How was the beginning of the year?
- CBG: still working from home, library not at full capacity yet
-JA: librarian at Newpaltz High School. School is still remote.
-AB: librarian at Nyack High School. Library under renovation. Helping students get laptops.
-AM: Outreach librarian at Bard College. Library being used as classroom space. Comes in one day a week.
-NM: Working from home from SUNY Orange. Library Instruction and Archive Librarian
-EC: Research Services Librarian at Marist. Working on campus 2 days a week. Removed some seating.
-JE: Works in Tannersville. Does curbside at her library right now. Has a staff of four people. Has been working from home as well.
-MT: SUNY Orange Librarian and Goshen Library Librarian. Working from home roughly three days a week. Neither library has reached capacity. Things have been going smoothly.
Educator Lab
-Teaching classroom teachers what librarians know about research. Running a 4 part series focusing on literacy instruction, primary sources, security and privacy. Only ran one class before the pandemic. Wouldn’t have worked virtually. Talking about doing a 3-day conference so they can do high school transition as a virtual event. They might try hybrid depending on how things are. Tentative date is July 7-9, 2021. Will be seeking a grant. Ideas for speakers or topics for this workshop, please reach out.
How is instruction going?
-JA: did an orientation in Google Meet. Some teachers did not have students turn cameras on. Another class had all their cameras on. Felt a little awkward.
-NM: It’s same with the college, not forcing students to have cameras on or off. She will start having students doing interactive things online. Have them use the chat. Feels she connects with the voice or chat. Starting to use padlet.com.
-EC: Had a similar experience. Uses Poll Everywhere. Uses concept maps. Generates as word cloud. Runs an icebreaker. Just started with Zoom so has not done Zoom polls yet.
-AB: her district requires the cameras on. Or turn on before class and turn back on at the end of class. Could be privacy issues.
-C: Has same concern with privacy. Teach them how to use virtual backgrounds. Started hiding self-view in Zoom. Has heard that students are having a hard time working from their bedrooms and not getting breaks.
-EC: her classes are partially in person and partially home. Or half home and half in person. The instructor decides the models. Are issues with each one.
-AB: Have college librarians had experience with first-year students?
-NM: Some are quiet. What they could be missing is needing other students around; no socialization.
-MT: Did a one-on-one Zoom session yesterday. I believe this was her first college experience and was an adult student. I think some students want to ask for help but might feel shy and anxious with everything going on. But we encourage them to ask for help.
-EC: Students do ask questions over chat.
-AB: We all need socialization.
-AM: Even in-person classes have been low energy. Not everyone is relaxed.
-JA: Doesn’t have access to students.
-AM: Values library space more now.
-EC: her library has gotten quiet.
-MT: At Monroe Woodbury High School Library listening in
-AB: Will be happy when construction is over but will be bittersweet due to social distancing
-AM: Had two reference chats during this meeting. Most so far this semester. Hopeful it will pick up. Bard’s plan is to do the same remote plan.
-NM: Pre-COVID there were talks to do more online classes. Was easy and difficult to transition from on-campus to remote.
-MT: OCCC might be doing mostly remote again in the spring.
-EC: Faculty who taught online had easier transition. Faculty had to build a course site. That was a struggle for many people.
-NM: There was a lot of training offered to faculty at OCCC.
-EC: Had a lot of training sessions too. Some were overwhelming.
-C: Final thoughts. Happy to see some good results.
-NM: Scavenger hunts. Melissa and Nancy created a scavenger hunt through flippity.net. No responses yet but hopeful that instructors would start using it soon.
-MT: Promoted it through Twitter.