How to raise the profile of your library by having fun
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My presentation for the SLANZA 2015 conference
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How to raise the profile of your library by having fun
- 1. HOW TO RAISE THE PROFILE OF YOUR LIBRARY BY HAVING FUN Michelle Simms
- 6. Te Totara Primary School
- 7. Raising your profile Why it’s important How to go about doing it Having fun! Different kinds Educational benefits Finding ideas Examples Finding the time
- 8. Raising the Profile of your Library Part One
- 9. Why do we need to raise the profile of our libraries?
- 12. Libraries are Becoming Obsolete “KTH Main Library” by KTH Biblioteket CC BY-SA 2.0
- 13. Libraries
- 14. How can we raise the profile of our libraries?
- 15. A Purple Cow
- 16. Communication Channels Daily Staff Meetings Email Library Facebook Page School Facebook Page, Blog, Newsletter, Website Year Book Digital Signage Assemblies After School Staff Meetings Presentations to Board of Trustees
- 18. Different Kinds of Fun
- 19. Different Kinds of Fun Winning Problem-Solving Exploring Teamwork Recognition Triumphing Collecting Surprise Imagination Sharing Role Playing Customisation Goofing off Chilling out - Professor Kevin Werbach, University of Pennsylvania
- 20. Educational Benefits of Fun
- 21. Educational Benefits of Fun Engagement Humour Novelty
- 22. Carmine Gallo “According to the neuroscientists I’ve interviewed, novelty is the single most effective way to capture a person’s attention” - Talk Like Ted
- 23. Joyce Valenza “…learning can (and should) be playful” - Manifesto for 21st Century School Librarians
- 24. Daniel Groenewald Fun is “a key ingredient of effective learning” “Effective teachers maximize fun and minimize boring” - Fun – the next big thing in education?
- 25. Dave Burgess “…entertainment and fun can, and should, go hand in hand with learning” - Teach Like a Pirate
- 26. Other Benefits
- 28. Teach Like a Pirate
- 29. The Mozart Hook How can I use music to aid my presentation? What songs have lyrics that relate to this lesson? How can I most effectively use music as students enter the room? Can students change the lyrics to popular songs to reflect course content?
- 31. Examples of Fun Activities
- 33. Learner Agency
- 34. Core Education “…schools are seeking new ways to invite, honour and act on student voice, both in learning and across the wider life of school” - Learner Agency
- 35. Clever Minions
- 36. Summer Lending
- 38. Little Free Library “little free library” by Chris Radcliffe CC BY-SA 2.0
- 39. Book Fridge
- 40. Mr Sheedy’s Book
- 41. Lucy and the Witch’s Spell
- 42. Channel Z News
- 43. Library Signage “Fantasy Signpost” by brykmantra CC BY 2.0
- 44. Class Dojo
- 47. Makerspaces
- 48. Makerspaces
- 49. Diana Rendina “Libraries are evolving. They must evolve, or risk becoming irrelevant.” - Advocating for Makerspaces in Libraries
- 53. Makerspace Circulating Kits “Potentially, a maker kit could not only connect learning at school with learning at home, but it could also advocate the library program to parents and caregivers” -Collette J
- 55. Caught Reading
- 56. Wacky Wednesday
- 57. Genre Quizzes
- 58. Library Teepee
- 59. Finding the Time
- 60. Three Ideas
- 61. Makerspace with Robots “Sticks and Stars and Girls in Action Visit SFU” by Simon Fraser University CC BY 2.0
- 62. All About Them Books
- 63. Visual Book Reviews dBy Steph Ellis
- 64. Reading to Dogs
- 65. Read and Ride Programme
- 66. Main Points Regular fun! Share photos and stories with everyone
Editor's Notes
- Book fridges
- Purple cows
- Shelving on skates
- Reading in Teepees These are some of the things I’m going to be talking about today. - First off though, I’ll tell you a a bit about me.
- I am the library manager and ICT Coordinator at Te Totara Primary School, in the North of Hamilton. I started when the school began, which was in 2008. When we began we had 58 students, now we have almost 800. By the way, If you want to refer back to my slides they will be on my blog by the end of the week. The address is on my final slide. The workshop is divided into two parts:
- The first part is about raising your profile and that of your library. Why it’s important and how to go about doing it. The second part is all about having fun. The different kinds of fun, its educational benefits, finding ideas for having fun, examples of fun things from my library and how you can find the time to have fun (mind you, in the absence of a good cloning machine I warn you I don’t have the perfect solution!).
