Advertising The Library

I have been trying to think of ways to get even more projects going on in the media center next year during our flexible scheduled time, and I think some of that is advertising. Teachers have so much already on their plate that they don't always remember that I might be able to help them plan a cool unit or teach some of the content while integrating my own. Most of all, I think sometimes teachers just don't know exactly what I do. I came across this great infographic from Joyce Valenza while I was reading another blog and I think it explains a lot of what we teach in an easy to read way.

Source

I found some other ideas on the same post on Mrs. Lodge's Library I found this infographic link on and particularly like the idea of using exit tickets from kids about why the library is important or why reading is important. I may try that next year!

Jog the Web to Learn About Coca-Cola

I recently learned about Jog the Web, a source that lets you take a group of sites you want kids to go through, add your comments or directions, and it puts it into a webquest sort of format for you. (You can also search for and use other people's 'Jogs' that they have done.) I have a teacher currently working on a cookie marketing project with his students where they are designing cookie companies complete with budgets, storefronts, ads, recipes, and more. He asked for some advertisement sources that show advertising over history, so I collected some into a livebinder for him. When I found Jog The Web, I thought it would be a good topic to try it out on, but you could do it with anything. I narrowed it down to Coca-Cola ads over time to see how they have changed, since that is one product and one they should be familiar with. Below you can see how it looks with the directions at the top of each page directing students to think about things like who are the ads aimed at, what are they using to make you want to buy the product, and how have the ads changed over time. On the left are arrows that take them through the sites, or they can click on the page titles below the arrows.

This is a screenshot of the Jog I made about Coke.

Jog the Web was very easy to use and you can find lots of short video tutorials. I really liked this one that I posted below, and it showed me enough in about 5 minutes to get me off and running. I made my jog in about 5-10 minutes once I had all the sites I wanted to use.

If you create a Jog, please leave the url and topic in the comments below! I think my next one might be on different authors maybe?

How to make a Jog using JogTheWeb from James Smith on Vimeo.