Springfield Township High School Library Annual Report—June 2010 Highlights of 2009/2010 • Learners produce and their creative work is recognized internationally • Launch of interactive Virtual Library (nominated as an Edublogs Best Educational Wiki) • Continuation of integration of Web 2.0 tools and digital storytelling into curriculum • Library becomes hub of research, production, and presentation: a learning commons • Addition of integrated search widgets, ebooks, and media to Virtual Library
Celebrate our library!
• Introduction of a variety of new research tools and learning strategies • Three art gallery openings and two OneBook,OneSpringfield programs • Selected as one of Tech & Learning Magazine’s 100@30 and FindingDulcinea’s Educators that Rock, and library featured in GameClassroom. • Launch of Virtual Springfield community history project • 2009 Edublog Award for Best Librarian/Library Blog This year our library’s online landscape shifted and we explored a variety of new options for communicating the results of student research. We explored the advantages of cloud computing. Headsets and cameras were in continual use as our students created and produced. Learners collaborated and produced video and told digital stories in multiple formats to communicate their new knowledge. Most importantly, our students’ work reached new and global audiences. Our work with learners was noticed. Students offered to help me create and performed in a keynote for the international K12Online Conference. Their multimedia musical contribution, written in GoogleDocs largely by Marlene Thornton’s Theatre I class, with technical help from Dan Meder’s independent study students, reflected on their learning about research and communication. The production continues to be seen by educators all over the world and is assigned viewing for some preservice classes.
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Our new library website, our instructional units, and our students’ work, were noted several times in a report from the American Library Association to the Department of Education. Outside visitors to our library continue to note its energy and its joy. Among our many visitors this year was the staff of the new search portal Finding Dulcinea, who featured our library in two blog posts. Attempting to capture the library’s atmosphere, they wrote about our studentcentered space:
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This report is meant to be viewed online. Please visit our Virtual Library (http:// springfieldlibrary.wikispaces .com) for the link.
Through the glass doors of the Springfield Township High School Library, you can see a life-size cutout of Robert Pattinson, the lead actor in “Twilight,” standing on some shelves. Pattinson’s defiant presence, front and center, signals who runs this library: the students. . . . Toward the end of my visit, I run into the school principal, Mr. Hackney, who tells me about his first trip to the library. He remembers walking in and hearing lots of chatter and noise, so he started “shushing” people. “Everyone started looking at me funny,” he said. “Now I understand. It’s a working library.” During a single block, in our library/learning commons, you will see our students working in groups or independently, as they: write traditional research papers, tell digital stories, explore new search tools, search scholarly journal databases, read ebooks, document sources with online citation generators, present the results of their research, describe their newly installed art work, post in curricular blogs, participate with experts in online teleconferences, produce media, and collaborate using such online applications as wikis and Google documents.