All About that (Data) Bass Recap

By Celia Dillon
The Brearley School

Couldn't attend last Wednesday's HVLA Fall Meeting? Want to follow up with a vendor but didn't write down his or her information? Missed something when you were chatting with a fellow librarian? Here's the information you're looking for!

HVLA's Fall Meeting, All About That (Data) Bass was hosted by the Town School and librarians Karen Grenke and Cynthia Millman. It featured presentations and tabling by several organizations with a technology component. These organization included BrianPop, Brooklyn Public Library, Tiny Bop Schools, New York Public Library, InfoBase, PebbleGo/Capstone, Project MUSE & World Book Online. Both librarians and tech integrators were in attendance. Representatives from each organization gave a four-minute "elevator speech" about his or her organization and were also available before and after the presentations to answer individual questions. A keynote speech was given by Daryl Grabarek of School Library Journal about technology and education.

A recap of the December HVLA + NYCIST meeting

Since 2014 HVLA has partnered with NYCIST (New York Consortium of Independent School Technologists) to host meetings that bring our two groups together. Collaboration between librarians and technologists is increasingly vital for any school that wants to innovate and remain current with the constantly changing information and technological landscape. These meetings have been a wonderful way for our two departments to share and learn from each other outside of the busy school day. Our most recent joint meeting took place on December 1st at my school, LREI - Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School. Saber Khan, Director of Educational Technology at The Browning School and current NYCIST President asked our library and ed tech department invited us to host and we planned an a quasi-unconference style afternoon.

Before I give you an overview of the meeting, some background: Karyn Silverman, High School Librarian at LREI and I led a workshop called, "It's LIT: Librarians and Tech Integrators in the Future" at last January's NEIT (NYSAIS Education & Information Technology) Conference. Our goal was to have a productive brainstorming session to understand where we are now in order to map out the future. We came away from that hour with a Venn diagram of our roles in the education ecosystem of our schools.

The "beautiful" Venn diagram we created during "It's LIT" at NEIT16.

Those of us who attended this session felt like we had created a solid foundation for future conversations about collaboration between library and ed tech departments. This was the first thing that came to my mind to frame our conversations on December 1st.

The next step was to gauge what attending members wanted to discuss. In the RSVP we asked, "Librarians/Technologists what would you like to discuss with technologists/librarians?" We also wanted to know if anyone had stories of successful collaboration that they wished to share. Based on these answers, I created a word cloud to visualize our questions and ideas.

As it turns out, "research" was the word that bubbled up as the most cited topic for discussion. Using the word cloud, as well as the full responses from members, we came up with four main discussion topics that seemed to address the various interests of attendees: research, information/media literacy, STEAM and design thinking, and equipment (1:1, fixed resources, etc).

After some snacks and mingling, introductions and announcements, we broke out into four groups to discuss our main topics. I joined the information/media literacy group and we had a great conversation that generated ideas as well as questions and resources. Matthew Moran, Director of Technology and Innovation at Dwight School created a Google doc with our notes. Feel free to take a look, use and/or add resources.

Before we parted ways, we had a quick share to wrap up. Listening to each group, I was struck by how we all approached these topics with various professional experiences, but we were meeting on common ground because both librarians and technologists have roles to play in developing curricula and programs for these issues. As Sarah wrote last month, our departments are stronger when we learn together and from each other. Keep an eye out for future meetings with NYCIST and please invite your ed tech counterpart if they aren't already on the NYCIST listserv. The upcoming NEIT conference at the Mohonk Mountain House is also a great opportunity for professional development with fellow librarians and educational technologists from New York. 

—Joy Piedmont, LREI

Sandy and my Information Drought

It's been four weeks since Sandy hit our area, and by now, we've all heard countless Sandy stories. At the time though, some of us found access to information scarce or difficult because of the power outages and intermittent cell phone service. My week without power began with the troubling feeling like something important might be announced—school closings, mass transit updates, power restoration plans—and I might miss it. Whenever I found cell phone service, I turned to twitter (specifically The New York Times Metro Desk) to hear from the outside world. 

Once the storm passed and the days without power stretched on, I’ll admit that there was something peaceful about being "off-the-grid," even though being without heat was not as pleasant. My husband and I played board games, we read by candlelight, and went to sleep when the sun went down. Friends with power invited us over for hot meals and showers, and we relied on them for information and news. In hindsight, the experience was a good reminder that access to information is a precious commodity, and it is important to be thoughtful about how and when we need to be plugged in. Turning off our devices every so often, stopping the constant stream of information, can remind us to thoughtfully seek out only the information that is most important to us, of the best quality, and from the most reliable sources. 

With this in mind, HVLA is hoping to use the interwebs for post-Sandy school library relief. We encourage all HVLA members to fill out this quick survey, so we can match schools in need with those offering resources. 

Tech News

Here's a selection of articles and blog posts from the past week that might be of interest. Feel free to add other articles in the comments.

