An organic 2011

     

photo © 2009 Martyn Hutchby | more info (via: Wylio)

I spent a lot of 2010 making myself crazy. Immersed in my RSS feed, I saw so many new things I could accomplish for our students. Our learning commons is a sign of change in our school and over the past few years, I have been working very hard at leading the charge from the front.

This year I am in a very different place. Why the change? It isn't because the need for ratcheting up collaboration in curriculum planning to include information and media literacy skills is any less crucial for our students. It isn't because students no longer need to understand the power of their digital footprint and what citizenship means in 2011. None of that has changed.

The change is in how I approach student learning and progress. We will still be keeping data on curriculum, skills, and standards. I'll still be teaching as many classes as I can shoehorn into the day. But the watchword is going to change. It has been "21st century skills," and I will tell it to you true, everybody hates that phrase. You can see the hackles rise. It is too strident, accusatory, and has become empty jargon.

Leadership from the front spreads the message, and I think the message is pretty much out there.  Leadership in the field is what we need right now - nurturing new skills and new literacies with personalized professional development when and where it is needed.
This year my watchword is going to be "organic."  I'll cultivate students and teachers by focusing on their specific need or task and build the skills into the educational moment.  I'll look to nurture each student and teacher with what they need, when they need it.

I came to this model after reviewing what worked over the past academic year to date.

• Our new student CCHS YA Galley Group Blog.  New staff member and YALSA Teen's Top Ten Committee Chair, Jennifer Barnes (you can read Jennifer's blog here) worked with our passionate student readers to create a review blog for YA galleys. These students are credentialing themselves in their joy of reading and publishing to the world. My favorite part is they not only assign a number on a scale in their reviews, they describe the book as a food experience. An example from a recent student post: "The combination of terrible emotions and timeline, yet satisfying ending that gives those silly characters what they deserve add up to give the book 3 stars. Imagine a funny tasting candy that's nice to just crunch down on and finish."
  
• Our new ebooks aren't gaining as much traction as I would like, but this is okay. We are building the information infrastructure ahead of need. This is important behind the scenes work that will keep our school moving forward and well situated for the coming transition to a more digital learning environment.
  
• Introducing new, more user friendly databases is working. Text-to-speech functionality and UDL compliance are the nectar luring teachers to this one.
  
• Supporting teacher requests for more rigorous source evaluation skills for students is working.
  
• Supporting teachers in more rigorous citation expectations is working.
  
• Supporting teachers and special education staff requests for guidance in identifying and obtaining alternate versions for students with reading disabilities is working.
  
• Supporting students in media production to synthesize their learning is working. Our media lab is busier than ever and the role of learning commons staffed skilled in advanced media production more crucial than ever.
  
• Going to a paperless pass system, making life easier for faculty and more accountable for students, is working.
  
• Establishing the learning commons as a place for academic as well as community building activities is working.

All the things that have worked best so far this year have come from an organic need. They dovetailed with work already being done and/or served our community. Transformation has come by nurturing and tending to teachers and students based on a personalized approach that goes beyond good, responsive patron services. It is both more holistic and more effective.

So for the balance of the 2011 academic year, I am going organic. I'll be working in the fields alongside teachers and students, checking in on them, seeing what their needs are, and seeing how we can support them. The nutrients will be skills and resources, and the sunshine will be collegial service with a smile.

Wishing my fellow teacher-librarians an exciting 2011 filled with happiness, health, and a wonderful harvest in June.

Farmer Robin : )

      photo © 2010 Uberto | more info (via: Wylio)

iNTEGRATION, baby!

Put an "i" in front of it and there I am, sprinting to our Mac Store. (That is me with the red umbrella - naw, it isn't.)  It is the only time I get exercise.


i need an intervention (get it?). There is, however, method to my, ummm, madness.

As I play with my MacBook, iPhone4, iPad and Kindle, and also juggle my stack of summer reading books and professional journals, the real point of it all is trying to understand how it functions together. I am looking for perfect integration across devices (digital and analog) to mainstream my learning needs, my teaching needs, and my professional needs. Tech lust aside, it is about efficiency.

My RSS feed was particularly abundant today, and among the treasures was Top Ten iPad Apps for Librarians | Information Tyrannosaur.  Please, open a new tab and check it out. When you finish come back here. I'll wait....

Good stuff, right? I already had a number of the suggested (excellent) apps and checked out all the others. After playing around with DropBox (free) I added it to all my devices. I'm going to evaluate and compare it to GoogleDocs, Diigo and Evernote. Finding the most efficient, web-based integration tool is, to my mind, the Holy Grail for school librarians right now.

Observations:

• iPad - I can't edit docs easily. Great reading functionality, but I keep tap, tap, tapping at the screen waiting for the keyboard to pop up. It will come with time and updates, but I really need it and want it now.
• iPhone4 - This is my first iPhone, and I got it because my husband was appalled that I wanted a new digital camera. He said ours was fine and I replied, in dulcet tones "NO IT ISN'T!!!!" Snakes may have shot out of my head. He responded with specs for the new iPhone camera and...he had a point! I lovelovelove the iPhone camera because of the amazing integration. 
• iMovie - This $4.99 app is flat out amazing. I tested it out on the 4th of July, which is epic in Boston. Editing was intuitive and painless, but moving it off the camera was frustrating. I videoed my nephew and wasn't comfortable uploading to YouTube, and the email options had size restrictions. I need to play some more to figure this piece out. Uploading to DropBox or Vimeo would be perfect, but either the functionality - or me - just aren't there yet.
• I'd also love to know if it is possible to upload photos and video directly to my blog or other web-based platform. Again, I have to figure this out.
• By the way, the-most-patient-man-in-the-world also found me an iPhone case that has a little pocket big enough for a drivers license and a credit card. Really and truly I grab my phone and walk out the door. Hopefully the next iteration will have a side pouch for Chapstick. Then the world will be perfect.
• Note of interest - my previous phone was a little brick we got on eBay. It was a phone with texting, and that was it, and that was fine. When we got it the texting was pre-set to Portugese because it came from Brazil. The first time I texted I thought I had had a stroke and lost the language section of my brain. But I digress...
• Kindle - Really great functionality for sharing across devices, if you are willing to play with the settings. However the proprietorship will ultimately prove to be too restrictive. Ergonimically I just love reading on the Kindle.

