Don't tell my husband or kids, but I just returned from my favorite weekend of the summer. Summer Institute at Valley City State University.
First a little background information: Valley City State University is a small school, but they offer a completely online Master of Education program with concentrations in several areas. One of these is the Library and Information Technologies concentration, and it is AASL accredited. Find out more about the program here.
Every summer they host a Summer Institute (SI). It's optional, but it gives students a chance to visit the campus, meet classmates and professors face-to-face, and earn field experience hours (120 hours are required for graduation).
I've been attending SI since 2007. I graduated from the program in 2010, but I've been asked to return to serve as a mentor to current students. This year was pretty special because program director Donna James asked myself and two other graduates/mentors to plan and "teach" SI.
Okay, enough background information.
This year we traveled to Kensal School in (you guessed it) Kensal, ND. They are a small K-12 school (they graduated 2 students in 2014) and have 2 "libraries"--small collections in the back of 2 different classrooms. Neither of the collections are automated or organized.
We rolled up our sleeves and dove right in. We organized, weeded, and mended. Plus we put a lot of the books in Library Thing. It's a free or cheap website used to catalog and track circulation. Many of the SI students don't work in a library, and this gave them some great hands-on learning!
We took a couple of breaks to learn from Scott Spanier at Follett about Titlewave. And Carol Ann Simpson skyped in from Texas to teach us about copyright law. Google her. Seriously. It was amazing.
But the best part of the weekend is learning from and meeting all these other great school librarians or future school librarians! I always leave feeling invigorated about the future of our profession.
First a little background information: Valley City State University is a small school, but they offer a completely online Master of Education program with concentrations in several areas. One of these is the Library and Information Technologies concentration, and it is AASL accredited. Find out more about the program here.
Every summer they host a Summer Institute (SI). It's optional, but it gives students a chance to visit the campus, meet classmates and professors face-to-face, and earn field experience hours (120 hours are required for graduation).
I've been attending SI since 2007. I graduated from the program in 2010, but I've been asked to return to serve as a mentor to current students. This year was pretty special because program director Donna James asked myself and two other graduates/mentors to plan and "teach" SI.
Okay, enough background information.
This year we traveled to Kensal School in (you guessed it) Kensal, ND. They are a small K-12 school (they graduated 2 students in 2014) and have 2 "libraries"--small collections in the back of 2 different classrooms. Neither of the collections are automated or organized.
We rolled up our sleeves and dove right in. We organized, weeded, and mended. Plus we put a lot of the books in Library Thing. It's a free or cheap website used to catalog and track circulation. Many of the SI students don't work in a library, and this gave them some great hands-on learning!
We took a couple of breaks to learn from Scott Spanier at Follett about Titlewave. And Carol Ann Simpson skyped in from Texas to teach us about copyright law. Google her. Seriously. It was amazing.
But the best part of the weekend is learning from and meeting all these other great school librarians or future school librarians! I always leave feeling invigorated about the future of our profession.
PS And of course, I forgot to take before and after pictures. BUT I'm heading back to Kensal in a couple of weeks to finish the job. I'll post some more pictures then.