I sent out my form asking teachers for their preferred resource guide format about two weeks ago so I’d say the responses I have are the only ones I’ll be getting. It wasn’t a terrible response. I received responses from a little over half my teachers and some even emailed with follow up questions before they submitted their responses. Unfortunately, there was about a 50/50 split between people preferring Pinterest and people preferring a digital newsletter. I’ve decided to create and maintain a Pinterest account for the library that teachers can browse at their leisure but also to send out a weekly digital newsletter highlighting some of the finds I’ve pinned that week. This will hopefully satisfy both sets of responders and keep the Pinterest account fresh in everyone’s minds.
While I was looking forward to exploring a different platform, like maybe Pearltrees or Symbaloo, it will also be nice to work with a tool I’m familiar with and not worry about any learning curves. The process of regularly maintaining a resource guide will be novel enough without worrying about the learning to use the tool. For the newsletter part, I had some trouble finding a platform to use. For now, I’ve decided to use Scoop.It. I’m hoping it will be easy to “scoop” content at the end of each week from the items I’ve pinned and create a quick digital newsletter for everyone with the week’s resource “highlights”. I’m still in the process of creating my Pinterest boards and adding to them so I haven’t officially shared them with teachers yet or done my first Scoop.It newsletter so I can’t say how well Scoop.It will work for me. I’m giving myself the deadline of before February break to get this all put together and launched so I’ll find out soon enough.
Librarian On The Loose 