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SLS Council Meeting Minutes

March 31, 2015

Attendance: Mary Nellenback, Anne Mlod (Auburn); Susan Cutri, Cato-Meridian; Angelic Wright, Loretta Johnson, (Jordan-Elbridge); Arlene Hertzog (Moravia); Sharon O’Connell, Debra Coville, Christine Brown (Skaneateles); Dawn Sedorus, (Southern Cayuga); Lori Willey, Stephanie Berry (Union Springs); Mary Kay Welgoss (BOCES).

The meeting began at 12:45 pm.

SLS Updates

Plan of Service – Member Plans – SLMPE Rubrics

Several librarians have been able to schedule meetings with their administrators to evaluate their programs using the SLMPE rubric and to complete the Member Plan document. Others said they would rather wait until later in the school year, especially after all the April testing is completed. Mary Kay agreed to send out a reminder after the April break for librarians to try and schedule these meetings.

Book Expo America, 2015

Room assignments have been made for Book Expo. Librarians who are attending should check the conference Google Doc for this information and to finalize travel arrangements (carpools, riding the train together, etc.) TST librarians will also be posting a survey about dinner reservations. Please respond at your earliest convenience.

2015-16 Purchasing Requests due May 1

If you have not already done so, please submit your purchasing request spreadsheet, signed by your business official, for 2015-16. Mary Kay is working to compile requests so that as soon as final district requests come in on May 1 she can begin setting up the purchase orders for mailing on July 1. Several districts have asked about new products in recent weeks. If you are still deciding, let Mary Kay know where you are in the process and how soon she can expect to receive your spreadsheet.

Copyright Project

Mary Nellenback reported that the Copyright Project. She demonstrated the LibGuide that the group is putting together. We have narrowed the focus to 10 copyright/fair use rules we want to focus on. The next meeting for this committee is scheduled for May 2.

Media Catalog Updates

ISS is considering the addition of the PBS Custom Content for the media catalog next year. A free trial has been set up, and access information was emailed to all librarians and aids last week. Please spend some time reviewing this resource and provide feedback on the Survey Monkey survey (link was sent in the email) by May 15th. If possible, get some of your teachers to look at it as well. This resource may fit the needs of some of our teachers that have said we need more humanities related offerings. Pay special attention to this aspect of the collection as you view it.

Thanks for your help with this decision.

Discovery Education access should now be up and running for all schools K-12. Please test this in your own library, and spread the word to your teachers, especially at the elementary level, that this resource is now available K-12 (In the past, it was only available 7-12).

My Learning Plan

Brynn Speer brought up the issue of the difficulty in using My Learning Plan to register for SLS workshops. Mary Kay explained that this is largely due to the fact that only 4 of our 9 district subscribe to My Learning Plan. But, she agreed that it is confusing for teachers and librarians in districts that do not subscribe to register for workshops. A discussion ensued in which it was decided that Mary Kay would develop a LibGuide page with step by step instructions for how to register if you are a subscriber, and how to register if you are not. She will post the page and ask for feedback (clarity, etc.) before making it public. Ultimately, she will make it a link on the BOCES homepage so it is easy for everyone to access it.

ILL

Sue Cutri expressed frustration at the ongoing problem with SCOOLS. It frequently gets hung up in the middle of searches, or it is down altogether. Also, there have been problems with data appearing in random fields that she know she did not enter. Mary Kay stated that she has received tech calls on these same issues from other librarians, and this has been a topic at the regional SCOOLS meetings with SLS directors from other BOCES. Harry Chan has indicated that OPALS is in the middle of a major upgrade to SCOOLS which should be ready for release in May. They believe the new program will solve many of the problems we are experiencing. Mary Nellenback asked if we could get some training on the new program, and Mary Kay said she would contact John Schuster about this. More information on the possible training dates will follow.

