How to Design School Library Lesson Performance Tasks that Engage Students

Posted on June 8, 2022 by Barbara Paciotti

How do we know if students are really engaged in a lesson? Well, are WE engaged?

We must be as excited about our lesson at the end of the day as we were during first period, or there’s something wrong with the lesson. A truly engaging lesson has us continually fascinated with how students—even our toughest ones—are focused on performing the task we ask of them.

And that’s the secret to an engaging lesson: the performance task. It must be one that goes beyond recalling information; it requires students to apply their learning, and then transfer the learning to a new situation.

So, how can a School Librarian design a performance task that captivates student interest, yet meets standards, fulfills lesson objectives, and supports classroom activities?

UNIT PLANNING, NOT LESSON PLANNING

It’s rare that students visit the school library for days in a row, which is why we’ve become accustomed to planning a single visit lesson. Knowing we may not see them again for a while, we try to cram as much instruction as possible into a lesson, which results in student burnout before they even get to a task.

Instead, we need to take a unit approach to library visits so that each individual lesson builds on what we’ve already presented, adds a new element that is crucial to the task students will perform, and then gives students a purposeful exercise they can transfer to any content area. This holistic view of school library visits allows us to:

Scaffold National School Library Standards over multiple units, so we gradually meet benchmarks during each school year for each grade level.
Learn more about long-term, scaffolded planning for library lessons by reading about my Library Lesson Curriculum Matrix.
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Incorporate Essential Literacies into each unit to give students the skills they can apply to any content area and into the future.
Learn more about the 5 Essential Literacies by reading my series, starting with Reading Literacy.
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Use a comprehensive Library Lesson Planner, specific to the School Librarian, to backward design the unit for maximum impact.
Download my FREE Library Lesson Planner and learn how to use it.

When we expand our planning in this way, a unit can also include multiple content area collaborations. Since each individual lesson activates prior knowledge of a library lesson, we can invite in any subject area class whose current classroom activity naturally aligns with the performance task of that lesson. The combination of continuity and transfer promotes higher level student learning and achievement.

ELEMENTS OF A LIBRARY LESSON PERFORMANCE TASK

Performance tasks need to focus on student learning, not responses to our teaching. The GRASPS elements set out by Wiggins & McTighe in their book, Understanding by Design, provide a guide for creating such tasks.

a clear GOAL	calls for understanding, extended thinking, and transfer
a meaningful ROLE	the student’s “job” within the situation
an authentic AUDIENCE	not just the teacher, but other students & the community
a real-world SITUATION	establishes a purposeful content application of knowledge and skills
a PERFORMANCE or PRODUCT	goes beyond surface features, recall, or a formulaic answer
STANDARDS	NSLS & those from a subject area, along with criteria that state what different students are going to achieve: ◦ All students will… (lowest-achieving students) ◦ Most students will… (a majority of students) ◦ Some students will… (most able students)

If we keep these elements in mind during unit planning, we can provide a series of lessons with intermediary tasks leading to a final, complex task. None of the performance tasks need to be copious or lengthy; in fact, the simpler and shorter they are, the more likely students will grasp the concepts or skills and use them for other assignments…while thoroughly enjoying them during the library visit.

The beauty of being in the library is that, if students finish before the period ends, they have time to check out and begin reading a new library book…which is a good purpose for every library visit—to promote reading related to what students have just learned!

EXAMPLE OF A UNIT-BASED SET OF LIBRARY LESSONS

Teaching informational resource lessons are often dreary presentations of Dewey Subject numbers and lists of the school’s online subscription services, with little connection to classroom learning. Applying unit-based lesson planning changes that.

In my unit Reading Informational Resources, I incorporate subject content and literacy skills to create a purposeful, transferable performance task for each lesson. First I identify the 3 main types of library resources students are likely to use—print nonfiction books, print magazines, and online subscription services. Next I contextualize the lessons with what students have learned and are likely to use in their content area classes, in this case ELA and any subject area class that asks students to read and gather information. Finally I design tasks that allow students to build up skills to a final shareable product.

