Hi, everyone --

Of course, I'm the night owl . . .

I'm having trouble keeping track of what has come through email, and what is posted where, so I'm just going to stick my comments in here.

Janet, in your last email you said, "According to the rubric, there needs to be a definition and an entry from each of our school systems under each definition. So we really can't divide up pages because we all need to contribute to each page."

I don't think that I'm understanding the rubric and assignment guidelines in the same way. Mona says, "Think of your wiki like an abridged "dictionary" not a handbook. You are NOT rewriting every single document. Instead, you might have 25-50 word maximum "definition" for something. You might provide a link to the district who has the best wording on that topic."

What I was understanding is that we need to provide a "definition" for each item, which it might be helpful to split up amongst us, and that beyond that, we pick and choose what's good. We could provide links, meld various county policies together, etc. I did notice that we are each supposed to put in our own mission statement. Am I missing something? Please tell me if I'm talking crazy talk.

I know Janet and I did a "Freedom to Read" assignment for Children's Lit. last summer. I imagine the rest of you may have as well? I think that looking back at that assignment will be helpful.

I'm thinking that it would make sense for each of us to include our contributions as comments on each of the pages. Then, if each person is assigned to particular pages, we can meld the ideas of all of the group members into cohesive concise text and get things organized.

Ok, I'm proud of myself. I'm getting a handle on this whole wiki thing. I went ahead and added a page for our bibliography -- just so we wouldn't forget.

I'm back again, ladies, and I've been doing a lot of thinking. I apologize in advance for the length.

I really love the subheadings that Janet got us started with. Many of them are more comprehensive/professional in nature than some that I have come across in my exploration of materials.

Here are my thoughts about what are sections should be and what we might possibly consider including in each of them. Obviously, we'll have to pick and choose on the specifics based on what exactly we can get our hands on.

I. Bios
A. Photos
B. Brief paragraph about each of us
C. Statements of what we learned through the creation of the assignment
II. Mission, Vision, and Philosophy
A. AASL Mission Statement
B. Individual Mission Statements
C. Respective County Mission Statements
D. Goals and Objectives Pertaining to Mission Statement?
E. Cohesive Group Vision Statement
F. Respective County Mission Statements
III. Media Personnel
A. Roles of the Media Specialist Defined – teacher, instructional partner, information specialist, program administrator, leader
B. Media Clerk
C. Volunteers
D. Qualifications and essential functions for each of the above
IV. Facilities
A. 5 Areas: Study and Research Area, Informal Reading Area, Instructional Area, Production and Group Project Area, Administrative Area
B. I forget for what class this is done, but has anyone had to design your ideal media center layout yet? Those plans could be useful here.
C. Include photos of well laid-out media centers? From web or taken in person as we visit our mentors?
D. List of essential furnishings?

V. Operations
A. Hours (each county, each grade level, ideal hours for most reader access?)
B. Class Schedule
C. Circulation Policies – Overdues, Fines, Length of Loan, Renewals, Policies for each county, group’s ideal policies
D. Sign-in procedures for middle/high school students using library during lunch?
VI. Administrative Procedures
A. Cataloging And Technical Services
1. Cataloging
2. Processing
3. Inventory
4. Annual Reports
B. Collection Development
1. Collection Development Plans
2. Professional Selection Resources – List
3. Selection Process/Ordering Procedures – Guidelines, Approval
4. Weeding
a. Time lines by area
b. General guidelines
5. Handling of Donations
6. Budget
a. Accounts/Allocations
b. Management System
c. Sample Budgets
7. Book Jobbers?
VII. Ethical and Legal Policies
A. Censorship
B. Intellectual Freedom
1. ALA Freedom to Read Statement
2. ALA Library Bill of Rights
3. Link to Mona’s First Principles document
4. Individual/Group Reader’s Rights, Freedom to Read Statements
C. Acceptable Use Policy - Copyright Issues
D. Plagiarism
E. Internet Usage
VIII. Program Evaluation
A. county comprehensive plans
B. Suggestions/guidelines from AASL/course texts
IX. Forms and Miscellany
A. Collaboration
1. Request Forms
2. Lesson Planning Forms
B. Program Planning
C. Goal Setting Forms
X. Bibliography/Acknowledgements

I think based on extent of content, we should divide things up as follows:

