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class-school-libraries-advocacy

Page history last edited by pollyalida 12 years, 8 months ago

Tech Tools & Advocacy for Schools & Libraries

Workshop for Capital Region BOCES School Library System - August 25, 2011

 

Contribute your own examples and ideas to this collaborative Google Doc. Special thanks to Carolyn Foote who shared tons of great material.

 

More ideas shared during workshop via TodaysMeet room.

 

 

Words of Wisdom From Your Colleagues

  • A Call to Action - from Dr. R. David Lankes
  • Everyday Advocacy -- from Carolyn Foote:  Remember that advocacy is not only for moments of crisis, but needs to be an ongoing effort throughout the year.  Advocacy can range from small daily promotions through email to social networking tools to larger schoolwide efforts.  (Everyday advocacy with web 2.0 tools: Slidedeck on Slideshare)

  • Why librarians should be more like Lady Gaga - from Gwyneth Jones: Shift perception! We need to be more like Lady GaGa than Lady Bird Johnson. We need to establish a clear, pervasive, vibrant, and involved presence in their school, community, and on the web. The more visible librarians are the less likely that they’ll be taken away. Those teacher librarians who are hiding their brilliant programs under a bushel, that’s when they’re most likely to get cut. We need to stay positive, be proactive and always be professional!”

  • Engaging Enchantment  -- from Buffy Hamilton. Build upon the three pillars to build community and collaborative ownership of the library for advocacy. 

 

First Things First (or 2nd...)!

  • Who are your stakeholders? Students, teachers, parents, admins? What do THEY need & want?
  • Who are the decision makers? Who & what influences them? How can you reach them? What are their issues & concerns? (budgets, services, community needs)
  • Does your school have a mission statement? Where do you fit in?
  • Stats & Stories - gather your data, gather your stories. You need both. Stories of how your library helps students & teachers are terrific and even more powerful when you have data to back them up.

 

Tools, Tips & Ideas

  • Highlight student, parent, staff voices in your PR. Nothing better than having your stakeholders speaking about what the library means to them.  
    • Have students create Wordles about what the library means to them.
    • Or set up a WallWisher and have students and teachers leave their thoughts about the library there.
  • Get feedback – how do you get feedback from students, staff, parents?
    • Is there an easy to use form on your web site, blog, wiki?  
    • Google Docs Forms, Polldaddy, SurveyMonkey are free and easy tools to  gather data.
    • Use surveys to assess student interests and learning; share with administrators/parents.
    • Take a snapshot of how the library is used: "what did you come to the library for today?"
  • A blog - This is such an easy way to get news out and potentially connect with the community.
    • WordPress.com, EduBlogs.org, Posterous, Tumblr, Blogger - all free and easy ways to get started.
    • Consider collaborating with other libraries in your district. More focused effort in that way. 
    • Post news, add widgets to bring in content from other services,
    • Include photos and videos. 
    • Update frequently.
    • Use the built-in RSS feed to send your posts out to your other services, like Facebook and Twitter. 
  • Widgets everywhere! …..  Get your content out of your library and into places where your customers ‘live’.
    • Database widgets to put search boxes elsewhere. eg: teachers & students could include relevant database search boxes on their own project pages.
    • Does your catalog have a widgety search box? Can you add that to other school & student pages?
    • Share search and catalog widgets with your local public libraries.
    • Make use of any RSS feeds your catalogs and databases may have. Use tools like Feed2JS and FeedInformer to create widgets from RSS feeds.
    • Make use of embedding & widget options from other services you’re using. eg: flickr, slideshare, YouTube, Animoto, etc.
    • Book sharing sites - Use sites like GoodReads, Shelfari, LibraryThing to create colorful widgets of new books, books on a particular topic, etc.
  • Facebook - Set up a organization page for your library. As the creator of the page, you can add other staff as administrators. Great place to share photos and updates about what’s going on in the library, announce events and more.
    • Use this to connect with parents, teachers, students, admin.
    • Highlight student work!
    • Post news, events, etc.
    • Highlight what the library staff are doing too, include your professional activities outside of library and school district.
    • Ask for input on what services library should offer.
    • Find out what other school staff need help with.
    • Repost news from other local groups & organizations. Connect with those organizations/groups and encourage them to share your library & school news.
    • Use your notes pages to hold a book discussion, a tech sharing discussion, or any other topic you can think of!
    • Connect with parents, offer information about literacy, reading, book lists, new tech tools, internet safety, etc.
    • Most important - ask questions of your followers and engage in conversations, with them.
  • Twitter
    • Post quick updates about what’s going on in the library and school
    • Share new resources, announce events, highlight student work, answer questions, connect with parents
    • Post links to items on your main web site, school web site, other places you have a web presence.
    • Include links to good resources and relevant news articles.  
    • Don’t just feed information out, remember to reply to your followers.
    • Reuse the tweets on your web page. Twitter provides code to put a twitter widget on your web site.
    • And if you're still wondering about jumping into Twitter, read this: If you Were on Twitter (by Scott McLeod)
    • Examples:
  • Slideshare - Post student & staff slide presentations and then embed them on other websites and social media pages. Slide presentations can include audio, consider recording student presentations.
  • Sharing documents - Make more use of your documents, reports, etc. Upload them to SlideShare, Scribd or other document sharing site. Then embed them in other places: web site, blogs, teacher pages, school site, social media, etc.
  • Video & Photos - Get out your camera and take some photos and videos. Or get some Flip cameras before they disappear from the market.
    • Capture your students thoughts on projects they're working on or library services. “why I love the library”, “how the library helped me”
    • Don't spend hours editing, just add some text at the start.
    • Post to YouTube, SchoolTube and any other video service that your school allows access to.
    • Post photos to flickr and use a widget to feed the photos to your website. 
    • Create albums in Facebook too. 
    • You can also take photos and string them together in a video using video editing tools like MovieMaker, PhotoStory and Animoto.
    • Examples:
  • Google Calendar
    • Use Google calendar to schedule classes and events. Share it with teachers so they can see when there is free time.
    • Share it with EVERYONE so they see how busy you are.
    • Embed the calendar on your blogs, wikis, websites.
  • Email signatures
    • Include stats in your email signature, and change them over time so that your work is demonstrated daily  (from webinar by Julie Todaro--ACC Libraries)
    • Include some sort of catchy tag line in your emails. Or include tips in your email footer, reminder of an event, etc. Change it out once a week.