Here is the overview of my “Reading Informational Resources” unit for 6th graders:

Visit 1 gives students a historical view of information books for youth, then has them identify the organizational structure of selected library books using expository text features they learn in their ELA class, then apply that by inferring Dewey Subjects from the books they’ve analyzed.
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Visit 2 uses a simple process to help students extract information, summarize, and cite a short print magazine article. This information literacy skill can transfer to any content area when students need to retrieve information, whether from a textbook or other informational resource.
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Visit 3 introduces students to selected online articles from a school subscription service in order to create an index-card poster comprised of expository text paragraphs with citations. This lesson can be customized for any content area assignment or any online resource, and it uses the ELA and information literacy skills they’ve already learned during the two prior lessons. Should a librarian not have a pertinent subscription service to use, I provide an alternative set of online articles from free student news sites to create a Technology News poster.

How do the performance tasks align with GRASPS?

GOAL	Learn skills for extracting, summarizing, and citing information
ROLE	Be a partner or group member for discussion and production
AUDIENCE	Fellow students and visitors to the school
SITUATION	Use acquired skills to present content in abbreviated form
PERFORMANCE/PRODUCT	Each performance builds skills to create final product
STANDARDS	NSLS clearly defined at beginning of planning process

While this unit’s performance tasks may seem rudimentary for sixth graders, they are the start of the scaffolding needed to bring students up to benchmarks by the end of their stay in middle school—especially if students have not had a strong library program during their elementary years.

ENGAGING TASKS FOR FLEX OR FIXED SCHEDULES

Having used these performance tasks with my own students, I know they are engaging. They provide interaction between students (an important consideration for middle school), they are short enough to “stick,” and they all provide a product for teachers to give a daily grade, something I have for all of my library lessons.

The adaptability of unit planning allows these lessons to also be used by a School Librarian who has a fixed schedule of library classes with students. In fact, my Essential Literacies units could comprise several weeks of scheduled library lessons with sixth graders!

Excite 6th grade students to read a variety of Fiction books with this 3-visit Library Lesson unit focused on Reading Literacy and aligned to National School Library Standards & ELA Common Core. Can be used with fixed library classes or as a flex-schedule collaborative unit with ELA study of narrative literature. | No Sweat Library

Engage 6th grade students with informational books, print magazines, and online information services using this 3-visit Library Lesson Unit focused on Reading & Information Literacies. Aligned to National School Library Standards & ELA Common Core, this can be used with fixed library classes or as a flex-schedule collaborative unit with ELA study of expository text or with another Subject area on a chosen topic. | No Sweat Library

This ELA Common Core- and National School Library Standards-aligned unit of Library Lessons introduces media literacy and is coordinated with the study of Persuasive Text in the 6th grade ELA classroom. Each of 4 lesson visits follows the PACE problem-solving model, helping students to create one of 3 options for a Visual Persuasive Booktalk. | No Sweat Library

You'll love using this School Library Lesson Unit that encourages students to read poetry books and gives them a simple, but meaningful, way to create & share their own poems. | No Sweat Library

How a School Librarian Can Teach Online Subscription Services

Posted on April 18, 2020 by Barbara Paciotti

At first glance, a School Library today looks much as it did a century ago: rows and rows of books. But, a second look reveals the influx of technology with desktop, laptop, and tablet computers. By the turn of the millennium, computers and their associated digital applications significantly changed School Libraries. Nowhere is this more visible than with online subscription database services available through the Internet.

Online subscription resources in K-12 schools began as add-ons to familiar print resources—digitized copies of encyclopedias, periodicals, biographies. They were costly, so most schools had only one, or maybe two. As online subscription services proliferated, they became affordable, and now are the primary reference resource in most secondary schools. Eventually service providers combined different types of reference into their own brand-name tools, so now a single resource can provide multiple forms of reference beyond what the tool’s common name would suggest.