Person 1 - Bios, Mission/Vision/Philosophy, Bibliography/Acknowledgements, General Formatting Decisions
Person 2 - Facilities, Operations
Person 3 - Administrative Procedures
Person 4 - Legal and Ethical Policies
Person 5 - Media Personnel, Program Evaluation, Forms and Miscellany

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to lay claim. I am happy to take with Administrative Procedures or Legal and Ethical Policies.Of course, it is imperative that we all contribute to each section or else we won't be able to get this done. Each person's assignments are just for organization's/compilation's sake. Oh, random side note -- let's try not to get too carried away with the links; I really felt the one sample group had too many different pages that linked to each other.

Have we heard from our other members so that we can divide up properly?

Should we go ahead and alter our page headings? Is there anything else we want to include or anything I mentioned that we don't think is necessary? We can continue on tomorrow and fine-tune based on everyone's opinions. I will get on tomorrow afternoon to chime in, but as you can see, I tend to work more effectively on these types of things at night.

We still need to get everyone on the Wiki. I would like to take on Ethical Policies. However we ALL need to contribute our county policies to each page. Once we put our policies in we need to look it over and see if we can combine or condense the information.

So we should all plan on having our county policy information in on each page by next week Thursday or Friday? Everyone pick a day and we'll go with the majority. That would give each person time over the weekend to condense info as needed and post for the team to look over.

Maria,
I think that Administrative Procedures needs to be two different sections. 1 for Admin procedures and 1 for collection development. I don't see a way to add "anchors" to this Wiki so it would make too long of a page to scroll through everything. If anyone is reading this and knows if I can make "anchors" please let me know. :) thanks!

I like the Bio section, should we call it Bio? or ???? not sure. Should it come first or at the end?

Love the facilities idea! Yes, I have my plan that I can post for a middle school. The class for me was cataloging where we did the plan.

Circulation works well in operations. Great!

I can combine Mission and Vision. I did think about that.
Not sure what "program evaluations" is?

I was debating with the Admin. procedures, too. I think you're absolutely right. Let's do the two different sections as you suggested: Admin. Procedures and Collection Development. Maybe we could call the Bio section "Contributors"? Last night, I was thinking it should go at the beginning but now I'm thinking at the end.

I do think we should go ahead and combine Mission and Vision since they're so closely related. Let's just go ahead and scrap the "Program Evaluation" section because in thinking about it more, I don't know how much it will really add to our wiki. It's supposed to be for standards and tools by which school libraries are judged. And maybe the "Forms" section can just sort of be on stand-by since it's not nearly as essential but would be a nice add in.

Janet, I'm glad you like the facilities idea. I thought it might be a nice add in and it connects with the AASL documents.

I agree that it will be IMPERATIVE that each person contribute county policies and other tidbits for each of the sections. The person assigned to that section should only be in charge of compiling. Janet, do you think it's best for us to to put write in our county policies as comments on the page or go ahead and edit the page itself?

Ok, here's my revised idea for the breakdown:

Person 1 - Bios, Mission/Vision, Media Personnel, Bibliography (There aren't many sub-categories for these, so I really think it's doable.)
Person 2 - Facilities and Operations
Person 3 - Legal and Ethical
Person 4 - Admin. Procedures
Person 5 - Collection Dev.

I'd like to take Administrative Procedures. Janet, would you mind going ahead and updating the pages?

I think we really need to have our county contributions posted by next Thursday at the latest, maybe Wednesday? Then, everything should be done except for final proofing by the following Sunday morning so that we have plenty of time that day to clean things up before officially submitting.

Cheryl --

Would you be willing to take on either Collection Development or Facilities and Operations?

I updated all the pages. We need to decide on a "page format" so that we each set up the page in a similar fashion. I left Ethical Issues as the page instead of Legal and Ethical is that ok?

I am going to do the Legal and Ethical page set up and definitions.

Wonderful! It looks great. Thanks so much, Janet.

I"m fine with just Ethical Issues. My only remaining question is: should we put have Ordering Procedures as a part of Administrative Procedures?

What are our page format options, wiki guru? Is this mainly a matter of font size, color, etc.?