- So, why do we need to raise the profile of our libraries? Well, I’m looking around the room and I can’t see any librarians. This is what I’m looking for
- An old lady with grey hair in a bun, half glasses on a chain, (she’s not wearing her cardigan today, it’s probably in the wash), and behind the desk she’s wearing sensible shoes. She’s conservative, crotchety, unsociable and fearsomely protective of her books, print of course. And don’t forget the preoccupation with shushing noisy children. She’s not good with modern technology – she’s still using a card catalogue! She’s not good with students. She doesn’t understand the latest library and education trends. She doesn’t have the skills or the personality to be a 21st century librarian and consequently she’s a very harmful stereotype. This (points) is my first reason for saying we need to raise our profiles. The way we stop people defaulting to thinking of librarians in this stereotypical way, is by bombarding them with a steady stream of information that proves otherwise. Everything we do that is not something SHE would do, we need to make sure people know about it. Another challenge we have is that it’s easy for us to become “invisible”.
- We work in the little bubble that is our library and our office. We’re often not part of any of the staff teams in the school. We might not be going to assemblies, or staff meetings, or meeting the Board of Trustees or having much contact with parents. So, the questions are who knows we are there? Who will notice if we’re gone? If the people, like the principal and the BOT, who make decisions about our budgets, our hours and our jobs, don’t see what we do then we put ourselves and our libraries at risk. If staff and parents can’t see what we do then we lose powerful advocates. Related to the problem of being “invisible” is the fact that people don’t know what we do and they constantly undervalue our profession because of it. I’m sure you’ve met people who think that librarians issue books, put them away and spend the rest of their time reading. And if that’s all they think we do, then we’re replaceable. So another reason for raising our profile, is to protect our libraries by capturing everyone’s attention and showing them what we do in the library that benefits our students. And here’s my last reason:
- We have the challenge of convincing people that we actually need libraries in this modern age. When I asked to expand my library last year the BOT asked if we needed extra space when most of the books would soon be electronic. One well-known NZ educator claimed in his blog this year that by 2025 “libraries and books will be no more”. And that is a common view, that with print books being replaced by ebooks and so much information online, we don’t need libraries, they’re obsolete, or soon will be. We need to correct this perception by showing that our libraries are about much more than books on shelves.
- They are about exploration, imagination and creativity, inspiration and self-directed learning. Knowledge creation not just knowledge consumption. And we can’t change people’s views if we keep a low profile. There are too many examples out there of schools without book budgets or librarians or libraries. We need to work today on raising our profiles, challenging stereotypes and misconceptions, letting people know we are here and will still be needed in future. Otherwise we risk not being around tomorrow.
- So HOW can we raise our profile? Seth Godin is an author, entrepreneur and marketer who did a TED talk called “How to get your ideas to spread”. He feels that the success of almost everything is about whether you get your idea to spread, or not. He thinks this applies to everybody regardless of what they do. If you can figure out a way to get your ideas to spread, you win. Librarians win if we can successfully spread the idea that we are professionals working in an environment that is essential for student success and well-being. Seth uses a parable about cows. He says” You're driving down the road and you see a cow, and you keep driving because you've seen cows before”. They’re invisible, they’re boring. But then he says “If the cow was purple (next slide)
- …you’d notice it His point was that remarkable things get talked about and acted on. To be remarkable means it’s got to be something that’s worth making a remark about. It has to be unexpected and different; something new and interesting in order to be noticed. If we want to spread our message to our students, staff and communities then we need to find some way to become a purple cow! By the way, this is a hand-painted purple cow that I’ve named Clarabelle. I’ve been keeping her on my desk as a reminder to take lots of photos, talk to lots of people, have lots of fun and spread my ideas. Not only do we need to be doing something unique and interesting and FUN, something worth remarking about, we also need to make sure that people find out about it. It’s no use having great library programmes that no-one knows about. I think it’s like having a purple cow but keeping her in a barn. Nobody can see her there, they’re not going to talk about her. So we also need to promote the library, often. We need to utilise all the available channels we have to raise our profile and spread our ideas.