SCHOOL LIBRARIANS ARE THE INFORMATION SPECIALISTS

In my medium-sized district, our middle schools alone have access to more than 40 different online subscription services—4 encyclopedias, 9 periodical databases, and more than 30 specialty reference databases and e-books. Imagine being a student or teacher seeing that long list of resource names on a school webpage. They are too bewildered to determine which service to use for their information need, so it’s no wonder they become discouraged and simply type some search terms into Google.

It’s unrealistic to expect intermittent users to know our online subscription services and their features, or take the time to learn—on their own—how to use these database services. These services are usually chosen and funded by the District Library Department or the individual School Librarian, so it’s our responsibility as School Librarians to know what each of these online subscription services offer, and to determine when and with whom to use each feature of each resource. After all, we are the Information Specialists; we are the Instructional Partners, familiar with everyone’s curriculum; we are the Future Ready Librarians who curate, manage, and integrate digital resources for our students and teachers.

We can’t just run through the list, telling teachers and students all that’s available: if it isn’t immediately relevant to classroom learning, it’s meaningless and quickly forgotten. Instead, we need to create Library Lessons that integrate particular features of specific tools with a classroom activity.

INTEGRATING ONLINE SUBSCRIPTION RESOURCES

I treat online resources the same as the print collection. I don’t introduce all the Dewey Subject books at once, but rather, each topical group as it applies to a classroom assignment. So also, I introduce online resources during subject area visits, focusing on features that fulfill the purpose of the library visit, avoiding others that do not.

My Library Lesson Curriculum Matrix - Composite example of an older version for the 1st grading period.

Sample Library Lesson Matrix

I use my Library Lesson Matrix to organize online resource lessons. Just as I examine each subject’s curriculum to identify a possible library lesson to enter into my Matrix, so also I examine each online subscription service. I utilize any trainings offered online and try out each feature to see which curriculum need it can satisfy and for which grade level. I record brand name and features into the subject units, then move on to the next online service.

It takes time to go through all the services, but I become comfortable enough with each tool to integrate it and teach it. By mapping these out in my Matrix, I can progressively build online skills so students are proficient in using our online subscription resources before they leave our campus.

USING INFORMATIONAL MATERIALS CORRECTLY

There’s continuing controversy about requiring students to use print or digital or online sources for assignments. We must help teachers realize that the format of information (print vs digital vs online) is NOT important, but rather the TYPE of resource and its content value:

Encyclopedias for general information and overview of topic;
Content-specific resources for in-depth information;
Periodicals for focused, condensed, and current information.

Encyclopedias and periodicals, in print, digital, or online versions, are pretty obvious, but content resources aren’t as obvious to students and teachers, so I always include specifics about these:

Print content includes all those specialty tomes we have in our reference area or topical books in the Dewey area.
Digital includes CDs and DVDs that we got primarily for teachers but students can be using them, too.
Online includes e-books, subscription services (like a biography database), and Web-based books (like Google Books, Project Gutenberg, Digital Book Index).

When I collaborate with teachers, I articulate the different types of resources and recommend what’s best for students to use for the assignment. In my Library Lesson I teach students about types of resources and how to use whichever format is accessible when working on the assignment—print version, in-house digital version, or online version. This is important in a digitally-divided school where some students may not have online access from home.

With Library Lessons that focus on type rather than format, students and teachers learn that print, digital, and online information sources all contribute to student success.

HOW I TEACH ONLINE SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

Carefully crafted Library Lessons, customized for each grade level, scaffolded throughout the school year, and aligned with classroom curriculum activities help students (and teachers) become familiar with which online subscription resource feature to use for their information need. It takes time and curriculum savvy to create these lessons, but we can use them year after year for the same online services.

I’ve discovered the best way to scaffold these type of lessons is to use WebQuests to introduce online services a few at a time, use curated folders of bookmarked articles within each online service for specific assignments, and to create Resource Lists of online services and other Web-based tools for longer research assignments.

