The Life of the Librarian TIS January 9-13, 2012

This week marked the end of the first semester of the school year.  Wednesday and Thursday were used for final exams, and Friday was a teacher preparation day with no school for students, so it was an unusual week. I was also very busy as a virtual school coordinator this week as I was gathering transcripts from the various providers, entering grades, processing new enrollments, and arranging extensions for some students. 

This semester I've been working on the blended delivery assignment with a science teacher who agreed to use Edmodo to manage his semester projects.  At the beginning of the week, I posted two polls to Edmodo to see how students responded to the platform.  In one survey, students indicated that their favorite feature of Edmodo is being able to discuss and ask questions outside the classroom.  In the other survey, students indicated that they would like to use Edmodo with the same frequency in other classes.  This tells me that they enjoy using Edmodo but probably would not like using it on a daily basis.  Students in these classes used Edmodo as they worked on their semester projects and as the teacher posted extra credit assignments.  Students checked Edmodo at least weekly. 

Because this week's schedule gave me more flexibility than usual, I was able to provide training on how to set up and use Elmos (document cameras).  Although not everyone has received one at this point, all teachers in my school are getting Elmos.  I provided training on how to set them up so that teachers can keep their Elmos and computers connected to their data projectors at all times without having to disconnect/reconnect anything when they switched from projecting from the Elmo to projecting the computer.  We also looked at some of the other features of the Elmo such as using a memory card to show and store pictures. 

I also used part of the day Friday to work on technology maintenance and repairs, the most common of which was cleaning data projector filters. Many of our projectors have the filters on the bottom, so when the projectors were mounted, the filter is on top.  The dust just lands and stays right on the filter.