- Here are the kinds of things I do: We have a short, daily staff meeting and I often share new books or talk about something new that is happening in the library. I follow that up with emails I have a library Facebook page (aimed at parents – I wanted to use a platform they’re comfortable using) I also have access to the school’s Facebook page, its blog, newsletter and website I make sure the library is featured in the Year Book. I put library photos on the school’s digital signage Sometimes I attend team assemblies and whole school assemblies in order to reach out and attract the attention of students Occasionally I turn up at after school staff meetings. Although it’s quite hard to get the opportunity to speak there. I’ve done a couple of presentations to the BOT, although to be honest that is usually when I want something! But at the same time I do make sure they know what we’ve been doing in the library. So we want to raise our profile and we have some channels that we can use to spread our ideas. To find our purple cow, our remarkable things, well I think one really good option is to HAVE FUN!
- But fun doesn’t have to be just about being relaxed and having a laugh
- Here is a list of different ways to have fun, made by Professor Kevin Werbach from the University of Pennsylvania Winning, problem-solving (overcoming obstacles and surmounting challenges), exploring (finding something new), teamwork (the fun of collaborating and socialising), recognition (being told you’ve done a good job, triumphing (you win and someone else loses, vanquishing your opponent), collecting, surprise (things that are novel and unexpected), imagination, sharing (doing things that are good for school & community, doing things that are meaningful), role playing, customisation (being able to makes something our own, personalise it), goofing off and chilling out (good American terms!) This can be a good list to refer to when you think about bringing fun into your library. It’s good to look to exploit as many different kinds of fun as possible. If you choose a variety of activities they will appeal to a broader range of students
- I don’t think we take fun seriously enough! There’s a common misconception that if something is fun, then it’s frivolous and we’re not learning anything important. I think that we often overlook the educational benefits of fun, so I’m going to share some of these with you (these can be great if you need to justify anything you’re doing!)
- I’m going to cover three different kinds of research: ==There is research around engagement, and I think it’s fair to say that a fun activity is going to be engaging. According to multiple research studies engaged students experience improved academic achievement and satisfaction, and have better social skills ==There’s also research around humour, and I think that humour definitely goes hand-in-hand with some kinds of fun. Educational research reveals that content-related humour improves retention and students report more enjoyment in the experience ==Finally, there’s also research around novelty, which is that kind of fun that deals with the unexpected and unique. A chemical in the brain has to be present for a student to retain information – dopamine. Dopamine is released when people learn something new and exciting. So if you have fun by increasing the novelty in your library then students’ dopamine levels will increase and they will retain more of what they learn and experience.
- Research about novelty also helps us understand why using fun can help spread our ideas and get our libraries noticed by others. Author Carmine Gallo says,== “According to the neuroscientists I’ve interviewed, novelty is the single most effective way to capture a person’s attention. Apparently the brain is wired to ignore the ordinary (like brown cows) and look for something brilliant and new, something that stands out (like a purple cow). Here are three different people who are keen on using fun in libraries or schools
- Joyce Valenza is a well-respected figure in the American library world, currently an Assistant Professor. She wrote a Manifesto for 21st century librarians. In it she talks about teaching and learning, and says ==“learning can (and should) be playful
- Daniel Groenewald is a professional learning consultant He published a series of articles in EducationHQ magazine He says that ==fun is “a key ingredient of effective learning” And he talks about how powerful fun is for developing some of the qualities that make people good learners – “risk taking, cooperation, competition, problem-solving and perseverance” He emphasizes that he doesn’t think all learning should be fun. But he says ==“effective teachers maximise fun and minimize boring”
- Dave Burgess is a teacher and the author of “Teach like a Pirate”. He says ==“entertainment and fun can, and should, go hand in hand with learning”
- There are some other benefits of doing fun activities. I find that people are very happy to help with fun things. And of course, activities that are fun for students are often fun for us. We get that same dopamine release that students get when they come across novel things. We have a chance to be more passionate, creative and fulfilled in our work
- I find plenty of ideas for fun activities on the listserv, SLANZA’s Google+ community and Facebook page, Twitter, Pinterest, in library blogs and so on One excellent resource that I want to share is Dave Burgess’ book… (next slide)
- ….Teach Like a Pirate Now I’m not a teacher but this year I finally got enough lib hours to be able to do some basic library skills sessions with our classes, and this book was a help when designing lessons Also used it to brainstorm ideas for my book clubs and for help with conference workshops Dave has a section in his book described as a toolbox of strategies, or presentation hooks, that you can draw on to energise your lessons and engage your students
- Here’s an example of a presentation hook and some of the questions that go with it: So with the Mozart hook you can ask: ==How can I use music to aid my presentation? ==What songs have lyrics that relate to this lesson? ==How can I most effectively use music as students enter the room? ==Can students change the lyrics to popular songs to reflect course content?