WebQuests to Introduce Services

WebQuests are my favorite way to introduce online subscription database services. Using the term “WebQuest” to introduce our online resources emphasizes to students that they are the first, best choice to find information on the WorldWideWeb. Each of my WebQuests is designed for a single class period, presents just 3 different online tools with 1 or 2 features of each, and satisfies a particular classroom assignment. Teachers appreciate this guided introduction to high-quality resources that is integrated into their lessons, and, because students respond on a printed or digital worksheet, there’s a daily grade for the class period.

I believe an encyclopedia is the best reference tool for students to begin research, so the first WebQuest of the school year introduces a grade-appropriate online encyclopedia, and I use it for that grade’s online lessons throughout the school year. Repeatedly using a familiar tool activates prior knowledge so students become comfortable using various features of the tool, and we develop online browsing and searching skills that they can apply to other online resources.

As an example, my first two 6g WebQuests—one for Science, one for Social Studies—occur about 2 weeks apart. The only difference is in the features I introduce to meet the needs of the two different subjects.

6g Science Biography WebQuest	6g Social Studies Countries WebQuest
introduce WebQuest concept introduce WebQuest structure introduce grade-appropriate encyclopedia 2 features of encyclopedia & their search strategies biography database periodical database	same WebQuest concept same WebQuest structure use same grade-level encyclopedia 2 new features of encyclopedia & their search strategies countries database map database

Subsequent 6g WebQuests begin with the same encyclopedia and offer 2 additional subscription resources that meet the needs of the subject, the project, the research, and the lesson. Eventually 6g students learn all the subscription services relevant to their grade-level, how to locate them on the main library page, and how to use their features. (If they ask about other tools they find on the resource homepage, I say I’ll teach them in higher grades, but they’re free to examine them on their own.)

Curating & Bookmarking for Specific Library Lessons

User-created folders is a feature now offered by most online subscription services, where we can curate folders for subjects and grade levels, and then bookmark into them articles chosen from their database. I love using curated folders & bookmarked articles to guide students who have a limited time frame for certain assignments. Once I create a named folder within a service, we can use that same folder and its articles for the same lessons in following years, for as long as we have the online service.

An example of such curating is our English/Language Arts expository text unit across all 3 middle school grade levels. Bookmarked online articles are a perfect match for the unit’s elements:

Unit theme=Technology & the Power of Information.
Content skills=summarization, inference, and interpretation.
Required resources=non-fiction books, newspapers, magazines, memoirs, speeches.
Final product=an expository written instrument.

At successive library visits during the grading period, I progressively build Info-Lit skills using different resource formats to activate prior knowledge and then lead students into new experiences to create a final product unique to each grade:

6g ELA	Visit 1) Examine components of non-fiction print books (table of contents, index, glossary, graphics). Visit 2) Learn how to summarize a print magazine article. Visit 3) Access the chosen online service, go to named folder, read a bookmarked article, and create an expository essay poster with your table group.
7g ELA	Visit 1) Compare non-fiction print books and e-books. Visit 2) Locate new online service, access named folder, and summarize bookmarked magazine article. Visit 3) Using the same online service, do a topical search, read at least 2 articles, and create a written essay.
8g ELA	Visit 1) Examine print memoirs from the Biography area. Visit 2) Access and compare a topical non-fiction print book, an e-book, and a free Web-based memoir. Visit 3) Access online services and read bookmarked and self-searched articles to produce an online e-zine.

Resource Lists for Longer Research Assignments

Once students have learned how to access and use grade-appropriate online subscription services, I guide them less formally to relevant online resources through customized Resource Lists. Others may call this a Subject Guide, Library Guide, or Pathfinder. (Academic librarian Patricia Knapp devised and named the “Pathfinder” in the 1960s as course resources for college students.) I call it a “Resource List” because it’s a list of resources which support a research assignment.

I build a Resource List using my Library Lesson Planner, just as I would any library lesson. Why so much work?

I want to be sure the Resource List fulfills subject & information literacy standards and meets research requirements of the final product.
Teachers typically intend a library visit as an introduction to a research project, so I want a short, meaningful lesson to cultivate the requisite Information Literacy skills along with presenting the Resource List.