At the end of the day (epically rainy in the Boston area today) what I am looking for is a triangulation of functionality. Our students and teachers need web-based platforms that will function irrespective of device. They need a portable device that will synch accounts while simultaneously allow for collaboration and editing on the live web.

We are getting there, and devices and platforms are evolving by the minute. Playing, testing, reading about it all is more fun than I ever imagined.

I'm so glad it rained today! I stayed in and played.

Photo credit:
(Essdras M Suarez/ Globe Staff)

The perils the plagiarist

As sure as the sun rises, kids are going to get caught by deadlines, and some of them are going plagiarize. By way of Stephen Abram's excellent blog Stephen's Lighthouse, comes a funny and fabulous anti-plagiarism video from Germany. Some sketchy sexuality kicks it out of the high school classroom and firmly into the college realm, but boy, does it get the point across with humor and relevant references to popular culture.




Helping students avoid plagiarism has to be part of our mission as librarians and information specialists. In addition to an academic honesty contract every student signs, our school also has a TurnItIn account which is a very efficient filter that puts kids on notice that their work is being checked. When I collaborate with teachers in planning research and multi-media activities I advocate (strongly) for the use of NoodleTools. This (surprisingly affordable) platform allows teachers to set deadlines for citations, notecards and outlines so students can't so easily miss deadlines and fall behind. I can check student sources and make recommendations. Interacting directly with students during their research process allows me to intervene and support students when necessary, and also support the teacher with expertise that may not be part of their content area or skill set.

In a recent project it was apparent that, despite admonitions that Wikipedia would not be allowed as a source it was being heavily cited. I discussed it with the teacher and worked with the class on how to check Wikipedia articles for recent changes and the history tabs to evaluate discussions around the content. We also talked about "mining" articles for scholarly sources that are appropriate for academic work. The citation process became a robust platform for teaching source evaluation, and students were engaging more critically with content. Their notes became more meaningful with sources they had spent time evaluating. And they were meeting deadlines. It was also really nice to be using Wikipedia constructively. Like Google, it needs to be explicitly taught and added to student's information toolbox.

Anything we can do to give our students and teachers the tools to avoid plagiarism is worth it - and that may include producing an in-house adaptation (sans sketchy sex) of this wonderful video. With proper credit, of course ;)

YouTube - Et Plagieringseventyr
Photo credit: R. Cicchetti

Waving emphatically!

I was so excited to get a beta invitation to Google Wave. Immediately I invited a few other friends and colleagues, and was then so disappointed when all we did was wave back and forth at each other, pinging furiously. We weren't collaborating on a project,  so it's power as a collaborative platform was simply not utilized. How exciting that Google has opened the gates:

Google Wave Available for Everyone - Google Wave Blog

We are not a GoogleApps school, but this is exactly one of the very enticing platforms that makes me cast longing glances at districts (and STATES!) that have made the jump. I am a big advocate of Diigo, Evernote and NoodleTools as collaborative platforms, but the ubiquity of Google makes it incredibly relevant to the daily practice of students. It was also designed to be a collaborative work environment, perfect as a place for students to gather, store, organize and pull their work together.

As usual, this Google video is clever and really "hits the nail on the head." ;)

Mind the Gap!

One of the challenges I face is channeling the quickly changing world of information and media technology into collaborative planning with teachers. Often times they seem overwhelmed with choice and the changes in assessment and management that come with incorporating many of the new tools and skills into their content goals. I get it. But how do I address this? How do I more effectively address their concerns and support their goals without stressing them out?

An example is NoodleTools, the powerful citation and note taking platform. Instead of passing out style sheets teachers, with my assistance, have to teach students how to create accounts, share them with the teacher, and go through the process of evaluating a resource and generating a citation. Then they must learn how to use the (brilliant!) note card feature take notes on their resource. After that there is the outline where they build the structure of their paper. This takes a different type of planning and time allocation, but the benefit is the teacher and I have access to student work and can monitor progress and intervene when necessary. This is about the teacher substituting "content time" with some "skills time".  Ultimately students complete the final paper more successfully. The first time is a real leap of faith, and not all are ready to hold my hand and jump.

Dr. George Loewenstein wrote a paper called The Information Gap in 1994 that neatly frames this dilemma, and it sure isn't isolated to school libraries. Luckily there is a neat 3 minute video interpretation put out by a blog called mondaydot that explains the theory and puts it in context with neat little animations.



So, back to my dilemma. I need to focus my collaborative efforts and teacher-directed professional development role on the size of the information gap. If the gap is too small it means I am not moving my students or staff forward. If I push new tools, skills and platforms too aggressively the gap becomes too large and fear sets in, causing them to draw back. Again, they will not move forward.

