LIBE 477- Final Vision Project

The Final Chapter

When we first started this course and were asked to come up with a list of ideas and keywords that we would like to explore, I was torn between having no idea where to start and having a ton of ideas that I would love to look at. I think that the thought of putting all of my ideas into ‘educational’ terms was what was making me hesitate. The more I read and thought about it though, I came up with this list:

 

-       Literacy advocacy and promotion

-       Building school culture

-       Family involvement 

-       Collaboration with teachers

-       Coding

-       Curriculum enhancement

-       Inclusiveness

-       Leadership

-       Creativity (STEM, Makerspace)

-       Digital tools (green screen, etc…)

 

As our course continued, I narrowed my focus down to 2 areas: collaboration with teachers and building school culture. First, I thought about creating a Padlet that would consolidate a list of all of our technology resources for staff in one easy to use website, so they would know what we have available. The course material on ‘fostering a reading culture in your school’ really resonated with me though, so in the end I decided that my main interest was in building a school community and culture of reading. Our students have lost a lot of social opportunities over the past 2 years, from sports teams to concerts and book fairs. While the focus has been on keeping everyone healthy (rightly so!), I think that they missed out on a lot of the school-based events that build a sense of belonging. Even the library was closed for a big portion of that time, so it was hard to build excitement around reading when their book choices were limited to what I could bring from class to class on a cart. 

 

Now that we are back in the physical library space, I want to help students feel like the library is their space and that they all belong there. Part of that is listening to which books they want and doing my best to get them, and part of it is rebuilding a connection with the students. I love giving a new book to a student and telling them that I set it aside for them to have first because I know that they really like that series or topic. Those small gestures are so helpful in developing relationships and creating a welcoming and respectful library space.

 

One way that I hope to build that community feel is to develop a welcoming physical space in our library. I really like their idea of having zones in the library. I would love to separate my space into areas for quiet reading, makerspace activities, and table activities for students to choose from. This is definitely something I am keeping in mind as I redesign the library. 

 

(McClintock Miller & Bass)

 

Improving my physical space is not really a project that I could hand in for this course however, so I started thinking about other ways that I could get students to ‘buy in’ to the library and maybe spark some interest in the books that are available. I chose to create a digital Bookflix project that can be on display in our space. I have a large portable touchscreen TV available to me that I can move into the library and use for this display.

 

 

Lucas Maxwell, a librarian who has created a similar presentation and was a big inspiration for my project, found that “a Bookflix display is a perfect opportunity to attract new readers, those who think they hate reading but just don’t realise that they haven’t found the right book.” (Maxwell, 2019)

 

The Bookflix project that I created contains 3 categories for students to explore- 

1. New Releases- Features some of the new books that we have recently added to the library.

2. Trending Now- Shows some of the top checked out books over the past few weeks. I used a feature in the Destiny circulation system that allows you to see the top 10 most checked out books and I can update this section every few weeks to reflect our circulation. (Although it is usually dominated by Dogman, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and The Babysitters Club!)

3. Easter Books- I have highlighted some of the books that we have about Easter. This category will change the most often. After Easter it may become Spring Books or Earth Day books.

 

Each book cover links to a page that has a summary of the book for students to read. I have linked the source for the summary on each page, mostly for the purposes of this project. I think that I will leave the name of the source but remove the links when I am displaying it for students, because I don’t want them to be able to click on it and end up on Amazon or Goodreads!

 

Some of the book titles also have links to book trailers that I found online. All of the links for the book trailers are filtered through the Safe Share website so that there are no ads or extra videos for the students to click on.

 

 

There is also a Browse button at the top of the display that links to our school’s Destiny account. This allows students to look through our entire book catalogue and locate any books they like in the library.

 

I enjoyed creating this project and I have become a lot more comfortable with many of the features of PowerPoint. Now that I have the Bookflix template done, I hope that it will be easy to switch out new books on a regular basis and the upkeep will be minimal.

 

The biggest challenge that I came across with this project was actually the final step of sharing it with you! I have been able to save my Bookflix presentation as a .ppsx file, which allows me to display the project automatically as a slideshow, so that students can’t exit the show and move or edit anything on the slides, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to share it that way online. I can email it as a ‘show’, but all of the links I have tried only work as a regular PowerPoint presentation. So when you open it from the link below, please just click on ‘Slide Show‘ and then ‘From Beginning’ in order to be able to navigate through it properly. (Sorry for the extra steps!)

 

https://1drv.ms/p/s!AtMcU96zRogdlRYbRoyXyAVfNj-N

 

One of the biggest things that I wanted to take away from this course was to learn from the ideas and experience of others. I definitely feel like I have accomplished that goal. I have learned about new digital platforms as well as in-person community building activities that I can implement in my own school and library. Thank you all for your ideas, feedback, and wealth of knowledge!

 

 

 

Resources

Maxwell, L. (2019, January 18). Bookflix Library displays are a wonderful thing. BOOK RIOT. Retrieved March 2022, from http://bookriot.com/?p=251910 

McClintock Miller Shannon; Bass William. Leading from the Library (Digital Age Librarian's           Series) (p. 90). International Society for Technology in Education. Kindle Edition.

Padlet. (2022, February 24). What's Padlet? YouTube. Retrieved March 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLdZJAc3bGQ 

The safest way to share YouTube and Vimeo videos. SafeShare. (n.d.). Retrieved April 2022, from https://safeshare.tv/