 

 

  • Have a useful web presence  - If the school web site locks you in to a standard format that doesn’t meet your needs, set something up elsewhere.
    • Something that’s easy to update, fun, and flexible. Free or cheap is nice too!
    • Google Sites, Wikispaces, PBwiki, blogspot.com, WordPress.com
    • Don’t forget to use the stats from your various web sites. Use Google Analytics or StatCounter (limited free version) to get good data to share.
    • Does your website have an “about us” “contact us” page? Tell the world about your library! What services you provide, how many classes you’ve taught, how many students you’ve worked with, anecdotes. Don’t be shy.
    • Make sure you connect all your sites to each other “FIND US ELSEWHERE” list facebook, twitter, flickr, wikis, etc.
    • Include links to your online presence in all your printed materials, posters, cards, etc.
  • Create a "newspaper" - There are many easy to use (and free) tools for creating collections of stories to share with others. Since you're already posting articles of interest to Twitter & Facebook, why not add them to a Scoop.it page as well. Makes a more attractive format for browsing articles of interest.
    • Scoop.it creates a page with photos and excerpts from the links you post. Create different pages for different topics.
    • paper.li - Create something of an automatic newspaper. It will find articles tweeted by you, people you follow, from an RSS feed and other options.
      • Library Grits - example of highlights from a paper.li page embedded on blog.
  • And more ideas??
    • Use your computer desktops to publicize an event, or stats, or news. See this fun example from Topeka-Shawnee PL

 

 

Examples

  • New Canaan (CT) High School - (Librarian: Michelle Luhtala) - Posts news, links, videos and more.
  • David C. Barrow Elementary Media Center (Librarian: Andy Plemmons)
    • Facebook Page - Connected to lots of other local organization’s Facebook Pages. Nice work that the school’s PTA page is reposting things from the Media Center page and vice versa.
  • Unquiet Library (Librarian: Buffy Hamilton)
    • 2009-10 Annual Report - Animoto video - can be embedded on web pages, etc. Text report, links to monthly reports also.
    • May 2011 Monthly Report - monthly reports gather resources on many different platforms to provide a thorough picture of activities that month. Flickr photo sets, research pathfinders, documents & slide decks shared through SlideShare.
  • Murray Hill Middle School Media Center (Librarian: Gwyneth Jones)
  • Eanes ISD Libraries Blog (District Librarian:  Carolyn Foote)
    • Districtwide blog to showcase the entire district’s library program;  works well when individual libraries may not have the time to maintain an individual blog, but allows the district/community/school board to see what library programs across a district are doing for students.   Can embed Animoto videos with scenes from every library or email the Animoto to Superintendent, School board, etc.

 

 

Tips for sharing your content more simply

  • Import your blog posts to Facebook
    • Steps to import an external blog to your Page's notes:
      • Access your Page manager here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/
      • Go to your Page and click "Edit Page" on the top right of page.
      • Select "Apps" and next to "Notes" please click "Go to Application."
      • On the bottom left hand side of the page select "Edit Import Settings"
  • Put Twitter stream on your web site
    • Use the Resources link at the bottom of the page http://twitter.com/about/resources
    • Select the type of Widget you want to create
    • Copy the code and paste it into your website. This will require getting into the HTML code for your site or using whatever technique your website maintenance system allows you to use for external widgets.
  • Include your Facebook presence on your website
  • Hootsuite
    • Use Hootsuite to schedule tweets and FB updates.  
    • Use the bookmarklet to quickly share great resources as you come across them.

 

 

More resources, ideas, articles....

 

 

 

Contributors: Please add your name here

 

 

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