- Here are some other hooks - Kinesthetic, Picasso, Dance and Drama, Craft Store, Student-Directed, Student Hobby, Swimming with the Sharks, Mystery Bag, Involved Audience, Props, QR Codes, Interior Design, Board Message, Costume, Storytelling, Mime, Taboo, Teaser, Backwards, Mission Impossible, Reality TV, Techno Whiz, Contest, Magic, Chef, Opportunistic, Challenge. - I’ll just show you a few of these. Swimming with the sharks can be walking amongst the audience, Mystery bag is openly hiding something, Involved audience is…this (hand present to open) and…props! - Every time I read thru Dave’s hooks and questions it sparks my creativity
- So now I’m going to share examples of fun things that I’ve done in my library. Hopefully some of them might inspire you to try something similar, I’m really happy to answer any questions that might come up if you do that and my contact details are on the final slide.
- I love running book clubs for students and I am continually trying to make them better. My latest club is called the ==“Exploding Minions” (they named themselves!) and this is our minion mascot, Dave. I’ve been trying to let the students be more involved with how the club works and choosing what they want to do. Currently we challenge each other to read particular books. Last year we focused on earning stickers when we read three books from each genre. We’ve also just had our first Skype with another book club, the Faultline Fiction Fanatics from Fendalton Open Air School, run by their librarian, Desna Wallace. The reason I’ve brought Dave down is so that when I visit Desna’s library on the primary school library tour this afternoon I can take some photos of him there. I also started a separate group with the express purpose of having them advise me on some library decisions and help lead some library activities. The reason I did that is because of this (next slide)
- Core Education is a NZ educational consultancy and they publish ten trends that are expected to make a growing impact upon education in New Zealand in the coming year. I think it is important to keep up to date with education trends, because we work in the education sector. One of those trends is learner agency, which is about student autonomy and voice, letting students make decisions.
- - Core says “…schools are seeking new ways to invite, honour and act on student voice, both in learning and across the wider life of school.”
- My advisory group called themselves, the Clever Minions! It appears minions are very popular at my school! The Clever Minions have been invaluable. Just having the group has encouraged me to think of what kinds of decisions I’m making that could have student input. The Minions have helped with ideas for signage and promotion. They’ve helped create fun for International Dot Day and taught kids how to do origami. On Thursdays our Clever Minions have started reading books to the younger students at lunchtime. This was the first time we did it. Those boys were so into that book!
- I open our library over the summer holidays, just for one day each week, from 1-4pm. I find it is a great way to connect with parents and it’s been well-supported. I’ve partnered with our public library, I run their summer reading programme from our library and they come in and host a fun event, like this one where they made little boats and sailed them in a paddling pool.
- I also stole from them the idea of wrapping up books in Christmas paper so students can get a surprise when they open them. That has been very popular and we’ll be doing it again this year. And you could do that without opening in the holidays, you could lend those on the last days of school.
- There’s a thing called “little free libraries” where you make this wooden box, like a big letterbox, and people come and exchange their own books for a book from the free library. I’d heard about it on Twitter and had thought about doing something like that as a way for students to get more out of the books they have at home, but it had been on my rather long list of things to do one day. One day I noticed there was a fridge in the corridor in our admin block. Our caretaker said the fridge wasn’t working properly, we were getting a new one and he was going to take the old one to the dump. So of course I thought of the little free library idea and how it might work in a fridge. One of our lovely teacher aides took on the job of painting the fridge. She spent hours on it, in her own time, and here is the final result,
- our book fridge – where the cool books are.
- She even included this nice book by our principal! The novelty of having a book fridge certainly created some fun and had people talking about the library. It hasn’t taken off like wildfire but we have our regulars. The Clever Minions and I have recently been promoting it at team assemblies and now the staff have got in on the act and taken over the freezer part for their own book exchange. I love that the students get to see their teachers taking out books to read. That was an unanticipated bonus!
- A few years after I started my job I decided to make a movie. Actually, I made two. The first one, ‘Lucy and the Witch’s Spell’ was about how to behave in the library, and it was the first movie I’d ever made so I had a large learning curve. In the second one I grew in confidence and ended up involving 61 children chosen based on who came to the library a lot. I created a script that was told in the form of a TV news report. Aliens had arrived at our school and tied up the principal and wanted to destroy all the books in the library. Some of the student librarians confront the aliens and show them around the library to prove how important books are. As fun as it sounds, tying up your principal is not all that it’s cracked up to be. You have the initial approach to make, asking if he’ll mind being tied up and gagged, and videoed. Then you have the awkward moment when you actually have to tie him up, gag him and video it.
