Wired Librarian

NBSLS Librarian of the Year Award

2011-05-26T06:26:00.001-04:00

This past Tuesday I was honored to receive the School Librarian of the Year Award from Nassau BOCES School Library System. The award was presented by my Superintendent, Dr. Jack Bierwirth. Below is my acceptance speech.

Thank you so very much! I am absolutely honored to receive this award, the award my kids call “The biggest nerd” award. I want to especially thank Nassau BOCES School Library System, Eva Efron, my Superintendent, Dr. Jack Bierwirth, Dr. Deirdre Hayes, my Assistant Superintendent, my Principal, Liz Guercin, and my fellow Herricks Elementary librarians, MaryEllen Guarini and especially Anne Brusca, who started out as a protégé, and now is a superstar and my partner in crime. Also, Noel Forte, our technology integration facilitator. Together, she and I run the best research program. I also need to thank all the little people...my students....that make me wake up in the morning glad to go to work. Most mornings, anyway.

How did I end up here - today - receiving this award? It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was working as a kindergarten TA in Watson School in RVC. OK - it was 16 years ago. My principal, Ralph Campanella, pulled me into his office one day and said that he was putting me into the library the following year. He thought “I would be perfect for that position.” I was devastated. I begged him not to do it. It was the last place I wanted to be! I did NOT want to spend my day stamping books and putting them on the shelves. Not only that, I was going to be seeing classes on the days the librarian wasn’t there. The next year, there I was, running a library and not having a clue about what I was doing. But, some of my teacher friends said to me, “You are good at this! You should go back to school and get your masters!” I laughed at them. But, eventually, the anxiety about doing something that I didn’t feel qualified for got to me, and I enrolled at C.W. Post.

My very first course was with a professor named Bea Baaden. Many of you have taken classes with her. Bea is one of a few key people in my career that have had an impact on the kind of librarian I am today. Bea taught me how to be a TEACHER-LIBRARIAN - and I am deeply grateful for that.

There were others along the way that had a lasting influence on me. I need to thank my first principal at Searingtown School - Nancy Lindenauer. Nancy was the kind of principal that would come up to you and give you a hug and a kiss for no apparent reason. She would leave notes in your mailbox that said “Do you know how wonderful you are?” She encouraged and supported me to ‘go for it’. She allowed me to become confident in my abilities. And I will always, always be grateful to her.

I also need to thank my mentors from my educational technology masters program, especially Dr. Bette Schneiderman. The TEAM program taught me to be a constructivist. To think outside of the box. To tap into my creativity and to be a passionate educator.

The theme this year for our liaison meetings has been advocacy. So, I hope you don’t mind if I address advocacy for a moment.

The other night I attended the LISMA dinner and had the opportunity to chat with some of you here today. Unfortunately, I heard many stories of doom and gloom in our respective libraries. Unfortunately, across the country, there is a plethora of horror stories - most recently from Los Angeles, where dozens of librarians were summoned to the basement of a downtown building to defend themselves and the profession at a makeshift courtroom. They were questioned by school-district attorneys who were attempting to prove that teacher-librarians are not teachers.

Across the nation, and right here on Long Island, it’s starting to feel like bad reality TV. One day you are an AMERICAN IDOL, the next day you are in HELL’S KITCHEN, or even worse, THE BIGGEST LOSER. Some of us have found ourselves on SURVIVOR.

We are being asked to “share the pain” and to make do with less or no help. Or to manage multiple libraries. Some of us have found ourselves on THE APPRENTICE and have heard the dreaded words, “You’re fired.”

Things are tough out there, and it is very tempting for all of us to become ambivalent as we try to hang on to our library programs. The bottom line is that many of our programs are being chiseled away, bit by bit. We are being told to do more with less. Or being told to just do less.

And you know, it’s not just about the budget cuts. We know that it’s not just the library programs that are being affected. We know this is happening in every area of education.

But, I think for school librarians, a huge factor is the misconceptions about the vital role teacher-librarians play. Or should I say, the vital role our programs play. So, it is all about perception.

So many think that our libraries are just warehouses of books. I’ll never forget some years ago when a teacher said to me after a lesson, “Just read to them, dear, that’s all you have to.”

And although I am so honored to receive this award, I like to think that the award isn’t about ME, but rather about the program I have worked so hard to build in my school.

Here’s what WE know:

~We know that today information is free range and that it comes in many different containers.

~We know that our students are hyperconnected and to them, change is status-quo.

~We know that today we live in a world of collective intelligence.

~We know that WE are the ones that are teaching the skills to navigate, process, evaluate, synthesize, sift, and mix, re-create, and contribute new thoughts.

Now more than ever it is integral to make sure that we are not the ONLY ones who know that.

So, make sure your libraries are NOT just book warehouses. Make them places of transformative questions. As David Warlick says,

Think about how you can make your library “respond” - how can you make it “talk back?”

Think about how your library can become a place of questions - not just answers.

Think about banning silence, and instead, provoke conversation. Make your library a place where learners exchange knowledge. Dare your students to make mistakes and feed the learning dialog.

And be transparent about it. Find the time to share what goes on in your library. Make a wiki, make a website, maintain a blog, publish newsletters -- do whatever it takes, because, now, more than ever, we have to change the misconceptions.

There’s a Simpson’s poster called the “Deep Thoughts of Homer Simpson” in which he says, “If something’s hard to do, then it’s not worth doing.” I don’t have to tell you that what we do everyday for students is so worth doing.

Stay active in the field. Go to LISMA meetings and liaison meetings. But don’t just stay local--go to conferences! We need to hear from the movers and shakers in our field. Can’t afford it? Just go on twitter. You will hear everything that you need to hear. Use social media, folks. Because of social media, my close professional friends are now Joyce Valenza, Buffy Hamilton, and in fact, the entire AASL listserv! And I learn so much from them. And the discourse is amazing.

I know for some of us, we are just trying to hold on by our fingertips. We are being asked to re-envision our programs with less help, less money, and for some of us, many more students. We are being asked to look into a crystal ball and state what the program will be under new and difficult circumstances. I have been trying to do this myself and I can tell you it is a very difficult challenge. How will we make it work?

School Librarians are a different breed of teacher. And it is probably the opposite of the public perception of who we are. Because I know that most people think that just because we put our books on the shelves in dewey decimal order, it means that we, too, are rigid, systematic and organized. I don’t know about you, but that’s not me. We are circuitous thinkers because we know there is not necessarily a straight line to an answer.

As librarians, we are responders and reactors. We think on our feet. We come up with creative solutions. We juggle many roles to meet the needs of the entire school community. And we love to do it. And those needs don’t all fit neatly in it’s special place on the bookshelf.

So, today it’s not an easy task to articulate how we will make it work next year with less. Because it is not in our nature to cut back our services, to be of less help, to care less. On the contrary, it IS our nature to want to give more, to guide, to motivate, to watch a child’s eyes sparkle when we open their minds to new ideas. Worrying about how the books will get back on the shelf is not what we want to or need to be figuring out. And it’s sad that for many of us, these are the things that keep us up at night.

So, I say, don’t just be a ‘survivor’ - because I know you are all superheroes. And this may really be the time that you have to draw upon your super powers. But do it. It won’t be easy. But do it. And advocate for your program. I know there are only so many hours in a day. But do it. No excuses. No whining. As Tom Hanks said in “A League of Their Own,” “there’s no crying in baseball!” Well, we are in the World Series right now. There’s no time for crying --OK, take a little time to cry--I did--- but then get back up and give it your all.

My husband always says to people, “I don’t understand what Karen does, but she is damn good at it.” Make sure that everyone knows how important you are to those students. What we do has value.

Make sure that you are not the only one who knows what a library in the 21st century is. Don’t keep it a secret. Sometimes it’s not comfortable to say “look at me” - but you are not saying that, you are saying “look at the value of my program.”

Last, I don't want to forget to give a big thank you to my husband and my 2 wonderful kids, who have to put up with a lot, especially when I zone out on my computer.

And thank you again for this award. I am truly thrilled to receive it!

Shout It Off the Rooftop!

2010-12-15T05:26:00.008-05:00

I am not a "look at me" kind of person - that being said, I have to stop and write about what an incredible couple of months November and December have been for me. I need to memorialize this, cause I am so busy all the time and I want to stop and really think about what I have accomplished. Let me start out by saying that 2009 was horrible. I had surgery and missed a half a year of school. I gained a lot of weight and was all around miserable. Now flash foward to the start of the 2010/11 school year.

First, I lost the weight, which for me was a big accomplishment. I'm by no means skinny (LOL), but I am at least comfortable in my own skin. OK, enough about that.

More important - In November I was invited to the SLJ Leadership Summit in Chicago. That was such an honor. I came back from that so inspired. I loved hanging around with superstar librarians and others - like Wendy Stephens, Joyce Valenza, Cathy Nelson, Gwyneth Jones, Rocco Staino, and Kathy Parker. I learned a ton about ebooks and ereaders. I even found $200 in cash on the floor of the hotel and apparently donated it to School Library Journal.

Also in November - I was asked to teach a course at the graduate library school at Long Island University next Fall. I wrote a mini-grant to get NookColors for my library and another to get 7 iPads for my school. Haven't found out yet about the NookColors. We are getting the iPads and I am happy I was part of making that happen!

In December I found out that my application was selected to participate in Project Enable in Syracuse this summer, along with Adam Dugger (gen ed teacher) and Amy Thomas (special ed teacher) in my school. We are representing our area for elementary.

I also applied to BrainPop to beta test integrating BrainPop with Google Apps for Education. Our school was selected. This is an awesome opportunity and I expect some good-looking BrainPop swag (hahaha). Seriously, though, there will be a benefit to the district. My Google Certified Teachers Group is the most fabulous network and the opportunities that come through it are amazing! I also have a great partner at work, Noel Forte, our tech integration facilitator, who is always open to diving into new opportunities in a very calm, organized way. We make a good couple.

I also was invitited to give a Google workshop in Florida by the Northeast Florida Library Network and will be giving a 2-day workshop in January to the Southwest Florida Library Network. And yesterday I started teaching a professional development course on Google Apps in my district. Oh, and did I mention that my fabulous father bought me an iPad for Chanukah, because he "is so proud of what I have accomplished." I am a very grateful daughter.

Yesterday I found out that my proposal to ISTE 2011 was accepted. What a way to end the year! I have to be honest that I am a teeny bit nervous about presenting to the big guns, but I have learned so much from them, it's my turn to give back to our school library network! They have scheduled me for Wednesday afternoon, which is not so great, but, whatever! I'm just thrilled to have this opportunity.

Like I said when I started, I don't like "look at me" - but then I was thinking about it, and as a school librarian, we can't be shy about shouting out about what we accomplish. We need to let the world know, we need to let our principals and administrators know. We do great things. We need to shout it off the rooftops!

Gotta Love It

2010-12-03T06:16:00.004-05:00

With all of the media bashing of school librarians lately, I had a week at work that kindled my spirit. It was a crazy, busy week - and I am drained - yet, ultimately, it was amazingly rewarding. The week started with writing two grants - 1 for iPads and 1 for NookColors. When we get those grants (and we will get the iPad one for sure) - I will know that I had a hand in bringing new technology to our school. That makes me feel good.

Yesterday I introduced my fifth grade classes to our new project - one based on the Picturing America artwork that my library received from the NEH grant. We started with a great lesson I found in Library of Congress on Analyzing Visual Images. It was totally a higher order thinking lesson (my favorite kind!) and it was just cool to see their brains open up as we made our way through the lesson. In the morning, before they came, I hung up a lot of the artwork in the hallway - and it got people talking.

One part of the lesson was analyzing an Ansel Adams photograph of Manzanar, the Japanese internment camp for Japanese-American citizens during WWII. We spoke about the historical context of the photo, the perspective, emphasis, and message of it.

Later that day, after school, my Book Bunch Club met. Here's what was cool: one of my 5th grade girls was so moved by the story of the internment camp that she asked me to help her find a book about it. I pointed her to Weedflower, a fantastic historical fiction book. Connection! Gotta love it.
Even better was hearing the kids in the club talk about how much they love to read and how happy they were that we were meeting. I don't know, it just made me feel good to listen to them chat with each other about books they love, about being able to meet like this. 10 year olds. Gotta love it.

Finally, I find myself being pulled into advocacy on a more intense level, lately, through my local and national library networks. I am glad. But I also feel like I am spreading myself very thin. Very. And when I come home from work I am spent. I am beta testing for Capstone, Google Apps/BrainPop. I am teaching professional development and developing syllabi for Library graduate school. Not to mention the million other things I do at work. I love it - but I am tired.

One more thing, if anyone knows any school on Long Island who is looking for a GUIDANCE COUNSELOR, please let me know! My daughter needs a job! Seriously!

Steps to take now for our schools- What Were You Thinking, Bernstein??

2010-11-24T06:34:00.001-05:00

I just sent this letter to the editor to Newsday, regarding Marc Bernstein's (Superintendent of the Valley Stream Central High School District) Opinion Piece in yesterday's newspaper. I don't know if they will publish my response, but I will publish it here:

Superintendent Marc Bernstein says, "Other avenues to explore, especially when evidence is lacking, include...in this Internet age, eliminating the antiquated requirement that all high schools have at least one full-time librarian and a minimum number of books." I say, the only thing that is antiquated is Mr. Bernstein's view of school librarians and the function of school libraries! School libraries are not simply warehouses; they are knowledge portals, manned by highly qualified educators who teach digital citizenship, inquiry, critical reading, evaluation, comprehension, analytical skills, collaboration, and creativity. We are, in fact, literacy leaders, teaching students the skills they need in a world where information is available across all kinds of platforms. In the "Internet age" that Mr. Bernstein speaks of, it is more important than ever to teach students how to seek and search for information. They might be very savvy with technology, but they don't necessarily know how to evaluate. The explosion of online resources demands that there is a teacher with expertise in technology and information-gathering (librarians) to guide students through the maze. We know how to let content spill outside of our libraries, into classrooms, and into students' lives wherever they may be. Our teaching focus is on enhancing literacy and encouraging critical thinking, problem-solving, and reasoned decision-making - essential 21st century skills that students need now more than ever!

Buffy J. Hamilton, high school librarian, writes in her blog, The Unquiet Librarian, "...President Obama In October of 2009, issued an official proclamation celebrating and affirming the importance of information literacy with the declaration of National Information Literacy Awareness Month. In this proclamation, he stated,

Our Nation’s educators and institutions of learning must be aware of — and adjust to — these new realities. In addition to the basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic, it is equally important that our students are given the tools required to take advantage of the information available to them. The ability to seek, find, and decipher information can be applied to countless life decisions, whether financial, medical, educational, or technical.

How do you think students can become informationally fluent in the absence of rich, current, and diverse collections in their school libraries or appropriate access to digital content? How can we as a nation provide students the instruction needed to help students cultivate “the ability to seek, find, and decipher information” without fully funded libraries staffed by highly qualified, certified school librarians?"

Obviously, Mr. Bernstein does not support his school librarians and the integral role they play in educating students about information and digital literacies. Perhaps if he educates himself about the role we play as educators, he would change his opinion.

ISTE10 Will Richardson: How Teaching Social Networks Might Save the World

2010-06-28T10:17:00.007-04:00

It's been a long time since I blogged... today should make up for that! I am at ISTE10 and will live-blog some of the super thoughts that Will Richardson will share with us.
Here are my notes:

Will is working off an iPad - oh do I want one! Links to preso: http://bit.ly/istegreen

Gulf oil disaster--> it's hard not to look at pictures of it and not ask how can we help? For most of us it's a matter of donating money and good wishes. What can we do? How do we participate? How do we DO SOMETHING????? There are facebook groups that have been put together to share resources and give each other support. These groups are probably blocked at our schools - kids would have to participate on their own. Big on twitter, too. The point is over the last 10 years, these types of social interactions are changing the landscape in a lot of different ways. Must visit ted.com - they are livestreaming from the gulf. There are technologies and ways to come together that just weren't around 10 yrs. ago.

This is a challenging moment no matter how you look at it. Should we go to Deepwater Horizon oil spill page on Wikipedia: yes, it is the most current and unbiased information on the spill. We can learn outside of school, that makes school look less relevant for our kids because we have this ability to connect around our passions. These are important moments --defining moments in history - a defining shift. We have to solve the education problem before we can solve the environmental problem. There are all sorts of resources that we are not modeling for our kids in schools. Doesn't matter what the topic is, if you are not feeling uncomfortable, then you are not paying attention - what is our role as teachers and educators?

Will became a vegetarian because of ecological reasons, not health reasons. His way of trying to pay attention to the environment. Blogging has been transformative in Will's life - he can participate in ways he never had before, a voice to the world. Small attempt to change his world.

Will is showing his clustrmap and what he really wants is his kids to have a clustrmap like that too. This is what kids need - a different classroom then the school classroom. Educators have to help kids understand what these global interactions mean. Teach kids to connect around their passions and then become part of something bigger than themselves.