LibLessonPlanner example

As I fill out my Library Lesson Planner for “Resources students will use,” I refer to my Library Lesson Matrix to glean print and online resources I’ve already selected as grade and subject appropriate for the assignment. I also enter any guidelines from teachers or subject curriculum guides to help me choose other Web sites that will be helpful for students.

I organize my Resource List according to the problem-solving model I’ve chosen as best for the particular research assignment, and I create it as a webpage so students can access it 24/7 (and so I can make changes or additions without issuing a new handout). Here is a brief enumeration of what I might include on my Resource Lists, as applicable to the project and the problem-solving model:

1. Problem-solving model as organizational structure
2. Recommended resources for background reading/investigation
3. Guidelines for creating questions about the research topic
4. Search strategies for different resources
5. Reminders about citation and creating a bibliography
6. Reminders about paraphrasing and summarizing
7. Resources available in the library (books, reference, other)
8. Recommended online subscription services
9. Recommended Web sites chosen by the librarian or teachers
10. Reminders about assignment requirements (from the teacher’s checklist)

USING OTHER ONLINE SERVICES FOR SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

When I began creating my Library Lessons for online subscription services in the early 2000s, we used printed guides, but over the years I’ve transmuted them into digital and online documents. For example, WebQuests have become HyperDocs, bookmarking & curation lessons also use tools such as TES blendspace, elink.io, or Wakelet, and my Resource Lists are Symbaloo webmixes or Webjets.

Regardless of the subscription services we have or the other online tools we might use to facilitate lessons, the essence of teaching online subscription services to our students is this:

Limit lessons to grade-appropriate services
Refine choices to only 2 or 3 different services
Focus on content-relevant features

6 Steps to Create a Great School Library Website

Posted on December 4, 2019 by Barbara Paciotti

A School Library Website is our most valuable online presence. We may have a blog, social media accounts, and resource links on proprietary services, but none of these will serve our students and our community—nor advocate for the school library—the way a School Library Website can.

Creating any website happens not with the tips of the fingers, but in the depths of the brain. It isn’t the result of fancy software, but rather of good planning. School Librarians aren’t professional Web designers, so here are 6 recommended steps to create a great School Library Website.

1. ESTABLISH AN IDENTITY & USE IT CONSISTENTLY

Viewers should know exactly who we are, and after following a link, should know that they’re still within our school library website. That doesn’t mean every page looks the same, but identifying characteristics are consistent throughout the site.

Decide on a theme to clearly convey our identity: the graphics and the color set (an eye-catching combination of colors for images, background, text, and links). School colors, the school mascot, and library-related images—books, the alphabet, numbers—are an obvious, but excellent, theme for a school library website.

Choose the main identifying image and colors for the homepage, and complementary graphics and colors for sub-pages. For example, we could have school mascot images in school colors, then use a light outline of the mascot for a background image. Or, we could have books, singly or in stacks, then use ABCs or Dewey decimal numbers as a border or background.

Flashy graphics won’t help an inconsistently applied theme, so keep it simple and be sure that viewers see “us” on every page of the site.

2. SUPPORT THE NEEDS OF OUR USERS

School Librarians know their users and are responsive to their needs; successful school library websites are the same. Students, parents, and community members visit our site for information about the school and the library: they want to know what’s going on, how we can help them, and how they can get in touch with us.

Provide the school library phone number and all staff email addresses on the homepage, and include our School Librarian email on every page. Parents and students don’t want to click through several pages before they can send an email to us.

Our student requests and parent emails can pinpoint what information to offer on our school library site. We can also ask the school’s phone receptionist what information our community requests most often.

Instead of duplicating existing information, link to District webpages for book searches, online resources, and other district services. Web users know how to use a browser, so insert a short message under the link inviting visitors to return to our page by using the Back button. These intra-district links promote interactivity and support the entire school district. (And relieve us from having to keep them updated!)

