Annual Speak Up Survey for Librarians and Media Specialists

By Jenny Hostert, Speak Up Operations Manager, with Dorcas Hand

TASL leadership, Renee Dyer and Becky Calzada, and TLA management, Pat Smith and Gloria Meraz, would like as many Texas librarians as possible to contribute to the 2015 Speak Up survey. Pat Smith is especially excited about the “fabulous information we’ll receive!”

Please note: the survey closes on Dec. 18 – please take a few minutes to contribute your data. (Dorcas spent about 10 minutes just now – not very hard. And I got a badge for my email signature!)

Texas Association of School Librarians: 

My name is Jenny Hostert. I am the Speak Up Operations Manager for Project Tomorrow. As an AASL affiliate –I wanted to reach out to you to see if you would be willing to promote out the Speak Up surveys to your members. If you are unfamiliar with the project, Speak Up is a free survey tool for schools and districts that annually polls K–12 students, parents and educators on digital learning and the use of technology to support future ready schools.  Since 2003, more than 4 million have participated with over 120,000 surveys already taken this year. All participating schools and districts will receive free online access to their participant results with national comparisons in February 2016.

This year Speak Up will once again offer a special survey just for Librarians and Media Specialists! As a companion to our other Speak Up surveys, you and your member’s input will help complete the picture of what’s required to effectively support the use of technology for learning. Last year 2,500 librarians participated in Speak Up and we would love to double that number this year. As part of our outreach efforts we work closely with educational technology associations on increasing participation at the state level. We would love the opportunity to reach more librarians in Texas to ensure their voice is represented in the Speak Up data findings which is used to inform policies, programs, initiatives not only for AASL but many educational organizations and is presented annually at 2 separate congressional briefings in DC. In fact, our CEO Julie Evans, is actually presenting 2 sessions at AASL this weekend on last year’s librarian findings.

As a participating association we also provide you with your state data results with national comparisons to use for your own planning. If you would like to take a look at last year’s librarian findings please just let me know! The surveys are open through Dec. 18^th so there is still plenty of time to get your members and their schools involved. I’ve attached some sample promotional text and tweets about the surveys, we would be extremely appreciative if you would be willing to share with your members, via social media, newsletter, email, or blog.

And of course we are happy to promote out any type of events, announcements, or releases that you may have via our blog any time of the year. Please do not hesitate to send our way, we are happy to share out to our network!

Lastly, as a librarian we would love for you to participate in the surveys to be included in our national dataset, to take the survey please visit: http://bit.ly/SULibrarian.

Thank you again,

Jenny Hostert

Speak Up Operations Manager|949-609-4660 Ext. 17|jhostert@tomorrow.org
15707 Rockfield Blvd. Suite 250| Irvine, CA 92618

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Project Tomorrow is the nation's leading education nonprofit organization focused on empowering students to have a greater voice in their education.