MacArthur report says teens are using 'friendship-based' tools, but a growing movement towards 'interest-based' around their passions and meeting people they don't know. This is the stumbling block we get to: kids are connecting to adults they don't know - we say 'oh no, that's not a good thing; but what we have to say is "it IS a good thing." Students don't undertstand the skills and literacies that go along with this - not getting it necessarily from teachers and parents. How can we MODEL those interactions (tech/librarians listen up!). Steven Johnson: "There is no doubt that five years from now, when my kids are teenagers, they will be comfortable living in public ways that will astound and alarm thier parents."

4 books that have influenced Will:

1. Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken

2. Ecological Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

3. Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirkey**

4. Tribes by Seth Godin - we have everything we need to build something bigger than ourselves and this is what we should do.

This is a compelling, different moment in time that we are in right now. Social technology is an opportunity that has not been in our context before; it's speed and creativity; put up a basement video on youtube and it can go viral. "The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See" on YouTube has gone viral over 7,5000,000 views - created by a physics teacher, led to him writing a book, "What's the worst that could happen?"

"There have always been networks of powerful people, but until recently it has never been possible for the entire world to be connected-Paul Hawken. "For kids, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades."

How are we as schools to be those problem solvers?? We have to give them opportunities to solve problems in the classroom first. Examples of students taking initiative to solve problems on thier own.

"25 Days to Make A Difference" blog - kid made her efforts to do great things everyday. Has connected all over the world--kept making a difference.

Ryan's Well blog -7 year old who changed the world 7 yrs ago to bring clean water in developing countries.

This is k-12 curricular integration.We need to have literacies around this. BP has bought google ads--it is interesting for a lot of kids who don't know what sponsored links are - are we teaching them about those kinds of literacies? NCTE has created new 21st c literacies. Are we doing this? Very similar to ALA standards.

If we are not there ourselves, how will our kids be???

WE all have to be Walter Cronkite - we have to look at info and make sense of it, participate in it, not just consume it. Daniel Goleman says we need a shared intelligence.

Discussion pages in wikipedia is where people negotiate the truth, critical thinking and analysis. The info comes in through twitter, delicious, we share and we all get smarter potentially.

Goodguide.com - you can scan products with your iphone and will give you info about the health of the product and rated it's effects on environment and society. Info that would help us make the world better. In schools, how do we prepare kids to tap into and make sense of this flow of knowledge? Look at google earth presentation on how climate change will effect California by Jean Ricshard.

How do we prepare students to create, navigate and grow their own plns in safe and ethical ways.. this is where they need us to model how to grow this network in safe ways.

We are being greenwashed - bunch of crap. Everything now is marked as green aWe are being techwashed in education - cause we have to understand which tech is transformative. We have to get serious about where we are going in environmental and educational technology.

1.Know your impacts.--what is impact of standardized testing

2.Favor improvements--we should always be looking to make things better, never be satisfied with status quo - we need to advocate and push for better tech and resources.

3. Share what you learn --take the best things you are doing and be transparent, share with the world

We need to teach environmental education, integrated

Ourmedia.org - post stuff for advocating environmental causes. Wiserearth.org; takingitglobal participate in great projects. Sprout ecourse for social innovators and environmental entrepreneurs who want to grown their project ideas.

Video from Michael Wesch-PdF2009 - The Machine is (Changing) Us

Seth Godin: "Leadership is a choice. It's the choice to not do nothing."

We need to think deeply about the choices we make for ourselves and for our kids.

Official Google Blog: Tips and tricks for deploying Google Apps

2009-12-20T09:16:00.000-05:00

Official Google Blog: Tips and tricks for deploying Google Apps
Going to share this with my tech people at my school, who have been contemplating apps (like contemplating your navel) for over a year now but have not moved on it... maybe this will get the fire lit again.

The Edublog Awards Homepage

2009-11-25T09:18:00.007-05:00

The 2009 Edublog Awards

Wow! I was nominated for an Edublog Award! How exciting! Anyway, here are my nominations: Remember~

Nominations: Close Tuesday 8 December!

Voting: Ends Wednesday 16 December!
Award Ceremony: Friday 18 December!

Best individual blog: Wes Fryer- Moving at the Speed of Creativity
Best individual tweeter: @web20classroom
Best class blog: Adam Dugger, 4th Grade Class Blog, The House That Blogs Built
Best resource sharing blog: Steve Anderson -Blogging About the Web 2.0 Classroom

Most influential blog post: Neverending Search Blog/Joyce Valenza
My 2.0 day and the response/rant about our cover argument
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion #edchat
Best teacher blog: Kevin Jarrett- NCS- Tech- http://www.ncs-tech.org/
Best librarian / library blog: Unquiet Librarian, Buffy J. Hamilton
Best educational tech support blog: Sylvia Tolisano Langwitches Blog
Best educational use of video / visual Common Craft Show
Best educational wiki WebTools4U2Use
Best educational use of a social networking service -Classroom 2.0
Lifetime achievement: Will Richardson – Weblogg-ed

Cheering from the Sidelines

2009-10-18T08:43:00.007-04:00

Those of you who know me are aware that I am on a medical leave right now from my job (due to a nasty torn tendon in my foot/ankle). I am about two weeks post op, pretty much confined to my bed. This is the first time in about 15 years that I have NOT worked, that I have been forced to slow down. It is the first time in 10 years that my mind will actually allow my body to sleep past 5 AM (sleeping til 7:30 AM now). It is the first time in the longest time that I am watching from the sidelines and not actively making things happen. I so needed this time to 'rest my bones' (literally!) and take care of myself; but I am not used to being outside the vortex and to actually having time to reflect on things happening in my profession. That being said, reading Joyce Valenza's blog post, My 2.0 day and the response/rant about our cover argument, (thanks to a heads up from Cathy Nelson), at long last broke through my mindless recuperating lifestyle, where everyday consists of sleeping, eating, and watching Barefoot Contessa, Say Yes to the Dress, House Hunters, The View, and various Judge shows!

I am surprised and not surprised by the responses to Joyce's article and responses Doug Johnson received in his Blue Skunk blog to their SLJ piece: Things That Keep Us Up at Night. I have posted a response to dialogue, which I am reprinting below:

From Beth...

As an example, the fact that these 2.0 tools are so often heralded as "free" is also interesting. To my knowledge, most of them require hardware, software, time to learn, electricity, support, connectivity, time to implement and so on. There is a lot of money and other resources spent before we get to "free." These are resources that many schools don't have right now. This is not always an excuse - in many cases it is a reason. This doesn't even touch issues of filtering, lack of administrative support, overwhelming attention to standardized tests, fixed scheduling and other elements that need to be addressed for learning 2.0 to happen.

My Response:

1. Most of the 2.0 tools do NOT require anything more than a computer with Internet access; in fact, the purpose of most of these tools is to create an even playing field, where users do NOT have to invest in expensive software (such as word processing, photo editing, telephone accounts; web hosting, etc).
2. The hardware required is a computer. Are there still schools without at least a few computers in the year 2009? Are there still librarians who do not have access to a computer to invest their own time in learning and staying current and informed about what is happening in our profession?
3. To bring up "electricity" as a roadblock to learning is ridiculous. No further comment required.
4. Support: never in our profession has there been more ideal time for getting support from your peers.
5. "Time to implement" - OK, where do I begin... we have to make time to implement, no one is going to hand it to us, i.e., "OK today you don't have to teach so you can implement a new learning tool." Ask Joyce, ask Cathy, ask Buffy, ask thousands of us, and we will tell you that we made the time, that we put in the time, that it was at 5 in the morning or at midnight, or all day Saturday, or whatever, we MADE THE TIME - we made the time to try something new, to reach out to others for help, to share what we learned, to network with experts and learners, to read and to write.
6. Getting around fixed schedules, state testing, etc., etc.... Sheesh, we all have to face these problems to some extent. We just have to find ways to make it work, And it can work, if we don't allow ourselves to drown in the negativity.

I agree that money has dried up for going to conferences for almost all of us. But because of Web 2.0, there are many, many FREE online webinars given by leaders in the field - for example, PBS Teachers® and Classroom 2.0. Most leaders in our field share their presentations online, in wikis, in nings, etc., so really, let's stop with the excuses! If you want to learn, if you want to grow, there is nothing to stop you but yourself.

The storycorps idea bothers me. Why do we need another platform for whining and complaining? Let's get with it, people. Put in the time and effort to stay relevant. Start slow, take baby steps, but get in the mix. Start by reading Joyce's blog, join the Teacher-Librarian Ning, read our prof. journals - all of these resources will get you started on your journey to being a 21st C librarian.

The comment, And we do that by not saying "I'm doing it right and you aren't so get out." We do it by asking "How can I help?", bothers me as well. I repeat, never in our profession has there been more help available. Never, to my knowledge, has there been more of us willing to help, to share, to put everything we know out there on the web for others. This is NOT AT ALL about "Look at me..." (and trust me, I despise ''Look at me" type people), it is about "get on the bus" and here is the road map that I want to share with you to guide you on your journey.

OK, enough said. What do you think?

Finally - My Thoughts On NECC

2009-07-18T05:47:00.007-04:00

So, this was my second NECC - the first one was in 2004 in New Orleans. I came away from Washington DC exhausted, but ultimately, exhilarated, although it took awhile to feel the exhilaration. I jumped right into teaching a graduate five day intensive course, and really did not have time to reflect on the conference until now.

The good (and often fabulous):

Getting to hang out with and getting to know better some of my librarian heroes, namely, Joyce Valenza, Cathy Jo Nelson, Keisa Williams, and Wendy Stephens, at our Library Web 2.0 Smackdown and at the SIGMedia forum and breakfast. I also met some other people I greatly admire - Doug Johnson and David Loertscher (wow!). I didn't meet, but hope to run into one day, Buffy J. Hamilton (the Unquiet Librarian - and trust me, she is definitely unquiet!). Our conversations continue now on Twitter and Facebook. My PLN is growing, thanks to whoever started the #followalibrarian hashtag on Twitter.

Library Tools Smackdown from abrusca on Comiqs

Meeting up with and enjoying time with some GCTs - got to say hi to Mark Wagner, enjoyed meeting Melanie Sutherland Holtsman, Martha Thornburgh and just loved hanging out with Rushton Hurley. Wish there were more GCTs at the Birds of a Feather!
David Loertscher's presentation at the SIGMedia Forum really got my wheels spinning about creating a Virtual Learning Commons. In a week or so, I am meeting up with my fellow district librarian (and good friend) Anne Brusca, to revamp our library sites and make one VLC for all of the elementary school libraries. I am very excited about this, I have been moving in that direction for awhile now, but I think now I am equipped to 'get it right'.
Steve Dembo's Favorite 10 Tools Session was also really good. I was starting to have the feeling at NECC that all of the sessions I went to were not telling me anything I didn't already know. Steve, however, always has something new and interesting to share - plus, he shares how to get use out of the tool. I've seen Steve a couple of times, he is always engaging to watch.
Meeting three new educators on the shuttle bus back to my hotel and having an impromptu dinner with them...the power of NECC.
Meeting and talking to Wesley Fryer, a person who initially influenced me to start digging into digital storytelling and who commented at length on my students' voicethread project.
Going to the keynote, receiving my award, but more than that, listening to a fascinating debate with Gary Stager about if schools need bricks and mortar.

Finally, getting to hang out with a great group of educators who were completing their masters degrees in educational technology. It was so much fun to be with them not as their professor, but as their friend. A lot of laughs and great discussions.

The Bad:

Walking out of at least 3 sessions (sorry!) because I already knew the stuff. I went to one which sounded promising, Electronic Constructivism, but when the presenter started explaining what a blog was, I had to shut my laptop and leave.
Speaking of laptops, I wish I had a netbook, my laptop weighed a ton!
Getting shut out of sessions because they were full. Missed a lot of good ones.
Not having enough money to get to DC early enough to go to Edubloggers or the Constructivist Consortium or to spend any time actually seeing Washington DC! This is the third time I have been to Washington without seeing anything but a hotel, some restaurants and a convention center!!
OK, on a personal note, and one you certainly could care less about, seeing my PR photos from NECC and realizing how much weight I have put on!! Ugh!

Best of all, I came away from NECC more invested in my librarian PLN, and with renewed enthusiasm to immerse myself in my field of study. I rejoined ALA and AASL and want to focus this coming school year on all things library. The past two years I was adjuncting in ed tech, which was fantastic, but now I (hope) I have more time to really invest my energy into my library media center and my library community.

The other thing I came away with is a lot of "been there, done that" feelings about the sessions I attended; it even made me wonder was it worth the huge expense to go to NECC and feel disappointed? I have read on other blogs that the best part of NECC is the discussions that go on when finally meeting your PLN face to face. And for the most part, I agree. On the other hand, I can talk to my PLN online whenever I want to through Twitter and Facebook and other Social Networking Tools.... so does it justify spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars to physically attend? I'm not particularly advocating for online conferences; I love the social interaction, I mostly enjoyed the keynotes, and I did enjoy listening to people like Bernie Dodge and getting to actually converse with him. The vendor area was eh, most of the sales hawks looked bored. But the cost to attend these things is high! I need to justify in my mind that is perfectly OK to spend upwards of $800 on a conference instead of putting it towards my kids' college tuition or other bills. I was lucky, I had some award money and district funding to defray the cost this time, but that is not going to happen in the future. Denver?? No way. Hey, ISTE, have you considered NYC for 2011?

Not sure what the answer is...what do YOU think?

Keeping Up With PLNs - The Digest Version?

2009-06-11T05:51:00.003-04:00

Here is some data:

I have over 1,000 items sitting in my Google Reader account that I haven't had time to read.
I belong to 6 educational/technology/library nings that all have messages I need to catch up on.
I am following 193 people on Twitter.
I have 60 friends on Facebook
I belong to the Google Certified Teachers Group
I belong to 5 Diigo groups
I subscribe to 5 professional library journals
I subscribe to about a dozen other educational or tech ed magazines
I belong to or own 60 wikis
I have 4 different email accounts
I am a member of Shelfari, LibraryThing, and GoodReads
I am a member of Edutopia
There's probably more groups, I just can't remember now...
Then there is instant messaging, gmail chat, text messages on my cell, skype conferences...

How in the world can I possibly keep up with all of this information? How can I not? What goes by the wayside? All of these sources of information are competing for my time and attention. So, here's the bottom line: I WANT to find time to read Will Richardson's, David Warlick's, Joyce Valenza's, CathyJo Nelson's, Doug Johnson's, Buffy Hamilton's, CoolCat Teacher's, etc., etc. blogposts...but there just isn't enough time in my day, and believe me, I am up at 5 a.m., on my laptop, trying to catch up!

So, I have to rely on the digest version...it needs to be in 140 characters or less, because that is how fast the information is exploding around me, it is dizzying, like being on a roller coaster - exciting, fast, breathless. Now, I'm not saying that I am overwhelmed, because honestly, I don't feel that way. It's more like I am grabbing tidbits of info that capture my interest and those tidbits have to be quick and to the point, like a tiny url, simply because there is so much of it!

Which leads me to the idea of information fluency, that is, how do I teach my students to be information fluent, when there is SO much information bombarding them (albeit, they don't feel bombarded, this is just the way it is to them)? How do I teach them to skim, sort, sift, evaluate, process, contribute? As an elementary teacher-librarian, I recognize that these 21st C skills are now the core of what I teach. Once a classroom teacher said to me, "Just read to them, dear." Can you feel me cringing? Anyway, what should their ILN (Information Learning Network - just coined that) be? How do I facilitate that for them? Besides the books and the electronic databases? Some projects that I have done with my 4th/5th graders have incorporated wikis where they could start networking their information. That's a start. Some of the classes are blogging. Next year, hopefully, we are going Google, and that will help them to share information in a collaborative format. I just feel that I really need to rethink what I teach them; learning about tables of content and indexes just isn't enough; learning Internet safety and netiquette and the Big6 isn't enough, even at this young age. I feel like I have to take an entirely new approach next year, not throwing out the bath with the bath water, but I feel like I have to start from a different place.

After NECC and after finishing teaching a grad school class in July, I need some time to sort, sift, evaluate, process and create.

Why DO We Need Libraries in Schools?

2009-05-25T07:16:00.002-04:00

Doug Johnson asks, (and I agree here with David Warlick) "one of the most interesting questions in education today,"~ "Why do we need libraries when virtually all of the information we need on a daily basis is only a mouse-click away?" I'd like to pose another question: Why is it that school librarians have to constantly justify their importance? We don't ask, "Why do we need classrooms when virtually all of the information we need on a daily basis is only a mouse-click away?" I suppose the quick answer is that in many places librarians are not mandated by the state, so, we see ourselves as dispensable unless we constantly advocate for ourselves. I know that here in NY, we are not mandated at the elementary level. It's incredibly frustrating that we always have to prove our worth. It's incredibly frustrating that with budget cuts, librarians are often on the chopping block. What are administrators thinking??? Why is there STILL that perception that we are nothing more than babysitters? There was a second grade teacher who once said to me, "Just read books to them, dear, that's what they really want." (I still cringe when I think of that!). Not that books aren't important! But our main focus now is on teaching students how to participate (safely) in this remix culture we live in, where they can produce and reshape information in a myriad of ways. We are information specialists - whether that information originates in books or online in both textual and visual formats. I know that in my library media center, I am having a ball showing my students different ways to express what they learn using various web 2.0 tools, connecting them to other classrooms via skype, and (usually without them knowing it) teaching them the skills to find, sort, sift, remix, and express knowledge. As David and Doug both say, this is such an exciting time to be a librarian. I know I'm having a great time...and so are my students!

