OverDrive at Elementary: Getting the word out to parents and students

Working at an elementary school poses certain challenges in making students aware of and getting them to use OverDrive. This year I decided to kick up my efforts a notch in regards to publicizing OverDrive to parents and students.   In September, we participated in OverDrive's "Big Library Read." I host book clubs every month for different grade levels, so the students at my school are very familiar with the concept of book clubs. I decided to try and get as many students involved in the "Big Library Read" as I could by hosting an online book club, as opposed to the traditional book club. I created three posts on our library website to explain to students how the online book club would work. I had three separate posts over the course of three weeks so the students could go online and comment about the book we were all reading together. We had a lot of students check out the book, (the most in our district) but the commenting online didn't go over so well. Live and learn. Next time I will try and have a morning book club for the students who are reading at home and allow them to use library computers to get on and comment about the book! To see the blog posts, click here, here and here.   My big Overdrive push this fall was on Parent Teacher Conference Day. I set up a table right by the office where all the parents had to check in. Every parent that came that day had to walk right by me. On the table I had a couple of school iPads and a QR Code for parents to scan that took them right to the district OverDrive site. I let them peruse the site on their own if they wanted, or I had my iPad there with OverDrive books checked out on it so I could show them what the eBooks looked like. Most parents loved that I was there to give them a quick tutorial of the app and explain what OverDrive was. See my post on Vine: At Parent Teacher Conferences showing Parents @OverdriveLibs https://t.co/p2xYdYXJX8 #tlchat #txlchat #ebooks — Nancy Jo Lambert (@lambertn) October 14, 2013 During the month of October, I also had the opportunity to have a Samsung Galaxy in the library that our district won from OverDrive for our promotional efforts. To allow different schools to get to explore this great device, our lead OverDrive librarian decided to call him "Flat Samsung" and allow him to travel from school to school each month. For my month, I gave him laminated arms and legs and a face on the screen. I kept him out for kids to explore by a QR Code that would take the kids to our digital library site. I took him to one of our morning assemblies and talked about him being our special OverDrive visitor to get kids to inquire about him and our eBook collection. See my post on Vine: Flat Samsung from @OverdriveLibs for kids to explore #overdrive #tlchat #txlchat https://t.co/4wsbaCQ5E3 — Nancy Jo Lambert (@lambertn) October 15, 2013 I love trying to find the right times to engage parents with OverDrive and different ways to excite kids about reading eBooks. Next on my agenda is using Skype to connect some of our elementary kids with some middle school and high school kids for some OverDrive tutorials!   Blog Post by Nancy Jo Lambert, MLS Ruth Borchardt Elementary School Frisco ISD http://www.rbelibrary.com @lambertn lambertn@friscoisd.org

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