Facilities: Inside the Walls & BeyondDescription & AnalysisErin Shultz - FRIT 7331

Facilities and Resources:

The facilities at George Washington Carver are tailored to fourth and fifth graders. The

building was built 20 years ago as an elementary school. As the population has grown

the school system decided to break up the

schools by grades and not locations. The

facilities are maintained by a staff custodians

that keep the library clean. The media center is

furnished with solid wood round and square

tables with wooden shelves for the stacks. The

circulation desk is located to the left of the

main entrance. It is schools policy that there is

always someone stationed there to help.

Students can also check out their own books

at one of the four self check out centers.

These computers can also be used to search

for books on topics or by the author. The

media center has three sets of double doors

that allow it to be accessed from each wing of

the school and the outside. The doors to the

outside stay locked because of security

concerns. Teachers and students use the

south set of interior door that lead to the

main hallway. The other set of double door

leads to another hallway that has been turned

into a work room for the teachers. In the

workroom there are two copy machines, an

ellison machine and various type of office

supplies. The school also uses this

space to store items for special events

like the fall festival.

At George Washington Carver there

are three computer labs with 30

computers that are less than 5 years

old. One of the labs is located in the

media center and the other two are

located in each grade level hallway.

Each lab is equipped with a mobile

smart board. The library also has 2 class

sets of Turning Points systems and ipads that the teachers can check out for a week at

a time. The ipad carts are equipped with wifi and connects to the school system’s

network. The ipads are not available for individual check out by students or teacher.

(Sriratanakoul, Katie. personal communication, March 3, 2014)

Location:

The school is located in the middle of a residential area but only has one road that runs

in front of the school. There is no noise from road traffic but there is occasional noise

from air traffic because of the schools proximity to Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah GA

and Fort Stewart in HInesville, GA.

Scheduling and Services:

The library has extra wide aisles and plenty of space for special needs students

that might use wheelchairs. The overall learning environment is positive and encourages

exploration of the stacks with an open flow and well organized space. The media Center

is open from 7:45 am to 3:30pm. Students can come to the media center any time

during the day to check in and out books independently. Or whole classes can come to

the media center for lessons, research, or lab time. Parents and students can also

access destiny, an online database of the book and ebooks available, through this

webpage. Carver Media Center also runs the School store. School Store is open 8 am -

3:10 pm The story sells tokens from 8 am until the bell rings. School store is open all

day long and students can come to the media center to spend their tokens with

teacher permission. Students usually come during their recess time or after completing

their work. Carver News Network is the Morning news program. CNN is reported and

operated by the 5th grade students. They do a live news report every school morning

that is filmed in the media center backroom.

CNN News

Online at a Glance:

The school system recently update its technology policy to include bring your own

device or BYOD. Which does not affect most of the fourth and fifth graders at GWC.

However, this change has over loaded the network and the wireless systems for the

county. The school system is in the process of increasing the bandwidth and updating

the websites to enable all the schools to have a greater access to online learning. The

network has not been updated for over 10 years and is not capable of handling the

increase in web traffic and the number of devices accessing the system each day. This

has lead to a decrease in the ability to offer a virtual media center’s . They also updated

the websites that are blocked by allowing social networking sites like twitter and

facebook for the high schools and youtube for every school. (Sriratanakoul, Katie.

personal communication, March 3, 2014)

Links to online learning used most often in the computer labs.

● Classworks: K-8; Creation of Individual Learning Paths● SLDS: PK-12; State Longitudinal Data System● Study Island: 2-5; Individual lessons correlated to CCGPS● Moby Max: K-12; Individualized instructional prescription based lesson● Sum Dog: 1-5; Multiplayer

games designed to improve mathfact fluency

● Edmodo: 3-12; Teacher ledinteractive learning environment

● Galileo: 4-12; Georgia onlinelibrary research database

● MobyMax● Hartcourt online● Think Central● EduPlace● Accelerated Reader● GMCS - media center● destiny - online card catalogy

● McGraw Hill Online Math Book(MyMath)

Online Assessments taken by the students:

● OAS: Online Assessment System from the State● EOCT: State End of Course Test● MAP: NWEA Measures of Academic Progress● Schoolnet: School-based online test creation and tracking● GRASP: Progress Monitoring System

Budget:Periodicals – books and magazines – $601.15- 4%

Supplies – $352 -2%

Technology – computers, ink – $1684.42 – 12%

Books/AV – print, electronic,DVD – $11762.56 – 82%

Total amount $14,400.13

($2486.96 on ebooks this year. 21% of my book budget is ebooks.)

(Sriratanakoul, Katie. personal communication, March 3, 2014)

Needs Improvement:

Overall the facility has an open and inviting learning environment. The media

specialist has done a great job organizing the media center in a way that encourage

exploration and curiosity. There are a few things that need to be changed to improve

the mood of the room. All the walls are beige and have very few pictures or poster.

Adding brightly colored poster or paintings would make the space more visually

interesting and inviting. Also, the room has window on one side that open to an

atrium/outside. When the sun is shining the media center is bright but on cloudy days

the room can be a dark. Better lighting should be added in the future. The floors are

dark brown which also makes the space seem darker as well. Brightly colored rugs and a

reading area with bean bags could also make the space more inviting.

The virtual library space is not as up to date as the physical media space. The

website is a single page with adequate information and links but it doesn’t reflect the

resource that are available. Parents and students use ebooks and tablets at home so

the media center would benefit from investing in these technologies for school.

Additions to the online resources would also improve the media centers virtual learning

space. While there are many ebooks available a majority of these are non-fiction and

only checked out by the staff. The school ipads are not in use because the technology

specialist has not formated them with passwords for the students. This is a waste of

resource that should be addressed immediately. The ipads would also serve as a great

resource for learning collaboration between the media specialist and the teachers. The

virtual learning space would also benefit from connecting the community to the

students through possibly teacher blogs of media center blogs that could share

activities and programs with the public.

References:

George Washington Carver School. Retreived from

http://gwces.bryan.k12.ga.us/?PageName=%27Library%27

Google Maps. Retreived from

https://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&q=Dr.+George+Washington+Carver+E

lementary+School&fb=1&gl=us&hq=george+washington+carver+elementary&h

near=0x88fb0f1094ead343:0x94ed3d8d06c85a9,Richmond+Hill,+GA&cid=65262919

56255828459&ei=-XsYU5SpIce-kQf07oDgBg&ved=0CKUBEPwSMAo