Driving along....

The school I am the librarian at is a little over an hour away from my home. This means I spend a lot of time in the car listening to music, audiobooks, and talking to my 1 year old son. It is also the time I spend thinking about what I am teaching and learning, what I need to do for classes, and loftier lifetime goals. Last Thursday my thoughts were all about virtual reference class. Finally, I am getting a chance to read my messy driving notes and put down the ideas in my blog...

1. Getting the message out about the IPL: If there isn't one already, I think it would be useful to have a message that could be sent to teachers, sent on listservs, and shared around as a FYI memo to teachers and librarians. I am working on one to use, at least for the teachers at my school and the Vermont School Library Association listserv. At schools, often teachers will use what they are directed to, especially when it is a great resource. Pointing out the IPL will turn lots of people on to the website.

2. Developing an IPL search button that could go on school websites for students that would link to the KidSpace and TeenSpace (depending on the grades at the school) and search the IPL. It would be like a Google search box, except go the the IPL. What I'm learning in my design and production of multimedia class will help me develop this if this is something that I decide to work on.

3. I would like to work on outreach for students/teachers since that is what I'm most familiar wtih. I think that students need to know more about sites like the IPL, so we need to come up with exciting ways to get them on it. Maybe doing something with Facebook/Myspace/Xanga (three social sites my 7th grade students were all talking about today) would be good to reach the kids out there who need some guidance and a push in the right direction for quality online sites.