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Digital Bulletin Boards: 16 Ideas for Library Content

This post about Digital Library Bulletin Boards was originally published in 2015. Back then, I called them “Scrolling PowerPoints.” I now call them Digital Bulletin Boards, and they are now also in Google Slides format. The concept is awesome and quite popular in my library! I’ve even had visitors and school administrators comment on how much they enjoy the scrolling slideshows.

I replaced the old slide images from the original 2015 post with sample slides from my newer Digital Bulletin Boards. You can click on any image to see them larger. The link to the Digital Bulletin Board for that slide image is in the caption under each image.

If you like this idea but don’t have time to create slides, I’ve got a free 27-slide presentation in my Free Resource Library or on TPT to get you started. You can get the password for the Freebie Library by subscribing to my email list. This one is for the first week of school and is themed for Back to School specifically. Give it a try in your library!

The following post was originally published on May 16, 2015:

I play these scrolling PowerPoints–also called Digital Bulletin Boards–throughout the school day when I am not using the equipment to teach a lesson. Slides can be booktalks, quotations, trivia questions, reminders, school/library announcements, etc. You can have as few as 5-6 slides or over a hundred slides. My record number of slides is 116 slides, which took 58 minutes to scroll!

You can click on any image in this post to see it larger:

WHAT YOU NEED

  • TV or computer projector with screen
  • Computer that can be hooked to the TV, smartboard, or projector. This can be a screen dedicated specifically to the Digital Bulletin Board, or it can just scroll as your classes checkout.
  • The computer or laptop needs to have the ability to play PowerPoint slides.
  • Slides! As many as you want to make!
This is a sample slide from my Nonfiction Text Features Digital Bulletin Board for Grades 7-12.
Nonfiction Text Features Digital Bulletin Board (Grades 7-12)

HOW I SET UP AND SCROLL THE DIGITAL BULLETIN BOARDS

The first thing I do every morning when I get to school is set up my Digital Bulletin Board for the day. I keep the PowerPoint presentation on a USB stick so I can easily transfer the new PowerPoint onto my presentation laptop.

I keep the file (called “Daily”) on the desktop of the presentation laptop. When I load the new presentation, which is slightly different every day, I just replace the previous one. This also keeps an extra copy of my presentation in case–gasp–something horrible should happen to my precious USB stick.

The second thing I do each day is set up my circulation computer. Along with opening up Destiny for circulation, I open my Digital Bulletin Board so it’s ready for any new slides I may want to add.

During the day, if I notice an outdated slide (such as “This Week in History” from three weeks ago), I already have the presentation open on my circulation computer. It just takes a second to delete the old slide.

Throughout the day, I try to add at least a couple of new slides. It doesn’t always happen, but some days, I am able to add five or ten new slides.

Slides can also be from my library lessons. For example, I recently did a lesson and booktalk on the Fantasy genre. Our library is genre-fied, and I split Fantasy into multiple smaller genres (light fantasy, high fantasy, paranormal, mythology, and horror).

Since I used PowerPoint for that presentation, it was easy to copy some of the slides and add them into my Digital Bulletin Board. This also helps reinforce the characteristics of the genres I taught that day.

WHAT DO I PUT ON THE SLIDES? HERE ARE 16 IDEAS…

Yes, I know creating so many Digital Bulletin Board slides is time-consuming. You don’t have to start with a whole lot of Slides though. The first day I did this, I had maybe 8 slides. They scrolled all day, and the students saw them over and over and over.

But the next day, there were a couple of new slides. Then more the next day. Before long, I had loads of slides! Over the course of a few months, I was adding more slides than I was removing. Some ideas for things to include in your presentation:

1. Booktalks

I include the book’s front cover image and a quotation or the first line. I also put the call number of the book underneath the cover image.

PRO TIP: For high-quality book cover images, Google the book’s title and click on the Images tab. Go to Tools and select the “large” image size. Bingo! Clean, sharp book cover images!

2. Quotations

These can be from inspirational leaders, authors, or characters in books.

PRO TIP: You can find lots of book-related quotations on Goodreads – Go to the Community tab at the top and select Quotes.

3. Funny cartoons

Find these online or – even better – publish your students’ work!

PRO TIP: As with the book covers, you can get high-quality, non-pixellated images from doing a Google image search. Use the Tools tab and select “large” images. I believe it is far better to have a high-quality image than a fuzzy one, even if the fuzzy one is exactly what you want. The fact that it’s fuzzy negates the image’s impact on students. They notice the fuzz, not the image.

4. Trivia questions

There are lots of daily trivia websites out there for kids and teens! I put the question on one slide, then have the answer come up 2-3 slides later. This gives the students a chance to think about their answers and encourages them to watch the slides in between.

PRO TIP: Use Pixabay or Unsplash to find free images for your trivia questions.

5. This Week in History

You could do “This Day in History,” but it will need to be changed frequently. I also have a couple of “This Month in History” that need even less-frequent changes.

PRO TIP: Find historical images on Wikimedia Commons and add them to your slides!