Hi everyone! I am finally up and running - I thought that I had gotten into the stream of things by yesterday afternoon and I even thought that I had sent a message and comment - but apparently I did not use the correct e-mail address and did not set up things correctly. I am impressed with the amount of information pulled together so far! THANKS and I will catch up as the weekend continues. I have a copy of the MCPS policies and procedures and from the looks of things from last semester most of the information in MCPS is online and therefore easy to access and link and pull from. i am more than willing to tackle most anything and will do my best as I try to navigate this new world of wiki. THANKS Janet for the e-mails and explanations - it is helping a great deal. MCPS does not allow blogs or wikis, but I am ready for the challenge. Where would you like me to start? I was thinking about mission and vision statements, circulation policy, media personel. Let me know what you think and I will begin pulling info from the MCPS policies and procedures. THANKS again for jumping in and getting us ALL started - it is greatly appreciated!!! I check back in a little while to see what the next step is - THANKS again!

Hi,
YEAH...you got it! Once you get the hang of it a Wiki is very similar to Word. That would be great if you would take on the Mission/Vision/Philosophy and the Bibliography page. So can someone summarize what everyone has chosen? I have Ethical Issues.

FORMAT
I think that we should follow the sample Wiki that had the
Word in larger font (18 font) and different color (Green) and then the definition following in a 14 font same color.
Each of us will input our information under the correct "word or area".

So lets try setting up our pages based on Maria's outline above. I copied the outline and pasted it into a Word doc to print out. We have made a few changes to it but I think it mostly affects Maria.
Wiki, Wiki Fun!

Great! My outline is really just some ideas I had or saw as I was trying to wrap my head around the assignment and all our sources. We can certainly modify it as we go.

Assignments so far:
Janet - Ethical
me - Admin. Procedures
Gretchen - Bios, Mission/Vision, Media Personnel, Bibliography? If that is okay with you. Let us know if it's too much, but for most of those areas, we each have to contribute our own individual pieces for posting, so it's mainly Media Personnel with which you'll need to do more shaping of ideas.
I'm not sure if Cheryl wanted Facilities and Operations or Collection Development.
Still no word from Betty.

Let's keep pushing forward. I think we've made a lot of great progress!

I'm still thinking about the color scheme. I happen to love green, so I'm fine with sticking with it. I'll post again if I think of something else, but for now, let's go ahead with it.

I am fine with what you have given me and I will yell for help if I need it! I have added comments and information to the mission/vision - I will give definitions tomorrow. I will add MCPS info or media personnel as well. If we can all work on the bibliogrpahy that would be great so that we have cited all of the sources we have each used.
The color scheme sounds great!

Hi ladies -
I have copy and pasted some information into each one of the sections. I need info of course from CCPS and HCPS when you can get it to me via online version or whatever is fine. I will also look through the rest of the wiki comments that have been made so far to find other information. As you have the online version of your counties policies and procedures please post them so we can start the bibliography as well. I think the green on green looks fine, but if we want a contrast at least bold the subsections, etc like I have on the pages I have worked on so far. We could also consider using purple or blue for the written sections. Let me know what you think so far and I will continue to work on my pages tomorrow. Janet - your quicken movie that showed us what to do to edit pages was great! I am really starting to feel incredibly comfortable with this format! You Rock!! :) Gretchen

Hi Ladies,
I'm sorry for the late notice. I'm actually in the process of withdrawing from this course. Due to a series of unfortunate events. I won't be able to finish this course this semester. I wish you all the best! Betty

Cheryl and I are working at the library today. She is working on collection development and I have been working on the mission/vision, media personnel, contributors and will start the bibilography. Since we are now down 1 person, each of us will have to step up and make sure that our county and our peronal ideas are represented on each page. We need to each take care of our county for each page so that information is not being handled twice and theirefore our time is being spent more efficiently. WOO HOO WIKI!!

Well, it's good to have confirmation of what's going on with everyone.

I am currently having some computer issues: my laptop cord is shorting out, and I'm having a little bit of difficulty getting a new one from the county because our school doesn't have any spares. I'm letting you know because my computer access will no doubt be a bit patchy over the next couple of days, but I will get my county contributions up ASAP as we discussed.

Hi, everyone --

Thankfully, I'm back with a temporary fix for the tragedy that is my life with computers currently.

