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Willard Intermediate South Media Center
This has been said by many educators, but it is worth repeating. In all of my years of teaching, I have never been through anything like this. Educating students remotely has its challenges. Mostly we have the technology structures and experiences to provide remote learning for our students. However, the one factor that we cannot control is the lack of home Internet access for our students. Yes, most people do have smart phones and access to data, but many people have metered Internet access and lack technology (tablet or computer) to participate in online learning. I am proud that my district recognizes this and have made accommodations for our families. COVID19 highlights the twin issues of disparity concerning Internet access and technology. I predict these disparities will become a major focus for education the future. Continuing library services during this pandemic is difficult. We all want the books to be checked out by our students. We want our students to continue using library resources. We want our students to continue reading! How do we do this and keep our students safe? How do we do this when many of our students lack technology? This is what we are currently trying to determine. My goal is to do what I can to support both my teachers and my students. I’m choosing to focus on my circle of control. I am so glad that I had my students enroll in the LMC Google Classroom earlier this year. I know that some of my students are unable to check the Google Classroom. Others simply, for whatever reason, will not check it. I’m using it as a direct line of communication. I’m posting information and links. So far, I have posted links to free learning resources and my youtube read aloud. Providing students with a read aloud has been challenging. Before the pandemic, publishers were clear about their stance on the subject of posting an online read aloud. Publishers perceive this as a copyright infringement. What has never been clear is the fair-use guideline. Fair-use guidelines protect schools when it comes to published resources. There is a growing sect of people in education who believe that we are following fair-use guidelines as long as we are using the read aloud online in the same way that we would in the classroom and not using the read aloud texts as a means to make profit. Many of the publishers have temporarily lifted the confines of copyright and allowing online read aloud as long as it meets certain standards. These guidelines vary from publisher to publisher. You can find a complete list of publishing guidelines here from the AAP website. I am choosing to offer an online story time via Google Classroom. I am recording the video, uploading it to Google as a closed link and will remove the videos in June. I am trying my best to follow the guidelines. Providing our school communities with resources is something that we do as media specialists. However, there is an over-abundance of resources right now. Many publishers are allowing free access to online resources during this time. In addition, there are many free online resources that have always been free. It can be overwhelming to parents and students. I am choosing not to overwhelm. I have created an Google Slide app that lists a variety resources separated by type. Basically, this is a hack. You simply erase the Google Slide link up to “edit” and replace it with word - “preview.” Paste this into your tablet or phones browser and add the link to your home screen. When you click the link it forces it to automatically present as a slide-show giving it the functionality and feel of an app. The other issue that we faced in the library media center is how do we continue our news shows with our Media Leaders? I have decided to switch our platform from LumaFusion to WeVideo. With WeVideo, the students can access it from home using the Google credentials for school. It took some training for me and the Media Leaders. After I taught myself to use WeVideo, I created “how-to” videos for the media leaders. WeVideo still allow us to do all of the advance layering, special effects, and overlay titles and images. In addition, it allows me to assign collaborative projects for my media leaders. Now, we can produce the news remotely from our homes. So far, it seems to be working out great! I’m using Google Classroom to communicate, give assignments, and update scripts. Currently we have produced 3 remote news shows. Check out our most recent one for the week of April 13-17. Delivering library services during the unusual time is challenging, but not impossible. It is forcing us to grow, change, and adapt. I’ll keep you posted on further developments as we navigate these untested waters!
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Mr. David Stockton
Library Media Specialist Willard Intermediate South |