- But aside from that making the movies was a LOT of fun for me. I enjoyed being creative and writing the scripts, I enjoyed working with the students and I enjoyed learning how to edit and put the movie together. The students who were involved were really excited about being in a movie. Even though the movie quality was definitely not perfect, they loved seeing themselves and we played the movie over and over again in the library. Staff saw the movie, parents saw the movie…it was something that got the library a lot of attention. Making a movie is a big project but it does have benefits as an information vehicle and as something that will certainly get the library noticed.
- Last year I came across some photos on Pinterest of library signage that I thought I just had to have in our library. They were better than this, but this is the only creative commons one I could find. It has a couple of places from Tolkein’s stories and it’s got Hogwarts. But add in Camp Half-blood and Narnia and Neverland and you get the idea. I thought it would be a fun way to get students thinking about different books. I involved the Clever Minions in choosing what place names would be good for the signs and then asked a parent from the school to paint up the signs for us. Unfortunately she’s just sold her house and moved so I’m having to practice my patient waiting skills until she settles in. But when it’s done I will definitely launch the sign on our school Facebook page and get teachers to get their classes guessing about what books the places are from.
- When I faced some problems around getting my shelf monitors and student librarians to show up for duty, work hard and stay on task, I introduced Class Dojo which is a free, online classroom management platform that I combine with other tasks to get them to their bronze, silver and gold library awards. Once they have a certain amount of points they can also earn the right to change the little avatar that they get. So that is the fun element of customization, being able to personalize their avatar. And they really look forward to being able to do that.
- When I was designing library skills sessions for classes this year I wanted to make them as fun as possible for the students, while still getting across some useful information. Here are examples of a couple of sessions I’ve done: I ran an “Intro to the Library” session for our Year 1 students which went over some of the basic library rules and policies. To avoid standing and delivering a speech on what they should and should not do I played dress up. I borrowed a large school jumper and wore black shorts and sandals, similar to our school uniform, and asked the students to pretend I was five and coming into the library at lunchtime. Then I proceeded to run headlong into the library and hide behind a shelving unit. And the students told me what I was doing wrong. And then I threw some books on the floor and broke a bunch of other rules and they sorted me out. It was a fun way to get across rules by having them tell me what they were
- I’ve also run competitions where students in groups try to answer genre questions by deciding which one out of a bunch of possible answers they should hold up. They really got into this, that fun of teamwork and trying to win. The prize was they got to take an extra book out from the library.
- I think the biggest opportunity on our horizon when it comes to raising the library’s profile with something that is fun AND educational is Makerspaces. Makerspaces are designed to encourage creative, hands-on activities. They’re areas that give students opportunities to be problem-solvers and to explore design and construction. They can also use collaboration, innovation and critical thinking skills. Makerspaces can include robotics, circuits, programming, media creation and 3D printers but also Lego, and traditional arts and crafts. Makerspaces are BIG right now. They’re listed in the "one year or less" category of the ==2015 NMC Horizon Report for schools, which is about trends and technology in education.
- Maker culture is also another one of Core Education’s ten trends. They believe the Maker movement has grown “out of a desire to use technology for active creation rather than passive consumption”. The reason this is an opportunity for libraries is because, like I said earlier, we are struggling with people’s views that “libraries are becoming obsolete”.
- Diana Rendina, an American Makerspace advocate, argues that ==“libraries are evolving. They must evolve, or risk becoming irrelevant”. Makerspaces are all about those things we want our communities to see. They are about knowledge creation through exploration, imagination and creativity so are worthy of being a purple cow. And the education community is taking notice, so management might be receptive to your proposals. Mine were very supportive.