6. Word of the Day or Week

A new, interesting vocabulary word for your students to learn. You never know when they will encounter the word again in a book or on a test! Check out the Miriam-Webster Word of the Day website for some help choosing words!

7. Facts

Students love wild, wacky, and interesting facts! Animal facts are always a hit, as are facts about astronomy, extreme weather, sports, dinosaurs, food, the ocean, and how things work in other countries.

You can even do sets of facts that go together. For example, for Earth Day one year, I created 10 slides for each of the ten most endangered animals in the world.

8. Caught ya reading! photographs

Take photos of students or teachers reading in the library and around school. Please be sure to permission from the students and teachers before using their photos in your Digital Bulletin Boards. For some of them, this could be quite embarrassing.

9. Other photos from around the library

This could be pictures of students playing Checkers at lunch, from your morning book club, or students making silly faces. Again, please get permission from any people in your photographs first.

10. Friendly library reminders

I allow my secondary students to have drinks in the library. Spills mostly aren’t a huge problem, though they do sometimes happen.

For this reason, I have a slide reminding them to “Keep a cap on your drink in the library!” along with a photo of a water spill on the library carpet. Other slides are things like “How many books do you have checked out? Now is a great time to check your account!” or “Don’t know where a book is? Check the Destiny search stations on the circulation desk!”

11. Current events

Many students do not read the news or know much at all about world events. Help them out by sharing some of the bigger headlines of the week.

12. School announcements

“Picture Day is this Friday” along with one of those “Worst Yearbook Photos” I’ve seen all over Facebook lately. Or, “Congratulations to our Wildcat Football team on their 36-12 win over the Meadowside Badgers. Go Cats!” Include a photo from the game or a pep rally.

13. Jokes

Really, who doesn’t love a good joke? As with the trivia slides, put the joke question on one slide, then share the answer a few slides later. This will give students a chance to think about their answer and formulate a guess.

14. Logic problems

These will need to be simple questions that do not require students to stare at the slide for a long time. Find some examples of what I mean here and here.

15. Genre or Author Spotlights

Highlight your library collection! Give some characteristics of the “genre of the month” or information about the “author of the week.” Add some slides to booktalk some books in the Spotlight.

PRO TIP: I have LOADS of free, downloadable Digital Booktalk slides. You can add these to your Google Drive, edit them, and copy-paste them into your own digital bulletin board slideshows. Click here to see my growing library of free Digital Booktalks.

16. Staff Spotlights

Do your students know the name of your school’s custodians? How about the school counselor? The cafeteria staff?

Honor these important staff members on a slide in the library! How great will it be for the students to start saying hello to the crossing guard or the school secretary as they walk by?

BACKGROUND MUSIC

YouTube is full of instrumental music compilations. Behind my Digital Bulletin Board, I play classical instrumental music from Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Lizst, Tchaikovsky all day long.

You can sort by >20 minutes and find many playlists that last for two hours or more. Instrumental movie music is also a huge hit. Look for movie scores like The Lord of the Rings, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Avatar, Disney instrumentals, and Braveheart.

One caveat: Watch for ads on your audio tracks! They can sometimes be inappropriate for school (beer ads, for example) or simply just a lot louder than the music.

PRO TIP for YouTube ads…This may not work forever, but if you put a period after .com (example: youtube.com./watch), it removes the ads! If that doesn’t work, you can also try putting a hyphen between the t and u in the YouTube URL (example: yout-ube.com/watch).

OTHER TIPS:

Change your slides often. I cannot emphasize this enough. Some slides can stay indefinitely (booktalks, reminders about drinks having caps on them), but others will need to be deleted after a certain period of time.

A current event from two months ago is no longer “current” and should be changed out for another newsworthy event. “This Week in History” should actually be THIS WEEK. If you don’t want to change it that frequently, make it “This Month in History.”

Time your slides. My slides automatically advance after 30 seconds.

Make your slides colorful and visually appealing. Include at least one large image on every slide. Pixabay, Unsplash, and Wikimedia Commons are excellent sources of high-quality, free images.

PLEASE use clear, easy-to-read, print fonts. Fancy, colorful fonts can be difficult to read, especially for students with dyslexia or vision differences. Header text should be a bold, block print. I really like KG Blank Space Solid from TPT (free for personal or classroom use), but Arial Black is also great and probably already on your computer. I recommend all body text be in a basic font like Arial or Century Gothic.

Look for images with high-resolution. I know I said this before, but it is super-important. You don’t want blurry, pixelated images on your presentation. If you use Google images, you can click on Search Tools and sort by size (select Large or Extra Large for the highest resolution).

Let your students and teachers create slides and send them to you via email. I just started this at my school, but I’ve already had one slide submitted from an 8th grade girl. When introducing it, we talked about what made a slide good/interesting versus boring/not interesting. We talked about color and image quality and large text size. I will be doing this with multiple classes over the next couple of weeks, so we will see how it goes.

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See all my Pre-Made Digital Bulletin Boards for Elementary and Secondary

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