Continued Community Outreach

Over the years, it has become commonplace to see hosted groups of administrators, teachers and librarians as well as students of these disciplines touring the LRC. Using technology, we have been able to further expand these tours and engage in discussions and shared practices as far away as Malaysia and up and down the Americas. These are always meaningful, reciprocal learning experiences for everyone involved. We look forward to them and always come away with that greater sense of community and the satisfaction that accompanies the sharing of ideas and practices with like minded educators.

The LRC staff members were recently invited to participate in a video conference with students at the University of Costa Rica enrolled in the BI-5017 Marketing of Services and Products for Educational Information course along with their professor Daniela Rodríguez. The purpose of this virtual meetup was to address questions the students had on the specific challenges faced by libraries in different countries. 

On September 13th, we hosted the class of student librarians via Google Hangouts. During this time we examined the challenges facing libraries, talked about marketing strategies and gave them a tour of the LRC facilities.

We ran this virtual session via Google Hangouts as it allowed us to go mobile on our various cell phones and a laptop. This technique worked really well as we were all able to not only converse with the group but also tour them around the facilities and in doing so pop in and out of the conversation as it developed. 

We spent an hour and a half with this class, during this time we also shared ideas for the development of learning resources centres, special projects, and purchasing ideas for equipment and resource. We shared the way we organised our print library as well as the virtual library and its functions and finished up with a complete tour of the facilities. The beauty of this type of meetup is natural flow of conversation punctuated by concrete examples and poignant Q and A.

The professor in charge wrote to us the following day to thank us for coming into her classroom the evening before and working with her students. We in turn were thankful for the opportunity to do so. There is so much scope for work like this. It costs next to nothing to beam a group in via the internet and collaborate. We do it with our students in lessons, why shouldn't we collaborate through web conferences with professionals at other institutions as well. All it takes is a few people who are not afraid of taking a risk and are willing to use the technology most of us carry around with us on a daily basis.

Possibly the most powerful aspects of videoconferencing between institutions and countries are the conversations that result and the links that are forged. Through this activity we were not only able share our spaces, but to discuss matter of concern for libraries and librarians everywhere. We would be thrilled to hold more of these virtual meetups in future. We'll keep the updates coming.

Jen and the Librarians

¡YA LLEGARON LAS REVISTAS EN LÍNEA!

Dentro de las nuevas adquisiciones en este año escolar tenemos dos nuevas revistas en línea muy interesantes, BBC Focus es sobre ciencia y tecnología y la revista New Internationalist cubre temas sociales y ambientales.

Para leerlas sólo debes seguir estos pasos:

1- Ir al enlace https://reader.exacteditions.com/
2- Click en "library card"
3- Ingresar el código: 20182019

¡Inducción de 6° grado al LRC!

Este año, nuevamente, realizamos la inducción de 6th grado, dándoles la más cordial bienvenida de parte del equipo del LRC. Durante la sesión se mostraron todo los recursos y servicios con los que cuenta el Centro de Recursos para el Aprendizaje para así brindar un servicio integral a los usuarios y enriquecer sus experiencias de aprendizaje, dentro y fuera de clases, como alumnos. Una de las innovaciones de este año escolar es la gran variedad de nuevos ebooks, revistas en línea y audiolibros disponibles. 

Luego de esta presentación los alumnos disfrutaron de un juego dinámico de Kahoot, el cual es una plataforma de juegos interactivos, personalizado en línea. El juego consiste en responder en equipos preguntas relacionadas a la presentación que se dio, utilizando dispositivos móviles, en este caso iPads. Fue una competencia que los motivó a hacer uso de la gran variedad de recursos y visitar el LRC. Demostraron un gran interés y participación, y se prepararon en anticipación para las las siguientes sesiones que tomarán lugar en las próximas semanas.

Fotos en Flickr

The End of ABC ICT and New Beginnings

Wikispaces is closing down this summer after generously providing free wikis to teachers around the world for many years. It was our go-to service and we used it extensively over the past 10 years to host our teaching and learning websites. Our greatest resource was ABCICT. It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to the repository of teaching and learning which we built as a team during the past decade.

As a chapter closes a new one usually begins and this is definitely not the end of the story for us. We have now rebuilt our resources using New Google Sites and linked all other sites too it.  This new site includes all of our most successful and updated lessons. We have christened it The ICTree!

We invite you to visit this site and hope that some of the work and lessons we share with the World will continue to be of use to teachers and students from around the globe.

Libraries in the Cloud and Applications for Makerspaces

Libraries around the world are turning into dynamic innovative places,

that motivate communities to create, innovate and learn.

On Saturday May 26th, 2018 the LRC team hosted a series of short workshops entitled

Libraries in the Cloud and Practical Applications for Makerspaces.

Participants included teachers, librarians and interested individuals from around
the country.

This initiative was one of many activities that took place during the celebration of

Salvadoran Librarian week, during the 60th Anniversary of Contributing to the

Development of Information Professionals: Globally United as Agents of Change.

Various sessions were offered as morning workshop:

Google Drive and Sites, Virtual Reality and 360 degree Tours with Google
Cardboard, Expeditions, Panoform y 360 degree Cameras, Makerspaces,
Drones, and 3D Design and Printing amongst others.

