Our financial strength means we can turn ideas into reality. Investing in our members drives innovation and collaboration that, in turn, fuels other libraries to take projects further. This series, written by award recipients, highlights projects and outcomes of the 2019 WiLS Ideas to Action Fund. If you’d like your project considered for the 2020 award period, visit our Ideas to Action website or email us at information@wils.org.
Our “Podcast Project” is still developing, but we’re making good strides. Initially, I’d planned on hiring a single intern, but I’ve hired two interns, Andrea Gambaro-Gunn and Dustin Karls. Andrea has a diverse teaching background and Dustin has experience working with and teaching a variety of new technologies. So we’ve formed a dynamic team that should help us make the project a success!
We plan to work at the Lodi High School with Anthony Schnell’s Chemistry 2 class, which has 11 seniors in it. The project will task the individuals (or groups) with developing a short podcast on a science topic of their choosing. Paula Tonn, the school librarian for the middle school and high school, has been very helpful in organizing our schedules and developing ideas.
The main success at this point is getting all of this organization in place. The equipment is here and it’s fantastic and we’ve got our project lined up. As a subplot to the main project, we also hope to work with middle schoolers in a way that allows them to experiment with the technology on some school mornings, but that is still in development.
I’m excited to see what the high schoolers come up with for their projects! There is an NPR Student Podcast Contest that we’re considering submitting to as well, so that should be fun. I’ve learned that we have a long way to go and there is a lot of planning that still needs to be done and a variety of schedules that need to be meshed, but when it’s all finished, I think we’ll have developed something new for other schools and libraries to consider replicating.
– Alex LeClair, Library Director