Still building the online profile

Edublog Awards banner

Wow! This professional learning blog, “Booked Inn”, has been nominated on a shortlist for “Best Librarian/Library Edublog 2010” in The Edublog Awards. Voting (please click HERE) doesn’t seem too complicated; I would love your support. Many thanks in advance! It’s such a buzz to make the shortlist. (Looks like all that work on Build Your Online Profile with Tristan Bancks, at the Sydney Writers’ Centre in Term 3, is really paying off.)

2010 Edublogs Awards nomination

Also, as an update to the work done by Kindergarten students this term, the first of our Photo Peach slideshows for the “Travelling Fearless Project” garnered 726 views (and 40 comments, including Sarah Davis, the illustrator of “Fearless”). Simply astounding! And it gets better: I Just received an automated email, via Photo Peach, that someone had made my page a favourite of theirs. I was curious, so tracked back and ended up on the main search page. It seems that, of Photo Peach’s 42 pages of “Recently Popular” slideshows, “Travelling Fearless” is on Page 1 (one of 15 image links sitting there, gathering even more views as I type). And the sequel, Farewell Fearless!, is on Page 3!

Fearless-9
I have… Goosebumps!

I flocked my clock

Flocked clock

The black “Penrith” clock, on the “newsroom clocks” wall, hasn’t been looking its best against an indigo background. You may recall, I superglued a green satin rim to the perimeter last week, but it simply wasn’t enough to lift the clock from the rich denseness that is the indigo material on the walls. I resisted the urge to add tinsel, petals or a sunburst, because I really liked the simplicity of a “newsroom”. So… now the black clock is also colour-matched to the doors. PVA glue and “Martian green” fake turf (made for decorating the scenery of a model railway), created an effect which is more luxurious and professional than if I’d attempted to paint straight onto the plastic rim.

Time 4 Le@rning - green clock

The Travelling Fearless Project

Fearless at the gate

My fifth day each week (timetabled in chunks across the rest of my four TL days) is to work with students on PSP (Priority Schools Program) literacy and numeracy projects. This term, it’s Kindergarten’s turn, and we’ve been part of the “Travelling Fearless Project”, in which Fearless, the misnamed, cowardly, British bulldog puppy from the Colin Thompson & Sarah Davis picture book, is visiting various schools, coordinated by Cath Keane at School Libraries & Information Literacy.

My Kindergarten literacy students (five representatives from three classes, working as a small group, four times per week) brainstormed this slideshow (content, poses for photos and captions) on Fearless’s visit to our school, making good use of our IWB and exploring every nook and cranny of the new library. Photo Peach is so easy, it’s almost foolproof:

View the students’ slideshow HERE! (Update: A sequel is now online HERE!)

I hope to provide annotations, and the results of our pre- and post-tests, on a parallel page to our wiki work soon: Select the third option on the menu. Enjoy!

Many happy returns

Returns

Just when I thought I’d finished with the blue paint and textured gel medium, I spent the weekend preparing, painting and varnishing a set of small MDF letters (from Spotlight) to match the circulation desk revamped signage – and to dress up the new Returns box. Not that it needed a lot of dressing up:

Lion and Returns box
The full story of the library lion is HERE!

I’ve read a lot of controversial comments about these BER-standard Returns boxes. Lots of schools seem to be very concerned about student safety when the box is emptied. A platform inside lowers automatically under the mass of returned books, and the lid is quite heavy. However, I never had the thought that the box in our library would be used every lesson. I had planned that, when borrowing recommences in 2011, students would continue to return their books in a pile at the circulation desk each library session – and that the lockable box is simply there for one-off returns, when no one is available to return items immediately through OASIS Library. I think the box is rather cool! And now, even cooler!

As for the “Just Back In!” boxes, these are my yet-to-be-shelved books. The divided interior of each box provides compartments for sorting. “Just Back In!” came courtesy of one of the schools in Kevin Hennah’s presentation on shoestring library makeovers, and when I first used the signage in the old library, it provided an immediate release of pent-up guilt. Suddenly, books didn’t have to be shelved (too) immediately, because the borrowers often perceive them as “Hot” titles and highly worthy of borrowing before anyone can actually re-shelve them!

Just back in
“Just back in!”

STOP PRESS: The picture book, “A rat in a stripy sock” by Frances Watts & David Francis, is very popular at out school. When I bought the book, the shop gave me a free rat-in-a-stripy-sock toy, and our rat and his colourful balloons (painted styrofoam balls and Fimo clay “nozzles”) now hang from the rafters of our new school library:

Rat in a stripy sock

Time 4 Le@rning…

Time 4 Le@rning
NEW YORK, LONDON, PENRITH, AUCKLAND.
And the ellipsis (…) is extremely important!