Teachers usually have their own webpages for instructional purposes, but we can determine what students may need from the school library to support their classroom learning and provide links from our homepage to that information.

Mapping out what to provide and how to provide it will save time and effort later. All websites change over time, but we want that due to changed user needs, not because the site didn’t meet user needs in the first place.

3. CREATE USER-FRIENDLY NAVIGATION

A school library website provides quick access to information through well-planned site navigation. Our site may start small, but imagine the complexity when we have webpages for information, for instruction, for student projects, and for various programs and activities. By developing a good navigation system now, our viewers quickly get what they need, and we can easily insert new pages of content as the need arises.

Create a site map to organize information, grouped by users or topics. A site map can be a simple outline with sub-pages indented from top level pages, or it can be sets of bullet lists, or we can use a table with colorized cells to identify similar types of pages. Make it easy to add new types of pages so site navigation continues to be user-friendly.

A site map is also valuable for web viewers. It’s like the table of contents or index of a book—it shows what’s there and where. By linking each page of the site map, we provide another navigation tool for visitors.

Determine the hierarchy of the website and create page templates for each level of navigation. We might want the homepage to have very few links—10 links is the most we can expect young students to comprehend at a time. For higher grade levels, we can provide more links so students can scan the full range of available information to find a specific piece.

click to enlarge

For a school library homepage with few links (1-6) and numerous support pages, create a unique homepage, a different unique template for 2nd-level navigation pages, and 3rd-level templates for each identified sub-group, using the same template for all a particular sub-group’s pages.
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For a school library homepage with many links (10+), but fewer links off 2nd-level pages, create a unique homepage and a different unique template for each group of lower level pages. Use a unique icon on the homepage for each link to its 2nd-level page so the distinctive identity of each group is carried through all its sub-level pagesAs an example, school library pages can have books, student instructional pages can have pencils, school events pages can have yellow stars, student clubs can have notepads, parent pages can have apples.

The real test of site navigation is what happens below the homepage. Don’t expect viewers on bottom-level pages to return to the homepage and then re-click through the same intermediate pages. Use a chain of links (called breadcrumbs) in the same place on every page showing the navigation:
Homepage↔2nd level page↔3rd level page↔Current page.

4. LAY OUT PAGES FOR EASY READING

We want pages to catch viewers’ attention so be creative with page layout, but don’t confuse viewers; rather, give them the information they need. The better we do that, the more likely they’ll use our website again and again.

Analyze how text will be most readable: a busy background image would be unsuitable behind a lot of text, and don’t use a dark background and light text color on a page we expect to be printed out.

Here’s a basic rule from print: use margins and empty space for balance and symmetry. Our eyes see empty space as a block, just as we see a block of text or a block image. An eye-catching webpage uses empty space to highlight page elements and enhance readability.

The human eye encompasses about 4″ of text at a time, so text stretching from one edge of a browser window to the other is difficult to read. Blockquote margins make heavy text pages easier to read by indenting sections of text, creating a larger margin on both sides of the page.

Tables offer enormous variety for page layout. We can adapt an appealing table layout from anyone’s webpage—HTML is open source. One disadvantage of tables is that navigation inside tables may not be readable by machines for the disabled, so provide text navigation at the bottom of each table page.

Size, shape and color of text areas can convey our theme, and highlight or contrast with our images. Text in bright crayon-box colors suggests children, while dark, grayed colors suggest maturity and stability. Just be sure text is easy to read.

Note: A browser displays text in fonts that are installed on the viewer’s device, so use standard fonts, such as sans-serif Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana, or the serif Times New Roman. Since serif fonts don’t display well on computer screens, use sans-serif fonts for small text.

5. CRAFT PURPOSEFUL CONTENT

Viewers come to our school library website for information, and if they don’t get what they need, flash and glitz won’t bring them back. Pack essential information into well-organized segments, and write clearly and concisely; give the what, where, when, why, who and how. Then, cut it in half: our webpages aren’t the place for flowery writing.

