ICT Magic

I just stumbled upon this ICT Magic site, at http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools. It looks interesting, so I plan to explore it later when I'm not already in the midst of following another search trail for the lesson plan I'm writing.

Educational Innovations Changing How We Learn

I was just reading "The Year in Education: Seven Innovations Changing the Way the World Learns" via the Google Currents app. The original source of the article is http://goo.gl/mag/HLHH1. The "Social Media in the Classroom" section and the paragraph on "Twitter as a Collaborative Education Platform" particularly caught my eye. The latter suggested educators use "Grassroots hashtags like #edchat and #edtech" to call attention to their blogs about best practices.

The last of the 7 innovations is "The Library Revolution", listing the ways that libraries are changing due to digital content. It highlights Drexel's "Library Learning Terrace" and Cushing Academy going all digital, with no printed books. The librarians teach how to research with all digital resources. That sounds much like what we are doing at Chambersburg Area School District with our use of LibGuides: http://littleurl.net/d4c3d1

A Favorite Example of a Student-Produced Video: The Afterschool Sneaksters

"12 Things You Didn't Know Facebook Could Do"

The blog heading is the title of an article that appeared in the NY Times and can be viewed at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/technology/personaltech/12-things-you-didnt-know-facebook-could-do.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all%3Fsrc%3Dtp&smid=fb-share

It's worth reading.

Free Online "Thinking Tools" for the Classroom

I'm working my way through my Intel guide to using the Intel(R) Teach [Thinking With Technology] Program, and I'm being reminded of how many resources are made available free on the Web at http://www.intel.com/education . There's a Seeing Reason tool at www.intel.com/education/seeingreason, a Showing Evidence tool at www.intelcom/education/showingevidence, and a Visual Ranking tool at www.intel.com/education/visualranking. To use them with a class, you'll need to register in the teacher workspace area, so you can do behind-the-scenes setup of the scenario that will suit your class. There are a lot of project examples and unit plans offered for each tool, to guide one in thinking about how they could be adapted to an individual classroom.

I'm currently reading Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century by Henry Jenkins [et al.], one of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning.

We hear so much about digital natives, and the fact that today's young people have grown up with the Internet, but research is proving a fact that school librarians have known for some time: that young people may spend a lot of time online, but that does not mean they have the knowledge of how to find the best resources, know how to reflect and upon what they have found, or how to cope with the ethics of the social environment they find online.

Our current push with our library curriculum involves writing Internet safety and cyber bullying lessons for the full spectrum of our K-12 public school educational offerings, so I picked up the digital book (free at the time I downloaded it from Amazon) with the idea that it would offer insights into teaching children how to use social media in ways that would not infringe upon their privacy and would teach proper social media interaction (i.e., not using it to spread meanness, rumor, innuendo). So far, however, the report is dealing with the issue of equality of access to digital media, and the inequities of children's educations if they do not have access to a computer and the Internet.

The next section of the report deals with the so-called "transparency" problem, involving assessing the quality of information that is found online. This is the kind of teaching we librarians do in school, trying to teach how to read the Web site to determine its purpose, and whether it is commercial or non-commercial, and why they might be trying to sway the reader's thoughts. Advertising on the Web is not as obvious as it is in the TV commercials that interrupt the entertaining parts of the television programming.

Then there's the question of ethics, especially when cut-and-paste is such an easy way to throw together a report. Ethics also enters into the use of social media. It is easy to lie about oneself when posting to MySpace or Facebook, or in chat rooms. We need to make students understand the importance of ethical conduct online as well as in their offline real lives.

Plagiarism

Even though the concept of plagiarism comes into our library department curriculum in the earliest stages of teaching research skills, the fact remains that we still need to deal with it in a manner that will catch the student's attention. I just ran across a good graphic representation that can be used in educational settings, from Acadia University. The link to it is here: http://library.acadiau.ca/tutorials/plagiarism/

Free Apple iBook - The Beatles Yellow Submarine

Yellow Submarine is a free digital book available from the iTunes store. It's based on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Beatles tunes. You'll need a Wi-Fi connection to load onto your iPad -- it's too large for 3G downloading. There are video clips within the book that provide sidebars for the action.

Google Currents, a free app for your iPad, iPod Touch, or Android tablet, is giving Flipbook some competition. 

The Library Grants Center

The Library Grants Center, http://salempress.com/Store/grants/grants.htm, is a free Web tool from Salem Press that pulls together listings of library grants on both the national and the state levels. There's also a comprehensive "Solving the Puzzle" page with information to help you navigate the maze and find newsletters and blogs that announce new grants. 

Find the Library Grants Center on Facebook and "Like it" to get updates on new grant listings.

WebJunction

Pennsylvania librarians may register at WebJunction Pennsylvania, a service provided by Access Pennsylvania, to register for free library trainings for which Act 48 continuing education credits are available.  The URL is http://pa.webjunction.org/.  I've just finished two of their self-paced courses, "Leadership Essentials 2: Communicating Vision" and "Directors ASK! (LibraryU)", each of which granted 1 hour of Act 48 credit.  My next selection will be "Copyright Issues in the Classroom and School Library (LEAD)".

Our district hosted a training session in LibGuides recently, so our librarians and others in neighboring areas could obtain a free year's subscription the the PA LibGuides curation pages for public and school librarians. My cohort librarian and I have made a CASD Faculty LibGuide page at http://palibraries.libguides.com/content.php?pid=270348&sid=2230234, where we organize resources for classes coming to our high school library for library instruction. I am also working on a private LibGuides site to arrange lesson plans for the Technology Integration Into the Classroom course I'll be teaching next semester for Wilson College's M.Ed program, focusing on Web 2.0 tools for education.

I've been exploring the Web. 2.0 tools listed in Bloom's Revised Digital Taxonomy: http://www.usi.edu/distance/bdt.htm and teaching the use of them to new teachers in our district: http://www.chambersburg.k12.pa.us/education/dept/dept.php?sectionid=2528&

I just joined Library 2.0 in order to participate in the [free] Library 2.011 Worldwide Virtual Conference that will be held online from Wednesday, November 2 through Friday, November 4. More than 4,000 information professionals from 149 countries have signed up to join the global conversation on the current and future state of libraries. 160 presentations are scheduled over two days, and all will be recorded so you can catch them later if you're not available at they time they are happening.


Create your own membership in Library 2.0: http://www.library20.com/main/invitation/new?xg_source=msg_wel_network

Back to Blogging

I'd been the only librarian in a middle school library and I had a blog on my school Web site, so I really saw no need to continue using this blog that had been set up for the purposes of a course.

Life changes, and so do decisions. I'm now librarian at a high school and find myself sharing the high school library Web site with another librarian. I have not yet ventured to put my own blog there -- although I might -- but in the meantime I've decided to resurrect this blogspot.