just don't know that this is an entirely good thing.

One could say we have no choice since it's a fact now that information is everywhere and in multiple forms, so it not always being a good thing is a moot point. However, I do think we have a little bit of a choice, and that we need to exercise that choice so that we keep our lives balanced. There's such a lure to sit around and check information all day that we forget to go outside, move around, spend time with nature and each other, and to breathe fresh air. I spend so much time at my computer both at work and at home; I notice I'm inside a lot more than I used to be, and I'm not sure how much better my life is as a result, if any.

I'm glad there are ways to aggregate one's information and I see the enormous potential in RSS in education and personal lives. I just don't know how much time I have in my life to add it to my plate. I'm going to try it out with something that interests me a lot (backpacking or ocean kayaking, for instance) and get a better idea of how it works by starting small but I don't have a lot of hope that it will go much past that. To really take full advantage of RSS, I would need to read the chapter at least one more time (esp. the last five pages), try the sites that the author recommends (many!), and practice a lot making tags, etc. I don't know where that time would come from.

I'd like to hear ideas for using RSS in elementary schools - not sure how that would work with students but probably 5th graders could do it (e.g. web logs). It might work for this grade level doing research and collecting sources, though I think teachers would have to do a lot of vetting of sources to make sure it was all appropriate, and that takes time. The author's example of creating a RSS feed that brings any news about avian flu to a student's aggregator immediately upon publication is quite amazing. Seems like at the elem level RSS might be most helpful for gathering feeds that discuss elementary education topics to inform one's teaching.

I can't believe that News.Google.com has 4,500 news sources to choose from! Incredible! I also thought it incredible that there are "leaders in indexing Weblog content", e.g. Technorati.com. The fact that it can follow the way people tag their posts is almost too invasive or something, though I can sure see how helpful it is in finding the content the user wants. I really do wonder how people even think up these abilities, let alone design the code to make it happen. What a world we now live in.

Academic Freedom at Risk!

Juneau teachers showed up en mass last night at the school district board meeting to testify against the district's proposal to cut out of the teaching contract the paragraph that addresses academic freedom. It is believed that the administration's intention is to strip teachers of their freedoms in an effort to promote the use of scripted , "canned", programs. We teachers feel a deep lack of respect for our professional capabilities and esteem. We are not interested in education without personal connection, and we feel removing the freedom given us to teach with our individual styles and preferences in play is not what is best for kids. Why educate us to be teachers when a robot could do the canned programs we are being told are coming our way? Teachers are appalled by the intent to strike intellectual freedom from our contract, currently under negotiation.

Please visit the following link and scroll to "Article 12" to see the proposed changes to academic freedom in the teaching contract. Note as well that instruction is to be "data driven and results oriented". In other words, standardized test will rule.

http://yourjea.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/jsd-initial-bargaining-proposal.pdf