Freedom Writers, Literacies and Learning

2009-04-07T06:05:00.006-04:00

Recently I attended a literacy conference sponsored by Nassau Tract with fellow library media specialist, Anne Brusca. The keynote speaker was Erin Gruwell, the teacher who was featured in the movie, Freedom Writers with Hilary Swank.

I have to say that Erin was absolutely one of the most inspiring speakers I have ever heard. There wasn't a dry eye in the place when she was done. Not to mention, she was one of the most accessible, warmest people I have ever met. From the Freedom Writers' Website:

The movement was born in 1994 from a teacher's simple notion - inspire young, underprivileged students to pick up pens instead of guns. Since then the Freedom Writers Foundation has evolved into a renowned charitable organization led by Erin Gruwell, with the unwavering support of the original Freedom Writers. The Foundation is dedicated to replicating the Freedom Writers' success in classrooms across the country by equipping teachers with the tools they need to reach and empower their students.
THE FREEDOM WRITERS DIARY
How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change
Themselves and the World Around Them
By The Freedom Writers with Erin Gruwell

The Freedom Writers Diary is the amazing true story of strength, courage, and achievement in the face of adversity. In the fall of 1994, in Room 203 at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, an idealistic twenty-four-year-old teacher named Erin Gruwell faced her first group of students, dubbed by the administration as "unteachable, at-risk" teenagers. This group was unlike any she had ever interacted with.

The kids took bets on how long their new teacher would last in their classroom. Then a pivotal event changed their lives forever: when a racial caricature of one of the African American students circulated the classroom, Erin angrily intercepted the drawing and compared it to a Nazi exaggeration of Jews during the Holocaust. To her amazement, the students responded with puzzled looks. Erin was appalled to discover that not one child in her class knew of the Holocaust and its unspeakable horrors. When asked how many had been shot at, however, all raised their hands, and a battle-scar show-and-tell began that shocked Erin even more.
Erin's message to us: Never give up. She was given the students that everyone had already given up on. She found a way to reach them, to make them writers, to transform their lives.
Later on Anne and I gave a 90 minute presentation on "Increasing Literacy Through Web 2.0". Take a look at it!

Literacy

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Designing the Digital Experience: David Lee King Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library

2009-03-31T11:35:00.005-04:00

Experience and design-what is it? "an approach to creating successful experiences for people in any medium.”

Ways to Go About It:
1. Structural path-create a better experience by improving ease of use. Navigation does not get in the way.

building experiences. Strategy->scope->structure->skeleton->surface
uncover (the customer need)->define the experience brief (what will the customer experience be?)->ideate (immerse yourself in the experience->then build and design it
getting real, by 37signals.com goal is speed and getting product out to public-->fine tuning should be done by customers--they say write a one page story about what your customers need to do on your site. Make it simple.

How does this work with the library website? His website-lots of focus groups and discussions first, trying to be fluid and get updates out there first. Fix it now and move on.

Look at your site with critical eyes think about the potholes (what makes people stumble and remove it) Big goal: Don't make me think. Customer doesn't want to think about how it functions, if they are forced to do it, you have failed.

2. Community Path: how does it provide positive experiences: a memorable experience created by online participation and community. Digital community experience- customer reviews and ability to rate those reviews. Amazon has done this, a digital community experience. There are five ways to do this:

real conversation is taking place-commenting on blogs, twitter, online forum, flickr --patrons holding conversations with us, allowing customers to connect with you the librarian and each other. Setting up book clubs on the blog.
invitation: passive and active. Active--asking questions--what's in your top five-you say yours and invite them to add theirs. Passive--content enablers making content compelling and displayed well, creating compelling content - making it interesting and web 2.0 enablers-allowing commenting and moderate promptly.
participation--other part of invitation point-if you have no participation you have no community online. Allow comments. Goal is to participate in the discussion. Share thoughts and opinions. I want you to add your thoughts, I want to hear what you are saying!
sense of familiarity--you feel like you know someone because you have 'befriended' them on blogs, twitter, flickr, etc. introduce patrons to library's 'personality'.
telling our stories--people want to know who you are as an individual as an organization, do you like using your library and what shortcuts you take when using it. People want to participate in the story --they want to feel like they are part of it. See that a lot in Second Life. You can do that online in social networks. For example, Katrina hurricane, people told their stories as it developed. Patrons want to do this. Library stories: what you've read, what you liked, what you are doing. Twitter for the library--
goal is to hold conversations and connect with community
focus on the customer path. - customer journey mapping

New Strategies for Digital Natives

2009-03-31T10:30:00.015-04:00

Helene Blowers-Digital Strategy Director, Columbus Metropolitan Library
Joey is our new digital patron:

The big story in the election was the kid who helped Obama reach out to the digital natives.

We used to chase information, now it has flipped, information finds us. Still, studies show that RSS is kind of flat across all demographics; people still don’t know how to get info to find us. Good role for librarians.

digital native realities:

Identity: digital natives: online identity is same as real identity. Idea of having one identity is intuitive to them. It is how they influence and assert themselves online, exchanging information, bantering that goes back in forth.

Top 5 Social Networks – jan 09
1. Facebook 1.19 billion monthy visits
2. Myspace 810 mill visits
3. Twitter 54 mil visits
4. Flixster 53 mil visits (movie reviews
5. Linkedin 43 million visits

These are where digital natives are leaving their footprints. The idea of social identity has become so important that we are graphing it. Linkedin based on the premise of who do you know to further your career. Average age of digital immigrants –42.

Social graphing:
6 degrees of separation
touchgraph
friendwheel on facebook

Renaissance Generation: Patricia Martin: Cultural consumers thrive on information and ideas to fuel their creative self-expression. Creativity very important to them.

93% of teenagers are online and intensifying
Nearly 2/3 of online teens are content creators~Pew Study, Teens & Social Media, 12/07

Posting pictures, sharing artistic work, blogging, etc...creates their social identity.
Teens:

post messages
download music
download videos
upload music
update personal website or online profiles
post photots
blog

We are starting to see a shift from authoritative control to collaborative control of information. How do you influence people? By sharing information.
OCLC Study --number one resource of getting information online is friends. Libraries are down in the bottom.
In January 09 Encyclopedia Britannica added a wiki layer so that people could add to it. Collective control--->they realized there are advantages to this new form of gathering information. What info source do you trust the most for your company's purchasing decisions: user generated content (blogs, discussion groups, online comm, wikis, etc.) from a study, interesting to see--first hand experience that you get from blogs and rating sites are where people are looking for trusted information.

2. Digital Safety --only .08% of all students say they've actually met someone in person from an online encounter without their parents' permission --national school board study July 2007.
Most teens ignore or delete stranger contact and are not bothered by it. (Pew Study).

3. Digital Opportunity
The world has become more accessible for digital natives. Every day the Internet becomes more and more important to society. There are no barriers, the playing field is leveled, you can mashup and mix up online, all you need is access (if you don't have access, library provides it), access is universal, connection is ubiquitous , it's all about me. Their sandbox is huge to play in, to assert their identity and creativity.

4. Digital Piracy
Digital piracy to them is digital sharing. File sharing has become the new normal for most. Copy, remix me. Fanfiction, music parodies, mashups, movie trailers, remix contents, remix fansites (Nine Inch Nails - encouraging fans to remix their content), creative commons (has spurred this whole rethought of copyright). Total Recut: video remix challenge.

In the past you were what you owned--now you are what you share. A collaborative remix culture. How do we respond to it as librarians?

5. Digital Privacy
Facebook:
82% send private messages
84% post messages to a friends page or wall

Lifestreams
Idea of lifestreaming all these social networks can be aggregated and look at it as a lifestream. Digital natives can trace their lives online.

6. Digital Advocacy
The idea of what you do online actually makes a difference. Young people as networkers, organizers, promoters to create their leadership potential, saw it in the election.

What can libraries do?

Idea of engagement to enable customers to connect with library staff, services and with each other in meaningful ways. Layering over OPAC with interactivity, twitter? Engagement is important because people want to feel connected. Patrons feel connected. Make the library a facilitators of connection.
Enrich - to provide customers with a rich online experience that enhances their local branch experience and daily lives. Our digital space should enhance not be separate, active engagement. All libraries get their funding from somewhere, that funding should be valuing their lives in some way.
Empower: to enable customers the ability to personalize and add value to the library experience and allow the community to celebrate themselves.

NYPL Paul Holdengraber

2009-03-31T09:47:00.006-04:00

Today's keynote is an interview with Paul Holdengraber—he was brought in to ‘oxygenate’ the New York Public Library—"to make the lions roar in the front to make this heavy institution levitate. To make the building less formidable to make it sexy."

Paul Holdengraber:
Funny guy! He grew up in Belgium, born in Texas, went to Princeton, he taught at Princeton and other colleges, He was a fellow at Getty. Brooke Sheilds was one of his pupils.

Quotes: "52 million items in the library; at first you feel small, then it should empower you to want to learn, to grow, to discover, to get a tingle in the spine" He is interested in transforming things, in what happens in this public place where we go to do an activity that is extremely private. That relationship between public and private fascinates him. He had to make the library irresistible.

"If I knew where inspiration came from I would go there more often."

He institued “Live from the NYPL” --he’s had Bill Clinton, Martin Scorcese, Mario Balti, and many more. He invites people from all walks of life – his favorite moment Myra Kalman – illustrator –Illustrated the elements of style http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/2007/10/26/the-elements-of-style/
“I never ask for permission, only for forgiveness.”

“When a great man dies, a library disappears with him.”

He changed the demographics of the audience that comes to a younger audience.

Talking about twitter and blogs: "Info has a life in haiku form on twitter. However we can’t ‘tickle ourselves’ still need to be together."

"Maybe a librarian needs to be a lifebrarian. We need humor in the library. People are bleak cause of the economic situation. We need humor. Create havoc in the library. The books on the shelf are there-what should we do about it—what is our role—take those books off the shelf and make people desire them deeply. Libraries are places of desire. We deeply believe in communicating and transmitting this experience that we probably had as children with a book…how can we imagine a world without books, would I rather have my library or kindles lying around everywhere."

"Digression is the sunshine of narrative."

What is the future of libraries? Fascinated by how libraries might be able to make us focus> in an age of utter distraction, we can go to a library where you learn things, a repository where you can learn things, a place to focus. Use these technology tools to focus on new discoveries. And a great place for opportunities, especially in these times. The reading room in the NYPL is packed…it’s a haven. Our job is a job of hospitality, make people feel at home, public programs is a beautiful way of welcoming others into the home you work in. We have Facebook but let’s get into the face to face encounters. Explode that home, a library without walls, a library that is everywhere, the gift of ubiquity.

Since we are near Washington DC, he wants to end with this anecdote. Here’s how Barack Obama found his community organizer job in Chicago: In 2005, Obama told American Library Magazine that people always mention libraries in terms of sources of reading and research, but he probably wouldn’t be in Chicago if it weren’t for the NYPL, because he was looking for a job as a community organizer in NY…the librarian helped him find these lists of organizations, one of them wound up being an organization in Chicago that he got a job with…..the rest is history….

If Paul doesn't make you feel good about being a librarian, I don't know what will!

Internet @Schools East Presentation

2009-03-30T09:53:00.004-04:00

This is the presentation I gave yesterday at the Internet @Schools East Conference. There's a lot to digest here, including some tips from some of the gurus I respect and have learned from, including David Warlick, Joyce Valenza, Mark Wagner, and David Pogue. For those of you who attended the session yesterday, I hope this helps! Leave a comment and let me know what you thought about the presentation!

Internetatschools

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Computers in Libraries Conference -Day One

2009-03-30T08:25:00.011-04:00

Opening Keynote: Lee Rainie, Director, Pew Internet and American Life Project

I am here in very windy Arlington, Virginia waiting for Lee Rainie to begin. The conference is at the Hyatt Regency, which is quite a nice hotel. Unfortunately for me, I was not able to get a room here so I did not know that they had a lovely free breakfast here for attendees and I paid $13.00 for an egg white omelet at my hotel.

I didn't realize what a big conference this is! There are librarians of all types here. -a lot of academic librarians. There are attendees here from 49 states, plus 18 countries outside of the U.S. I just might be one of the very few elementary school librarians here. There are over 2,000 attendees here.

"Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience." -Clarence Day.

Lee is talking about Twitter. Only 5% of the people here know about or are using Twitter. Surprised.
Lee is talking about “Behold Homo Connectus”: We are a different species with a different sense of things:
1. Volume and variety of information has grown tremendously with millions of users creating content. People can screen out what they don’t want.
2. The speed of information speeds up—the way you find info now through social networks speeds things up. We can create our own playlists of media, in other words, there is a time shift and place shift in accessing media.
3. The relevance of information improves as the number of voices explodes. Voting and ventilating are enabled. We can explain what is going on in our world and there is ample opportunity for us to talk back to institutions.
4. Social networks are more vivid. We can fall back on our social networks for support.

So, how does this relate to the role of the librarian? Less says that personal activities and media have come together; institutions can be active in people’s networks like never before. Librarians can find ways to be reliable gatekeepers and sensemakers that people will appreciate.

Internet @Schools Sessions:
Finally got to meet David Hoffman, editor of Multimedia and Internet@ Schools Magazine. He has been extremely nice and helpful in getting me here to this conference within the conference, aimed specifically at school library media specialists. Our sessions are in another room (not the best venue - has huge columns that block your view of either the speaker or the screen). Due to a cancellation of one of the sessions, my session got moved up to right after lunch from the 4:15 slot (sigh of relief). There are approximately 50 LMS's attending these workshops. The first presenter is Sheila Gersh, from CCNY to talk about her project, CultureQuest.
http://www.culturequest.us
http://www.schoollink.org/twin
I am going to connect Sheila with some people in TEAM. I have students creating a collaborative project called Cultureshare - this is a natural. CultureQuest started 5 years ago at CCNY: inquiry-based investigations of other peoples and cultures that are rooted in student questions and based upon student interests. Projects focus on literature, art, music, history, government, and more. Sheila talking about a model-->P is the problem-->E expert learners-->L learners, all working together to solve the problem. CultureQuest projects are based on this model. Talking about ePals for global collaboration.

Leap and the NETS Will Appear:
Next up is Johanna Riddle, who, unfortunately is having many technical problems in her presentation. One of the things she talked about is a project using the book Owen and Maze (love that book) as a jumping point for guided discussion, comparison and research. She is focusing alot on strategies for incorporating visual literacy into instruction with young students.

Using Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts to Promote Books and 21st C Skills:
This was a very informative session. Patrick Ledesma and Cecelia Carmenate from Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia are talking about using blogs to promote discussion. In their example, the librarian creates a blog in which she poses questions that students respond to. For incentives, they have "blogger of the month" in which they give rewards to the students who blog the most. The librarian posts questions, such as "can you judge a book by its cover?" This gives them the opportunity to engage in discussion. Librarian responds to the readers and comments. Can be used to tie in books with current events and books and their movie version. Important to add pictures and media. Blog like this shows that the library can also be a place for fun. You can embed the movie trailer into the blog.

Spotlighting Good Literature Through Technology: Video Book Talks:
Eloise Long and Eileen Kern from PA
They are discussing booktalks in the library - a booktalk is a structured mini-mystery with a cliffhanger ending. They are inspiring me to do this, but I would have my students do it. Some of the web 2.0 tools that they suggest for this are:

Also are recommending the book The Tech-Savy Booktalker: A guide for 21st Century Educators

General Comments About Day One:
I think that my session went very well, I got a lot of nice feedback. I also met Stephanie Rosalia, the librarian who was featured in the New York Times Article (Librarian Job Gets an Update) and had a nice conversation with her. Mostly, I came away from today realizing that I have come a long way as a school media specialist; I don't assume, but sort of expect, that most LMS will know about most of the tools that were presented here today by myself and others - but surprisingly, that is not the case. Many of the LMS here today have to deal with the fact that teachers have to spend so much time teaching to state tests that they don't have time to take their students to the library. My suggestion there was to tell them to let those teachers know that you can help them by creating research projects that deal with a part of the curriculum- take a little of the load off of them.

This was my first time presenting at a national conference that is geared strictly to librarians. I had an 'aha' moment, realizing that I have a lot to offer in the area of professional development to my colleagues. As a whole, school library media specialists are up against a lot~ in many states and districts we are not even mandated and are replaced by regular teachers; we are up against mandated testing, small budgets, lack of help, and often lack of support. This makes it imperative that we take read-write web by the horns and make ourselves indispensable! That was the theme of my presentation. We can make ourselves indispensable by not only being the experts, but also by modeling the use of web 2.0 tools in our library media centers. On top of that, we have to be the ones to lead in teaching digital and information literacy skills to students. That has to be our focus now.

