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Tech

Fun and Learning With ClassVR Continues!

Thanks to Sarah Thomas from Maple Lake Elementary for the photos!

This program is funded in part with a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education using federal funding, CFDA 45.310 – Library Services and Technology Act, Grants to States Program (LS-00-19-0024-19).

Last week, we held an all-day training at CMLE for our member school libraries to learn how to use our ClassVR headset devices. (Huge thank-you to LSTA and the MN Dept of Ed for this grant!)

Thank you to all the members that took time to join us! Many attendees had already reserved their kits for the month of February and were able to take the kits back to their schools after training. It has been SO exciting to hear feedback already from how students are enjoying the headsets!

If you are in a CMLE member school library and haven’t reserved your kit yet, don’t worry! We still have SOME availability for April and May, and are happy to let you make reservations for the upcoming school year, too. Find the application here.

We will be holding another training session on June 11th, so mark your calendars if you’d like to join us to learn how to best use the devices when you bring them to your school! More information about the program can be found on our page.

As a reminder – this is a FREE program! We are so pleased to share this technology with our members.

Questions? Email vr(at)cmle.org 🙂

Thanks to Sarah Thomas from Maple Lake Elementary for the photos!
Programs, Services, Tech

Top Library Tech Trends

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This is  an excerpt from an ALA article By

“From virtual reality to gamification to security techniques, libraries are using the latest technology to engage patrons, increase privacy, and help staffers do their jobs.

American Libraries spoke to library tech leaders—members of the Library and Information Technology Association’s popular Top Tech Trends panel from the 2017 Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits—to get the apps, devices, software, and best practices that you can adopt for your library right now and in the near future.

1. Take patrons on a virtual tour

Create a virtual tour of your library using a 360-degree camera and post it to your website or social media, says Cynthia Hart, emerging technologies librarian at Virginia Beach (Va.) Public Library (VBPL). Virtual tours can be helpful for both information and accessibility.

“One of our branches is 125,000 square feet. The A’s for adult fiction are all the way at the end of the building. Can you imagine if you were a person with disabilities or if you were an older person or had low mobility?” Hart says. “If you didn’t know that when you went into a library, wouldn’t it be helpful to have that virtual tour of the building? Then you could call and say, ‘Hey, can you pull that book from the shelf?’” Virtual visit statistics can also be used as a gate count metric. Continue reading Top Library Tech Trends →