3D Printing and More in the Library Media Center

Since receiving our MakerBot 3D printer through many generous donations with DonorsChoose.org, we have been able to do some exploration and have now started our more serious projects.  I was so nervous to begin with about how to work with the 3D printer, but I feel really comfortable using it now AND also feel comfortable allowing students to use it.  Any chance I can, I want to have the kids to do all of the making, converting and button pushing.

Anytime the MakerBot is printing we draw a crowd! 

Tinkercad is web based so kids can access on various computers

This week in the CMS Library Media Center, we printed the geodes our 6th grade science students made in Tinkercad during their investigation of the contribution of minerals to rock composition.  We have had quite an interesting array of designs.

Next week, we hope to begin printing the winning 3D product designs that our 6th grade social studies classes are creating as they learn about economics and environmental issues.  

In a few weeks, our next, and more ambitious, project is to use the FREE 123D Creature iPad app to design monsters that will inspire our writing.  Right now, we are in the testing phase by creating test designs and attempting an export from 123D Creature and then into MakerBot.

One of our students suggested we make a video of a MakerBot build and speed it up, so I told her to have at it.  She set up the iPad in front of the Bot and we recorded away.  After a bit of editing in iMovie here you go.....

A Reflection on Literacy Events for Families

We had a nice turn out for our Family Literacy Night again this year.  I have had many different variations of our family night: a reading carnival, a reading pep rally, and the the current version: an evening of many literacies.  During the last two years, in the spirit of participatory learning, (which got me all excited when I learned about it from Henry Jenkins) students have led sessions for parents on several different #literacies  (which is one of my passions brought on from the teaching of great Donna Alvermann at UGA and all of my PLN friends in the area of  #literacies  Anna Smith, Emily Pendegrass and Buffy Hamilton just to name a few).  Parents rotate among the classes to experience all of the student-led sessions.  Probably my favorite part about this year's fam lit night was our collaboration with the teen services librarian at Athens Regional Library.  Lauren came and provided activities for the middle schoolers while the parents were in the sessions.  We have done quite a bit of collaboration with Lauren from the library this year, and I'm super excited to share more about that....in another blog post soon.

I found our current lit night model to be pretty successful, and the parents seem to be impressed with the student experts and many literacies for learning, but I wonder how we could get more parents to attend.  I've used the trick of having kids perform or be involved to get more participation with orchestra and step team performances as well as student presenters, but sometimes the parents come begrudgingly to the literacy sessions b/c their only real motivation for coming is to watch their kid perform in the orchestra/step team, etc.  With the 600 students in our school, I guess I'm an overachiever to hope we could pull more than the 50 or 60 parents that show for the evening.  Do you think this is a reasonable turnout?  Do most schools have a family literacy night or event to promote literacy with parents?  How do you get more parents to participate?

What we've been working toward: Our program is Exemplary!

The CMS Media Center was named a Georgia Exemplary Library Media Program for the 2011 school year! This is what we have been working toward since 2009 when we changed our program development planning to use the Georgia Exemplary Rubric as our guiding document. After receiving GA Exceptional status (step below Exemplary status) for the 2010 school year, I made some changes and our program was nominated again, so I rewrote our application for the 2011 school year back in the spring, and finally, last week the Georgia Department of Education called our administration and told them we had won!

A little more about the award and our programing:

A library media program named as Georgia Exemplary Program must be nominated first. Then, the library media specialist must write a six page narrative detailing their programing, and the program must be evaluated and receive Exemplary in all twenty areas of the Georgia DOE Library Media Program Rubric.

A strong focus of the CMS Media Program in the last few years has been on information and digital literacy skills. We have collaborated with teachers to provide participatory and inquiry based learning experiences for our students. Many of these collaborative projects integrated technology in various content areas through hands on experience with digital media, Web 2.0 tools and using music and images from the public domain through Creative Commons Licensing.

One significant change we made in the media program this past year was to add additional hours outside of the normal school day and to extend a warm invitation to families and community members. The CMS media center was open before school and after school until 6 p.m. this past year. In addition, over the summer, the CMS Media Center Website hosted a Summer Reading Blog in which students blogged online about the books they read this summer, and we opened the library media center on Thursday afternoons in the summer time for students and parents come and check out books, play games, read, use computers, or just hang out.

Additionally, an area reflected in the GA Exemplary Rubric that I felt I needed to improve in was professional sharing.  Although I have done a pretty good job with sharing with my district media specialists, I had not created a state or national professional learning network for myself.  I have since started this blog, acted as a guest speaker at new library media specialist grad school classes, returned to graduate school to work as a TA in grad level LMS classes, become a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant (with Red Clay Writing Project/UGA SI) , and most importantly joined Twitter.  I would say that this professional sharing, especially my Twitter PLN, has probably been the most beneficial change for me as a teacher.  I have learned so much from this sharing and my new professional learning network!

Our 2011 Application