Media Snapshot

During Professional Learning Communities yesterday, Mrs. Lukkarinen and I decided to check some statistics to measure our growth so far this year. We had a phenomenal year last year, with a 27% increase in student visits, 51% increase in circulation, and about a 2% increase in media lessons over the previous year. With such great growth in visits and circulation, we set our target SMART goal much lower for this year, expecting to possibly see another 10% growth across the board.

I will admit that I was a little anxious to see how we were doing so far this year, as we just completed our slowest month of the school year. I was pleasantly surprised, however, when we charted the data. This year has been fantastic, and we can’t wait to see where we are in June!

Valdosta = Success!

On Saturday, BI’s eight-member Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl team traveled to the Southern Regional Bowl at Valdosta State University. Each year, teams from the 61 school systems in this region compete for a chance to move on to one of two divisional bowls held in the state later this month.

This year, BI competed against seven other high schools during six rounds of competition, including our rivals from Liberty County High School. We had a strong showing early, putting up scores of 90, 60, and 80 in our first few rounds. At the end of the competition rounds, we posted a composite score of 400, our highest score in two years of competitions. We also defeated LCHS in our face-to-face round by a score of 50-40.

Even with a great score, we were not sure if it would be enough to put us ahead of Islands High School from Chatham County, who always brings a strong team to the competition. In the climatic awards presentation, we all held hands and waited as first the participation and then the placement awards were announced. Liberty was announced in 3rd, leaving BI and Islands to advance to the Division 2 Bowl on February 22nd. But we did not come to simply advance. We wanted to come home with another 1st place trophy and repeat as Southern Regional champs.

And that we did! It was a proud day for us all, and we celebrated with the team before heading home after a long day. We now have three weeks to prepare for another repeat performance at Divisionals in Statesboro. Congratulations to our students who have worked hard all year. We are proud of you!

Liberty County Reading Bowl Champs!

January is one of our favorite times of year because it kicks off our Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl competition season. Our first competition each year is the Liberty County Reading Bowl where we compete against Liberty County High School for county bragging rights. Although we don’t compete against many teams at this competition, it is the one that our team most looks forward to because of the big rivalry between our two high schools.

We are proud to share that for the second year in a row, our BI HRRB Tigers dominated the county bowl and came out on top by a final score of 310-200. Congratulations to the eight students who have spent many hours reading and studying to prepare for this bowl. We have already been hard at work this week preparing for the Southern Regional bowl to be held in Valdosta on Saturday, February 1st.

Hour of Code

Along with over 20,000,000 others, Bradwell students participated in the Hour of Code in December. We hosted two self-paced sessions in the media center for all students and staff interested in learning more about computer programming. We had great participation and so much fun completing the tutorials and activities.

Are you interested in computer science and coding? Check out http://code.org to learn how you can get involved.  Here are some of our enthusiastic coders in action!

Donors Choose Projects

We were fortunate to have 12 Donors Choose projects funded during the month of December. This means that we will be adding more resources for our students this month. Check out some of the great items that are on the way:

-An assortment of supplies (paper, pens, scissors, etc.) for our maker space area

-30 new graphic book titles (requested by students this fall)

-Three new cameras for our yearbook and Tiger TV staffs

-Ink for our student’s laser printer

-Ten rolls of MakerBot 3D printer filament in assorted colors

Mrs. Lukkarinen and I still have three projects pending funding on Donors Choose. When these projects are completed, we will add four Hokki stools to our Mac video editing workstations. These stools are great for collaboration and are easily moved for flexible seating.

Check out our individual Donors Choose profiles to keep updated on our progress!

www.donorschoose.org/melissa.mccallar

www.donorschoose.org/nikki.lukkarinen

Congratulations, ISMF Winners!