David Pogue Part II: Extreme Googling

2009-03-16T10:20:00.005-04:00

Google's motto: "Don't be evil" :)

By the way, David won an Emmy for a story about Google. How did Google come to be? Two guys from Stanford - came up with the idea of a search engine that searches how many other pages link to your page, rather than just look for the words you are searching for. They got to be rich and powerful through the ads. The ads are labeled sponsored links ~until that time, other search engines buried the ads in search results.

Google means 1 followed by 100 zeroes. The word 'google' itself is a misspelling, cause the two guys did not know how to spell it!

Other Tips from David:

"I'm feeling lucky" means just take me to the top search result - it will go right to the website.
Word order counts in composing a search...most important words should be first. Don't bother putting in little words.
Maximum number of words in a search is 10. Plurals matter.
You can type two dots to look for a range like miami 1985..2000.
If your result is a picture or a movie, it will show right in the result.
For some organizations, they give you a table of contents in the results. This is relatively new.
For some big sites, you even get a search box within (like the ny times).
The greatest google trick of all: every website such as Amazon, YouTube, etc. all have their own search boxes, but the google search box is better than theirs. For example, google is a better searcher of ebay than ebay is itself. You are better off putting the name of the site and the item that you are looking for and then click "I'm feeling lucky" it will take you right to the site. (e.g. amazon eat love pray)--click feeling lucky. You will go directly to the book on their website without any intermediate steps.
Asterisk is the wildcard - great for song lyrics that you can't understand (excuse me while I kiss the *)

Encyclopedia of life

The ''ooos" in Google at the bottom of the page over the page numbers are also pages to click on.
Doing a search for "showtimes and your zipcode" will give you a table of every movie playing in your areas with reviews by peopole.
You can type define: and a word and it will show you dictionary definition.
You can also type math calculations into the google search box; it is also a calculator.
Also a converter: inches in a mile.
Also currency converter = type in dollars in a euro. Weather plus city takes you to weather right there.
You can type in a barcode number and then look it up!
Can also type in a flight like 'united 22' and will give you the status of the flight.
Can type in a VIN number and find out the history of the car.
In preferences you can turn off porn filtering.
In google language translator you can type in the whole website address and it will translate the whole page.
iGoogle was created in someone's 20% time.
phonebook:name place - get someones phone number.
google maps for directions shows you traffic too and you can drag the route to another road; instantly recalculates directions. shows construction and accidents. Click on cameras next to directions to see street view. you can pan around too.

ASSET 2009: Keynote~David Pogue: "The Digital Generation Grows Up"

2009-03-16T08:42:00.009-04:00

David Pogue: And He Sings, Too!

Live blogging, so excuse the typos! David Pogue is the technology writer for the New York Times and appears on CNBC and has written best-selling "how-to" books, including some of the "Dummy" books. He looks at new technologies coming down the pipe.

TREND 1: What happens when you merge cellphone and Internet?
Google Cellular (free) info is texted to you~google 411. (46645). Weather, flight info, stock quotes, movie showtimes, as well as:

Flight info (aa 152)
Movie showtimes (shrek plus zip code)

800-GOOG-411 by voice dial from any phone, state the location and business type, and it connects to the business for free. You don't get the phone number, you don't need it, it just connects you. That's the beauty of it - like your own personal operator.
ChaCha (800-2CHACHA) will answer any questions. Anything you ask, they text you back the answer. They employ 10,000 people who sit in front of Google and are paid .20 an answer.
Voice to Text--get your voicemails converted into text for free, and the recording is actually in the email. Offered by phonetag, callwave, spinbox. Google entered this with Google Voice (wow this is great) - it comes to your phone or email for free you make up a number and then it reads all of your phones, one unified number and one unified email box. Turns text messages into first class communication. See David's video from last Sunday's online NY Times.

TREND 2: ONLINE 24/7 ~
David asks, "What's so hard about giving us wifi everywhere we want it?" Well, in reality, being online all the time and everywhere has snuck up on us with the changes in cellular - iPhone really started this.

Apple just released an iPod So Small Its Controls Are Found on the Cord

(Look for iPhone shuffle video on YouTube (a parody).)

Until the iPhone came along, cell phones developers would go to the carriers like Verizon with new ideas but the carrier was the gatekeeper. It was not a system conducive to innovation. Steve Jobs went to Verizon, Sprint, Cingular, AT&T bought Cingular, they all laughed him out of the idea of an Apple iPhone, except for Cingular. The amazing thing is when Apple opened up the apps store - the world changed from this! People spend more time on the apps then on making calls. Some cool apps (I wish I had an iPhone!!):

Pandora, free internet radio, type in the name of a song and and immediately plays the song you want. Immediately feeds you another song by another band that is similar, you give it thumbs up or down, gives you more songs, based on the feedback, eventually you create a radio station that you love.
Urbanspoon where you are standing when you are looking for a restaurant.
Urbanspoon on the iPhone is part Magic 8 Ball, part slot machine. You shake your phone and it finds a good nearby restaurant for you. Keep shaking it until it comes back with something you want to try.

This is a whole new paradigm, selling $1 apps. See Davids article about Ocarina.
Verizon now will open up their network. Now Google has a phone (TMobile G1) has its own app store and the Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications to run on Android-powered devices.

Trend #3: Web 2.0

So we know that Web 1.0 consisted of websites where we provide the material. Web 2.0 is radically different. Facebook is so hot. Microsoft bought 1.6% of Facebook for 240 million dollars.
( SubEthaEdit -everyone can collaborate on the same notes.)
According to David:

Craigslist -- it's killing the American newspaper. You'd be an idiot to pay for a classified ad in a newspaper.

YouTube-sold 1 year after creating it to Google for over a billion dollars!

domystuff.com you post your grudge work and people bid to get paid to do it.

goloco-you say where you going, other people ride with you, share rides

epetitions.com anyone can start a petition about anything

who is sick ok this one cracks me up and I know a lot of hypochondriacs that would like this site...

WHAT DOES THS ALL MEAN for next generation? Things splinter, things add on and become more things. Everything is in real time - kids insist on this - "nobody does email anymore" it has to be instant, text messaging, chat or twitter.
Privacy- nobody cares, they (this generation) advertise their personal stuff on Facebook, they want people to know --maybe they are the "Ego Generation" - how many friends do you have on facebook, twitter??

Speed+ego-privacy=twitter. Its like a big cocktail party but incredibly powerful.

Need an opinion??

IMDB (Internet Movie Database): collates opinions of 11 million people and they are never wrong! :)

angieslist Use when looking for service - consumer reviews

cnet Technology-related reviews

rateyour doctor

So...
Everything is on demand - itunes store, hulu (free tv on demand) the last 4 episodes of every single network show is available for free. Internet is your tivo. Even on demand cable (not pay per view) watch it when you want. On demand movies from amazon (selection not good, quality is not good) When you rent a movie online you have 24 hrs. to watch it.

Tech Shifts-->Cultural shifts
Do you speak their language?
LOL, AFK, BRB, POS

COPYRIGHT CHALLENGES - gray areas: - take the test..which one do you think is a copyright infringement??

I borrow a cd from the library
I own a cd but it got scratched and so I go to the library, borrow the cd and rip it to my pc
I have 200 vinyl records and I borrow them on cds and I rip those
I buy a dvd but I have a 3 yr old so I use an illegal prgram to make another copy in case the 3-yr-old ruins it.
I record a movie off of HBO using my dvd burner (legal)
I meant to do it, but I forgot, but my buddy recorded it and I copy his dvd
I recorded an HBO movie, but my dvd broke so I got the movie from blockbuster and copied that.

He did this with college students, no one thought any of these were illegal.
We have to teach privacy, permanence - chat rooms- teach credibility--power of web--i.e. think of Steve Jobs rumor--apple stock fell after that-- see snopes.com - clearinghouse for stupid web rumors.

You can't predict the future of technology.
Oh, and did I mention, David Pogue sings, too? :)

snopes.com - clearinghouse for stupid web rumors.

Project-Based Learning: Notes and Quotes

2009-02-07T06:47:00.008-05:00

Last week I asked students on TEAM to respond to some readings and videos on the topic of project-based learning. Some of the responses:

I watched the three videos from Edutopia, and the second one actually made me quite angry. In that video I saw something that I never see in my classroom; I saw students who cared about their work, students who cared about the world around them, cared about how others viewed them.
Though PBL is a great way to learn for students, it can be a difficult process for teachers and students to get used to. Teachers must be willing to spend the time to create PBLs and students must buy in to the process and work effectively to get the project done.
In the past, teachers just focused on the reproduction of information, but now teachers must make their students go deeper and work on meaningful issues and topics, where they find real solutions to real problems.
Ms. Friesen, seems to believe that "deep understanding" leads to a more profound level of "Inquiry". I find this a bit odd considering, when I have deep understanding of something, I no longer wish to inquire further about it. It is, as I have found to be true in teaching children, questions come forth most readily when "deep understanding" is NOT present.
My question is how do we completely follow the curriculum? Being a middle school teacher in NY I am responsible to prepare my students for Math, ELA, Science and Social Studies state exams. Test taking in a skill within itself. Realistically PBL would have to be coupled with orthodox means of teaching to prepare the students for what the state is asking.
I am however a little uneasy with the idea of shifting the control to the students.
PBL vs. traditional pedagogical regurgitation on tests seems a close cousin of the Internet vs. Web 2.0.
My only reservation about using inquiry is that it often takes a significantly greater amount of time.
Time is always the issue when speaking of this type of learning because in my school setting, I see my students for 42 minutes a day, have a strict and packed curriculum to fulfill, and have state tests to prepare for. It’s a little disheartening for me to learn about PBL because it is a way of learning that I believe would benefit my students for the future but at the same time, it is also a way of learning that I currently can not implement in my classroom because of New York State standards and the time constraints we have.
As a teacher with 43 minutes to teach a curriculum that ends in a state assessment or Advanced Placement exam, I know that I often ask this of my students and would love to change that. I often become frustrated with my students’ retention of material and I know that this could be improved if they were able to make more meaningful connections.
I think the best way for me to use PBL within my classroom would be to work with other teachers and have a combined effort. The teacher and I could come up with a project and work out the logistics.
However, there must be certain, institutional structures in place for it to be successfully implemented. Schedules must allow for curriculum design, professional development, teacher collaboration, and student participation.
Project based learning allows many students to shine who might struggle on typical assessments.
I want to make my instruction meaningful to my students, but I struggle to find those places where students find meaning.
I believe that students, especially young students need to have a firm foundation or basic set of skills before they are required to deal with abstract, intellectual tasks.
As a special educator, I feel that project based learning should be the core of most of the curriculum taught to student requiring alternate modes of education. When learning is engaging and has meaning to students, they grasp concepts much better than trying to visualize concepts from that which comes form a book. In addition this learning approach fosters the levels of thinking in Blooms taxonomy, even for those who's capabilities are compromised due to a disability.
Sharon (in the first video) wants us to change the type of work we ask students to do. Okay. I don’t ask them to regurgitate information. How does she want me to change the system? I can only influence what happens in my classroom with my students. She also wants the role of the teacher to change; I don’t think she realizes that the role of the student must change. Students have a perception of their responsibilities that doesn’t correlate with what she is asking them to do. She also does a great job dreaming about what we should be doing while ignoring curriculum requirements, state requirements, budgetary requirements, time restrictions, and students’ own perception of what school is.
I believe Project Based Learning should be a mandatory change in education. Life is all about choices and I think it is our responsibility as educators to change with the times in order to incorporate more PBL choices into our teaching. Once immersed in PBL, your job as a teacher changes and you become more of a planner and facilitator then a sage on the stage. I would I agree that my work as an educator has changed as I am forced to question, plan, schedule, monitor, assess and evaluate my students using a whole new mind set in order to achieve a PBL classroom. I love the authentic learning experiences that my students engage in when involved in PBL, but I need to be honest, it takes time to fully appreciate PBL because it sometimes takes longer for students to complete assignments and teachers to evaluate results.
When I first heard the term PBL (which was last week at TEAM), I immediately thought of WebQuests. WebQuests (for those who are not familiar) is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by the students is drawn from the Internet. I was involved with a number of WebQuests when I was teaching in the city. I loved the idea of working backwards, having an end goal, and carefully planning how kids would successfully reach their goal. I've even felt that, since teaching on LI, there hasn't been much of an urge to train teachers to teach/question using the inquiry-model. This new (not so new) concept of PBL would be a great way for teachers to promote the idea of inquiry---encouraging students to think (ha! what a concept!) .
The idea of a Project Base Learning model has always been intriguing yet mystifying at the same time. At first, I'm always inspired and wished the projects described in the articles and videos would one day be a reality in my classroom. Yet, it doesn't take long for questions and doubts to arise and ultimately quench the inspiration.

How do we balance state-mandated test prep with engaging, authentic learning?? I don't have the answer. I can't speak to the high school experience because I teach elementary; I am not a classroom teacher, so perhaps I have a little more freedom; I don't have to teach to a state test, but I do have skills and standards to meet. I can only say this: Whether it's one project a year or more, YOU have the ability to design a learning environment that will open up students' minds to a different kind of thinking. YOU have the ability to give your students a voice, to make them see that what they think counts. YOU have the ability to give them the opportunity to connect what they learn in your classroom to the bigger picture. BUT, it takes time and it takes effort beyond the hours of the school day, hours that are so hard to find when you are already putting in so many extra hours just to keep up!

Remember:

Excitement is contagious.
PBL is not the be-all, end-all, but can be a component ~

If you are pressed for time and need to include many topics in your instruction during a year, you may want to think about the concept of "uncoverage." This means making a deliberate decision about topics that you want to teach in depth versus topics that can be simply "covered." What parts of your curriculum can be easily and successfully handled through lectures or textbook assignments? What parts require more depth? Identify those topics that reflect the most important ideas and concepts in your curriculum and incorporate those topics into projects. Those are the topics with which you want students to grapple. The remaining topics you can deal with through direct instruction. ~Buck Institute for Education

Time is always an issue for teachers! We need to reach out to like-minded colleagues to plan together. We need to take advantage of what is already out there and available on the web. There are many websites that list projects that other teachers have developed. Projects that invite your participation.
Start small.
Be willing to change your mindset.
Be willing to hand over control.
Deep understanding will naturally lend itself to deeper questioning.
Use web 2.0 tools to extend the learning past the 42 minute period.
Use web 2.0 tools to extend YOUR learning via PLN's (professional learning networks) such as blogs and other social networking tools. Use them to make connections to other teachers who are looking for collaborators.

TechYes

2008-11-13T06:45:00.003-05:00

TechYes has a video that explains their philosophy of project-based technology literacy assessment while showing authentic assessment in action. TechYes is not a free program, although the cost is not that high, but I think it is worth looking at in terms of modeling a way to bring technology literacy into your classroom or school. TechYes is part of GenYes.

In light of what we have been learning about technology, collaboration and assessment, I would like TEAM students to watch the video, and then click on the Assessment link. After viewing, please leave a comment on this blog. What can you glean from this presentation that you can incorporate into your teaching?

Pedro Noguera: How Many Barack Obamas are there in YOUR School?

2008-11-09T06:38:00.010-05:00

Phrases and statements that caught my attention from Pedro Noguera:
"How many Barack Obamas are in our schools?"
"Students who are headed somewhere will behave differently than students who are headed nowhere."
"The easiest way to teach is the hardest way to learn." (As Alan November says: [a lot of] teachers were paper-trained!)
"Cemetery Teaching"

...which brings me to Pedro Noguera. On Friday I attended and presented at the Council for Prejudice Reduction conference. Pedro Noguera, Ph.D., professor at NYU, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education and co-Director of the Institute for the study of Globalization and Education in Metropolitan Settings, was the keynote speaker. He was fascinating and I am sharing my hand-written notes here from his presentation, (no Internet connection at conference).

Pursuing Equity and Excellence in Princeton: 10 Principles to Promote Achievement for All Students

How do we do something about racial inequality in schools? Racial inequity breeds resentment.

Challenge 1: Equity vs. Excellence: Competing or Compatible Goals? We have to challenge the normalization of failure. Race and class should not predict achievement. We can't only send the most privileged to the good colleges. How many Barack Obamas are in our schools? We are good at measuring and sorting kids, but not so good at cultivating the talent out of kids who do not have the privileged life (i.e., no private tutors, English not the primary language, single parent families, etc.). We can't judge our schools by how good we are doing with the most privileged. It doesn't mean we get rid of honors/AP, but we need both. We have to start with a vision and a plan. The biggest obstacle is believing it can't be done. Schools have to accept responsibility as kids' educators and stop blaming the parents and the kids.
We also need to increase access to and support for rigorous courses.

Challenge 2: Educational leaders must be the guardians of equity. The common practice is to assign our least experienced teachers to the low achievers and the best teachers to our honors classes. Did you ever notice that parents won't allow 'bad teachers' to teach gifted classes? Parents of low achievers don't necessarily speak out -- they may not even speak English, and they are easy to discourage.