By keeping track of the tools, skills and platforms that I introduce and support, hopefully  the information gap will fall in that comfortable middle range. The goal is for students and teachers to continue to move productively, and happily, forward.

Source:
Stephen's Lighthouse: Mind the (Information) Gap

Photo credit:
EveryStockPhoto

Working hard or hardly working?

Come by the CCHS Learning Commons and you will see a lot of students, doing a lot of stuff. Are they working hard, or hardly working? Two recent blog posts had me thinking about this.

New tools are replacing the familiar, and work looks different. With students what might look like messing around on Facebook may actually be very valid work.

As an example, in Jenica Rogers post, Attempting Elegance, she reflects on transliteracy as literacy in using new media. She was pulling photos off her iPhone and communicating on Facebook and Twitter during a seriously busy day. Why? She was studying her library's  Facebook presence because they are "about to use it as a reply venue for our lobby’s suggestion board". She was Twittering a source regarding assessment data. All work, all important, and these are the tools that are most efficient for her and the stakeholders she works with.

Stephen Abrams writes in his blog, Stephen's Lighthouse, about building relationships as being of primary importance to libraries, and perhaps more relevant data than circulation statistics. Harder to quantify as well. "...the foundation of library relationships is communication – one to one and one to many. It’s not really what we measure a lot – circulation. And it’s not easy to measure."

We need to be doing more with these communication methods  in the CCHS Learning Commons. We will definitely be creating a Facebook Group as well as a Twitter feed. Our wiki portal will be updated to include a photo stream from our account for images of the work and fun we experience daily.  So if you see us typing away on Facebook, you might think we are hardly working, but we will be working very hard to build our relationships with students and staff through these dynamic communication tools. Just like our students.

Photo Credit:
Abram, Stephen. Stephen's Lighthouse. 2.25.10
The Foundation of Library Relationships
http://stephenslighthouse.com/2010/02/24/the-foundation-of-library-relationships/

via
The Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarian's Weblog

The problem with paper

It really came home to me for the first time that the paper format was holding me back. I just finished reading Born Digital: Understanding the first generation of digital natives, by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser.

The problem isn't the book, which I really liked (my GoodReads review). The problem is the post-it notes. This book had so much original research and concepts so eloquently developed that I ended up with over 40 post-it notes that I now need to go back and review.

If this were a digital text I could have been using Diigo to highlight and annotate the whole time. From Diigo I could share with a group, like HS Librarians, and see what others had to say, discussing ideas and their application to school libraries with my professional peers. I could export my notes to NoodleTools for organizing for future reference if I want to write a grant or article. As it stands now, I will end up re-typing passages into NoodleTools. What a waste of time. (It also needs to be pointed out that if I had a reading disability I would be unable to access this text because paper has no text-to-speech option, and it isn't available in audio format.)

Research, investigation and inquiry tend to be solitary endeavors. This no longer needs to be the case and,  by utilizing the symphony of free digital tools, we can offer a much richer experience, enhanced by collaborative networks and accessible to all learners, including those with disabilities.

After reading this book I have a much better understanding of our digital natives. They are very polite and patient with us, but for how much longer? Pretty soon they are going to start getting annoyed.

Organize, Analyze, Synthesize & Respond: Using Diigo & Voicethread to Support Online Reading Comprehension

MassCue Session 6 – 11:15 – 12:10
Organize, Analyze, Synthesize & Respond: Using Diigo & Voicethread to Support Online Reading Comprehension
Donald J. Leu, Prof and Director, New Literacies Research Lab, U of Conn
Lisa Zawilinski, Heidi Everett-Cacopardo, U of Conn and the New Literacies Research Lab

New Literacies of the 21st Century - portal for New Literacies Research Lab
http://sites.google.com/site/newliteracies421st/

Diigo - Digest of Internet Information Groups and Other Stuff
Helps organize Internet activity. Use FIREFOX for browser.

Premium educator accounts - create student/class groups, helps management, assessment, insight into their information process and skill level.

Collaborative and powerful - extract annotations make it very powerful for evaluating critical thinking

• *Online Notebooks - access to groups Diigo account
• *Online Notebook - has link to apply for Diigo educator account (upgrade)

VoiceThread - tool for commenting
(New Literacies - VoiceThread webpage)
VoiceThread for Education - New Lit - VoiceThread wiki for educators, good resources
VoiceThread Digital Library - great for examples of educational VoiceThreads!

Educator VoiceThread - manuals - very helpful. You can have multiple identities. Free educator accounts!

Back to School: 15 Essential Web Tools for Students

Watching students stagger out of CCHS with armloads of freshly issued textbooks, backpacks loaded with sports gear, musical instruments, and assorted bags, made me think of Sherpas bowed under their loads. They have to manage a lot. Schedules, classes, homework, activities, and all the stuff that goes along with these various commitments. There are free, web-based tools that can help them, and cut down on what they need to lug. Portable, accessible, and they won't get left behind on the bus or in the locker room.

However, it isn't just about making it easier for students. These tools will help build skills they will need in business, and in their lives as citizens of the 21st century. Collaborating, organizing, scheduling, time management, creating, publishing, and communicating with co-workers from around the world are important , and can be introduced through many of these applications.

Stay Organized:

• NoodleTools - A fantastic note taking and citation tool that keeps getting better and better, and available for free through the CCHS Library Learning Commons website. Every student should have an account. This is heavily used during research projects, and is also a great tool for writing assignment.
  
• Evernote is so cool everyone should play with it. You can synch notes between the web, your phone and any computer. It handles multiple media formats and is available via mobile apps (think cell phones).
  
