But Where Are All of the Books?

I can imagine by now that my librarian friends are ready to call me out.  This was supposed to be about library adventures.  Didn't you do anything with books?  The answer is of course, but they did get a little less attention this year than I'd like to admit.

There were several changes technology wise that shifted my focus a little more than usual.  One of the biggest was our 1:1 transition from iPads to Chromebooks.  This was a bit of a learning curve for me and my staff.  It should have been easy.  They were just laptops - right.  Not so much at first.  I guess we had been spoiled by all of the flashy apps that put some pretty cool learning tools directly in the hands of our students.  We had to back up and punt a little at first with the Chromebooks and shift our way of teaching.  Once we got over the hurdle of learning a new tool and how to teach with it, it became easier.  Our tech director did have a cart of iPads for teachers to use.  We took full advantage of this by using them for Minecraft projects and green screen.  I had to be sure to carefully schedule them so projects didn't overlap.  The students loved using Minecraft.

The second piece that shifted my focus were the new tech tools placed in the media center.  Someone had to learn how to use them in order to show students and staff.   That someone was me.  I'll admit I'm a huge geek when it comes to shiny new "toys".  I dove in head first to learn to use them all.  My first was to create a project in Tinkercad to print on the 3D printer.  My only instructions were:  "This is how you turn it on.  This is how you load and unload the filament - have fun!"   I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and by the end of the day it was installed I had my first project printed.  It was only a rectangle that had "Cindy" on it, but I was excited.  I did similar projects with students and staff to get started.  Each time they wanted to make something more challenging, I learned a little more as well.  

In addition to the 3D printer I had to learn more complex programming for the Spheros, how to use our green screen app, learn our Promethean board, create files for our Cricut, find ways to use Little Bits and stay a step ahead of what our teachers wanted to learn.  I'll admit I was in Geek Heaven, but the books came in a distant second.

So to answer the question in the title of this article, the books are where they have always been.  Waiting quietly to take me and my students on our next adventure when we're ready.