January News "Media Matters" from MAME

Media Matters! January 2011

In this Issue

From the President

From MAME Headquarters

A Planning Guide for Empowering Learners

Advocacy in a Few Easy Steps

Recommended Resources

Happy New Year

New Year's Resolutions

Call for Media Spectrum Articles

Spring Conference

What's on Your Mind

Upcoming Events

Our Sponsors

Media Matters Archives

From the President

Happy New Year Everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. It always seems to me that those of us who work in schools get two chances to make resolutions, January and August.

As you are thinking about what 2011 holds, I hope you will resolve to help MAME continue to succeed. Join a committee, get active in your region, or help us recruit more members. We all know that MAME is an amazing organization because of the personal commitment of our members. Though the economic picture for many of us is still dim, TOGETHER we can support, encourage, and inspire. Truly, this is a critical time for MAME and we need each of you to continue to go forward. Please help us make 2011 great by seeking ways you can be involved.

The MAME leadership team has a busy month ahead. Many of us will be attending ALA mid-winter in San Diego to meet with our respective committees. Sue Lay and I will be representing MAME at AASL's Affiliate Assembly where the discussion will focus on implementing L4L: Learning for Life. We look forward to this great time of dialogue with our colleagues across the nation. We are also anticipating the announcement of the youth literary awards. This is a major highlight of the mid-winter conference and I'm very curious to find out if any of the predictions are accurate. Once we return, we will re-convene at our first board meeting of the year on January 22nd in Lansing.

Here's to an exciting 2011!! May it be a great adventure TOGETHER!

Rachel Markel, MAME President

From MAME Headquarters

Happy New Year! I hope you are all refreshed from a well deserved break and once more doing your best for the students and teachers in Michigan. I often think we educators are lucky to have a couple of built in breaks in the course of our years where we can stop, look at where we are, and think about where we're going and how we get there. Even if we don't set formal "New Years Resolutions" we can take advantage of the new year to do a little reflection.

While I am not ready to share all on my resolutions with you all, there is one concept I'm working on that I would like to share with you. I guess I'm calling it "Simple Steps". I don't think it's anything new or earthshaking, but it seems to work for me. I know there are ideas like this in many of the management / leadership books. I simply try to find simple, concrete, steps I can take to work toward making progress on the big issues. For me, it comes out of learning that in order to run a marathon, I have to just go out and run a few miles every week and gradually build up, making a habit of running. Here's a couple of examples:

Goal: Be a better lifelong learner

Simple Step: take a few minutes everyday to read some educational blogs and keep learning and growing.

Goal: Do a better job of advocating for the profession

Simple Step : write one or two letters every week supporting school libraries and librarians

Goal: Learn more about virtual learning

Simple Step: participate in Second Life or other webinars at least one a month

Goal: Stay more organized

Simple Step: flag to do items in my email inbox and delete the rest

I hope this idea has been helpful and useful to you. I would also like to challenge you to think about one or two simple steps you might take both for yourself and maybe even for MAME!

Tim Staal, Executive Director

A Planning Guide for Empowering Learners

Program Planning Made Easy
By Nancy Larsen

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) new standards, Standards for the 21st Century Learner in Action (2009), and guidelines, Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs (2009) provide a new vision for school library programs. Our task as school librarians now is to study these documents and to implement them.

This implementation is facilitated by the release of AASL's A Planning Guide for Empowering Learners, an inexpensive online tool, that walks us through program planning. In a series of sequential steps, the online interactive planner helps us to develop our mission and goals, evaluate our existing programs, involve stakeholders in the process, develop action plans, and chart implementation progress. The online planner includes a School Library Program Assessment Rubric, which provides us with 16 sets of criteria to determine where our programs are in meeting AASL's program guidelines. Now Michigan school librarians have two strong assessment instruments to use: this AASL rubric and the Library of Michigan's SL21.

The AASL online planner is $40 for the first year ($36 for AASL members) and $20 ($18 for AASL members) for each subsequent subscription renewal. To learn more about the new online planner, and for ordering information, go to: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/guidelinesandstandards/planningguide/planningguide.cfm

Advocacy in a Few Easy Steps

By Marsha Lambert
Marshall Schools

After spending an intense afternoon in a session on Advocacy provided by MAME's Affiliate ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), I was astonished to discover the most effective tools for working with advocacy are at every librarian's fingertips! The following techniques are something each of us regularly use when working with students. They apply to the grownup world by using just a tiny bit of time and energy.

Congratulate your newly elected officials-whether they are school board members or state or national legislators. Before asking for anything let them see your name as part of a celebration of their position. This is important with administrators as well. A short handwritten note is good and if you use Follett note cards reading is also highlighted.
Phone calls to state and national legislators usually connect you with a staff member. The staff pass along messages and concerns. Be ready, be concise and be a positive, caring voice they are willing to hear and whose message they will pass on.
Tell a story. Be brief, but tell them how the issue, the program or the funding will impact a specific child or group of children. Include a success story. We see them every day, but don't always celebrate them or express sorrow for the sad ones to the people who might make a difference.
Be active in your teacher's association and know the issues in education. MEA and NEA send regular updates if you subscribe. When you advocate for and with your colleagues you become part of a vital team who are them more apt to help you as you speak out on behalf of your students. If you contribute to PAC (political action funds) you may be eligible to serve on a candidate screening committee-ask your Uniserv Director.
Say thank you! January is School Board Appreciate Month and the volunteers who work on school boards don't often get much appreciation. When a legislator or principal does something well or takes a stand supporting education let them know on behalf of the students you appreciate it.
Keep the focus on students!

Good luck and please resolve to try a few of these ideas. I still think of myself as a basically shy person and have found all of the above to be not only relatively painless, but empowering!

Recommended Resources & More

KeePass

I have so many passwords I don't know what to do with all of them! Do you have the same problem? I have passwords written down at home and I can't access them from work and vice versa. I have found a great solution! KeePass!

It is a "password safe" to keep all your passwords in one place and you only need to remember ONE password instead of many. It's also portable so you have it on your flash drive.

"KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database."

It is so easy to use! It keeps your user names, passwords and even the URL in one place for easy referencing.

2010 EduBlog Awards

Check out the winner and runner-ups of the 2010 Best Librarian/Library Blog here. You can also take a look at the winners of the other EduBlog categories as well.