• Notely is an organizational suite of services that allows kids to manage their calendar, assignments, note taking tools, and more. Very friendly and intuitive.
  
• GradeMate is another online student organizer. I had never heard of this one, but it looks pretty good, too.
  
• Backpack was designed for businesses, and also offers really robust organizational capabilities. I consider this one to be over-kill for your typical high school student.
  

Study Better:

• Diigo is something I can't be rational about because I think it is one of the best bookmarking and organizational tools for the web I have ever seen. Reading web content, whether it is a website, a pdf file, or an online book, will never be the same. Highlighter, sticky notes, collaboration, tagging, they have it all.
  
• StudyRails was a new one for me. They describe their service as "an online study tool for effective study habits and homework management". Think of this as a personal tutor who schedules a student's study opportunities and blocks out potential digital distractions. It is not a free site, so I haven't tried it out.
  
• Delicious - "The tastiest bookmarks on the Web", is the leader in social bookmarking. I tried it but it didn't suit my needs or personal style, and yet I know many people for whom it is a way of life. I think students need as much focus as possible, and that is not what Delicious is about. Given its popularity though, they are clearly on to something.
  
• Mindmeister is for visual learners and offers collaborative online mind mapping. I believe many students would get a lot of benefit from using graphic organizers as part of their process. This looks like a good one.
  

Work and Collaborate:

• Google Docs should be a part of every student's academic tool box. Many schools have switched to Google Apps for Education just to roll out Google docs to students and staff. Why? It is a great tool for collaborating on documents, powerpoint presentations, and has a great forms feature. This allows for students to work together without having to sit next to each other. No carpooling! This link has a really good little video explaining Google docs.
  
• EtherPad - I saw this for the first time at a conference I attended over the summer and was very impressed. It is a web-based word processor that allows people to work together on the same document, at the same time. Wow! You can see the other person, wherever they might be, typing on the same screen as you, simultaneously. Businesses are using this for meetings and collaboration, but it is very user friendly.
  
• Sliderocket is really powerpoint on steroids. Web-based and accessible on any computer, on any operating platform, this tool allows you to build really stunning presentations online. Your work is username/password protected, and is stored in the cloud. Check out the little video tutorial. Cool, cool, cool.
  
• Wikispaces (Concord-Carlisle Wikispaces is the district account) is a collaborative platform students and parents will be seeing quite a bit of, as more teachers are launching online discussion forums. Wikis are the best for fast, quickly updated, easy to manage web pages. Wikipedia is the most famous wiki of them all. Did you know that wiki means "fast" or "hurry" in Hawaiian?
  

Citation:

• NoodleTools - Gotta come back to this gem of an application. Again, this is free via the Library webpage.
  
• CiteMe is a Facebook app (!) and works with WorldCat, the world's largest library catalog. I just added it to my Facebook page so I can mess around with it.
  
• EasyBib is very good. A lot of kids use this, but it doesn't have the note card and outline feature that I think makes NoodleTools better for research projects.
  
• Zotero turns people into evangelists. It is browser extension, and has a great track record.
  

The source for this post is Mashable, one of my favorite resources for information on emerging web tools and social media. I learned a lot from this post and played with some new tools. Thanks, Mashable!

ManagingBack to School: 15 Essential Web Tools for Students

Also from Mashable:
Back to School: Top 10 iPhone Apps for Students


Photo credit Flickr Creative Commons:

bright idea...

Uploaded on September 15, 2008
by maebeitsme

Chairs w/ Alan November - notes

K-12 District Team / Chairs session w/ Alan November

Chairs w/ Alan November
Sept. 2

Cellphones in the classroom – invite but demand performance
PollEverywhere.com – we Have ActiVotes, same concept.

Unfair advantage to tech savvy students? Are there parents who don’t want their kids to use technology? It is a personal value, not pursued.

Assessment – is writing overlooked/surpassed by presentation and aesthetics of an assignment? Does glitz of technology mask the major component(writing)of assignment?
• AN – final paper – how did student get to the writing? Google docs revision history
• Takes draft to a whole new orbit – provides data to understand final doc in a new way.
• Have we given teachers enough info to do the best possible job? New tools give insight into the process of learning than ever before.

Research – how do we ensure that kids are taught tools/skills in K-12 continuum?
• Google Custom Search – design your own search engine. Power of Google limited to sites you put int. 100 people can be on design team, unlimited access. Create content search engines built by classes. One student tasked with being researcher-for-the-day. That student finds the worlds best resources while teacher teaches. Teacher can answer questions – or teach students to get their own answer.
• Teach kids they are building a search engine (design team) they will take ownership of it.
• The best tech teacher in a lab can teach, but it has to be reinforced in every classroom.

Overwhelmed by Technology
• Comprehensive plan to support teachers is needed
• Need teachers to model
• Scale up the pioneers in organizational design
o ActivBoards

Paradigm / Practice Shift
What could support look like to put this into practice and make this change.
• Start with curriculum – what is the toughest to teach
• What works the best
• What works the worst – where do kids struggle
• Give that list to your tech leaders to help
• Create bridge between tech and pedadogy
o Embedded specialists in each department
o Kick the wheels, play, choose a few things to start with, enlist the kids in helping you learn
o Manage tech you don’t know how to use, but know what is possible. Know the CONCEPT
• Specialists give suggestions for pedagogy

New Tools to make learning more powerful. Nothing new. Addition of new tools in communicating content to new learners. More attractive to kids.