We have to encourage kids and push them to take harder courses and give them the support they need to succeed in those courses. Homework is an equity issue; kids might not have computers or parental support. As educators, we have to be willing to challenge each other to make change.

Challenge 3: The academic success of immigrant students is contingent upon how they and their families are treated. Immigrant students are the exception to the inequity pattern. They tend to be over-represented among successful and at risk students.
We need to have cultural competence among our staff. ELL classes should not be used to deny students learning opportunities. Schools serving immigrant children need a bi-lingual and bi-cultural staff as well as have relationships with social services agencies that serve immigrant groups. We have to remember that kids assimilate into our culture faster than their parents - and sometimes parents don't assimilate at all. Some of these kids are high risk for joining gangs where they become part of a culture. We need to find ways to make these kids part of our school culture. Immigration is both our past and our future. Immigrants do the work other Americans refuse to do and they do it for low wages. This is a big issue on Long Island. Supreme Court decision: even undocumented kids have the right to go to school.

Challenge 4: Demystify school success. Students who are headed somewhere will behave differently than students who are headed nowhere. When kids have a clear sense of where they are going, they don't make the big mistakes, such as teen pregnancy. We have to teach kids how to 'code switch' - kids that are not white and middle class have to become bi-cultural, they need to learn social skills, how they should look and speak. It's not fair, but it's reality.

Challenge 5: Build partnerships between parents and teachers/schools. We all know the parents that insist on being partners! They become head of the PTA, etc. But just because we don't see parents in school doesn't mean that they don't care. They might be working, etc. Public schools need to be explicit about what we expect of parents. Teachers need to build partnerships--that first call home shouldn't be about something bad. The one good thing about NCLB is that it demands evidence of learning of ALL students.

What works: Extended time and opportunity to work harder, longer, and under conditions that offer possibility of success.
What doesn't work: Grouping kids together in a remedial class with a weak teacher.

Reading and writing needs to be across the curriculum, regardless of the subject being taught. We need to rethink remediation. We must teach the way students learn rather than expecting them to learn the way we teach (differentiated instruction). The easiest way to teach is the hardest way to learn - in other words, cemetery teaching--lining them up in rows and lecturing.

What are effective teaching strategies?

Active learning - interactive classroom
Constructivist
Inquiry-based
Simulations
Socratic Seminars
Project-based learning
Experiential learning
Student leadership in the classroom
Public presentation of student work
Know how to relate to kids - notice that most students really like their coaches, music teachers, drama teachers. Why?? Because when you focus on performance you cultivate stronger relationships with students.

(My thoughts: educational technology helps facilitate many of those strategies.)

Teachers need to talk to each other and not work in isolation. Teaching and covering the curriculum is not the same as having conversations with your colleagues about what is working and what is not working.

At this point, Pedro ran out of time, which was most unfortunate! I could have listened for another hour. Lots to think about here and reflect on our own practices.

Creepy Treehouses and Other Thoughts From Great Minds

2008-11-09T05:05:00.008-05:00

David Warlick, who skyped in to talk to my grad students at a blogging workshop, talked about the notion of "creepy treehouses" -- a phrase coined by Chris Lott (see Ruminate) and then discussed more in Jared Stein's blog, Flexknowlogy. From Jared's post:
In the field of educational technology a creepy treehouse is an institutionally controlled technology/tool that emulates or mimics pre-existing technologies or tools that may already be in use by the learners, or by learners’ peer groups. Though such systems may be seen as innovative or problem-solving to the institution, they may repulse some users who see them as infringement on the sanctity of their peer groups, or as having the potential for institutional violations of their privacy, liberty, ownership, or creativity. Some users may simply object to the influence of the institution.

I’ve been observing this phenomena increasingly, as instructors push down hot Web 2.0 technologies, while students push back with vocal objections or passive resistance. I call this the creepy treehouse effect.

More directly, any move to integrate or aggregate new institutional tools or systems with pre-existing tools or systems already embraced by the community may be seen as creepy treehouse, in as much as it may be construed as institutional infringement upon the social or professional community of it’s participants.

Being that I teach at the elementary level, I am not seeing the creepy treehouse effect. Actually, I am seeing the 'wow' effect when I make it possible for my students to create and learn from personal learning networks as they explore and navigate the web 2.0 environments that I have provided for them (i.e., wikis, blogs, skype). However, I do see that creepy treehouse effect happening in a different way in my own home.

At our staff development, Will Richardson mentioned that 75% of kids have MySpace or Facebook sites. He polled our audience - less than 10% of our district's teachers had one. OK, so this made me think I should start a Facebook site. Well, hello! I have two college-age students who absolutely forbid me to get into Facebook! In fact, I believe the exact phrase they used was, "it would be creepy." I would be intruding -- their friends, searching for them, would find me - and that did not fly with my kids. By the way, please read Will's article, Digital Footprints, in Educational Leadership, on this subject. Here's an excerpt:

It's a consequence of the new Web 2.0 world that these digital footprints—the online portfolios of who we are, what we do, and by association, what we know—are becoming increasingly woven into the fabric of almost every aspect of our lives. In all likelihood, you, your school, your teachers, or your students are already being Googled on a regular basis, with information surfacing from news articles, blog posts, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, and Facebook groups. Some of it may be good, some may be bad, and most is beyond your control. Your personal footprint—and to some extent your school's—is most likely being written without you, thanks to the billions of us worldwide who now have our own printing presses and can publish what we want when we want to.

On the surface, that's an unsettling thought—but it doesn't have to be. In fact, if we are willing to embrace the moment rather than recoil from it, we may find opportunities to empower students to learn deeply and continually in ways that we could scarcely have imagined just a decade ago.

David asked us to think about the creepy treehouse effect when we create group learning environments using nings, for example, at the high school and college level. Are we in danger of creating creepy treehouses that our students will reject? Or are we taking advantage of a great collaborative tool? My feeling is that in a world of hyperconnectedness, we can extend time and opportunity for students to work harder and longer, to work collaboratively, and to actively learn in an interactive environment. I think that students will get over the creepiness; it's just that they got there first and we are catching up.

Will's point was that in schools we try to filter out things like Facebook, IM-ing, texting, under the guise of keeping them safe. As I mentioned in my previous post, he said that kids are learning social networking from each other, without guidance about the implications of posting personal info in a world that is becoming increasingly transparent. Therefore, educators can't pretend that this stuff doesn't exits. Personally, I don't pretend that it doesn't exist; I am working hard at teaching my students the 'rules of the road' in the web world. I think I am lucky that I get them at an early age, where, hopefully, I will leave a little voice in their minds that helps them make wise decisions when they move on to the middle and high schools.

Will Richardson @Herricks School District

2008-11-04T08:27:00.011-05:00

Blogging live from our professional development day, so pardon the typos. Will Richardson is keynoting here. for our Superintendent's Conference Day. We are embarking on a year of technology in our district. Christine Southard is showing me Coveritlive, so, hopefully you will see that at the bottom of this post.

Will says that our classrooms look very different from what our world looks like right now. Kids and technology -- pointing to 25 Days to Make a Difference - a young girl who is using a blog, working her community. Laura, the 11-year-old, writes what her readers want to know about. So what is Laura learning? That she can engage with the world -- irony is, her blog is blocked at her school.

Students are hyper-connected. Their network is in the palm of their hand - text messaging. Our kids are starting to explore these networking technologies in interesting ways. They are taking advantage of this shift that is occurring on the web - 200,000 YouTube videos are uploaded everyday. 1.8 million blogposts, over 1 million flickr photos uploaded everyday.

He is referring to a 'tectonic shift' - one of those moments in history that we will look back at and say, "oh, my goodness, look at what happened"...like the invention of the printing press. The ramifications are tremendous, see Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. Schools are preparing students for a concrete world, rather than the world that will be. We don't even know what the top ten jobs will be in the coming years.

The easy ability to form groups is one of the main advantages of the technology we have. People who are passionate about something can easily get together. We can form groups around the things we believe in. This is a different model of politics, business and needs to be for education. Media is shifting - citizen journalists - CNN will buy your media. Online versions of news media is encourages you to interact.

New toy: Kindle- Amazon's wireless reading device. By the way, I believe that is on Oprah's Favorite Things list. Businesses are not about products any longer, they are about the conversations about their products. This is a huge shift. So, news, government, business is changing, reacting to these shifts. But EDUCATION is not shifting. We have to speed up. Upward to 80% of students have a Facebook or MySpace site. Gives an example of a student who died, and over 400 comments about grieving were posted on Facebook immediately. We block these things. We need to know about these things, but we filter and block these things because we are fearful. Most students know how to get around these things and can hack into them, anyway. We can't filter out the world to our kids; it is a very challenging moment in education. What do we spend our technology money on? What's here today is obselete tomorrow.

Will doesn't believe in the digital native/immigrant theory. The natives still need our help in using technology well. Learning is changing - with online environments and on the web. Will's blog only addresses how the technologies are changing teaching and learning. The comments to his blog posts reveal and teach a lot. Every person that comes to his blog is potentially a teacher. So different than students who have to come to your classroom. People come to his blog because they WANT to be there. This is about networks, that we can create networks around ideas and connections. Kids have already figured this out. FanFiction - just illustrates what kids are able to do if they are passionate about it. Reality is, administrators and principals will google prospective teachers.

Kids are learning Myspace and Facebook from each other. We need to be the ones to prepare them for their future- a more transparent world, expectation that when they get googled, good stuff will come up. We can't pretend this doesn't exist. We need to teach this in age-appropriate ways. This is the way the world operates now; it has to be taught even at the earliest ages. (OK, this made me feel good, because I am teaching information literacy, web evaluation, and media literacy to my elementary students.)

Students, through blogging, can learn they have a global voice while being guided by a teacher who is teaching them information literacy. Why aren't we teaching kids how to use iPhone in schools to access information? What is the potential for this device? Content is no longer scarce, we teach state capitols for the test - the way it was done years ago when access to information was limited. In a world where content is everywhere, we need to teach kids to find, vet and edit content; form groups with others who are passionate; and learn on their own. Content is not static any longer. Wikipedia is the most important site on the web right now...represents the collaborative construction of truth; negotiate and collaborate around the creation of content. Sarah Palin entry in Wikipedia was most updated entry. If we are not teaching Wikipedia, we are not teaching editable media. We can't teach reading and writing in the same context as we used to. We need to connect our students to the smartest people in the world - to larger, richer experiences -- and we now have the capabilities to do this. Our kids can do real work for a real audience, even in first grade - look at Radio Willoweb.

Challenge: Teachers have to realize that this is about us...getting our brains around the idea that the world is changing. The tools may change, but what won't go away is our ability to connect with others around the world any time we want to, about the things we are passionate about.

Election Webquest: Meet the Candidates

2008-08-25T05:51:00.002-04:00

I have created a webquest for upper elementary-middle school classes called "Meet the Candidates." This is an award-winning project, updated for the 2008 election, with web 2.0 tools incorporated. The project is available at: http://eev.liu.edu/KK/election/meetthecandidates/index.htm

Your students will learn about candidates and elections as they participate in this timely project by working in teams to research platforms and policies, develop marketing plans, or plan for public awareness campaigns. All links are included. The project will culminate with a virtual election.

Would you like your class to participate in this project??

Deadline to join is: September 5th, 2008. Project must be completed by October 31st. To join: go to the project website, read through it, and then click on the 'teacher' page for directions on how to participate!

Hoping classes across the country will participate! Check it out!

The Chronicles of Ralphie - or - How I Spent My Summer Vacation

2008-07-20T05:34:00.004-04:00

So, I got a puppy, another golden retriever that we named "Ralph". He is 10 weeks old now and it is like having another baby. He is beautiful, very independent, funny, smart, and sometimes a royal pain! The past two weeks have revolved around taking care of him. This morning he chased a spider he discovered on the kitchen floor, which I thankfully got to before he ate it - yuck! But, I have to say (with motherly pride) that he is 99% housetrained, has learned sit, stay, and come. On the other hand, he can be a real rascal and occasionally has these spurts of energy where he acts like Wiley Coyote (reminds me of some of my students). He barks at the barbecue. His mother is an agility champ; apparently, Ralphie takes after her as the other day he somehow managed to jump over our very tall couch. My house is a maze of baby gates. But...I have definitely fallen in love.

Yesterday was the first day we actually left him alone in the house. Joey (hubby) and I drove down to Jones Beach and took an hour walk on the boardwalk. Refreshing and great to breathe in that ocean air! Anyway, we came home to a sleepy puppy -- no accidents, no damage. Yay! By the way, my kids picked out his name. It kind of suits him, though.

So Proud of My Students

2008-07-09T11:00:00.004-04:00

I have nine graduate students right now that are deeply engrossed in setting up social network accounts. They are an interesting mix of LMS and soon to be LMS. They are discovering so much about web 2.0 and it's application in the library media center setting. We are at the midpoint of our five day summer institute - and they have mastered blogging, social networking, social bookmarking, photosharing, image generating, and more in our short time together. Go LIBRARIANS!!!

What is School Library 2.0?

2008-06-22T06:03:00.002-04:00

I am in the middle of preparing for the graduate Summer Institute I will be teaching this July about School Library Web 2.0. As Kristin Fontichiaro, a media specialist with the Birmingham (MI) Public Schools, points out,

Web 2.0 tools tend to have some common themes and concepts:
Working together (to develop open-source software, to build collective knowledge such as in the Wikipedia, to make conference calls using Skype, to share tags and favorite Webspaces via Delicious or Furl)
Finding and sharing one’s voice (via blogging, videocasting, YouTube, or podcasting to an authentic audience)
Responding to the work of others (via blog comments or “talkback” audio recording features or working on one’s own blog)
Finding a community (via social networking like Facebook, Myspace, or LibraryThing, or via interactive environments like SecondLife)
Expressing oneself in a variety of modalities (audio podcasts, videos, writing)
Learning by interacting with content and with peers (all of the above!)

...Now let’s strip away the technology for a moment and look just at the activities that are bolded above. Are there tools beyond Web 2.0 that we can use to strengthen our school library’s importance in our students’ learning lives? Let’s try the list of important themes and concepts again, this time mapping to non-technology things we find in strong libraries:

Working together (combining individual research into a group project, being part of a broadcast team, re-enacting a storytime tale through drama, contributing findings to a community “graffiti” bulletin board)
Finding and sharing one’s voice (via meaningful instructional projects that call on students to wrangle with authentic, real-world issues and share their findings with others — think about student research on global warming, invasive species, etc., a writing center where young writers can explore storymaking and storytelling)
Responding to the work of others (conferencing with peers)
Finding a community (book clubs, hanging out in the library at lunchtime)
Expressing oneself in a variety of modalities (synthesizing research in a variety of ways that go far beyond a PowerPoint with three bullets per page, such as written projects, drama, songwriting, original historical fiction, original stories and puppetry, etc.)
Learning through interactivity with content and peers (What can I learn from you? What can I learn from this source?)

After reading the above, I would like my graduate students to fill in the following sentence and leave it as a comment to this blog post:

My ideal school library is a place where ....

Mixing it Up With Mixbook

2008-06-20T05:14:00.003-04:00

As the school year draws to a close, I have to give a shout out to one Web 2.0 tool that I just loved using - Mixbook. We used Mixbook for our culminating project in one of my fifth grade research classes. Students examined children's rights, focusing on the situation of children in Kenya, through a project I developed called Kids for Kenya. Our students raised hundreds of dollars that will be utilized to pay for a child to complete his secondary education. One of the fundraisers was the sale of this book, published on Mixbook and available in print. The great people from Mixbook are donating some of the proceeds to the Kenya Education Fund.

Mixbook is a super tool for publishing online books and I can tell you first hand that the printed versions come out wonderfully. Take a look at our book at this link.
Leave us a comment. Better yet, buy a printed copy. For a quick preview, see below.

In Memory of Maggie

2008-05-31T05:11:00.003-04:00

This past Tuesday I lost a great friend ... my 11 year-old golden retriever, Maggie. Those of you who are animal lovers will understand how sad it is to lose a loyal and loving member of your family. She suddenly became very, very sick from cancer, and on Tuesday I had to make the decision to put her down. We took her to a wonderful facility in Westbury, Compassionate Care, where we had our own private room. Maggie laid on a blanket, I was next to her and held her as she was given the injection. It was one of the saddest moments in my life. Maggie was the best dog I ever had in my entire life and it was so hard to let her go. I am pretty much cried out and I am trying to forget the memories of her last day here on earth and only remember all the joy and laughter she brought to my family. I was touched by how compassionate my colleagues were at work this week. It really helped. Some people might think "oh, it was just a dog," but she was like one of my children and it hurts so to not have her here anymore. This picture of her was taken about a year ago after a trip to the groomer...I love this picture 'cause she was so NOT a ribbon & bow type of personality! It makes me smile to look at this.

I have begun searching for a new puppy ... the house seems so quiet ... I got an email last night from a breeder on Long Island who is expecting a litter in a couple of weeks. So--if all things work out, I will have a new 'baby' in July.