Congratulations to Bradwell’s 2013 International Media Festival winners! Each year BI holds a media festival, and projects that score a 96 or better advance to the next level of competition. We had 20 projects submitted last year, with 15 moving on to the Liberty County festival, 14 that advanced to Georgia’s state festival, and 7 that went to the international competition. Here are the 5 international level winners:

Social Media for Young Adults by Raveenn Smith
How a Bill Becomes a Law by Felix Linzan
The History of Graffiti by Mychal Outlaw
Ireland by Joshua Bowen
The Unforgettable Love by Jun Wei Ren

We are also pleased to share that Jun Wei Ren’s project was named a Top Honors project, making it a best of festival winner.

Learn more about the ISMA here:
http://www.ismassn.net/

Collaborating Like Crazy

Wow…December came and went before we had a chance to blink. While that is always the case this time of the year, we were especially busy this year! We are not complaining, though, as we had one of the most successful months in the media center ever. How does one measure success in a media center you may be wondering? Well, of course there are many ways – a high number of student visits (we had 2993 in just 15 school days…a record number for us), a high number of circulated books (not too bad, but no records this month), and special events hosted (Hour of Code comes to mind). These are all great ways to measure success, but the one we celebrate the most is the number of lessons taught, as this is one way that we can directly impact student achievement in our school. It also happens to be our very favorite part of the job!

This month, Mrs. Lukkarinen and I taught at least one class of students every day of the month. Most days, we each had a separate class and lesson for three blocks of the day. After reviewing our statistics at the end of the month, we were astonished to find that we taught 40 lessons in December. We want to give a shout out to the following teachers that stepped outside of their comfort zone and tried something new with us last month. You are awesome Mrs. Eastlake, Mrs. Reese, Mr. Richards, and Coach Miller! Thank you for allowing us to collaborate with you throughout your project, and we can’t wait to do it again (only better) this semester.

Bradwell is 3D Printing

We are really enjoying our new 3D printer. Students and staff have been visiting the media center throughout the month of December to learn about the printing process and to see it in action. We are currently working with teachers in several departments to brainstorm ways that this tool can be used to improve instruction across the curriculum. We are also working with our media committee to create some student printing policies, including the price for each new job. Check out some of the photos of the printer in action!

Making Our Space a Maker Space

When reading about trends and ideas for libraries and media centers, I often see a great deal about maker spaces. To me, a maker space is a student-centered learning space. It is flexible and mobile, allowing users to customize their experience. We think it should also promote inquiry, innovation, and creativity. We decided that we wanted to designate a large area in our media center as a maker space of sorts. We have organized games like chess, Scrabble, cribbage, and mancala on a shelf for student access. We have also received a donation of several MindStorm robotics kits for students interested in building and engineering. Additionally, we are providing other materials used in self-directed learning and exploration, including Mac computers for those interested in application like advanced video and photo editing. We are also very excited to announce that thanks to Donors Choose and MakerBot, we will be receiving a 3-D printer for our school. We can’t wait to see what our students create with this amazing tool!

Here are a few before and after photos of a decoupage project that we took on to spruce up some of our maker space areas.

Author Visits BI

On Wednesday, we were proud to host a local author, A. Dragonblood, in the BI media center. This author spoke to a group of our students interested in pursuing a career in either a writing or art-related field. As a children’s book author, Mr. Dragonblood has published several titles, but as our students learned, he has been involved in many other great writing projects including ghost writing for Stephenie Meyer’s Eclipse. He also shared some of his experiences with screen writing for popular television series such as Supernatural and True Blood.  Students enjoyed the small group discussion format of the presentation and really got a good introduction to different types of writing an author can do.

In addition to thanking Mr. Dragonblood for his time, we would also like to thank the Live Oak Public Library for organizing this visit in conjunction with the Savannah Children’s Book Festival this weekend. We look forward to hosting A. Dragonblood again for our Career Expo at BI.

Students with art and writing career interests

Mrs. McCallar, A. Dragonblood, and Mrs. Lukkarinen

A. Dragonblood leads informal discussion