How-To Research
Do we need to teach this? Discipline behind the knowledge, with reinforcement and practice. Technology isn’t an option but a core requirement.
• Secondary teachers use collaborative word processing
o Leaders models this so it filters down

Scotland and other small and developing countries – takes tech seriously, in a global economy they can’t afford to lose 1 kid. They get that there are new rules, and Internet as new tool for opening up economic opportunities.

Student Voice
SpEd – new opportunities for these students
Find new formats to find voice and contribute to their won learning
Task students with designing tutorials – they know it has meaning to others
Ownership of product > learning > publishing globally > authentic

Design
Skills are merging in student projects, and collegial support for student production needs to be a design feature.
Professional community on the web - free

Robin's TO DO:

CREATE NING
TEMPLATE DEPT CUSTOM GOOGLE SEARCH WIDGETS

Keynote Kick-Off with Alan November - Notes

"What do you do with technology when you are not in school?"

Confirm what you are already doing.

I don't like technology. it breaks, especially in front of audiences.

Helps expand relationships with kids and access to information.


West Point 1985 act of Congress required every student to have a laptop. First university to make this requirement. They hire all of their graduates (6 years). Possible that a student will be a field commander later. They have data on results of learning that most schools don't.
Change in mission. Win the war > now the goal is to win the peace. (Should the mission of K-12 change?) New curriculum, new skills. Massive wrenching change for institution and faculty.

Teaching graduate program in info searching. Now have to teach students that there are different points of view. Example: impact of pope's speech in Turkey.Serious real-life problem with bad results.
Google results return Western results w/ no Muslim perspective. This does not support the mission to win the peace. West Point wants students to find alternate perspectives to find the truth, to win peace. Knowing the language of digital search addresses this problem. You don't know what you don't know, and it isn't your fault because you were never taught.

Caught in transition from paper to digital.

Should we teach American kids that there are other points of view?

Class of 2010 - demographers created working label "Boomerangs" > children of Boomers.

Alan's Advice on How to Get Kids Out of Your Parent's House:
critical thinking in the web (syntax, grammar)
"the medium is the message" - Marshall McLuahn

(Students didn't know how Google algorithm worked) students look at top page, don't change search engines.

What can YOU do?
1. Announce that you don't know everything
2. Hire the kid who breaks in
3. "Hire" the kids to teach you the tools you need - they want to be helpful

Peeling back the web to validate information
Google - link:www.marinlutherking.org

altavista - seach engine for finding links into a website link:www.marinlutherking.org
this search engine returns far more links to main site

How should teach this? Should it be embedded in what you teach?

High Tech High, San Diego - highest standardized test scores in CA, but they don't teach to the test. They ask the students to find solutions to teaching the most difficult concepts in your curriculum, Have them come back with examples in diverse media formats.

Assessment - assessing final product rather than process of getting to the final product. Assess how the kid got there.

SOCIAL WEB
Kids have a developmental need to connect socially with other people
YouTube phenomenal growth - show students the work of other students from around the world - this is cross-curricular.

The mission of education: Brain research shows that if a kid goes home and does homework and makes a mistake, the mistake is embedded in the brain. The longer the wait for the feedback the less relevant the learning and the most damaging the mistake.
Need to give different kinds of homework, like looking at vodcasts.
Bob Sprankle, Welles, ME - We have underestimated what young children can do. Children can watch a review of what was learned the week before, that they produced. No mistakes, they love to publish.

What's the difference between regular homework and producing/publishing for class? Homework is for self and doesn't matter. Publishing for authentic audience increases value, learning, enthusiasm in learning. When kids produce tutorials there is HUGE traffic. Students who take notes off a pod/screen cast do better than those who take notes live during class.

Change in culture of teaching/learning where kids take more responsibility for learning in the class. WHO should own the learning? US ed system designed for teachers to own the learning. Teachers work harder than the kids. These new tools can change this power nexus.

• Literacy more than reading paper. Internet is a core literacy.
• Global perspectives, alternate POV. Skype is a social connection, and kids thrive on social authenticity. Share/publish globally. Kids will listen and go back over it because it is their voice. This is FUN!
  

Robin's Ideas/ TO DO:

• prof development Google docs/forms (essential equity issue)
• Google workshop - basic search
• Deep web search tools - tricks and grammatical tools to validate web content
• Jing workshop
• IDEA - "Play in the Sandbox" workshops around themes/tools. Group exploration.
  

Super Researcher Girl!

Shazam! It is official. I now have super-powers beyond those of the average mortal. Harnessing the powers of Diigo, I can take notes on web pages (!) and collaborate and share with anyone in my research process.

I was playing around with Google Books (very cool) and found this article giving an overview of their platform. This is an area of interest for me, so using Diigo I have started a research project on e-books. You can see the link, the description I gave it, and then the tags I assigned the article. Below that you will find paragraphs I highlighted, and bulleted notes (brief) with my name. Go ahead and scan. I'll see you on the other end. You will recognize it is me again by the orange font ;)

• Inside Google Books: Download Over a Million Public Domain Books from Google Books in the Open EPUB Format

  (My short description of the article) Resources on public domain e-books.