One Flea Can Worry a Whole Dog

2008-05-13T06:03:00.005-04:00

Interesting class last night for TEAM. Dr. Mark Weston gave a presentation, One Flea Can Worry a Whole Dog, where he talked about the evolution of education, where it has been and where can it go. He pointed out that 65% of students complete school; of those, a large percent require accommodation; about 30% feel they are not challenged. Roughly 1 in 3 students feel the system is working for them. How do we interpret this situation? What are the 4 or 5 practices that we must have?

Dr. Michael Byrne, co-chairman of the educational technology graduate program at Long Island University, added some interesting data from a survey (sorry, I don't know where the survey is from) of some parents:

67% of parents think that the web don't help kids teach to communicate.
87% of parents think it doesn't help them learn to work with others.
3 out of 4 parents did not believe the web could teach kids to be responsible in their communities.

He continued to say that technology should be the 'flea' that positively effects differentiated learning for our students. If we are going to make changes we have to be able to demonstrate to the community that the technology can have a positive effect. Most schools can't demonstrate this.

Technology is the single most powerful force we have to dramatically improve learning down to the individual. The vast majority of educators see technology as a piece of chalk. That is true if it is not integrated into the curriculum, not into the community. It is an expensive piece of chalk!

So, how do we communicate what we are doing with technology to the community? I know that in my district, there are a handful of teachers who are successfully using technology in a way that is helping students communicate and collaborate, through blogging, wikis, skype, various web 2.0 tools and global collaborative projects. In my school, Noel Forte, Adam Dugger, and I have our students blogging (talk about communication!) and working in collaborative wikis with other schools from different locations in the U.S. We have a third grade class communicating and sharing information with a school in Australia, I have a first grade class working in a wiki with a class from Taiwan. I have recently received emails from a teacher in Poland and a teacher in New Zealand who want to work with our classes. In another school in our district, Lisa Parisi and Christine Southard have been doing amazing technology-centered projects working with classrooms from all over in wikis and google docs.

We are a handful of teachers who have our students podcasting, vodcasting, working with students inside the classroom and outside the classroom. We have tapped into this new creative avenue that allows our students to communicate what they are thinking and learning in differentiated ways to a worldwide audience. Our students are engaged and excited in a way not seen before. We have invited parents to be part of it, to read the blogs, view the Voicethreads, and leave comments. Lisa, Christine, and I have been teaching professional development courses in our district to share our experiences with other faculty. It is a slow process, to get others on board.

We want the technology to be more than an expensive piece of chalk. We want to be the 'flea that worries the dog'! Are we succeeding? Time will tell. With programs like TEAM and this core group of mentors modeling what they are doing with others, I know we are beginning to shake up the dog, I think, I hope. Change is slow--and that is perfectly OK. To make this shift we must be willing to share what we know and what we are learning. The technology landscape is constantly evolving. Everytime I check out my feeds in Google Reader, or click on a link from Twitter friends, I learn something new. I am lucky to work in a school district that applauds the kind of efforts that teachers like myself and the others mentioned are putting in and are willing to examine what we have accomplished and support it through staff development opportunities. As Peter Senge says, in The Fifth Discipline, a learning organization is "an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future." As a district, we must create a new shared vision about technology.

Twitter??

2008-05-09T06:35:00.003-04:00

Great post from Doug Johnson about the value of Twitter. Something to think about. I like Twitter for making connections with other teachers or librarians for sharing information or collaborating on projects. I think it's great for asking questions about new apps that people have tried out. I also am interested to know what some really fabulous ed-techie types are doing out there with their classes or at their conference sessions.

What I don't like about Twitter is that some people use it for "look at me" purposes. I've been guilty of that myself. Then I saw how annoying it was when I saw other people do it.

On the other hand, it's a great shortcut for reading blog posts when you are not in the mood to go through your RSS feeder. And, I have to admit, sometimes I do enjoy knowing that David Warlick is exercising his marvelous mind somewhere in the world. And I love to know what caught Vicki Davis' eye.

What do you think???

Looking for Virtual Participants for Poem in Your Pocket Day- April 17

2008-04-05T05:11:00.001-04:00

April 17th is POEM IN YOUR POCKET DAY. The idea is simple: have your students select a poem they love during National Poetry Month then carry it with them to share with other students on April 17.
We are looking for classrooms to SKYPE with our school for our Poem in Your Pocket Day event! We are hoping that other schools will videoconference with us throughout the day to share poetry via skype! Interested in joining us? Leave a message here!!

Curriculum for a schoolwide celebration of poetry is available at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dvtjctt_371hmjbhpdg. More poetry curriculum is available at http://schools.nyc.gov/academics/englishlanguagearts/educatorresources/poetry%2bresources.htm

Back to the Future

2008-03-30T20:29:00.003-04:00

I was interviewed for Edutopia about place-based storytelling. The article is called Marking Time: Back to the Future on Web 2.0.

Color My Wiki

2008-03-20T07:00:00.002-04:00

Wikispaces has added a color feature! You can now change the color, font, size or alignment of text on your page. Go to http://blog.wikispaces.com/2008/03/bringing-color-to-your-wiki.html to check it out.

What Do You Do?

2008-03-18T05:11:00.005-04:00

It's been awhile since I've posted an article (not counting yesterday's live blog at the ASSET Conference). This article is prompted by a remark my husband made to me yesterday when I got home from the conference, after my presentation on Web 2.0: More Than Just Razzle Dazzle.

..."How did it go? I still don't understand what you do."

So, how do I explain what it is that I do? Better question - what should a library media specialist be doing? After my presentation yesterday, I had two requests for permission to come observe what I do in my library media center. One was from the head of a Suffolk Library Association; one from a school district. Both said that their librarians do not do what I do because they claim that there is not time to do it. Honestly, I don't quite know how I juggle teaching 600 kids, teaching a graduate course in educational technology, creating workshops and presentations, mentoring library interns, staying current in ed-tech, being a mom and a wife. One answer could be that I wake up very early in the morning (it's 5:24 am right now) to organize my day. But, in all honesty, it's more than putting in extra hours. I think that if you love what you do, then somehow you find the time to get done what you want to get done. If you can surround yourself with people who are like-minded, that helps. If you can't find like-minded people where you work, join a social network, like classroom 2.0 or teacher-librarian 2.0 or twitter. In fact, join one or more of those anyway! Catch the spirit. Go to conferences to find motivation. Take a professional development course and learn something new. If these things don't appeal to you, it is probably time to start thinking about hanging it up. All of us librarians remember the library motto "lifelong learner". It applies to us as professionals, too.

ASSET 2008: Keynote - Rushton Hurley

2008-03-17T08:37:00.004-04:00

Blogging live from ASSET 2008 in Huntington, NY. Rushton Hurley is the director of Next Vista For Learning. Having fun with clickers - getting audience statistics. Haha funny - 54 teachers clicked in that they've been teaching since the dawn of time. The fun of teaching: 11 people - no place in learning for fun! Themes -fun, technology, and testing. Where is the common ground?

If what we do is teach really well in front of class and they're not getting it, it may be more about reception, not broadcast.

Sketchup - from Google - build a house - there are tutorials on how to do this. Can use with science -can put shadows on the house by time of year! Ask students, "why is this happening?"
Google Earth - historical, geographical tie-ins that you can see visually.
Video - incredibly powerful tool. Getting kids interested in doing a job just right.
PicLens - make a photowall - can use it for a wordwall.

How does this relate to testing? Find a way to reach kids that are having difficulties with testing. Getting ideas across in a different way. Wrote a minigrant to teach the kids how to make videos to help explain hard-to-understand concepts. Kids are making the movie; audience is rest of class, school, world. Confidence booster for kids. Make a video of our school - what is it like in our school? Kids worked for hours to 'get it just right.' Low achieving kids made these videos. Tools to give these students another opportunity to say 'we belong, too'.

Later: My session, Web 2.0: Beyond Razzle Dazzle, went very well. Audience very appreciative. I made many references to David Warlick and Will Richardson - thank goodness for these two!

Thinking Maps; Google Doodle Contest

2008-02-17T18:47:00.003-05:00

Just a short post about two interesting items:

Check out this video link about thinking maps.
Google has announced a doodle contest for grades K-12. Go to their site for details. What if...one of your kid's doodle was chosen?

Looking for New MidLink Editor

2008-02-14T06:42:00.001-05:00

MidLink Magazine, is looking for a new teacher/editor to join us! I have been an editor for 7 years and the experience has been so valuable! Our chief editor is Brenda Dyck, an amazing innovative educator from Canada who writes for Education World and who is the recipient of several major awards.New MidLink Editor will be added to the existing team of editors this spring. This is our call for submissions of applications which are due by March 16, 2008. Our editors work with international colleagues to create content for MidLink Magazine. MidLink’s mission is to highlight the exemplary work from classrooms around the world. The Advisory Board includes founder Caroline McCullen, State and Local Partnerships, SAS inSchool, Cary, NC, Dr. Lisa Goble, Director of School Services, NC State University, Raleigh, NC, and Beckey Reed, Consultant, School Services, NC State University, Raleigh, NC.
Download Application E-mail completed applications to Glenn Gurley - glenngurley@gmail.com by March 16, 2008.
Questions? leave a comment!

Federal Holidays VoiceThread Takes Off!

2008-01-25T09:21:00.000-05:00

Our Federal Holidays project, which included a VoiceThread by our fifth grade students is starting to take on a life of its own! I sent out a tweet to Wesley Fryer, who not only commented on our VoiceThread, but blogged about it in his blog, Moving At the Speed of Creativity. His blog lead other people to view our VoiceThread. I have received a lot of positive feedback on this project over the past couple of days from people that I don't know, from all over the country. This is the power of the web! This is what Steve Dembo was talking about in his presentation. Very exciting for me and for my students!

FETC - MidLink Presentation

2008-01-25T08:46:00.000-05:00

It is freezing in Orlando (by Florida standards) this morning! Having my coffee and reflecting on my day at FETC, my presentation, and MidLink Magazine.

After presenting, I realized that MidLink truly provides a great service to teachers. Our collection of projects, created by our editors who hail from New York, Canada, and North Carolina, are great examples of project-based learning that's ready to be replicated. The projects are connected to standards and incorporate technology and collaboration tools. They are applicable to elementary, middle, and high school and are models for how to weave educational technology into the curriculum.

Joselyn Todd and I presented Web 2.0: More Than Razzle Dazzle to a standing room only crowd of educators from all areas of the education field. Surprisingly, most of the web 2.0 tools we discussed were new to a big part of our audience. We created a PBwiki site for our presentation and asked a member of the audience to be a scribe and take notes in the wiki for the rest of the participants. Coincidentally, in her notes, she mentions that most of the notes came from back channeling -- I love that!

Fifty minutes absolutely flew by. We could have gone on for another hour! After we finished, it was nice to receive comments from people about how much they learned from our presentation and how they were excited to go out and try the web 2.0 tools we talked about. It was also very cool to know that people were 'tweeting' live during our presentation and blogging about it, too!

Web 2.0 was a focus at FETC this year, as pointed out in T.H.E. Journal.

FETC - Steve Dembo

2008-01-24T15:19:00.000-05:00

Blogging live from FETC - Steve Dembo, from Discovery Educator Network (DEN) talking about the huge amount of information out there - Flattening of the World (The World Is Flat) that creates a level playing field for people to compete and succeed:

open sourcing - people collaborating together to create tools that are comparable to stuff that is out there; doing it voluntarily. Open source version might have 1,000 people working on it. Doing it cause they want to, cause they are passionate. Tools are provided free of charge so people will use it.
Steroids - the ability to access the Internet anytime, anywhere, more ways than ever to be connected in a big way.

More access to tools than we ever had before. Web 2.0.

Wikinommics of learning: mass collaboration has changed everything. Curriki a curriculum project that is a wiki where they are trying to build curriculum that schools can draw upon.
Perpetual beta: web 2.0 tools just keep throwing it up there, perpetual newness ongoing. Institut St. Joseph - Canadian school where students blog all the time. Their stuff is always in perpetual beta. They put a stamp on it when it is a final draft.
Innovation vs. Invention - a lot of people taking what is out there and mashing them together, putting them together to invent something very cool - they are doing something innnovative with the tools. Example: Google Lit Trips.

New Ways to work: Collaborate in real time.

This creates a democratization of knowledge combined with democratization of tools to use that knowledge and create things from it. The average person can be innovative, be published, get credit for it and add it back into the body of knowledge. You don't have to publish in a major journal to have an audience anymore. This all leads to this phenomena of changes in online educational community. The community becomes my network. "MY" implies ownership - publish, comments, reader becomes contributor and collaborator.

Twitter: going to a community of educators and saying, What do you know? Join us.Spontaneous professional development. People are doing it because they are passionate about education; lifelong learners.

Classroom 2.0 - you can create own social network. You can reach your niche for your community.

Second Life - big learning curve, but once you get past it, it has amazing things for educators to get together and explore the tool together--how it could be used in education. People are having fun.

Native way to attend a conference:

live blogs

podcast

backchannel - people in the audience open up a skype chat session to talk about what's going on making connections in real time.

skypecast

twitter

ustream

Sharing what's happening in one place with other people, starting your own node with a web in real time, participate with people who are watching it. You can create multiple communities to fit who you are and make the connections. IF you do nothing else at a conference, continue to collaborate online when you are separate. Keep the learning ongoing. Connecting teachers to their most valuable resource - each other. Your best resource is the other people who do similar things. Nothing more valuable than building your personal learning network.

Thanks, Steve, for a very motivating presentation!

Hall Davidson @ FETC 2008: My Notes

2008-01-24T10:41:00.000-05:00

Another person I was looking forward to hearing is Hall Davidson, the Director of Discovery Educator Network (DEN). Following are my "Blogging live" notes from his presentation:

The gist of the presentation is about html code and how easy it is to copy and paste code into applications to tailor these applications to suit your needs. It's sort of an HTML for Dummies (don't mean that in a bad way) -- in other words, all you have to know is how to find the codes and then you can paste it anywhere. Hall had a funny image of his face floating on Google Earth. Basically, you just need to be able to find the image source code to do this, just insert the code in the placemarker description box. You can also do this with videos and webcam sites.
Google Earth: you can make your face float on Google Earth by copying & pasting the code right on. Hal is having technical problems.

If you didn't know about this, check out blackle.com it's google in black.

Hall says, "Copy and paste gives the kids the illusion of control.. Code can make things work better for schools."

Hall spent a lot of time talking about pasting code into ipods for students. Great idea, if your school has ipods!

Here's a good tip: Email geec@google.com to get a free google earth pro license for educators. Pro lets you make a movie.

FETC-Kathy Schrock - Second Life: My Notes

2008-01-24T08:14:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I spent a full day at FETC 2008 in Orlando. I started at the early bird session with Kathy Schrock, who spoke about Second Life. According to Kathy, Second Life provides exciting opportunities for professional development. ISTE has a home in there and is very supportive for educators who need help learning their way around. They have docents who will help you. Having attempted to navigate Second Life myself, I agree with Kathy when she said that upon entering this virtual world for the first time you feel “homeless”. She said that when you first enter you are dropped off on Orientation Island, which takes you through how to do things.

Kathy also mentioned a few places in Second Life to visit, including “Virtual Starry Night,” “Global Kids,” “Second Life Pioneers” (a virtual adaptation of a webquest in which students meet immigrants and choose an immigrant character to research), and “Terra Incognita.” Terra Incognita Is from Australia and is owned by a person who is doing research on educational applications of Second Life in education. Educators can use her collaborative spaces but you must allow her to ‘observe’ for her research.

Still not sure if I have the time to tackle Second Life or if I even want to, but Kathy is certainly fired up about it!

Kathy’s presentation links are available @http://www.kathyschrock.net/muve.

Historical and Current Abolitionists: Fighting to end slavery

2008-01-03T06:08:00.000-05:00

Are you a high school teacher? Then you must check out Wesley Fryer's post:

If you have aspiring digital storytellers in your classroom, let them know about “The Better Hour Contest.” The deadline for entry is March 1, 2008, so they will have to get busy once school begins again in January. The available prizes are substantial, but the overarching purpose is even more impressive and important.

What was done at your school this past year to commemorate the 1807 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in England? Do students, teachers, and others realize slavery is still a CURRENT event, and there are things they can be doing to take action and stop it?

If not you, then who? If not now, then when? Become a modern day abolitionist, and encourage your students to join you. We aren’t practicing and sharing these digital literacy skills merely to amuse and inform ourselves. We’re sharing these skills to transform the world into a better place.

Our Stories

2007-12-11T06:47:00.000-05:00

There is a very important project that has just been launched, sponsored by One Laptop Per Child, UNICEF and Google, called "Our Stories" ( www.ourstories.org ).

From their website:

About Our Stories

...How would you like to be remembered?
...What was the saddest moment in your life?
...What is your proudest achievement?
...When did you first fall in love?

Answering questions helps us frame the stories of our lives. As we speak, we become storytellers. As we listen, we hear echoes of our own lives and discover new worlds through others. By empowering storytellers and interviewers around the world to record and share their voices online, Our Stories™ aims to create a virtual archive of stories of everyday life.

