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KNowledge Quest Interview

5/28/2019

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Early this year, I had the opportunity of begin interviewed by Dr. Daniella Smith from UNT.  We had the opportunity to talk about one of my greatest passions in the library, Design Thinking.  I have had the pleasure of working with Dr. Smith, first as a student while I was working on my master's degree and library certification at UNT and then last year, I was able to collaborate with her on a STEM project with our 4th graders and in the fall, I will be once again working under her as I begin my journey as at Ph.D. candidate in Information Science.  Here is the link to the Knowledge Quest Article.  

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Where has the year gone?                     Is it May already!

5/4/2019

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2018-2019 School Year Round Up
Diana & I have been busy!
1- Grants: We teamed up and received an KellerISD Ed Foundation Grant
Check It Out! : STEAM BACKPACK - Books get checked out all year round. It is now time for STEAM items to join the books and become available for check out all year around. These STEAM BACKPACKS will be made available for check out to students at 2 elementary schools.  The kits will include activities to engage engineering, physics, electronics, robotics, arts, technology, and mathematics. Even a book might be in some to promote STEAM and literature connections. (Plus - Diana received one focusing on reading.)
2- Clubs: Battle of the Books; Tech Ninjas; Incognito Readers; Girls Can Code
We are really liking the before school times for the club meetings. Plus adding eating lunch in the library opportunities for the club members. Our Tech Ninja Friday Tips definitely were very successful addition this year.
3- Presentations: Girls Can Code; Design Thinking; Seesaw; Librarians-Wild Card; STEM Boxes To Go
These presentations were done at varies conferences...TCEA, Service Center XI, KellerU, District PD, Staff PD
4- Building a READING Culture:
  * DREAM BIG: (Diana) kindness/reading/physical activity school-wide project
  * "What I Am Reading" - POSTERS: so staff can show off what they are reading
  * Global Read Aloud
  * Book Character Parade
 * Dr Seuss Week (Dr Westfall did a read aloud FaceTime from Bluebonnet ES (Diana's Library))
  * March Book Madness
 * Bus Book Mobile Grant (Cross your fingers that we can get a grant/grants to make this happen)

Here comes the books!  The KISD Libraries dream of bringing books to KellerISD students during the summer; as well as, have the ability to do Pop Up events during the whole year. We want to provide access around the District in a variety of places so students & their families can acquire books to read. Research has shown that reading during the summer stops the “summer reading slide”. This dream needs wheels!
5- AR/VR : These are still creating "AWE & WONDER". 
6- Digital Citizenship Lesson: We are  helping to develop these for our District using Common Sense Media.
7-  District Technology & Library Leadership Committees
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What is up in 2019?

1/27/2019

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1-We were awarded a KellerISD ED Foundation Grant for $3,800+ to help us set up 40 STEAM BACKPACKS. (The next Blog Post will have more about this.) (See the images for a sneak peak at a draft of a challenge card for 1 of the backpacks.)
2-Diana & I will be presenting at 2 sessions at TCEA 2019. We will be presenting Girls Can Code & Tech Empowered Design Thinking. Check out the Presentation Tab to see the Slides used in the presentations.)
3-We are writing up proposals for Keller University  for this summer. It is hard to believe we are already planning for the summer PD.
4-We are participating in District Technology Advisory Committee & District Digital Links. We are fortunate to be a part of helping plan for the future and supporting the current technology in our District.
5-Diana & I are a part of our KellerISD Librarian Leadership  Focus Group. It is important to be ​advocate to move forward and keep that growth mindset. Librarians have so much to offer & need to be at the "leadership table".
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a little of this & That : Follow up (reflection)

11/12/2018

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Just a little of this and that...here is a follow up (reflection) on some of our different projects/programs.
1-Incognito Readers Club: "Shh! It's a secret club!" It is so easy to run. The Club started in October and teachers already had students in mind. They mentioned how it was so meaningful to a student they invited last year.
2-Tech Ninja Club: We are really liking the transformation!  We now only are meeting once a month after-school but have added one before school meeting every week.  The before school meeting spotlights a Tech Tip.
3-Design Thinking: We are doing the Food Truck Challenge with our 3rd graders. The 4th graders will be doing an authentic problem.  They will be looking at the PBIS rewards and then recommend new rewards. We added a new one for 1st graders.  They designed a monster character for a puppet author.
4-Google Expedition: We had a chance last year to be a part of the AR pioneer program. I purchased a set of 7 devices and accessories. I figure that 3 students can share a device and experience AR.
​5-STEM BOXES TO GO: This program is on it's 3rd year.  They are still are flying off the shelves.  We are planning on changing and adding some more to challenges.
6-Social Media Intern Program: This program is small but is important.  We train just a few students to tweet out using our official school twitter account. #kidstweet It is great seeing what the students want to share.
7-Girls Can Code: Wow! Girls come one day a week before school to Code. We spotlight a Code activity but the girls are given freedom to choose what coding they want to do.
8-Flexible Schedule: Truly from Monday-Thursday my library is a mix scheduled...but on Friday-I am flexible schedule.  So far this year, Fridays have had Coding, Google Expeditions, BreakOut EDU, iCentre Reward, Pilgrim Lady presenter and Workshops on Chromebooks, Seesaw & Book Talk Choice Board.
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#SummerBookBus