A Guide to Publishing in the Library Ebook Market
via The Digital Shift

Book Apps Aren't Going to Replace Children's Books, Part 1
via Small World Press

Are Ebooks Hitting a Plateau?
via Sites and Soundbytes

At San Francisco State Library, A Robot Will Happy to Find That Book For You
via The New York Times

Overdrive to Distribute Harry Potter Ebooks
via Library Journal

A Look into the Digital Lives of Teens
via Mind/Shift

Necessary Evil? Random House Triples Prices of Library Ebooks
via Tech Crunch

The Twitteraholic's Ultimate Guide to Tweets, Hashtags, and All Things Twitter
via The Edublogger

Our Embedded Librarian at Library2.011

Are you planning on joining the masses for Library2.011?  The worldwide virtual conference is fast approaching and the presenters have some amazing sessions planned for the three day event.   You can watch librarians from all over the world talk about what they are doing in their libraries.  One of HVLA's  own librarians, Briar Sauro, will be presenting her curriculum as well.  Read all about it below.

Briar was inspired by conference STRAND 2:  "Librarians & Information Professionals" - Evolving Professional Roles in Today’s World. Says Briar, “I wanted to present at Library 2.011 because I saw the term ‘embedded librarian,’ an idea to which I strongly relate but which I rarely see applied at the elementary level.”

Briar has been at Berkeley Carroll since 2004 as the librarian for Grades 2-4 and has been an Independent School Librarian in New York since 1999. About two years ago she began making big changes to her library curriculum. She got the Fourth Grade library class scheduled back-to-back with computer class so that she, along with the computer teacher, could use the time flexibly for computer skills, library skills and online research skills as needed.

Briar did not stop there. That year, she was under Peer Review and was asked to imagine her ideal library program by her Review committee.  She told them about all the things we learn in library school, flexible scheduling and integrating research skills into the classroom curriculum. One wise teacher said, “Sounds like you need to be working with the classroom teachers, not just the computer teacher.”

So, with the support of her Peer Review committee, she presented a proposal to the administration to overhaul her entire Third and Fourth grade curriculum. She now co-teaches with the computer teacher and the classroom teacher. They work in the library, lab, or classroom, depending on the content of the lesson. Briar attends all grade level meetings and works out a research timeline with the teachers. They figure out what the students will need to know for their research projects and then they break it down into lessons and mini-lessons leading up to their projects.

The integrated library curriculum is always dependent on the social studies curriculum and may change over time. For one unit, Briar taught three weeks of lessons on using authoritative websites followed by a short mini-lesson on using Google Docs for note-taking as students launched their explorer research. For another project she built a web page full of video and interactive resources for a trip to Ellis Island and then assisted while the students wrote immigrant journals in their docs (with factual sidebars!).

This new curriculum would not be possible without the support of the administration, a team of enthusiastic teachers up for a challenge, a reworked schedule, and a librarian for PreK-1st Grade who can help the students become independent library users by 3rd Grade. And it is not without its challenges. In her presentation, Briar will talk about all that went into her embedded curriculum: the planning, the collaboration, and the challenges. “This is messy work and we are still figuring out how best to do it. I’ve been pleased, though, by the increase in students’ capability and competence with online tools and their enthusiasm for the work we do together.”

Thanks to Briar Sauro for providing the details of her  program. I hope you check out her session. 

  This post was brought to you by HVLA Vice President, Kimberly Pallant

A 21st Century Librarian Conundrum

This week I received my first set of bibliographies to correct and I started thinking about MLA format.  It seems to have taken over my brain recently and left me with lots of unanswered questions.  One question in particular has been haunting me; how does one cite an iPad app?   My students are using apps for research more and more frequently and in fact I was thinking of recommending these apps for a science project next week. But before I do, I want to make it clear to the students that they will have to cite the app and show them how to do it.

Let’s consider the following:

Is an app a website?

Not quite.  One does not necessarily need Internet access to use an app, just a device on which to view it.

Is an app a database?

Not exactly, however you could use an app to access an online database from the library or create your own database using an app.

Is an app an eBook?

Well….there are book apps.  You could purchase and read an eBook using  an app or download a unique book app that lets you play inside the story.

My conclusion: an app is an app!  It seems to me that an app can be any and all of these things, thus it is a completely unique resource requiring it’s own citation format.

So, where to go from here?  I did some googling for app citation suggestions and came across a few helpful responses.

A member of the California K-12 School Librarians List Serv had a great suggestion that 

mimics the citation for a general website, with a few tweaks that are unique to apps such 

as creator, version and release date. The iPad Journal had an equally helpful response. 

The only difference I noticed between the two is a matter of labeling the medium.   

Should it be iPad or app? 

Is this an issue that has come up in your schools?  How have you responded?

This post was brought to you by HVLA Vice President, Kimberly Pallant