- Last month we had a great chat about Makerspaces on Twitter (and I’m a big Twitter fan so if anyone wants to talk to me about that later, go for it!). Anyway, from what I could tell from that chat it appears that a lot of librarians are just starting out with Makerspaces, and I’m one of them. So I’ve only done a couple of activities so far
- - we made dots for International Dot Day, using our iPads
- - and we made some origami minion bookmarks (show prop)
- One of my problems with Makerspaces is lack of space. So I’m also planning on testing circulating maker kits in order to inspire maker thinking. A circulating maker kit is a kit with hands-on activities in it, that can be checked out and taken home. An American teacher-librarian explained the benefits ==“Potentially, a maker kit could not only connect learning at school with learning at home, but it could also advocate the library program to parents and caregivers”. What she does is include a small card in each kit inviting parents to send in photos of what students create. Then she posts those pictures on her library’s Facebook or Twitter pages. I haven’t started lending kits yet but I have just bought a telescope and a microscope and a few other things and hope to have everything ready to go early next term. And if they are successful then we’ll approach the PTA for more funding next year. And here are some quickfire ideas:
- A few years ago I did a library timelapse, that was great for showing how busy we are. It was also quite novel so it caught people’s attention.
- I do a “Caught Reading” album on the library’s Facebook page that is very popular. Parents get a nice surprise when they see what their child’s been up to at lunchtime.
- One year the school had a Wacky Hat day and I saw the tie in with the book “Wacky Wednesday” so set something up in the library. A parent lent me her skates, someone else brought in a toy pram, I printed off some pictures of shoes and away we went. And if you’ve never shelved books in skates you’re missing out!
- I made a couple of online genre quizzes which have students answer a series of questions and then the results tell them what genres they should try. They’re kind of like personality questionnaires but for books. And the kids have fun doing them.
- Last year we got a Teepee for the library. Wow big purple cow event! The kids LOVED reading in the Teepee. We put photos on Facebook and got lots of positive feedback.
- - I know that with all these ideas you’ll be thinking “How am I going to find the time to do them?”
- So here’s three ideas from me (NOT including cloning) Firstly, if a parent can do it, let them. Ask for help in your school newsletter, for things like book covering, repairs, and preparing journals (if you’re responsible for resources as well). I’ve met people who will not let anyone else do this because others don’t do it as well as them. If that is you then please note – a principal will remember the innovative and fun things you do in the library, they’re not going to say ‘well, let’s give Jenny more hours because she covers those books immaculately’. You can do a few things to protect the quality of the covering. Test run the volunteers with a few books. One parent we steered toward taping our journals – she admitted to having a few wines to ease the boredom of covering! Be proactive, stop doing these jobs BEFORE they get farmed out anyway and your hours get reduced. That gives you the chance to do other, more interesting things with the time you’ve freed up. I also tap into parent help for those things I want to do but aren’t that good at and don’t have time for. For example, I’m not a great artist, so when I need things painted I ask for help. This saves me time and makes the finished product look much better than it would have if I had done it. Like our lovely book fridge. ==No.2 ASK for more hours, or for a package of extra time, for example 40 hours over the course of the year to be used in addition to your normal hours. If you don’t ask, you won’t get them. Detail any unpaid hours you have been doing. And when you ask make sure you outline all the amazing and educationally awesome things you could be doing if you had the time. You still might not get more hours but your principal or TLR will be more aware about what your needs are and what you could be doing, and that’s a good thing. It might even soften them up for when you ask next time. ==No.3 You may still not have many hours and you may be spending most of them supervising students at lunchtime and processing books. When I started I did ten hours a week, including five in the library at lunchtime. My decision, because I wanted to do more, was to do the fun stuff at home if I didn’t have time at work. Ultimately, I enjoy my work more if I can incorporate fun activities in my day and if I take fun work home with me I don’t see it as a chore, more a way to get out of my chores! So maybe you could pick fun things to do then work on them at home. Or don’t. Because it’s your choice. But keep asking for what you need, and farm out anything you can to parents. And accept that you can’t do it ALL. I still have a huge list of things I want to do in the library, one day. Here’s some of them
- - Makerspaces with robotics and programming
- Remember that Mozart Presentation Hook? – it would be cool to do a parody (and get the students to sing it!). I’ve linked to this one if you haven’t seen it.
- Visual book reviews, this is from Steph Ellis, a librarian in Napier. She said I had to tell you it was her first attempt, but I think it’s fantastic and it has me inspired
- Reading to dogs. Isn’t that neat? Probably not going to happen for me anytime soon though.
- Exercise bikes to read on. I have NO space for this but how cool would it be?! And I have more, but you get the idea.
- I hope that I’ve given you something to think about. Just remember: Try to incorporate fun into your library on a regular basis. If you do anything that is new or fun then make sure you raise your library’s profile by sharing photos and stories and letting everyone know about it. Then people will have a vivid picture in their mind about what you and your library can do for students. Thank you very much for your attention. I hope I’ll get to chat with some of you over the rest of the conference. Thank you.