6/8/2018

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Books + Design Thinking = Awesome Summer Book Bus
Third time's the charm, right? I really want to share this incredible story, but it is not that easy because I want  everyone who reads this to understand and get the picture of how wonderful this experience has been for me. It combines what we have been working on for the last couple of months, Design Thinking with community collaboration through partnerships such as an Eagle Project - book donations, Durham Bus services - donating the bus and driver, Keller Public Library, Ace Hardware  and Keller ISD schools - locations, and of course librarians.

What we were able to do was to provide over 6000 books for over 1500 visits from the community for the month of June was not only amazing becasue we actually did something, but the very act of serving the community was a lot of fun.

Every teacher wants their students to read over the summer because they know that if a student reads over the summer they will not suffer from the dreaded summer slide. They also want students to develop a love for reading. However, many times students don’t have the opportunity to visit the library during the summer  for various reasons. So, the librarians used Design Thinking to create a Summer Book Bus. This small fact that we actually followed the Design Thinking also makes the success of this project even better. You can see from our other posts that we have been using it with our students, but now as librarians we used it to solve a much bigger problem. I will have to write another post about the actual method. 

Through Design Thinking, we created a bus that traveled to ten different locations each week and gave books to students, families, and community members.  The best part was that they did not need to return the books. They could keep the books to build their own library.

Most of the locations were elementary schools in our district. We chose schools that had students who might not get to visit libraries over the summer and who might not have books in their homes. We also had four evening events, two at a public library and two at a neighborhood hardware store. All of the books were either donated from an Eagle project or from a grant. The bus and driver were donated by Durham Bus Services. We used the Design Thinking steps to work through the challenges so that we could provide books for students.


Results: Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday mornings, we handed out books to people. Most of the patrons were students, but parents were welcome and there were books for all ages. We loved having families come and pick out books. One best surprises was the fact that some of the schools that we chose had summer school programs so there were a lot of students who were able to access the bus and the books. We did have four evening stops and these were busy with families. ot have many patrons.

As several librarians have said, “this has been a very fulfilling project, but it was also very tiring” because we were so busy.  The bus far exceeded our expectations. We are looking forward to using this year and Design Thinking to help this product evolve and make it bigger and better.

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Design thinking - Our Journey  (part 1)

3/21/2018

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, .Design thinking is one of the newest topics to hit the education market.  This topic was widely discussed at SXSWedu in 2017. So, how did two library/media technology specialist bring Design Thinking to the library for elementary students?  Here is our story.  
Joining the library field later in life, I am always looking for ways to connect student learning to real world experience especially in the library.  I want students to learn how to learn, not just learn where the books are, how to follow the rules or even find a good book to read.  I think it goes much deeper than this. Students need to learn how to take charge of their own learning.  Librarians do a great job of showing students a wide range of resources both print and digital.  However some of those ways are in reality quite boring.  I learned about the iSearch process first from Donna Duncan, Laura Lockhart and Lisa Ham in their The New iSearch, You Search, We All Learn to Research (2012) and then from my library certification class.  I converted this in to my research model for my third and fourth graders.  Shortly after, I started this process, Genius Hour became a hot topic.  This proved a great way to take the iSearch method and blend it into the Genius hour concept. It worked great for the one year that I had a teacher willing to collaborate with me. 

However something was still lacking.  These ideas were solely focused on what the student wanted to do with little regards to the world around them. I had begun to follow A. J. Juliani and John Spencer and discovered Design Thinking and their LAUNCH process.  This started the wheels spinning.  I decorated my library with rockets and mission control, but again I was stuck.  

This is where SXSWedu come in.  Suzanne and I attended and learned how a lot about design thinking, but the most important part was that we learned how to teach students how to use design thinking. Thanks to Sam Patterson and Echo Horizon School, we had a plan.  Now that we have your curiosity piqued, join us next time for part2 and see how we use the design thinking in our libraries.

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    two authors:

    Diana Colby @DianaColby Mother of eight. Librarian, one busy momma. "Live as if you were to die tomorrow, Learn as if you will live forever." Gandhi
    ​Suzanne Ross @pgelibrary TCEA 2017 Library / Media Technology Specialist...Mother...Wife...Grandmother...trying new things one 'byte' @ a time...too many 'squirrels'...but that makes learning and sharing fun.

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