Diversity In the Media Center

The purpose of the school library media center is that of support to the school’s mission statement and school improvement plan.  First, the budget must be considered.  Then look at what the requests made by the teachers that will support what is being done in the class room.  After that is done, I think most media specialists purchase what will appeal to the readers.  What are they asking for? 

Being a special education teacher, I can certainly understand the assistive technology needs by our students.  Often that is funded through a different source than the media center.  At my school, the exceptional education department has put a Kurzweil reader

in the media center.  Students are given instruction on how to use it and may do so at any time. 

For our visually impaired students materials are provided for them through a different budget. 

Diversity in the Media Center

Diversity in the media center is having the resources and support systems in place to help all students in the media center - no matter their race, gender, culture, language, or learning difficulties. I think that this concept is actually very difficult for a media center to accomplish. We need to have a wide range of resources for our students, including books on many different reading levels, technology that can assist students with sensory disabilities/difficulties, and resources that can used in different languages. What a media center needs and what a media center can get are two different things. It is difficult to rationalize spending the small budget we have on items that may only help one or two students, when we could spend the money for items that more students could use. I think what we have to remember is that without special resources, some of our students would not be able to use the media center at all. As a media specialist, it is important to remember that we need to make sure all our students are being served by the media center - we have to learn how to balance what a special population of our school needs and what the majority of the population of our school needs.

As media specialists, we should always encourage our students to find and discover information about what different people think and feel. We need to provide our students with a variety of resources that will enable them to form their own opinions and perspectives, while still appreciating and tolerating what others think and feel. I think that my school attempts to provide resources for our diverse group of students, but I know that we need to offer more to our students that speak other languages and to our students that may read on much lower levels than our general population. I also feel that my school tries to teach students how to look at problems and issues in the world from different perspectives, but in middle school this can be hard to get in the system because middle schoolers are, in general, pretty self-involved. I think we need to give our students the opportunity to learn in different ways and learn about different lifestyles than their own and help teach them acceptance and tolerance along the way!

Digital Storytelling & eBooks

First let me say that I am a special education teacher who co-teaches with the history department.  I have always thought that to be a good history teacher, you must be a great story teller.  Digital storytelling offers a different way to do just that!
Digital storytelling could be used to open a unit or to close it.  It might be used to highlight keys events.  The students in your class could be assigned the task of creating the digital story.  That would provide them with opportunity to practice research skills such as collecting and analyzing information and then putting the data in a useful format.  Students also practice communication skills.  They learn how to ask the correct questions to get the information they need.  They learn how to write stories for the audience they are addressing.  Digital storytelling also presents an opportunity for students to improve their computer skills.  No matter if you are a beginner or someone with advanced computer skills, there is a job for everyone to do and new skills to learn!
Using digital storytelling provides yet another way to persent the information.  The material is presented in an interactive manner which "draws" the students in and increases the students attention to the lesson.
The University of Houston's Digital Storytelling website is awesome!  It is a great resource for audio and video questions as well as copyright information and so much more!  It is a resource to go to as we complete our digital story assignment.
The media center at my school does not offer ebooks.  The only electronic reference that is offered is GALILEO.  We offered an electronic encyclopedia at one time, but have since discontinued the service.
I think ebooks will have a role in the future at my school.  As the students mature, they may like having the ebooks more so than the actucal book.  The faculty would appreciate having ebooks available for checkout at the school media center rather than having to order them or going to the public library.  eBooks are slow to take off at school, but the future is coming fast!

Technology Training

The technology skills of the teachers and staff at my school are varied, but overall limited. While most of our teachers are younger and up on the current options and tools out there, we work in a school where there is not a huge emphasis put on technology. We are applauded by the administration when it is used, but it is not a big focus of our principal. Teachers use what they are comfortable with, so introduction of new tools is very important. As a faculty, we all use the internet as a teaching tool and Brain Pop is a big favorite of all the teachers right now.  We also just got our first Promethean board in the computer lab this year, so it is catching on slowly but surely. Our media specialist does a good job providing technology training to teacher who are interested. Instead of it being a mandatory staff development, she does an optional technology training at the beginning of each year. It is mandatory for any new teachers to the school, but not for all staff. While I think this is wonderful, you end up seeing the same faces year after year and those tend to be the teachers who are already using the available technology in their classrooms. 


The problem with technology training is much like the problem with any kind of training... no time! Teachers are stretched so thin right now. Our professional learning days have been converted into furlough days, so any kind of training has to be done after school when teachers are tired, talkative, and have other concerns they put before the training. If I were the media specialist at a school like mine, I would suggest a "technology spotlight" at each faculty meeting. This would be a quick introduction to a tool or helpful site. The focus could point out helpful and practical applications in the classroom. If the tools were still not being utilized, I may even offer a small prize (like a jeans pass) for teachers who used the tool in that next week. I know it is hard to break the habits of some teachers, but it may help to expose some staff to the tools and they may end up loving them!


My DO's for technology training:

• Do show the staff how the tool or site will make their job easier or cause them to be more effective.
• Do have all teaching staff attend some sort of training, not just a study group.
• Show your administration the benefits of the technology, you need their support!

My DON'T's for technology training:

• Don't overwhelm the faculty with a lot of new things at one time.
• Don't introduce something geared for a certain grade range to teachers who do not teach that group, no matter how cool the tool.
• Don't shy away from technology training because it is something else added to your overflowing plate, embrace it and make it fun!