  (My tags)tags: ebooks, epub, Free, books, digital books, Google Books

  • Before physical books were invented, thoughts were constrained by both space and time. It was difficult for humans to share their thoughts and feelings with a set of people too far from their physical location. Printed books changed that by allowing authors to record their experiences in a medium that could be shipped around the world. Similarly, the words written down could be preserved through time. The result was an explosion in collaboration and creativity. Via printed books, a 17th century physicist in Great Britain could build on the work of a 16th century Italian scholar.
    • The first step in global collaboration - post by rcicchetti
  • it can be difficult and costly to reproduce and transport the information that older physical books contain. Some can't afford these works. Others who might be able to afford to purchase them can't unless they can find a physical copy available for sale or loan. Some important books are so limited in quantity that one must fly around the world to find a copy. Access to other works is only available to those who attend certain universities or belong to certain organizations.
    • Barriers to access - post by rcicchetti
  • convert atoms from physical books into digital bits
    • New format - evolution. Same content. - post by rcicchetti
  • While atoms remain fairly expensive, digital bits are on a trend where they become ever cheaper to produce, transport, and store. For example, providing every student in a school district with a paper copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet might cost thousands of dollars. Yet if those same students already have cell phones, laptops, or access to the Internet, then they can access a digital copy of Hamlet for just a fraction of the cost.
    • Barriers to access - economics. The devices are expensive, though. For the poor, is a book still the most cost effective way to go? If books disappear will the poor be without free access to information? Digital bits are cheaper than atoms, but the cost of the device and access must also be figured in. - post by rcicchetti

Thanks for sticking with me so far! What I want you to notice is that my "rcicchetti" link is live and can take you to my Diigo page. I can invite others to participate in reading this article and taking notes along with me, collaborating as we go. This is an online discussion platform. There are lots of privacy feature, but I haven't set them up on my account, because I want it to be as open as possible at this point.

Cooler yet, I exported the whole thing to this blog with the click of the keypad! Versatile, powerful, collaborative - I haven't found the kryptonite for Diigo yet.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Photo credit Flickr Creative Commons:

Shazam! - Series 1 ( DC Direct )

Uploaded on April 19, 2009
by Leandro [ Egon ]

The Social Media Revolution

This is a great 4 min. 22 second video. It speaks to the power of social media, and the challenges in teaching our students critical thinking and evaluative skills. I look at this type of message as a provocative way to illustrate the sea change that has occurred in our society. Many educators have missed this shift, and are wondering why people are yammering on about 21st century skills. They really want to be left alone to prepare their lecture notes and make copies of their handouts. They don't want to add anything new to their practice because they don't have the time.

This isn't about "in addition to". This is about "instead of."

I posted the link to Facebook and got some interesting responses. This one in particular really summed up the issues really well.

From Ellen:
I completely agree with the point of the video-social media is a major cultural change, and not a fad-but some of the data is misleading, or just plain wrong. For example, the source listed on the website (www.socialnomics.net) for the claim that Wikipedia is more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica is...Wikipedia. Hmm. Yes, *some* studies have ... Read Moreshown as many or more factual errors in EB as in Wikipedia. But it's crucial to look at the *nature* of the most damaging misinformation in Wikipedia: vandalism, pranks, corporations trashing their competitors' products, politicians defaming their opponents' character, etc. Wikipedia has stepped up their efforts to improve the credibility of their articles in the last couple of years, to their credit. But I want to look at this video (not just the Wikipedia vs. EB piece) critically. What are the larger implications of our getting our information through social media, and how should we be teaching our kids to think critically about that.

Source:
Socialnomics - Social Media Blog

Research Tools on Steroids - Wow!

It ain't your parents research project any more. New sources and formats for information call for new ways of searching, organizing and managing the research process. These tools are powerful, and they are (mostly) free. They will also blow your socks off.





This nine minute tutorial on Diigo is well worth the time, because Diigo is simply astounding. It helps manage Web content through web highlighting, sticky notes, tags, and sharing functions. Originally designed for professional researchers, it has found a key spot in education. I am switching over to Diigo for my own use. This is a tool that will help every type of learner.


yolink is an information literacy tool that "with a single click, searches through links and electronic documents for multiple terms and relationships and brings the information to you." What does this mean? This (free) browser add-on helps you do a deep web search, and assists the researcher in drilling deeply into his/her search results. This works with basic websites, e-books, pdf's, any web content. Think about your basic search on, let's say, explorers. A Google search will return millions of hits, so you refine it by adding a few more keywords. Now you narrowed your results to tens of thousands of hits. Instead of having to hit each link and look for your information, yolink finds it for you, splitting your screen, searching each page for your keywords and displaying the paragraphs with text including your keyword on the right screen. A students can quickly dig deeply through multiple webpages at a time and mine the web for information more efficiently. yolink also has bookmarking and notation capabilities, and findings can be exported to a citation tool. Which brings us to...


NoodleTools. yolink is working with NoodleTools on a partnership, and when they pen the agreement I will be singing from the rooftop of CCHS. This is not a free service, but CCHS has an account and every student should be using this for citation and note taking. The student is provided a scaffold for the entire research process, and their new outline feature is fantastic. I use this for my own research projects.

Does everything have to be technology based? Absolutely not. The 5 's of note taking remain the same.

The Cornell Note Taking system is ideal for recording lecture notes, and every student should be adept with this. Kids must be able to take notes by hand, and this is a great way to manage that process

1. Record. During the lecture, as many meaningful facts as possible are recorded.

2. Reduce. As soon after class as possible, ideas and facts are concisely summarized in the Recall Column. Summarizing clarifies meanings and relationships, reinforces continuity, and strengthens memory.

3. Recite. Most of the page is covered and the student tries to recall as much of the lecture as possible, using only what has been written in the Recall Column. This procedure helps to transfer the facts and ideas to the long term memory.

4. Reflect. The student's own opinion is distilled from the notes. This also has the effect of training the mind to find and categorize vital information, leading to more efficient memorization.

5. Review. The student reviews the notes briefly but regularly. Because of the highly condensed nature of the notes, the student remembers a significant amount of material.