Professional Development

· The Kathleen Odean workshop on March 17th at Wells was a record breaker in terms of attendance. We had 65 total attendees from Cayuga Onondaga BOCES and TST BOCES. In addition to librarians, many of the attendees are ELA teachers from the region. Kathleen provided many great activities along with the engaging book talks for which she is famous. Mary Kay has copies of her latest resource book that librarians can borrow if they wish. Despite the limitations of the room at Wells, it was a very valuable session and Kathleen received very high marks on the evaluation form again this year. If she comes back in 2015-16, however, we will definitely look for a better venue. The chairs are terrible (straight back, hardwood) with no table to set a device or laptop. The room is always much to warm, and there is no easy way to break out into groups for discussion, etc. Mary Kay said that she and Jane O’Brien have talked about alternating workshops that we share between the Cayuga Onondaga BOCES campus and the TST BOCES campus. That way we can better control the environment and provide spaces that are more conducive to learning. The librarians present indicated that they would not mind driving an extra 20 minutes for a better location.

· Technology Tune-Up Day at TST BOCES has been rescheduled to April 28th due to the snow day on February 2. Brenda Auld-Klaben from the Syracuse City School District will be there to present on the Best Apps in Education, and several other excellent workshops will also be offered. Sign-up is on MLP and is open now.

· The Social Studies workshop with John Lee and David Hicks will also be at Wells College on May 6th. However, we have booked a different space for this event on the Wells campus. Instead of the MacMillan Building, we will be in the Sommers Student Center. We are hoping it will be a better fit. It has round tables and chairs, though Mary Kay and Jane are uncertain about the acoustics. Tony Abbatielllo is working with us to devise a better sound system for that day. So far, registration has been steady. Mary Kay encouraged secondary librarians to invite their Social Studies teachers to attend with them. The focus will be on resources that support inquiry, so the teacher-librarian collaboration is vitally important to making the inquiry-based approach work that Lee and Hicks advocate.

· The Starr Latronica workshop scheduled for May 13th for elementary librarians has been postponed due to health issues in Starr’s immediate family. Starr very much wants to come here in the future, and we are looking at dates in the fall of 2015 to reschedule this event.

· Scholarships to attend the NYLA/SSL Cornell Educational Leadership Institute in August are now being accepted. There is a link to the application on the SLS website along with more information about the conference. The title of the conference this year is School Librarians: Deeply Embedded—Fully Collaborative. Please contact Mary Kay with questions, and submit your applications as soon as possible. Awards are given on a rolling basis until all funds are expended.

What’s happening in your library?

Anne Mlod (Genesee Elementary School) – is currently working on the one-to-one iPad project with her second grade teachers. Students are working on a research project that will result in an Animoto video. Anne is pushing in to teach the research skills (books, databases, videos) and she is helping the computer aid to teach the students how to use Animoto. All videos will be posted on the school website in time for the end of the year parent night in May.

Brynn Speer (Weedsport High School) – completed a collaborative research project with her ELA and Social Studies teachers in 11th grade. Students had to create a campaign ad and a brief speech as though they were presidential candidates that were televised on the school’s internal TV channel during lunches and before schools starts in the morning. The student body was polled about which candidates they would vote for based on these ads and speeches, and the students had to develop and refine a campaign strategy based on these poll results. Brynn helped with the research and the technology integration. The project was very successful, and Brynn and her teachers have plans for improving it even more next year. Finished products are available for viewing on the Weedsport website. Brynn shared two samples with us at the meeting.

Arlene Hertzog - (Moravia Middle/High School) – has been working with the Kindles that they received through the SLS Grants to Member Libraries program. AP English students at Moravia used the Kindles for their unit that featured The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. There were some initial issues with the app, but once they were worked out, the students reported that they enjoyed using the ebooks, and that they found the highlighting and notetaking features particularly helpful when they had to write their papers at the end of the unit. Two other teachers have scheduled use of the Kindles for later this semester.

The meeting adjourned at 3:00 pm

Submitted by Debra Deloia 4/1/15