High School Media Center

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This expanded library provides students with the print and electronic resources needed to complete research papers and other homework assignments.

The Media Center’s extensive literary collection features many of the American and British classics required for literature courses in addition to non-fiction works spanning various disciplines. Books written from a Christian perspective enable students to compare and evaluate world views.

The Media Center also houses a computer lab with high-speed Internet access where students can conduct research, complete assignments or print a paper. Additional technological resources include:

• College View: Students can download college applications and evaluate undergraduate schools that match personal goals and requirements.
• Gale Database Resources: Includes 31 different databases for students to use for reliable data for projects and various research papers. Some of these databases contain information for: history, literature, opposing viewpoints, health, biographies,magazine and newspaper articles and reference books. There is also a link to all of the books that Valley has purchased as E-books.
• Issues and Controversies: Includes a database of varied perspectives on many issues.
• Kurzweil Software: This program helps students overcome reading challenges.
• Poetry for Everyone: Users can search 4,000 poems by author, title or subject.
• Tell Me More: This software helps foreign-language students hone pronunciation and speech recognition.

Links to resources

Encyclopedia Americana and The New Book of Popular Science
San Jose Public Library
Web Sites for Research
Gale Database Resources
Facts on File
Poetry for Everyone
College View

Media Center Hours and Staff

The High School has a beautiful library/media center on the Skyway Campus that the students and faculty share with the Junior High School. The media center hours are from 7:15 am to 5:00 pm Monday through Thursday, and 7:15 am to 3:30 pm on Friday

On occasion the media center closes for teacher and staff use.The media center is staffed by Mrs. Sharon Kilpatrick, Mrs. Rebecca Gaul, and Mrs. Aimee Van Meter. One of the goals of the staff is to make sure that each student that needs personalized assistance receives it, so that they can be successful in the assignment they are working on.

About the Media Center

The media center houses a computer lab, so that computers are available for students to use before school, after school, during break and lunch. The computers are here for the students to be able to complete assignments, do research, or print a paper. They are networked making the Internet available for the students to use for school related projects.

The lab is also open for the faculty to bring a class in as a group,to do a writing assignment or research for a paper. Having a complete computer lab with 27 computers in the media center allows each student to have his or her own computer to use, in a classroom setting.

The foreign language department uses the computer lab for their students to have the opportunity to use a software program that creates a personalized learning path with parameters that are set by the teacher for each student. This program allows the students to practice their pronunciation through speech recognition, thus improving their linguistic skills. It also provides various exercises to develop better oral and written expression, comprehension, grammar and vocabulary.

There is an extensive collection of Christian fiction for those students that are avid readers. Also available are many of the American and British classics for the students to choose from, that are required reading in the Literature classes. The non-fiction collection lends itself to the research that the students are required to do for the various disciplines.

There are a number of books written from a Christian perspective,a viewpoint that can be difficult to find in the public library.

Work Permits

Work permits are necessary for any student that has not graduated from high school and is working as an employee in any job. Work permits are available through the media center.
In order to get a permit, a student must have the following: a job, an application from the media center and each section filled out completely, including the employer and parent signature. The student then returns the application to the library and 24 hours later the permit will be ready for issue to the student.

During the summer, the permit can usually be made available when you turn in the application. The student must personally turn in the application, so that he/she can sign the original permit.

Kurzweil Reading Software

The media center in cooperation with the Discovery Center and the faculty also provides a tool for students with reading challenges. The Kurzweil 3000 is a software reading program that converts printed text into speech. The program enhances a studentís reading rate as well as comprehension, and favorably increases the amount of time a student spends reading and studying.. The program helps reading become more focused and enjoyable, because reading is less stressful and less tiring. The media staff and a group of volunteer parents have scanned and edited all of the novels that are required reading for the English curriculum, so that a student can have the material from the novel read to them from the computer.

For those students that have difficulty taking tests, these can also be scanned, so that the student can take a test using this program as a tool. The student sees the printed word on the screen and at the same time hears the words spoken audibly from the computer.