I"ll be adding my contributions from my county handbook this evening, but I wanted to bring something to everyone's attention. I've been looking back at the module introduction and assignment explanation for the wiki, and I noticed these pieces:

"Evaluation, Advocacy, and Strategic Planning--Ah...three vitally important components of administration, and I've not touched on it. You've got your texts, you've got our standards, you've got our bibliography. Tell us what we need to know, how we do it. Include it in your wikis."

and under "Your Task"

6.Define the stakeholders in the school library program.
7.Working together, come up with a Strategic Plan for the school library.
8.Working together, come up with an Advocacy Plan.

Initially, I had predominantly been running with the listing of suggested sections, but now, I'm thinking that some of these might not be "suggestions" after all.

My question is: Do you think we will be adequately fulfilling these requirements with the sections we have already been working to develop? Do we need to add anything additional?

I'll be thinking about it very seriously tonight and will post more thoughts tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm beginning to feel less and less sure about our expectations and need some more time to ponder.

I'm now thinking we prehaps do need to add an additional section on evaluation or "Program Evaluation" as I had been thinking about earlier in our initial discussions. I'm willing to head up that page.

Well, ladies -- I am on my way to getting caught back up on everything post-technolapacolypse. I am happy to take over some additional formatting, summarizing roles as needed as we get everything polished.

I am back on the wiki!!! Yeah - very frustrating, but I am going to try to finish up my parts today so there is time to format, edit etc. Please make sure that you are adding your counties information to the pages - then we can tweak from there - THANKS!!! It is looking good!!! Great team work! :) Gretchen

I've been posting a lot of my information as comments rather than directly onto the pages -- mainly so that I can revisit and re-evaluate what I really think needs to be in there. Feel free to adapt my comments yourself if you prefer; otherwise, I will condense and post them in myself.

P.S. Welcome back, Gretchen! Apparently, the wiki is not my friend either because some of my contributions did not actually post. Oh how I love redoing things I have already done . . . Thankfully, I had the sense to save most of it this time.

Hey Gals,
I am posting this in two places because I want to know if we are eliminating the evaluation page since nothing has been posted on it.
C :)

Hi all,
I am on tonight also. I just noticed the evaluation page is missing. Are we suppose to add a page that talks about what we learned from this project? I am going to check the rubric. J

I"m going to post this on the Bio page also.. #18 states"Does the Wiki have a brief bio on each group member that explains her contributions and what she learned?"
Should we add that to the Bio page?

I think we're getting two different impressions for the actual "Evaluation" page. Our contributions/what we've learned should I think go on our bio page as Janet has done beautifully. I was thinking that we might need a page devoted to professional evaluaton of yourself and your media program.

I added my information to what I had learned and I have also been working on the formating,etc and pigging backing on what Cheryl has been doing. Cheryl and I chatted last night and decided that we would both get back on today and work on what was out there. I am logging off now, but will be back on this afternoon. When you all have a moment check out the bibliography and let me know if there are any other resources that were used so that we can make sure to cite thoses sources. Also make sure to add your information to your bios about what you have learned - thanks for getting us started with that Janet! Glad everyone is back on the wiki or back in town :) The wiki is starting to look more unified and condensed. I am also going to double check the rubric...Have a great day - GREAT team work! :) Gretchen

Hi there ladies - I just went through and looked at each page. On some pages I reformatted, checked color scheme and information. Cheryl and Maria don't forget to add what you have learned from this project on the bio page :) Maria make sure you add your vision statement to the mission and vision page. It looks really good overall! Also can everyone please check the bibliography page to make sure that I included all resources that you all think should be cited. THANKS and I will be checking the wiki again tomorrow to see how we are doing. As I said overall I think it looks GREAT!!! :)Gretchen

Don't worry -- I'm still fine-tuning my vision statement, but I should have it ready to go shortly. Thanks for the reminder. I agree that things are looking great!

I'll be on after dinner to take care of the last details. I think we have worked very well together. Yay us!

Ok, I am checking all the formatting at 5:30 on Sunday night. It should be good to go. thanks for submitting everything Maria.

Looks good everyone! Thanks everyone for a great effort! J

I also just looked through again and it does look good! GREAT TEAM WORK!!!!! We pulled it together :) Thanks Janet, Maria and Cheryl - I have learned a lot from each of you!
:)
Gretchen