So, how does a student know which tool to use, and when? Isn't this all overload? I don't think so. We all have many tools we use in managing our daily lives. In this age of abundant information students will require diverse tools to find, evaluate, and manage their information needs. Tools like Diigo, yolink and NoodleTools give students power and control in their learning, and I can't think of anything more exciting than that.

Are you literate? Writing in the 21st Century - making connections

Jeff Utecht posted to his blog from Bangkok. He attended the BLC '09 conference in Boston last week. Clearly, he is in the zone, and he is a leading voice in defining the educational conversation. I like what he has to say.

Digital Literacy vs Networked Literacy | The Thinking Stick

For those of us above the age of 25 it can be a strange conversation. Yeah, we know how to read. This is a new type of reading. We are looking at broader contexts and skills and making connections. There are new paradigms and different stakes. Education is to provide children with the critical skills to work and provide a livlihood for themselves and their families, right? If you are a 22 year old college graduate chances are you are struggling to find a job. Has your education really given you the skills you need to compete? To contribute? These are tough times. A lot of people are being left behind. We can do better. We have to do better.

Literacy = reading and decoding skills
Digital reading = technology access skills
Networked literacy = understanding and making connections

From Jeff Utecht:
"Networked literacy is what the web is about. It’s about understanding how people and communication networks work. It’s the understanding of how to find information and how to be found. It’s about how to read hyperlinked text articles, and understand the connections that are made when you become “friends” or “follow” someone on a network. It’s the understanding of how to stay safe and how to use the networked knowledge that is the World Wide Web. Networked Literacy is about understanding connections."

Take a look at what the National Council of Teachers of English have to say about Writing in the 21st Century.

For our kids to be literate they need to have the skills to create their own networks, frame new questions, seek reliable information, assess for bias, identify alternate sources from around the world, collaborate, generate opinions, and share their results. These are new and incredibly powerful skills. This is a great time for education.

Image: Wordle - word cloud generator
Text source:Digital Literacy vs. Networked Literacy, The Thinking Stick

Developing Digital Learning Spaces from Vision to Reality

Session #8
Raw Notes

David Jakes, Developing Digital Learning Spaces from Vision to Reality
(slide deck and resources available from this link)

Educause eBook - book resource w/ pdf chapters on online spaces

Poptropica - 26 million kids are registered on this virtual world website. Mostly used by 14 year olds.
Online activities - friendship and interest based. We need educational intervention with their online activities so they can transfer their skills to academic and professional tasks. What happens when networked kids come into the classroom - is there a disconnect when they hit the classroom?

kZero - online data/consultancy: K Zero is a virtual worlds consultancy. "We are specialists in connecting real worlds brands and companies with the residents and environments of virtual worlds. Since 2006 we have been examining and assessing the drivers affecting virtual world adoption and the marketing opportunities presented by the metaverse." Growth of virtual worlds for kids is staggering and we have to adapt. Toy manufacturers recognize the value and extend toys to virtual worlds, targeting kids. They are tapping into it, so should education. GREAT DATA with graphical representation!
PEW Report online use data - social network websites

How can we utilize informal learning opportunities in non-classroom spaces? Can we empower informal learning opportunities like Stanford iTunes courses (ex. programming call pone apps). Enlarge the boundaries of what learning can be.

Core components to a multi-dimensional learning space? Systemic approach based on suite of tools that support digital learning.

• teacher space
• student space - content should travel w/ and belong to student
• knowledge commons (library) - peer tutoring area, adult reading support specialists, professional development area w/ cafe, social bookmarking (teach tags). Supports teacher and student spaces.

Critical stakeholders

• need equitable access to 21st century skills / sets of experiences for every student
• parents
• support staff - ask their opinions about learning
• teachers

Technology & Literacy Goals

• articulate these Jake's docs link including by disciplines!

New Literacies - new context of old literacies: read, write, communicate, listen, speak
Different from skills, but need to develop new skills to achieve evolved literacies.

Fluency - Closing the Fluency Gap, Mitch Resnick
Beyond literacy is fluency. Ex. digital reading is different from paper reading - new skills needed to gain fluency.

The Internet (Web 2.0) is "acontext in which to read, write and communicate?" Leu
VAlues" research, collaborate, create, network, present
assign core platforms for each value

• research: RSS feed, delicious, Google, wikipedia
• collaborate: wikis, google docs, moodle
• create: blog, drupal, film, podcasting
• network: Twitter, Skype, FB IM email
• present: uStream, Flickr, iTunes, Voicethread

SPACE

• knowledge commons
  
• students learning space - Google apps / student blog - students can take their accounts with them after graduation. Blogfolio
  
• physical learning space
• course learning space

• Google apps integrated w/ Moodle - ths is a great idea. Seamless integration of teacher and student space.

edubloggercon: the Un-conference Before BLC 09

Today I went to my first Edubloggercon Un-Conference at the Park Plaza Hotel, the day before the Building Learning Communities 09 Conference. My head feels like it is going to explode! Great conference,small, intimate, informal, fast and furious, high level discussions.

Edubloggercon - East Coast 20009
"EduBloggerCon is based on the idea of an "un-conference," and is being organized by the participants in real time on this wiki. Another way to describe this event is as a "collaborative conference," where the conference attendees help to build and create the experience."

edubloggercon - EBCEast-Agenda

Backchannel - Beta testing with this conference. Very cool. Beta version from MIT lab.
Allows participants to log in with either Facebook or Twitter and process the session online, asking questions, tossing ideas around while the main discussion continues.

