Hacking School Libraries: 10 Ways to Incorporate Library Media Centers into Your Learning Community (Hack Learning Series)

by Kristina A. Holzweiss

Designate a cart of supplies and an area where students can continue working on their in-class projects.

kitchen accessories like Lazy Susans

Making is meaningful when there is a purpose, and an easy way to give your students a purpose is to start a community service project. Consider starting a community service project

Kids Kindness Kart,

Sending Smiles (sendingsmiles2sis.com) is a nonprofit organization that will send you blank postcards for your students to decorate.

Create a Please Touch Museum.

“autopsies” and “dissections” of appliances, to give new life to old objects. Allow students to take unwanted appliances apart so they can learn about the mechanisms that make them work.

Useful resources for design thinking are DesignThinkingforEducators.com, Ideou.com, and Extraordinaires.com.

“You Can Do the Rubik’s Cube” lending program. Register to borrow an educational set (twelve, twenty-four, or thirty-six cubes, with guides and a learn-to-solve curriculum) or a mosaic set (up to six hundred cubes and guides) for six weeks.

The library is a place where students can continue their studies and learn together in a less restrictive environment.

Explain how the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills that your students develop will help them analyze and apply information.

Imagination Chapters participate in weekly activities such as coding robots

Make them workers, helpers, consultants, and presenters. Learn to step back and let them take charge while you facilitate and teach. The last step is to keep the momentum going. When students become leaders in the library and school, synergy happens—but only if you encourage it. Look

Create and advertise a student wish list.

Another empowering action is to let them see you creating a purchase order with their requests on the form.

Be sure to tell them you have ordered their request, and that it should be at the library soon. When teacher-librarians

Labels such as “I Reshelve,” “I Help,” and “I Made a Difference,” accompanied by action shots of the students, are a great way to promote student leadership activities.

Few educators within the school building are modeling how to use social media, but the library is the ideal place to help students better understand how various social media formats

Check out Badgelist.com, Openbadges.me, Credly.com, ForAllRubrics.com, OpenBadges.org, and Badgr.com for resources

Hour of Code website. When students complete an hour of code training, you can generate a certificate and print it for display. You can also find templates online to create your own custom award documents.

The main idea with each of these possibilities is to give students a safe place to let them lead and learn.

Libraries should be staging areas for dynamic, collaborative programs,

think of the library as an extension of the classroom.

Host your first books and bagels event.

coffee station for teachers in the library workroom. The traffic generated by a coffee maker may spark interest and conversation that can lead to a new collaboration.

Send personal notes to teachers.

Ask your principal to invite you to speak to new faculty during summer orientation sessions.

Find out what teachers need help with regarding educational technology, and include questions that reveal options for curriculum-based collaborations.

leadership role that can also serve as an instructional facilitator.

The goal is for all stakeholders to see what the library can do for learners.

Ask teachers and administrators to make book recommendations.

Consider asking them to make short video reviews of a book they love. Teachers do not always have a chance to share their opinions,

Be flexible, and remember that teachers and students are the customers, so try to make the offered services fit their needs.

consider creating short instructional videos that you can share with teachers.

Celebrate Hour of Code during Computer Science Week, Digital Learning Day, or any other time of the year. The activities are free, available all year long, and can be used with a variety of grade levels.

National History Day is a springboard for librarians to collaborate with not only social studies teachers, but also their computer science, drama, and art colleagues.

Through the StoryCorps public service, for example, students can interview family, friends, and community members and preserve their stories to share with future generations.

Operation Footlocker, a national program by the National World War II Museum, lends out traveling trunks with about fifteen actual artifacts from World War II for students to explore. The Wall That Heals is a half-size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., that travels to communities all over the United States. Free “Trunks of Hope” are available nationwide from the Florida Holocaust Museum to help teach about the Holocaust,

The Reason2Smile organization also shares trunks to introduce and enhance students’ understanding and appreciation of Kenyan life.

Learn about open educational resources (OER), that are freely and publicly accessible.

Create Your School Library Writing Center: Grades K–6,

reshelved books using the sticker system to match books to their corresponding bins.

Freecycle.org.

Want a variety of board games for “screen-free time” fun? Ask your friends, family, and neighbors to think of you when they are doing their spring cleaning.

Create a birthday book club. Ask families to donate a book to the library to celebrate their child’s birthday. Stick a bookplate in the front cover of the book to recognize

Plan a stunt.

readathon, where sponsors donate prizes to give away based on the number of minutes the children read.