Checklist Item #3: Weeding

I've discovered weeding and cataloging are ongoing projects throughout the school year. I have found that weeding is easier to complete than cataloging since there are a number of books that past media specialists have left to be processed that, unfortunately, at this present time are still waiting to be cataloged due to my lack of time to review all of them. Hopefully I will receive a more consistent volunteer team so that I can begin tackling those stacks of books hiding in the back of the library.

Weeding, on the other hand, helps me feel productive in the library. It encourages me to make room for the new(er) materials that are waiting to be cataloged, or to find new resources to add or replace the old. This past week the IT Director and I began weeding and organizing materials from one of the cabinets in the media center. This cabinet contained extremely old and slow, but well used, laptops, random cords that belong to some kind of technology, and old cameras / camcorders. All of these materials are part of the Equipment inventory, which consists of several items that may or may not be lost as the school has moved since its creation in 2005. After he organized and I weeded them from the system, we were still left with the stack of laptops. This leads to one of my questions about this process - what do media specialists typically do with the materials they weed? In recent weeks I weeded older magazines from our collection, but conveniently a kindergarten teacher asked for magazines so those were easily recycled for another purpose. Technically, these clunky laptops still work, but you'll be waiting longer than most students have the patience for to get to the Internet in our world of instant gratification. If we had any clubs that involved making things out of parts, we might be able to donate those items, but as of right now no club exists. They might just end up in the trash or as recycled parts.

Reflection:
Recently I've been able to exercise my role as Instructional Partner with one of the fourth grade teachers. As mentioned in an earlier post, this fourth grade teacher asked for help in finding a program that would help students design an environment, such as a garden. This past week we've put Sketch Up into use both in her class and during my technology class. At the moment, students are playing around with the tools to help them become more familiar with how to manipulate the tools to design various shapes or architecture. For example, one group of 4th grade boys discovered they could download cars and furniture from Sketch Up to add to their newly designed home. Some had more success than others, but practice and learning from failure is the best way to become a risk taker and experiment with technology tools.