RCPL: Leading the Change

Sunday, November 9th
10:30-11:15

Cen Campebell (not able to attend)
Marianne Martens, Kent State
RK, RCLS
AngT, RCLS

We started off the morning checking technology - thank you Wess for organizing all the right ipads, cords, connectors, chargers, laptops, etc. and figuring out how to get everything working (for not just this program, but a lot of them - evn those that weren't RCLS!). Very much appreciated! As an aside, Mission Viejo had a tech breakdown - they did their presentation on a laptop, then had to change devices / cords for an ipad ... of course there were problems.

Once we had all of our tech set up, and everyone esle who was using the room later for their presentations stopped visiting, we were able to do a run through for our presentation!

We had a good turn out for the presentation - 45? Seemed like the audience was mostly children's storytime folks interested in starting at their library.

RK gave a great intro about why we took on this grant and what we hoped to get from it.

MM gave a really nice presentation about the grant overview, the findings including - interviewing families, the spaces, trouble shooting, and of course we this important to look at in libraries. Whether anyone likes it or not families are using technology (specifically cell phones, tablets, apps) with their children.

RK - covered how grant was implemented, training and trainers, the brilliance of our tech team, whom without this would not be possible, training topics, and an overview of what we got out of the training.

I followed up with - THANK YOU to RCLS staff! Would not have been possible without our tech team and RCLS staff. That while we had great training, we needed to figure out how to make things work at RCLS with our community.

I gave a sample storytime to highlight - how technology is integrated within our regular storytimes (not separate). That we all of our storytimes are designed to share early literacy & learning, child development, and now digital literacy tips with families interwoven with our activities. We had a little bit of everything including singing and a cat puppet!

Highlighted:

- One drive / PowerPoint app (and that it was our brilliant tech staff that discovered this gem!)
* the purpose is to encourage parent participation (words to songs and finger plays)
* encourage learning at home

- Highlighted book apps -
* why use (good for large groups, "magic" of interactive book, encourage use at home)
* showed sample book app (quality, not distracting, interactive with whole group)

"Kalley's Machine Plus Cats"
You Tube video for Kalley's Machine

- Highlighted content creation apps -
* Grant requested 20 ipads = get into the hands of kids (thanks Renee!)
* Skills from hands on learning
* Demo

"Identikat"
You Tube clip for Identikat


The crowd seemed very positive - huge relief! We had a series of follow up questions inclduing -

- Did we offer separate all digital storytimes? (No, integrated in)
- Have we had any complaints from parents / families about digital elements in program? (No - thank goodness!)
- Are storytimes walk in or registered? (both - we explained)
- App selection (Highlighted training, little eLit)

That's all I can remember, overall impression, we did what we came to do!Whew!

HUGE thanks to Wess, Vivian, Kristin, Margaret who helped to break down all the iPads and cords after the program!

And once again, thank you to everyone at RCPL or RCLS who helped make this grant a success and are helping to pave the field for libraries across the state! Thank you!