Last week, I finally had the time (ho ho ho) to put up the last major installation in our new BER school library: the “newsroom” clocks with various world time zones represented. This is, essentially, my original vision for the previous library’s back wall, but the beautiful, proposed, professional signage (with purple lettering on a large, clear perspex rectangle, to show the green-painted wall behind) was way out of my meagre, less-than-shoestring, budget at the time. In the old library, I ended up making do with a simple, laminated sign, designed rather crudely in Word, and enlarged on the photocopier on green A3 paper.

It was a recent, chance discovery of the chain store Typo (in Parramatta, but now also in Centrepoint in the CBD) that secured me the lettering I decided I wanted to do the job properly, and they were pre-painted, and on special! The new library even comes with a ledge – at the right height – for the letters to stand upon, secured lightly to the painted wall with Velcro dots. The ellipsis was an afterthought… While placing the letters last Monday, I had to move a few and the very last Velcro dot removed a tiny bit of paint off the wall, so… I raced back to Typo on Thursday night to get three matching full stops (at 95 cents each). Luckily for me, the first full stop sits over the offending paint glitch. As if it was always meant to be there… (Shhh! Don’t tell anyone I ruined the new wall!)

The black clock (easily recognisable as the local time) doesn’t show up as clearly on dark blue as it once did on pale green, so I superglued a thin, green satin ribbon around its edge, and that helps the rim show up.

What's the time in Penrith?
What’s the time in Penrith?

During the rebuilding of our BER, I happened upon some very cool, extra clocks in the shape of Superman‘s insignia and a Doctor Who Dalek, and accumulated those, too, to join the “Time 4 Le@rning” clocks. While in Typo, I also found a very nice, cubic, digital clock for my office (scroll down to final photo); as close to a “Star Trek” stardate clock as I can get at the moment. The “Superman” clock is numberless and the Dalek clock is deliberately “one handed” – and they can be challenging to interpret, but bound to be discussion starters, like so much else in this new library. Almost every artifact has an anecdote and the stimulating environment is getting conversations between students really buzzing.

The day I was putting everything up, I realised that six clocks in a row defeats the pun in the signage, so I found new locations for my new, novelty clocks, leaving the “newsroom” part of the library with a more serious tone.

What's the time on Krypton?
What’s the time on Krypton?

Frames & clocks

What's the time on Gallifrey?
What’s the time on Gallifrey?

The clock with the mouse represents “Hickory Dickory Dock”, of course, and dates back to when the newsroom clocks in the old library began to run down on their first batteries. It took me a while to work out that “Auckland” didn’t need constant repairing and resetting, just a new battery. This old clock, from the original library office, had never kept good time, so now it sits permanently at one o’clock, complete with mouse:

What's the time in Nursery Rhyme Land?
What’s the time in Nursery Rhyme Land?

Digital clock
My office clock from Typo. (With Nicholas Ickle’s elephant!)

A quick & dirty mud map

I’ve been asked to help other teacher-librarians, about to move into their new BER libraries, to provide a “mud map” of the floor plan, showing the arrangement of the shelving bays and where our Junior Fiction, Fiction and Non Fiction sections start and end.

Library floor plan mud map
(Click to enlarge.)

The Key is:
C = Computers
CC = Connected Classroom
IWB = Interactive WhiteBoard
LP = Listening Post
PRC = Premier’s Reading Challenge
R = Reference
SPIN = Spinner Rack (one for Animal NF and one for Fiction Quick Reads)
TR = Teacher Reference.

Junior Fiction goes from the returns box to the couch, (Senior) Fiction follows in two “U” shapes, Non Fiction follows in two “U” shapes and finishes at IWB. I realised before unpacking that we really didn’t have enough shelves, so I marked my three targets (ie. JUN Z, FIC Z and NON 999), bit the bullet and just culled ruthlesslessly to fit. I am now very glad to have been that brave. We probably culled about a quarter of a very bloated collection. I know that borrowing will increase as a result of this drastic spring clean. Had I tried to cull in the old library environment, I’m sure I’d have kept a lot of unnecessary stuff.

As you can see, I essentially accepted the arrangement offered by the builders, only switching the positions of a browsing table with a set of bench seating, and sliding one bay slightly to accommodate. The two spinner racks – one for Quick Read, such as “Aussie bites”, etc and one for colourful animal books – plus the racks for Premier’s Reading Challenge, were retrieved from the classrooms where they were on long-term loan.