What would you do if you had $1000 to spend on media-related equipment for your school media center? What would you buy? First, consider: what do you want to do? What is your goal for the media center? What do you want to accomplish? What do you want your students to accomplish?
Information literacy has been emphasized lately, as has the role of the media specialist in educating students to be information literate. How do you teach a child to recognize a need for information, know where to look for that information, evaluate the quality/appropriateness of the information, and then put it to use?? What tools (i.e.: equipment, other than knowledge, experience and wisdom!) does the student need?
A very popular source of information lately has been the internet. To access the internet, you need, of course, a computer. While it is possible to show students how to locate, navigate and evaluate websites by means of an interactive whiteboard (Smartboard, E-beam, Promethean board, etc), they don't really get it until they do it themselves (the old "hands-on" method). So, show them, but then put them in front of a computer screen and see what they can do.
To do this, you need as many computers as possible. Our media center has computers, but we need more computers. Therefore, with some of my (imaginary) $1000, I am buying computers (2 laptops to be exact). After looking at several reviews, I found the Asus Eee PC 4G.
It's nothing fancy, just something for the students to surf the web. It is small, with an admittedly "cramped" keyboard, but it is sturdy. Besides, our students are fourth and fifth graders, so their hands are smaller anyway.
These laptops can be found at Red Barn Computers for $398.97 each, plus $26 shipping and handling. (Total $823.94).
Now, the flip side of the library computer is the library BOOK! Hopefully, we will always need and love to read BOOKS. But just as you can't make a horse drink the water you've lead him to, sometimes you can't make the child read the book in his hands that you know is wonderful. So, make the book catchy. Make it more techno. Load it onto an MP3 player and let the child listen while he also reads the words. We have done this with some of our students on a rather trial basis, and it's been a great success. (You will actually hear them laughing out loud as they read Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).
A review of a good MP3 player, the Creative Zen V Plus (4 GB), can be found here. With my remaining money I will purchase two of these MP3 players. Amazon has a good price on the Creative Zen V Plus (4 GB), which is described as "a cute, pocket-friendly design which doesn't sacrifice screen real estate, and the vivid OLED display is viewable from any angle. The player is packed to the gills with features, including an FM radio, voice and line-in recording, photo and video playback, and compatibility with subscription WMA tracks. The sound quality and battery life are great too." (It's also available in up to 16 GB). Amazon offers free shipping, and each audio book player runs $82.99, so two can be bought for $165.98.
That leaves me $10.08. Audiobooks.org offers free books to download, although the children's book selection at Audio Books for free.com is much more extensive, and they offer reviews and content analysis as well (lets you know what you're getting into....or not). Amazon's companion site for audio books is Audible.com, but there is a monthly subscription fee for these books.
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