PLUS

 Hey there Pioneers!! It was so nice to see so many of you last week with your pictures from Spirit Week. In the Media Center, we miss seeing your faces and we miss YOU!  I hope that you all are adjusting well to this new way of learning but I'll be so glad whenever we are back to normal. During this weird, difficult time, one of the best things for students to do is to just keep reading!  I am trying very hard to provide resources to help both parents and students find ways to get books to read.  TumbleBooks provides books, Destiny Discover provides access to our Lightbox and other eBooks, but one of my FAVORITE resources is PLUS.

I was going to talk about more of our World Book Web resources today, but I learned something exciting last week and wanted to share it with you.  Last week in a meeting with ALL the media specialists in Polk County, they told us that Overdrive is working properly and that they have increased the number of books you can have checked out from 3 to 10! Yes, 10! That is very exciting news, but some of you have no idea what I'm talking about so, here we go!

But first, let me explain some things.  Not only do I love our school media center, but I am a huge supporter of public libraries. I had a library card as soon as I was old enough and at the Auburndale Public Library, where I live, they know me by name!  There is no way that I can afford to buy all the books that I want to read, and public libraries fill in that gap for me.  I want our students to know and understand what public libraries can do, but there is no Polk County public library close enough for our students to us.  When I learned about PLUS, I was so excited that I shared it before it even worked properly.   You may be wondering exactly what PLUS is and why I am so excited about it.

PLUS stands for Polk Libraries United for Students. It is a partnership between the Polk County Library Cooperative and Media Services of the Polk County Public Schools. All students enrolled in a Polk County school have a PLUS library card (it’s not a real card, but it works!) The simple explanation is this:  PLUS gives every PCPS student access to ALL of the books at ALL of the public libraries in Polk County. This gives them access to so many more books than one school library alone can give them. 

Right now, one of the most useful things is Overdrive.  Overdrive is a free app, available from most any app store, that allows students to read digital books. We LOVE digital books, because they never get lost, they are never overdue and right now, we don’t have to go anywhere to get them or return them. Attached to this below are the steps to use Overdrive.  

To access PLUS, you can start at the Polk County Public School’s web page. Then go to Students, Online Resources. The icon looks like this: 

(Or you can look right over there on the left side of this page under "Links We Love."

For access, students need a library card number and a PIN.  It’s the SAME NUMBER (which is easy!)

For all students, their library card number is a 10 digit number:  5300 and then their student ID number.  (We call it their library number, they sometimes call it their lunch number.  It’s all the same.  Oh and by the way, that number will never change the whole time they attend school in Polk County. It’s never too soon to memorize it!  Even kindergartners and first graders can memorize it.  In the media center and the cafeteria we do not use the 5300, just the last 6 digits.)

It’s something like 5300123456 but most of our students have a 6,7 or 8 as their first number, but everyone starts with 5300.    Again the PIN number is exactly the same number.

I have a really good friend who is the media specialist at Sleepy Hill Elementary School. She made this video to show her students how to use PLUS. 

Also, another media specialist in Polk County made this video for PARENTS to learn about PLUS.

https://youtu.be/sVhMv0v276s

(I didn't make either of those so you will not hear me talking on there!) 

During “normal” times, our students can use Books By Mail, which mails books to a student’s home, absolutely free of charge. The only charge is mailing the actual book back.  Again, during “normal” school times, we have a large black box in our school media center with the PLUS logo on it, and if students bring the books to me, I return the books for them.

Our students can also, during normal times use the Bookmobile and the Book Vending Machine at Outpost 27, the Polk County Tourist Information Center, located across from Posner Park.  There is also a book return box outside that building where books can be returned.  I will be giving you more information about the Bookmobile and Outpost 27 when things return to normal.