I walk in and spot Dr. Joyce Valenza, the school’s library information specialist, through another window, one that peeks into her office where she sits consulting with a student researcher. She apologizes for not being able to shake my hand (she has a cold), and welcomes me and begins telling me about some of the projects her students are working on.
She introduces me to her assistants Patty Gee and Casey Arlen, who rave about findingDulcinea, then the study hall students, who greet me politely, and the U.S. History II students who are focused on their computers.
Mr. MacFarland’s history students explain that they are creating an online textbook that covers material their textbook leaves out. Valenza reminds these students that the Google News Timeline and Fact on File’s World News Digest—one of many databases available to the students—are great places to begin their research.
She also reminds them about Dulcinea Media’s SweetSearch tool, which I’m excited to see is listed on her search page. I mention that our site also has a brand new Biographies page. A few minutes later I see two girls scrolling through a findingDulcinea profile of Michael Phelps.
In one darkened cove, a projector screen is lit up behind Mr. Alexander, who is giving directions to students researching their senior seminar. In another room, Mrs. Mazurek’s eighth-graders are comparing products online using Google Squared. The other half of Mr. MacFarland’s class, the half not creating textbooks, is watching a history movie that introduces a new unit; the area is often used for student presentations, Valenza explains. She guides me through the reference area, the magazines aisles and the student-run art gallery. Outside the gallery is more art: painted pottery dishes, medieval castles, models of the Great Wall of China and a life-size wire sculpture one student made of himself.
When we return to her office, Valenza shows me the keynote presentation she helped students in a musical theater class put together for a K-12 Online Conference. The German students created their own art museums, with introductions written and scripted entirely in German. World History II students also created interactive museums of artifacts of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and Reformation using a variety of tools that included Glogster, NoodleTools, Animoto, Wikispaces and VoiceThread. “Sometimes even after the class was over, they just wouldn’t leave,” she said, laughing.
The whole time I’m there, a student, who introduces herself as Maya, is working quietly at a computer in the back of Valenza’s office, wearing headphones. She takes them off to explain her project: a stop-motion animation about the future of libraries. Characters—an old man and an ‘80s fairy—were drawn, cut out and moved around a background, and then photographed hundreds of times. I ask how she gets the characters to stay in place for each new scene. Without a trace of condescension in her voice, she answers, “They’re aerial photographs.” Of course, I think. After she leaves, I ask Valenza what class Maya is making the animation for. I’m not surprised to hear that it isn’t for credit at all; it will be used in advocacy efforts supporting school library information programs for students that don't have them. Maya and a few other students volunteered their study hall time to create a PSA that will be used by the Spokane Moms and others.
Toward the end of my visit, I run into the school principal, Mr. Hackney, who tells me about his first trip to the library. He remembers walking in and hearing lots of chatter and noise, so he started “shushing” people. “Everyone started looking at me funny,” he said. “Now I understand. It’s a working library.”
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