Using iMovie on the iPad to Welcome Patrons to the Library

It's a new school year! We had a blast making this movie for the library. It took about 2 hours.

I purchased the iMovie app for our iPad to make a movie introducing our staff. We'll put the movie on the LCD screen outside the library. Originally, I tried to make a book trailer but had too many words. I abandoned that project and started tinkering with the preset trailer templates. I decided we could be "Super Librarians" and had Ms. Lin Photoshop a logo like "Superman's" except with an SL versus an S.

Presentation to Local Education Professionals

Professor of Library and Information Studies, Joyce Chao-Chen Chen, from National Taiwan Normal University brought about twenty local education professionals to The Taipei American School to tour the libraries. I gave a presentation on what is means to be a Teacher Librarian and promote reading in a school library. The education professionals are interested in what the libraries look like and how the U.S. school library  model is similar and/or different to the Taiwan school library model.

Here is a copy of the presentation.

Parent Talk on Reading & Selecting Library Books

I got this idea from Tara Etheridge's, Elementary Librarian at the International School of Bangkok, blogpost. Thirty parents in grades 1 & 2 came to hear a brief talk on reading and selecting books with their child.

Angela MacKenzie, Reading Specialist, and I presented the talk. We had 4 tables of books with one of those tables being new books. We talked about how to select books, read for enjoyment or read for meaning, use  the catalog and consider reading levels, and what the levels mean on Early Readers. We ended with Angela modeling how to read for meaning with a child and ask questions. We didn't want to make it too teacher-oriented. Afterwards we browsed and helped parents one-on-one. One thing I didn't take into account was the parents who came that didn't speak much English. I didn't put together a PowerPoint and I probably should have for them.