August 2024

Your media center is excited to usher in a new school year. We are here to serve students and staff with the latest and greatest books, electronic resources, technology, and multipurpose facilities. I will send occasional newsletters to keep you informed of the latest and greatest resources we offer you. I hope you will take a minute to scan through this newsletter and find something that you can use right away.

Mr. Robitaille is available to discuss resources, plan collaborative lessons, and co-teach with you. He is happy to teach in your classroom or to host you in the media center's instructional space. Mr. Robitaille is happy to join your lessons to demonstrate research strategies, technology integration, book talks, virtual field trips, Makerspace integration, and more. Please email Mr. Robitaille, call x1412 or stop by the media center to start brainstorming.

The media center is a multi-function facility that offers teachers many useful features for teaching lessons. You are invited to bring your classes to the media center. We offer:

• A wide-open space with many tables. Great for group projects.
• An Instructional Space to accommodate 30+ students. This classroom has moveable desks, dry-erase walls, a Mac Mini computer, an Apple TV with projector, and speakers. We'll supply dry erase markers if you need a space for your students to brainstorm on the walls.
• A Digital Den with 14 Mac computers, two smart TVs (with Apple TVs), a large green screen for chroma key video recording, six Meta Quest virtual reality headsets.
• A Collaboration Station where small groups can work together on projects. This room has two HDTVs with cables to connect iPads.
• A small-group study room with comfortable couches.
• A multipurpose Explorer Room for individual and small-group interviews, meetings, meditation, etc.

You can reserve the Instructional Space and the Digital Den by adding them to a Google Calendar event. (Here are instructions.) You can reserve the Explorer Room by contacting the media center on x1412. If you wish to reserve the entire media center for an event, please submit an FMX ticket.

In addition to having a collection of DVDs, the media center provides access to video streaming services that include educational clips and Hollywood films.

• Swank Streaming - Access to over 30,000 movies, documentaries, and foreign language films.
• Classroom Video on Demand - Access over 200,000 curriculum-focused video clips. All curricular topics covered, lots of short videos to supplement lessons. Videos can be assigned in Google Classroom. (Sign in with Google.)
• PBS Learning Media - Free curriculum-aligned videos, interactives, lesson plans, more. (Sign in with Google.)
• INFOhio Digital Video Collection - Over 2,000 educational videos available at no cost to all Ohio students, teachers, and families.

The media center subscribes to an amazing book recommendation resource called NoveList Plus. Students and staff can easily browse book recommendations by searching through categories or getting suggestions based on other books, movies, TV shows, or music that they enjoy. You can bring your NoveList+ book recommendations to the media center where we will get you connected with those books. Users will need to log into NoveList+ using our school's username and password, which can be found on the database password cheat sheet, which is located on the library website.

SchoolAI is an amazing resource that allows teachers to create a virtual chatbot that can have an individualized conversation with your students based a topic related to your academic content standards. You provide SchoolAI with a prompt, as detailed as you want it to be. It then uses generative AI to create a customized chatbot that interacts with your students in a safe and secure environment. You can send this "space" to your students who will then have individualized conversations with the chatbot. The chatbot then taps into resources based on your content standards to provide a realistic conversation that prompts students to become more inquisitive and dig deeper into the topic.

Students join your class with a join code and do not divulge personal information. You can monitor the conversations they have with their chatbots. SchoolAI will alert you to inappropriate language or tomfoolery. SchoolAI has a Discover tab with preconfigured chatbots that can you can roll out to your students. It also has a wide variety of generative AI tools that help teachers write lesson plans, rubrics, quizzes, worksheets, etc.

Virtual field trips are an amazing way to take your students to destinations all over the world. Using VR Expeditions, students view 360° images of a location chosen by their teacher. They hold VR ViewMaster goggles to their eyes and see the location from all sides as if they are standing there. The teacher directs the experience on a tablet and guides the students on the field trip. Teachers can read information on the tablet that describes what the students are seeing.

The media center has 30 VR units for full-class experiences! Please contact Mr. Robitaille to test these out and to arrange for virtual class field trips.

Below is a link to VR Expeditions available on the devices. You will be prompted for a password when accessing this site. Copy and paste this password: XK!sJ86sNq2Lt5d9 . You can then search for keywords on the list by typing CTRL+F (or CMD+F on iPad or Mac).

The above website is passworded. Please copy and paste this password to access it:

XK!sJ86sNq2Lt5d9

Teachers are able to check their library account to see what items they are currently borrowing. Here's how:

1. Click on the iSearch icon on the main library website.
2. Select My Account in the top-right corner.
3. For the User ID, type your 7-digit employee ID number.
4. For the PIN, type your birthday in MMDD format. (Use four digits. Eg., April 9 is 0409.)
5. Select the Checkouts tab to see your current loans.

Email: robitaia@hudson.k12.oh.us
Website: https://hhs.hudson.k12.oh.us/departments/library
Location: Hudson, OH, USA
Phone: (330) 653-1412
X: @aussieandrew

View past newsletters at https://hhs.hudson.k12.oh.us/departments/library/library-newsletters