Web users prefer concise, 2-3 sentence sections, with topic headers, so they can scan for the information they need. Use bullet or numbered lists to focus the eye on specific points.

A question-answer format is user-friendly, so create FAQs—Frequently Asked Questions—pages. Add information that might be needed when the school is closed.

6. USE GRAPHICS WISELY

A school library website filled with images can have charm and impact, but they can overpower the viewer. Use graphics to enhance the theme and identity of the website, and bring clarity to content. There are 3 types of images we can use on webpages: GIF, PNG, and JPEG.

GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format) are clipart-type images. Some are animated by a string of movements which cycle continually, or cycle once and freeze on a single image.
A single animated GIF at the top of a page punctuates a theme and adds a bit of whimsy. When the visitor scrolls down, animation scrolls off the window, so a viewer is not distracted while reading. On navigation pages with little text, we can use more animated images because the viewer spends too short a time on the page for movement to become annoying.
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PNG (Portable Network Graphics) was created as a replacement for GIF and supports a wider range of colors. It’s the most widely used format on the Internet.
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JPEG images (Joint Photographic Experts Group) are typically photographs, with subtle shading and blending rather than crisp lines.

Size of Images

click to enlarge

Icons are small GIF or PNG images, about 24-32 pixels square. Visually descriptive icons can represent various links, especially if the icon is carried through to the page. Intuitive icons, such as arrows, help navigation when used consistently throughout a site (but always provide text links at the bottom of a page for accessibility by the disabled).

Digital camera photographs can enhance content, but remember that school district access may be faster than that of a visitor. Photos that display quickly on our workstation may load slowly for visitors, and several on a page can take much longer than viewers want to wait. (Average wait-time is 10 seconds before clicking away.) For faster loading, use an image editor to reduce the file size and limit large photos to 1 or 2 per page.

For better page balance, we can change the viewing size of an image. A large image can easily be reduced, but maintain the aspect ratio to avoid distorting the image. Avoid enlarging small images, which causes blurring and pixelation.

Placement of Images

Where we place images on a webpage can enhance or undermine a page. A right-facing graphic looks better on the left side of a page, and a left-facing graphic looks better on the right side of a page. Use an image editor to flip an image for better orientation.

Webpages are more 3-D than printed pages. We unconsciously experience gravity, and our senses are jarred by composition that ignores it. Place weightier graphics further down the page than lighter ones or balance them with heavy text areas.

Pages are often longer than a single window, so if a webpage looks odd, try rearranging text areas, graphics, and empty space for better balance within each window.

Include ALT tags for every image

What are ALT tags? ALT stands for “alternative text” and is part of the HTML that displays an image on a webpage. Use a descriptive phrase to identify the picture, like Westside Middle School Eagle Mascot.

ALT tags serve viewers using audio screen readers or braille displays. Without ALT tags, images are shown as the word “image” so a disabled visitor doesn’t know what is displayed. When the image is a link to another webpage, a disabled visitor is at a particular disadvantage if no ALT tag is provided–they don’t know what the link is or where it will take them.

We can also use ALT tags to increase our site’s identity with search engines. For example, with a school logo at the top of the page, incorporate the school motto or some special recognition or award: “Westside Middle School—A State Recognized Mentor School where every child will succeed.”

FOR YOUR SCHOOL WEBSITE’S CONTINUED SUCCESS

Keep the school library website current. Remove dead links and outdated information. Create a discussion forum that invites users to interact with us and each other. Periodically, add a survey to invite reader feedback about the school library and about the website.

We can also embed various features and media in our webpages to make the site more attractive and useful. For some ideas, read my post An “Embedded” School Library Website.

Our school library website is our virtual library, and it’s seen by the entire world. Build it wisely and it is a valuable information source for our school community.

For more in-depth information about creating a website, visit Ms. P’s Web Design Tutorial.

Looking Backward – No Sweat Library Lessons & Management That Works

Reflections from A Middle School Librarian

Tag Archives: onlineresources