My First Half of the Year as a Media Specialist!

My First Half of the Year as a Media Specialist

This is my first year as the media specialist at my school after last year's media specialist retired. Something you should know, I am attending school online to gain my media degree while being the media specialist this year. 

So, my thoughts so far...

Let me just start by saying, as a classroom teacher, I was absolutely in my prime. I could not be more comfortable than when I was in front of "my" class teaching reading, science, math, social studies, having a class meeting, reading a book aloud, or laughing at a student's joke. 

As a media specialist, I am able to find that same comfort. The main difference is that "my" students do not consist of 20 students, but instead consists of all the 750 students of the school. They all know my name and smile as they come to visit once a week during their specials, and also during the week as they finish their library books and  visit to check out new books, or in the hallways. I feel that I am making such a huge impact on the entire school opposed to my one classroom. I am still able to teach and laugh with students each day.

So, to the question I hear constantly, "Do you like being a media specialist more than being a teacher?" I'd like to truthfully answer that they are both enjoyable in their own way, but I feel that I am making more of an impact on the entire school as a media specialist.

There are so many things that I enjoy about each day, but here are some that stand out.

I really enjoy Coding Club and using Code.org with students.

I enjoy going into classrooms to Co-Teach with Technology and teach teachers as well as students about technology. So far we have learned about Google Classroom, Storybird.com, Plickers, Galileo, Online Research, Google Docs, Sway, Adobe Spark, Blabberize and Popplet. 

I've enjoyed inspiring students to be creative inventors. Here are some examples of their Cardboard Challenge projects.

I've enjoyed my media courses at West Georgia. Here are some of my presentations and coursework thus far.

I learned to make a screencast. It's not perfect, but I enjoyed learning how to do it.

This screencast is a tutorial of how to use Voki.com 

I created a Digital Story about the Imagination Stations in the media center.

I wrote reviews for online reference sites.
This was an extremely time consuming task, but also extremely informative.
You can see this on my weebly site created for my college course. It's a student account, so I'm not sure how long the link will work now that the course is complete.
http://caseycrumbley.weebly.com/

I also gave my school website a makeover using smore flyers.
School Website

I also use smore for monthly newsletters to the faculty and as a tutorial for how to use new technology.

I learned to use Canva for creating clip art and flyers. I created one about FERPA.
FERPA Flyer

All in all, I've learned and enjoyed so much thus far. I look forward to continuing to soak up everything as a media specialist.