Our Stories was founded by UNICEF , One Laptop per Child (OLPC), and Google, and to help collect, preserve, and share online the stories of the world's people and their cultures and communities. The OLPC initiative, partnered with existing UNICEF projects, gives children the tools to interview, record, and share the stories of their parents, grandparents, and others in their families and communities. The focus during this phase is on children in developing countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia where OLPC computers are available. Eventually, children and others will be able to share and access recorded stories directly through the Our Stories Children's site .

Our Stories is also committed to providing access to people's stories from around the world in their native languages. You can also hear stories collected by the Museum of the Person in Brazil, and by UNICEF from Ghana, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Uganda. And we anticipate adding stories from Argentina, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and other countries soon.

You cannot currently upload your own stories. However, they plan to have systems in place in the future to allow all people to upload their own audio interviews to share. In the meantime, the site says, "join our community now by listening to our current collection of stories found on the Find a Story page. And take advantage of our interview guides to start capturing the stories and lives of those around you."

Ishmael Beal, author of the memoir A Long Way Gone , has recorded a message on this website, available at: http://www.ourstories.org/ishmaelbeah.html. I have read his book and found it sad and shocking, but worth reading. As a 12-year-old growing up in Sierra Leone, he lived a life not unlike a typical American pre-teen, listening to hip hop and hanging out with friends. When civil war comes to his country, however, he is surrounded by death and is forced to survive by becoming a soldier, plied with drugs and sent on killing sprees. The violence is frequent and not for the squeamish, however, it is a remarkable true story of a boy overcoming great odds.

Children's rights, cultural tolerance and storytelling has been a focus for me over the past few years--as you can see in the projects I created:

The Our Stories project will give a voice to children all over the world. It is also an amazing model of the EEV key elements.

Be a Video All-Star

2007-12-11T06:09:00.000-05:00

From the Discovery Educator's Network: (Joe Brennan):

21st Century Connections is once again inviting K-12 teachers and schools to make a 2-3 minute video on why digital learning tools are important in educating today’s students. There will be 1 grand prize and 3 runner up prizes in each of the three (elementary, middle and high school) grade categories. The 1st place teams will receive a Lenovo laptop and 25 licenses for the Adobe Digital School Collection. Runners up will also receive copies of ADSC. In addition, winning schools’ principals will win a trip to a 21st Century Connection event.

They have also put together a nice list of things you can do to create a more polished video. Regular readers know the drill: planning, lighting, preparation, sound, a variety of shots, and plan some more. Deadline for submissions is midnight January 31, 2008.

P.S. And in addition to or instead of entering the contest, wouldn’t your school board like to see a few well crafted video minutes from the students on why digital tools are important in their learning?

It's All Good

2007-11-22T07:33:00.001-05:00

It's All Good
Originally uploaded by rockwilder

One of the teachers in my school was selling bracelets for her daughter (who has been ill) that says, "It's all good." I have been wearing it in support for her, but also because it reminds me that life is "all good" when things seems like they are about to spiral out of control (or when I am surrounded by negative thinking, which often happens behind the desk in my library -sigh!). I just read Bette's blog about how special Thanksgiving is, but especially, for her family, the day before Thanksgiving. It put me in a reflective mood...so here is my day before story...
Last night I was at La Guardia waiting for the moment when I would see my wonderful, tall, too-thin son , Adam, appear after a long day of traveling from Wisconsin, where he attends the University of Wisconsin. I hadn't seen him since the third week in August (except through one iChat). Finally, I spotted him walking down the ramp, looking like a typical college student - unshaven, messy hair, backpack and laptop. What joy to hug him hard. And I thought, that despite my worrying the past three months about his health and happiness, "It's all good." Later that night, the sound of deep male voices and laughter emanating from my kitchen as Adam's best friends raided my pantry while they caught up with each other about their lives at Columbia, Brown and Wesleyan (yes, he has smart friends) allowed me to go up to my bedroom, get under the covers, and think again, "It's all good."
Yesterday at school was insane. I scheduled all of my fourth and fifth grade research classes to meet with Noel Forte and me to make sure we were at the point we needed to be at in our various projects. There wasn't any time to stop and reflect on how wonderfully these students are doing - how engrossed they were as they went into their wikis, their blogs, their powerpoints, transforming and combining. As one of my classes sat in teams arguing (yes, very heated arguing) as they brainstormed ideas for a new U.S. holiday for our Federal Holidays project, I couldn't have been happier. In Adam Dugger's fourth grade class, we brainstormed questions to ask our Native American Project partner school in SC when we videoconference with them next week. Happy, happy, joy, joy. Collaboration, Synthesis and Constructivist Learning at its best with all four of my classes!
Yesterday was also a banner day for me with paychecks. It coincided that I received my paychecks from both of my jobs as well as from the Teacher Center for the Digital Storytelling Course I taught. Was I happy about the money? Of course, especially when my husband complained during the drive to LGA about the skyrocketing cost of heating oil. But, honestly, what really made me happy was what those checks represent - accomplishment. I am pulling it off - somehow - weaving all of this together, as Tim Gunn from Project Runway would say, I am "making it work." Bette talks about how layered our learning is, how we step into and out of different spaces. My life is like that. During the course of one day, I do step in and out of so many spaces, and I have to say that I love it. Although it is often exhausting, and I definitely do not get enough sleep, and I can't seem to get myself to stay on a diet (at some point I will step into that space and FOCUS), I can't envision my life in any other way. How boring it would be. How lucky I am. How lucky I was yesterday, to start my day with a random hug from a fourth grade (troubled) student and to end it with a powerful one from my son. As I said, it's all good. I am thankful.

Carry on! (Now, if only I could look like Heidi Klum).

We the People Announces Bookshelf Grant

2007-11-18T18:57:00.000-05:00

The National Endowment for the Humanities in cooperation with the American Library Association Public Programs Office is accepting applications for the fifth We the People Bookshelf program. Each year, NEH identifies a theme important to the nation’s heritage and selects books that embody that theme to build the We the People Bookshelf. The theme for the 2007-08 Bookshelf is “Created Equal.”

The “Created Equal” Bookshelf grants are part of the NEH's We the People initiative, which aims to encourage and strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture through libraries, schools, colleges, universities, and cultural institutions. Since 2003, NEH and ALA have awarded We the People Bookshelves to 6,000 public and school libraries. NEH plans to issue a We the People Bookshelf each year on themes related to American ideas and ideals.

Web 2.0 Overload?

2007-11-11T20:53:00.000-05:00

When is it too much of a good thing? I have lately been feeling like I am on web 2.0 overload. I am blogging, wiki-ing; I use twitter, iChat, gmail chat, skype; I am a part of 4 'nings' now: Classroom 2.0; Teacherlibrarian 2.0; Information Fluency 2.0; NYSCATE 2.0, I have 5 different email addresses, I probably have hundreds of rss feed reads to catch up on and tons of podcasts to listen to. I have 7 billion passwords and user names. I am maintaining about 6 wikis, and overseeing 100 student blogs on blogmeister. Not to mention that I like to get in and read the 30 or so TEAM blogs on a weekly basis. (Oh, and by the way, I also teach 600 elementary students, 30 adult students, occasional teacher courses, have two kids in college and a husband, a dog, and a house to give attention to.)

So how can I possibly keep up with all of these forums of communication????
There is going to come a time when I will have to pick and choose my way through all of these new web 2.0 tools. There are times that I JUST DON'T CARE what other people are doing!! There are times that I have to tell myself to close my laptop - that there is a fine line between wanting to be part of and contribute to this great information network and letting it take over my life!

Do you ever feel that way?

I also think that I have to keep in mind when I read some of the wonderful blogs and interesting 'tweets' of some of my favorite thinkers that for a few of them, this is what they do for a living, and that there are not enough hours in the day for me to blog/twitter/wiki/network at the pace that they do! On the other hand, so many of them have 'day jobs' like I do and yet find the time to think great thoughts and share them with the rest of us. Of course, when I read one of these great insights, my mind starts going, the emails, blogs and wikis get opened, and I'm sucked right back into the thick of it.

I have noticed, however, that one thing for me has gone by the wayside as a result of the availability and immediacy of web 2.0 information - that is, I have basically stopped reading my teacher/library magazines. One, I don't have time and two, by the time it comes to me it's old news or I have read the online version. That worries me a little...

Route 21

2007-11-10T06:49:00.000-05:00

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has launched Route 21.
TEAM cohorts should make it their business to explore this site!

Constructivism in the Library

2007-11-05T05:52:00.000-05:00

TEAM students are working through the constructivism module and blogging about it in their blogs. It reminded me of my own study of this subject when I was a TEAM student a few years ago. The image above was made in Fireworks and it is featured on my Educational Philosophy web page. Reading other students' blogs motivated me to go back and read what I wrote and to think about how I might add to it to incorporate web 2.0, the technological landscape that has emerged since I graduated. Here is what I wrote in 2002:

As schools explore the potential of information and electronic technologies, it has become clear that the 21st century library/educational technology specialist has the responsibility to ensure that students and teachers are effective and critical users of information. At the heart of the American Association of School Librarians' Information Power is a constructivist pedagogical framework. Team building, shared inquiry, project based learning, performance assessment, technology integration, learning communities, critical thinking and viewing, emotional intelligence, and multiple intelligences are the vessels that supply the lifeblood to knowledge construction.

Thoughts on Constructivism and Technology Integration in the Library Media Center:

Meaning making is at the heart of the constructivist philosophy of learning and at the heart of Information Power, the framework for the American Association of School Librarians' Information Literacy Standards. Meaning making is prompted by a problem, question, confusion, disagreement, or dissonance (a need or desire to know) and so involves personal ownership of that problem. In the constructivist model, knowledge is constructed, emergent, situation in action or experience, and distributed. (Jonassen et al,1999). Thus, each person must build or construct a framework of knowledge based on what they already know. Traditionally, teachers were the sage on the stage. In the past, this prepared students for the assembly lines of the Industrial Age. Today, however, students must be encouraged to construct meaning from a myriad of information available to them in the Information Age.

Technology brings into the library more interesting and diverse materials than ever thought possible. Hundreds of libraries and museums, including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonion, distribute their resources in digital form. Technology can expand students' horizons with online field trips to historic sites and to museums to study art and artifacts. They can follow expeditions, engage in simulations, and gather environmental data to share with other students. Library Media Specialists who guide their students to learn in these new ways prepare them for lifelong learning. ("Web-Based Learning," Gwen Solomon and Lynne Schrum, Education Week, May 29, 2002).

The constructivist library media specialist sets up problems and monitors student exploration, guides the direction of student inquiry and promotes new patterns of thinking. Constructivist teachers refer to raw data, primary sources, and interactive materials to provide experiences for their students rather than relying solely on another's set of data. (Classroom Compass, SEDL-SCIMA,1994) Students cannot ask a textbook, "What is it like to rescue a stranded whale?" Yet, this is the type of real-world question that can be asked when technology is used as a partner to foster learning.

How Technologies Foster Learning and Support Knowledge Construction

Technologies in the library media center can be used as vehicles for:

representing learners' ideas, understandings, and beliefs
producing organized, multimedia knowledge bases by learners
accessing needed information
comparing perspectives, beliefs, and world views
representing beliefs, perspectives, arguments, and stories of others
collaborating with others
building consensus among members of a community
helping learners articulate and represent what they know
reflecting on what they have learned
constructing personal representations of meaning

Adapted from Learning With Technology: A Constructivist Perspective by David H. Jonassen, Kyle Peck and Brent G. Wilson (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999)

In a Constructivist Library Media Center:

Student autonomy and initiative are accepted and encouraged.
Higher-level thinking is encouraged. Students are encouraged to connect and summarize concepts by analyzing, predicting, justifying, and defending their ideas.
Students are engaged in dialogue with the teacher and with each other. Social discourse helps students change or reinforce their ideas. If they have the chance to present what they think and hear others' ideas, students can build a personal knowledge base that they understand. The class uses raw data, primary sources, manipulatives, physical, and interactive materials.
The constructivist approach involves students in real-world possibilities, then helps them generate the abstractions that bind phenomena together.

Adapted from In Search of Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms by Jacqueline G. Brooks and Martin G. Brooks (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1993)

Thoughts on Team Building: The Library As A Learning Organization

Learning organizations are where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together. For this to happen, it is argued, organizations need to "discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn al all levels." (Senge 1990).

The goals of today’s library media program point to the development of a community of learners that is centered on the student and sustained by a creative, energetic library media program. Team Building occurs in the library when:

there are learning experiences that encourage students and others to become discriminating consumers and skilled creators of information through comprehensive instruction related to the full range of communications media and technology
the library media specialist provides leadership, collaboration, and assistance to teachers and others in applying principles of instructional design to the use of instructional and information technology for learning
the library media specialist provides resources and activities that contribute to lifelong learning while accommodating a wide range of differences in teaching and learning styles, methods, interests, and capacities
the program functions as the information center of the school, both through offering a locus for integrated and interdisciplinary learning activities within the school and through offering access to a full range of information for learning beyond this locus
the library program provides resources and activities for learning that represent a diversity of experiences, opinions, and social and cultural perspectives.

Adapted from: Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning (AASL, 1998)

Thus, the framework of the library learning community in which students and teachers function needs to be conducive to reflection and engagement. In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge tells us that "real learning gets to the heart of what it is to be human...for a learning organization, 'adaptive learning' must be joined by 'generative learning', learning that enhances our capacity to create." (Senge 1990). Most importantly, learning in the library is a lifelong discipline, a process, in which members of the learning community access, share, contribute, and build information as a team.

To Top

Shared Inquiry: The Underlying Foundation

The library media specialist provides intellectual access to information through learning activities that are integrated into the curriculum and that help all students achieve information literacy by developing effective cognitive strategies for selecting, retrieving, analyzing, evaluating, synthesizing, creating, and communicating information in all formats and in all content areas of the curriculum. (Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning 1998).

Howard Gardner On the Importance of Engaging Students Actively in What They are Studying:

We have schools because we hope that some day when children have left schools that they will still be able to use what it is that they've learned. And there is now a massive amount of evidence from all realms of science that unless individuals take a very active role in what it is that they're studying, unless they learn to ask questions, to do things hands on, to essentially recreate things in their own mind and transform them as is needed, the ideas just disappear. The student may have a good grade on the exam, we may think that he or she is learning, but a year or two later there's nothing left.

Inquiry-based activities cause students to revise their prior understandings and deepen their understandings of the world. Inquiry is a dynamic approach to learning that involves exploring the world, asking questions, making discoveries in the search for new understandings. In an inquiry-based library program, students develop skills such as careful observation, reasoning, critical thinking, and the ability to justify or refute their existing knowledge. Because inquiry begins with a meaningful problem or issue, the process engages students as they come to value the essential question that motivates the inquiry process.

Shared inquiry lends itself to collaborative activities. The collaborations are multidimensional in that students collaborate with each other, with teachers, as they learn alongside with students, and with experts provided by technological access in the library. Project-based learning is a vehicle for students to work in teams, apply what they know, problem-solve, self-direct their learning as they explore real-world problems and tasks. Student learning is gauged through performance assessment, the essential companion to project-based learning.

Critical thinking is directly related to inquiry-based activities. Students are bombarded with electronic, visual information and it is crucial to give them the skills to question what they see; to distinguish between information and info-garbage; to determine the credibility of their sources and to identify and recognize logical fallacies.

Putting It All Together: Building the Learning Community

Team building, collaboration, constructivism, shared inquiry, critical thinking, project-based learning, performance assessment, multiple and emotional intelligences, coupled with the use of information and communication technologies, provide an environment where all members of the community come together to construct knowledge. It is my philosophy to create a learning library in which both educators and students have the opportunity to stay in a continual learning mode as they work in a collegial environment which provides pedagogical, technological, and emotional support. The integration of technology into the library allows connections to be established between communities inside and outside the walls of the library. In this environment, learning is an evolving process where all members of the learning community have the opportunity to learn side by side.

Resources:

Bibliography:

Brooks, Jacqueline G. and Martin G. Brooks. In Search of Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1993.

Jonassen, David H., Kyle Peck and Brent G. Wilson. Learning With Technology: A Constructivist Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999.

Senge, Peter. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. NY: Currency/Doubleday, 1994.

Solomon, Gwen and Lynne Schrum. "Web-Based Learning." Education Week 29 May 2002: 48.

Webliography:

American Library Association and Association for Educational Communications and Technology. "Information Power: Mission and Goals of the School Library Program" [Online] Available June 16, 2002.

Lucas, George. "Edutopia" [Online] Available June 16, 2002.

Murphy, Elizabeth. "Constructivism: From Philosophy to Practice" [Online] Available June 16, 2002.

Southwest Educational Development Laboratory."Constructing Knowledge in the Classroom." Classroom Compass Winter 1994, Vol. 1, No. 3. [Online] Available June 16, 2002.