The excitement and active learning were palpable as participants moved from
one activity to the next. Each one of them left the workshops with several exciting
new ideas for their own institution as well as implementation strategies.  

The excitement isn’t over yet. Participants have kept the discussion going through our

ABES Google Classroom, where 3D models and other ideas are still being uploaded.

It is truly a pleasure to work with such motivated individuals as we work 
together as educators to share ideas, best practice and inspiration.  

You can view media from the workshops here.

Hilda Gomez and Jennifer Garcia

STEAM Fest 2018

The event is open to students across Primary and Secondary and also includes winning projects from the 6th and 7th grade Science Fair. Special guests including schools and organisations around the country also attend as part of the STEAM Fest community outreach initiative. 

This year schools from as far away as Morazan and La Union are taking part along with schools from Santa Tecla and San Salvador.

The festivities kicked off at 7:30 this morning and ran until 12:20 pm. An innovative go-kart project was introduced this year. At 10:30 the access ramp next to the large pool was closed off and the races began.

The entire STEAM Fest event was streamed live on the ABC Facebook page.

 If you were unable to catch the live streams you can also them from the Facebook page. 

Here are a few pictures from Thursday evening when the STEAM Team and
Crew set up the Auditorium with the help of our wonderful maintenance people.

Click here to view all the media from the event.

Silicon Valley Trip 2018

The first-ever Silicon Valley trip returned last Saturday and the students and teachers have not stopped talking about it.

The trip,  which involved 11th and 12th-grade ITGS and Computer Science students, was divided up into a week's worth of visits and activities which focused on technology developments in the region and their impacts worldwide. It also included a whole day tour of San Francisco. 



The group was transported from San Francisco to San Jose on a huge bus driven by Jose or as we came to call him Don Josecito.  The first stop on this leg of the trip was the Intel Museum for a 2-hour tour including lab visit.




Day 1

Intel provided one of the most powerful experiences on the trip. The tour guide delivered a hands-on workshop for our students and a very complete tour of this small museum, which included the history of Intel and its microchips, real ingots and wafers, and the chance to put on the garments used in the clean rooms of chip manufacturing.

The day ended with a trip to K1 Speedkart where the students had the opportunity to whiz around the track while competing for first place in the mini Grandprix!

It was all very exciting and it would seem that they were already well practiced!




Day 2





On Day 2 we got up early and bused ourselves over to GOOGLE. I don't think any of us truly realised the extent of Google's Campus until we arrived at the wrong end (our phone was acting up) and walked all the way across.

We were well received by a member of the Google Earth team John, who gave our students the overview of several Google projects including Street View and Expeditions. The students were given their very own Google Cardboard viewers to try out during the session and take home prior to visiting the snack bar.

John then led the group on a walking tour of the campus. Each member was handed a 360-degree camera and selfie stick (these were loaners) so that they could take their own 360-degree images of the tour to use with their viewers. We polished off the visit with a Google-sized lunch at the outdoor cafeteria, a visit with the Android lawn statues and a visit to the Google Store.

Our next stop was Stanford University, where the students participated in a very interesting tour lead by a 2nd-year student and included the history of Stanford, a walk around the grounds, information on academic and non-academic programs, Q/A and of course the bookshop!

We topped off the day with a visit to the Great Mall!




Day 3

During day 3 we visited the Computer History Museum. This was a self-led tour during through which the students learned about the 2000 years of computing history.

The museum contains 1,100 artifacts! It was geek paradise!



Nasa Ames Research Centre was our next stop. The kids got to touch a moon rock and space shuttle tires, walk in a model space station, build virtual solar systems and more. Of course, they also made a stop at the gift shop.

We finished off the day with a walk down Mountain View's Castro Street.

Day 4

During Day 4 we took a short morning walk in the Sofa District and visited the Tech Innovation Museum. 

At the museum, students were treated to their first Imax movie as well as a self-guided tour of the museum's abundant displays and activity centres.  They programmed, played with sensors and AI, viewed the human machine from within and tried hovercraft. Some of our kids even strapped on VR Googles and took their exploration to the skies in a VR flying tour of the Manhatten skyline through the Birdly tour. 

Our next stop was Apple Park. We weren't allowed into the mothership, but the kids could view it from the visitor's centre as well as through a model sporting augmented reality layers. 

Day 5

This was our San Francisco Tour day. You shouldn't go to San Francisco without visiting certain landmarks and so we did.

The group ferried over to Alcatraz, did the cell block tour, which was fabulous, toured the wharves, walked to Fisherman's Wharf for lunch and took an afternoon bus tour of the city which included historical landmarks such Victorian homes, parks, and of course a ride over the Golden Gate bridge. 

Day 6

Back to El Salvador!

We packed a lot into this trip and managed to tire the kids out by the end of each day, prior to catching some sleep so they could get up bright and early for the next adventure.  

Did I mention that the trip was amazing? The learning, discoveries, and discussions that took place were powerful and it was wonderful to watch students from different year groups and specialist subjects bond even further as part of our little community of travelers.

 The experiences and learning that came out of them, coupled with the friendships that were forged will stick with them for a very long time.  

We would like to thank all of the parents and students who made this memorable trip possible!