Further Browsing:

Advanced Readings for Critical Thinking Workshop

Comer School Development Program

Constructivism

I guess what I would add to that now is that web 2.0 mandates a new kind of literacy because the web has become so interactive. Information literacy skills are more critical than ever, and the AASL has recognized this and has just unveiled the revised information literacy standards at the recent AASL Conference in Reno to reflect this. (New Learning Standards). The exponential growth of information on the net and the ability to easily be an information contributor goes hand in hand with constructivist learning. The importance of being an ethical, critical, and creative user of the net cannot be overstressed. And this is why I love what I do! What a great time to have my job!

On a completely different note, my 22-year-old daughter was looking at my blog and said that the frappr map on my blog is "creepy"...hmmm.

There is More Than One Way to Hatch an Idea

2007-10-23T06:01:00.000-04:00

We are beginning to have some great discussions on our TEAM blogs about web 2.0 and its value in our classrooms. Of using technology for the sake of technology...
Sometimes, I have wondered about this myself. For example, why blog if no one is going to read it? (If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, did it really fall?). Why twitter? Do we care that someone is sitting an airport, sipping Starbucks? Is twitter our version of Facebook?
Then, I remembered a blog entry by one of my fifth grade students on our class blog at blogmeister. I asked students to write a blog about what they hoped to learn in my Library Research/ICT class this year. This is what one student said:

When I finish research class

When I finish reasearch class,I want to learn how to type faster. I also want to share my ideas with everyone. I would like to see comments that are good about my blog. I even want to learn how to use the computer better. I already know how to use a computer,but I want to know more about it. If I read other people's blogs, I could maybe hatch an idea from that idea.
That is what I want to learn when I leave research class.

That's it! A 10-year-old captured what this is all about for me - ...I could maybe hatch an idea from that idea. Twitter is bringing more readers to my blog. I am starting to pick up tips and ideas from following some of my favorite thinkers. Through RSS, I learn something new everyday.

This is an amazing time for teaching and an amazing time for lifelong learners. See the Information R/Evolution video below from MWesch. Take part in this. Add to it. Take from it. It's free. Hatch an idea.

*Photo from: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/?display=142963&

Digital Storytelling - Embracing Our Differences

2007-10-20T07:36:00.000-04:00

Photo Courtesy of the Embracing Our Differences Website

I am off this morning to Heckscher Park to give a workshop on using PhotoStory to document an outdoor juried art exhibition celebrating diversity called Embracing Our Differences. In the limited time we have, I won't be able to get into much more than the basics of using the program, but I hope participants will go to Wes Fryer's blog, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, and read this post, as well as explore his blog in general. I plan to do a future workshop on using VoiceThread. Also, notice the neat diagram he made in Skitch. Another cool web 2.0 tool.

More About The Partnership for 21 Century Skills

2007-10-16T18:58:00.000-04:00

Adam Dugger posed some great questions in his comment to my blog about Karen Cator's keynote. Some of his thoughts came up during the q&a at the panel discussion at the conference. Of course, testing and how that limits the 'creativity' for teachers was brought up by more than one teacher. And teachers do have to abide by that right now, but both David and Karen felt that there is a little progress. The 21 Century Skills partnership is supported by the AASL, and many organizations.

Karen Cator said that this 21st century learning framework is a step in the right direction. From their site:

New Online Education Resource to Feature 21st Century Skills

Oct. 10, 2007 -- Skills such as problem solving, innovation and creativity have become critical in today's global economy, and educators will now have additional resources to prepare our young people to succeed.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has developed Route 21, an online, one-stop-shop for 21st century skills-related resources. Route 21 demonstrates how 21st century skills can be supported through standards, professional development, assessments and teaching and learning.

Route 21 will launch on November 7. Be sure to check back then to learn more about this groundbreaking online educator resource.

Also, on their resource page, The Partnership for 21st Century Skills offers "...various tools and resources to assist educators in integrating 21st century skills into education. Their tools were developed through a comprehensive process involving hundreds of educators, researchers and employers across the country."

They also have Assess 21 - "a Web-based repository for information on assessments of 21st century skills. This repository is designed to serve as a central hub for background information on 21st century skills assessments as they become available and is open to submissions."

Apple John Lennon Educational Tour Bus

2007-10-16T05:57:00.000-04:00

Picture above from http://www.lennonbus.org/

Yesterday at the conference I was able to tour the Apple John Lennon Imagine Educational Tour Bus. It was amazing! It is a recording studio on wheels that travels all over the U.S. and Canada, visiting schools, (for free), and allowing students to spend the day in the bus creating their own music videos. Students write the lyrics, create the music, create the video, and the Apple engineers turn that into a MTV-style music video. That is burned to a DVD and given to the students. We got to see the Imagine bus and watched this video. How cool is that!

Technology Summit Conference - Keynote Karen Cator

2007-10-15T17:18:00.000-04:00

Blogging from the conference...

Karen Cator – Directs Apple’s Leadership and Advocacy efforts in education.

21st Century Skills and Learning:

Why 21st C Skills?
Partnership for 21st c Skills – partnership of technology groups, AASL, technology companies - (such as Apple, Dell), cross section of entities involved in developing framework.

Route 21 will be on this website - standards, assessments .

Why do we have to talk about doing things differently in schools?

1. Global Competition: “Did You know” video on youtube. The top 25% of students in China outnumber the entire population of the US.
2. Global Interdependence – global warming, internet security, where are those things stored? A virus will travel the world 6x before it burns itself out. This is what kids have to think about.
3. Information is ubiquitous – if I can google the answers to the test is that cheating or is that resourceful? {What do YOU think???} Do we have to completely rethink the assessment systems?
4. Workplace Innovation – the workplace has completely changed with the advent of the Internet. What are companies looking for in the next 5 years that are not coming out of schools today? –->TOP two things they are looking for are:

Creativity and Innovation – that has to be our niche if we want to compete.
The ability to operate in a global environment – international trade –entire of integration of business and person relationships. The workspace has completely change.

5. Student Experience – outside of school has changed tremendously. Texting, communicating, problem-solving – not multi-tasking but parallel processing. Students are totally connected to each other –text each other, etc., when they come into school we tend to shut that down. We tend to shut down their creative collaborative side.

Individuals – ---->Sharing Content------>Virtual Communities

Today’s Challenge: Student Engagement
We have tremendous nonretention issue in the US. Every student, whether they are successful or not, every experience is about relevance – how do we engage them in a relevant experience; and a social and emotional connection –kids don’t care about NCLB, they care about that someone knows they are there. It used to be OK that 30% of our kids dropped out of school. It’s not anymore.

For every 100 9th graders in the US only 69% graduate, 40% enroll incollege immediately; 27% are still enrolled in college and 18 graduate college on time from National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education Policy Alert April 2004.

Tony Wagner, Harvard 2007 THE SCHOOLING DISCONNECT
Schooling today -

Getting right answer and performing well on multiple choice tests
Working alone
Learning within academic disciplines
Memorizing fixed info
Adhering to external and inflexible time segments

21st C Schooling:

Figuring out right questions and using skills to solve new problems
Working in teams
Working across disciplines
Learning how to find info, communicate it and apply it
managing time and commitments and prioritization

Creativity:

26% of employers use google myspace and facebook to look up potential employees – students are CEO's of themselves – what do you want the world to see you as?

Where do they publish - where is theiroutlet for creativity? One place Apple Student Gallery -
Apple has insomnia film festival – 3000 teams were producing and publishing videos. Students were collaborating, writing, - think of the process that could be assessed!

There’s a whole new growth center for creative industries – how do we get our kids aware of this? Digital media careers will go from over 1 million employed to over 7 million by 2014.

What does innovation look like in education?

How do we create that environment for students to be producers – to create, distribute, access and environment.

Content creation tools. Communicate effectively with multiple media types – text, video, phtot, music, podcast, websites. What are professionals using? ILife is the pro set.

Distribution environment: iPod + iTunes – mobile device to take away from your computer. iTunes education content from national geographic to David Warlick. iTunes U is now in regular music store. Open free public access in the itunes store. Gives you access to 30 public college and universities – this is amazing. Changes everything concerning distribution and content. Apple is thinking aout how to publish content specifically for k12. Look at usf --university of south florida-- has audio books for kids for all ages.

Collaboration -video ichat, online global community global awareness unit-peace, conflict and security on apple learning exchange.

Technologies to build relevant engaging learning environments.

Technology Summit - Panel Discussion With David Warlick and Karen Cator

2007-10-15T11:26:00.000-04:00

Yikes! I am going to run out of battery soon!

DW- teachers should be modeling how to deal with an abundance of information.
KC - teachers should be as proficient as students - look at NETS for teachers too!
We need to teach kids to ask good questions.
With wikis we are seeing students create their own 'textbook'.
KC- We need to teach teachers how to create compelling assignments.
DW-One of shifts we have to make is tc change our notion of a teacher. That the teacher is the model learner. Teachers need to teach themselves. The learning of the technology is part of the teaching week - a master learner in today's information landscape.

...out of battery...more later!

Technology Summit - David Warlick -Redefining Digital Literacy in the 21st Century

2007-10-15T10:20:00.000-04:00

I am blogging live at the Technology Summit Conference in Huntington, NY. The Internet connection here was unavailable at first, but we are online now! For David's online handouts, click here.

I took this picture with my laptop (photo booth). No, you are not dyslexic. It is how the picture came out in photo booth!

DW - This year we will generate about 5 exabytes of new information. Only 0.01% of that information is printed. David says we should stop integrating technology and we should start redefine literacy and integrate that. The best thing we could be teaching our kids is how to teach themselves what they need to know. Wikipedia is not entirely reliable...but, think about it, are textbooks, newspapers and magazines always accurate? We live in a new information environment. Our kids are reading in an electronic, global library - where anyone can publish. We must expand our notion of what it means to be a reader in the 21st century - can I find the truth in information? Can I find the evidence that it is true? Find it, decode it, critically evaluate, and organize it into personal digital libraries. Our kids are starting with Google - billions of pages of information - not a simple index in the back of a book.

Thanks, David, for pointing out the importance of information literacy!

Information used to be a product, you consumed it. For students today, information is raw material that can be mixed to make something new, remix content. We are overwhelmed with information, but we pay attention to what competes best for our attention - probably visual and audio will catch our attention first. Today it is can you express an idea compellingly to a group of people.

write to--->communicate to--->accomplish goals. What you write must be read - it must successfully compete for your audience's attention. (Multimedia- visuals, music communicate.) Express ideas compellingly.

THE 3 E'S:
exposing truth
employing information
express ideas compellingly +
ethical use of information - minimizing harm -spam, viruses

seek truth and express it
minimize harm
be accountable
respect and protect the information infrastructure

Information is bringing meaning to what we are doing. We see technology - kids see information.

Spread the Love

2007-09-30T08:01:00.000-04:00

David Warlick, Chris Betcher, and so many others are blogging reminders to attend the K-12 Online 2007 Virtual Conference. David Warlick is the keynote speaker. TEAM students should REALLY think about virtually attending this conference. I know I will!

Top 10 Technology Tools

2007-09-30T07:42:00.000-04:00

Just found a new blog worth subscribing to: Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day.
From there, I found the list, Top 10 Technology Tools.

Pay It Forward

2007-09-29T17:45:00.000-04:00

Pictured Left: Me, David Warlick, Neepa Shah

Last year, our school came into a little grant money, given in honor of an outstanding fifth grade teacher, Neepa Shah. My principal asked me to think of an effective way to spend that money. I emailed my friend and co-editor of MidLink Magazine, Joselyn Todd, asking for her for some help. Here is what she said:

“...The most lasting impact that this money could buy would be professional development to help your teachers take it to the next level in terms of their tech skills such that they could guide students in innovative project based work rooted in sound content. Joselyn's idea: hire someone to come in and teach your teachers some Web 2.0 technologies (with very practical “lesson plans”) that they can immediately implement in the classroom with the equipment that the school already has...Give the gift of a nudge in the direction of life-long learning to those educators who are in the “middle” of the tech skill continuum such that they can “pay it forward” to their students. Hundreds of students learning new tech skills by enthused and invigorated teachers would have very long lasting impact at your school.”"

Through MidLink, I had the good fortune to meet David Warlick on a couple of occasions down in Raleigh, NC. I immediately thought of him, sent him an email, and LUCKY for us, he came to NY and spent a day with a group teachers at my school. Besides teaching us how to "say grits" - (for you New Yorkers, it's "greee-its"), he taught us how to podcast and "invigorated us" with conversations about new literacies and possibilities. Not long after that visit, I had many of my students podcasting ... and well, since David's visit, the floodgates have opened in terms of my own professional growth in the area of Web 2.0.

Anyway, two weeks ago I started four classes blogging on Class Blogmeister, after introducing blogging to my fourth and fifth grade classes byway of a paper blogging lesson, co-taught with my friend and hallway neighbor, fourth grade teacher, Adam Dugger. We introduced the idea of writing for an audience, of private information vs. public information, of appropriate language, and of constructive criticism. The lesson called for students to write a passage describing a favorite food; others in the class had a chance to leave constructive comments by writing them on post-its. The lesson worked so well that I decided to make a bulletin board out of it for Back to School Night. I racked my brains for a title for the bulletin board, and then it came to me: "Our 2 Cents Worth" - what a perfect 'pay it forward' moment! The David Warlick ripple effect.
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BTW - I am writing this as the Wisconsin Badgers beat Michigan State in a very exciting game AND The Mets won today (finally!). Yay!

Technorati

2007-09-15T16:24:00.000-04:00

Technorati Profile

Boy, I've Been Busy

2007-09-15T15:41:00.000-04:00

I have been on my laptop for more hours than I care to admit, working on projects for the ICT (Information-Communication-Technology) DISCOVER classes that I teach, along with Noel Forte, another TEAM member. I finally feel that I am ready for Fall and am excited to dive into these projects with our fourth and fifth graders. We will be using various web 2.0 technologies, including Classroom Blogmeister, Wikispaces, Google Maps, CommunityWalk Maps, VoiceThread and PhotoStory.

There are various opportunities for sharing and collaborating with these projects. Here are the links to the projects and a brief summary:

Federal Holidays: This project is designed for upper elementary and middle school students studying the meaning of American culture, United States symbols and core values of the American democratic system. Federal Holidays proposes two main tasks: 1) students will teach their class about an existing federal holiday by creating a PowerPoint presentation; and 2) student teams will imagine a new holiday that represents the spirit of America and then write a persuasive argument which will be supported by a poster that visually represents their proposed holiday. Using VoiceThread, student teams will comment on and persuasively argue why their holiday best represents the spirit of America. The site includes links to all the required resources and rubrics. Originally created in 2002, Federal Holidays was a response to 9/11, to help students deal with the feelings generated by that horrible event. I am running the project again, with updates.
Explorations: This project is a 4th grade social studies project where students will study explorers from "The Age of Discovery." Students are asked to become "docents" - knowledgeable guides who will virtually guide "visitors" through our "Age of Discovery Museum" by creating photostories. Students will place a marker on our Google World Map, showing the area their explorer discovered. The marker will contain a link to the student/docent PhotoStory. The PhotoStory (vodcast/podcast) will inform "visitors" about the explorer they researched with narration and images. It would be fun if another teacher wanted to do this project as is, or modify it to have their class research other types of explorers...for example, 'explorers of the sky' or explorers of the arts, etc. etc.
On the Trail of the First People - On the Trail of the First People is an online, collaborative standards-based social studies unit that seeks to incorporate information literacy skills with communicative technologies for 4th and 5th grades researching Native Americans. Classrooms located in the Northeast, Southeast, Plains, Southwest, California, Far Pacific Northwest, and the Far North are invited to research tribes indigenous to their area and then share their knowledge with all through the use of Wikis, Blogs and Social Mapping.

About Me

2007-09-12T06:06:00.000-04:00

A couple of my colleagues told me that I don't talk enough about my accomplishments. Well, it's true, I don't, because sometimes I can't believe that I have accomplished what I've accomplished and I don't like to 'toot my own horn' so to speak. I do what I do because I have discovered that I love to create and this is my outlet. The awards and rewards that have come along are secondary and byproducts. So, I don't speak about them too much. But, I have to admit, they are fun to receive! I have been lucky to work in a great environment and to have connected to some unbelievable mentors during the past 7 years, including Bette Schneiderman, Mike Byrne, and Fran Roberts of TEAM, and especially my just retired principal, Nancy Lindenauer.
In any case, if you do want to know more about my background, you can go to my bio link.
Notice my glamour shot on that page....it's about 10 years old!

Wired?

2007-09-12T05:27:00.003-04:00

OK, coming up with a name for this blog took me longer than I thought it would! After mulling over several titles, I finally decided on “Wired” - it seems fitting in many ways:

When I was getting my educational technology masters, (back in 2001) our class had to come up with a name for our ‘team’ - we decided to call ourselves the “Wired” team.

I like the connotations of that -- wired–connected, collaborative, plugged-in, hyperactive, sending & receiving.

Maybe I should change it to ‘wireless’ ? Not that I mean the above connotations don’t apply to me, but that information flows so effortlessly.
...Nah, I’ll leave it at wired.
If you click on the image below, I think you will agree that wired is a good description of all the feelings associated with being part of the 21st century ed-tech landscape!

VIsuwords