Twitter Hashtags #EBCE09 #BLC09

Session #1 with Dennis Richards, David Truss, Liz Davis
What works in presentations, what doesn't?
Dave discourages blogs with classes, prefers a platform that encourages engagement that goes on between student and student. Power of wiki is that the power is distributes. Great entry point for people to engage. Teachers should use the tool they plan to use and engage. Each page becomes the student's personal tool box. Access and equity for students to encourage student engagement. Authentic audience. To be transformational teacher must move away from hanging on to power and allow social aspects to exchange of information. Promotes ownership and students want to go there. Homework becomes the by product.
Make staff meetings paperless using a wiki or Google doc. Free up collaborative time. Depends on leadership. Need someone to identify current practices and find skill/tool to be more engaging, collaborative, transformational, efficient. Coaching model most effective because it is hands on. Requires a lot of one-to-one. Lots of tech tools, but where is the implementation? Good presenters tell a story. Transformation changes the learning experience. This is a business model. Students need to experience learning, not just receive content. It is about skills, not mindset. Needs honest discussions. Clint Kennedy - When tech leaders are helping peers in schools we need to be more "bit-torrent" and less "napster".
Clay Shirkey's TED Talk - Institutions versus collaboration.

Session #2 - New Media Reaches All Learners - Facilitated by Karen Janowski, Assistive Technology Consultant
Etherpad Link - Etherpad is synchronous! Discussion logged here. 16 allowed at a time for free version. Check out educator pricing.
Universal Design for Learning - remove all barriers to learning: instructional goals, materials, assessment

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for designing curricula that enable all individuals to gain knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm for learning. UDL provides rich supports for learning and reduces barriers to the curriculum while maintaining high achievement standards for all.

PBS Misunderstood Minds - excellent resource for understanding the experience of students with learning challenges. Good to share with teachers.
Think about how we present what we do in classroom to engage, present, and demonstrate what they know. Remove obstacle to learning traditional methods put in place.
Free text-to-speech toolbar Click Speak - Firefox extension. Follow up on this.
Scaffolding that helps struggling learners helps many additional students to learn and understand. Focusing on the needs of the struggling kids helps your design in lesson plan and assessment. Students need to bring ALL their tools and strategies to assessments. Teachers need to stop throwing up barriers. Design assessment for many contexts and situations where adaptability and resourcefulness will help them gther the tools they eed to show what they know. Our curriculum is the problem.

Free text-to-speech tools
udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/

Session #3 - Scratch - Facilitated by Liz Davis
You don't need to know Scratch to teach it. Visual programming language. Kids can connect with how games, animation and online things are created. Takes mystery out of their online experiences. I can see very good applications for classroom assessments. Relies on script building. Add as an option for students. Maybe good for team work to take advantages of multiple intelligences/skills. Nice alternative to Powerpoint projects.
Go to File > Open >Scratch Projects > Examples (on left nav bar) - see multiple projects from websites to see and play with scripts, download scripts to see how they work, re-mix existing Scratch scripts. Creating and re-mixing this open source tool.
Characters are called "sprites", and sprites can broadcast secrets to each other- very cool. Includes coordinates, directions, sequencing, process, problem solving, logic, etc. Provides immediate feedback. It works or it doesn't work.
Scratch - free download and resources. Check support button for tutorials and additional materials like activity cards. Lots to check out for classroom activities.
Learn Scratch - good tutorials.
scratched.media.mit.edu/discussions - lots of good stuff on this link.
Scratch is a community where students can find support, feedback, look at other people's programs and learn collaboratively from the community. Kids in control. Easy to import multimedia files of all sorts.
PicoCricket - sensor board that will interact with Scratch, includes temperature sensors. $50.
Mitch Resnick created Scratch. Extension of Logo. MIT has a Scratch Day for students on Saturday. Very interactive and dynamic. Good connecting and networking.
Power of Educational Technology - Scratch - Liz's blog post and Scratch-umentory.
Liz's Scratch Lesson Plan - 6 lessons, 45 min. each.

Session #4 - Making the Most of the BackChannel: Utilizing Conference Backchannels Using Multiple Technologies - Facilitated by Lisa Thumann
How can we use a back channel in our classroom to enrich learning? In small keynotes or classrooms set up backchannel beforehand and encourage people to use it. Extending the conversation beyond direct instruction to keep kids engaged. Make sure you have laptops in the hands of kids before you start. Plan for the backchannel. Also allows presenter/teacher to adapt the presentation to needs of audience and learners. This will not be for everybody.
Pedagogy - need to set up acceptable practices before you start. Clear expecations, classroom norms, buy in, these are being established as we go along in conferences. Engage students by including the technology they ae already using. Also empowers quiet or non-verbal students to participate.

Things to look for in a BackChannel: Clickability, moderation, embeddability, archiving, synchronous communication, accountability.

Resources:
Twitter, UStream, Chatzy, Skype, TodaysMeet.com, CoverItLive (this looks GOOD - can embed charts, editable, etc high praise for classroom use. Can also embed in wiki!!), TinyChat, Elluminate (free rooms to educators, good for presentations and professional development - chat is the back channel), EdMoto (free, educational version of Twitter but more, gets big plug, easy interface, can share notes and files, can be archived)
EdTechTalk - live streaming with chat
Joyce Valenza: BackChannel and Chat Resources
Joyce Valenza: Twitter and New Tools

Session #5 - Web 2.0 Smackdown - Facilitated by Lisa Thumann
Google doc used for link collection.

• bubblecomment - allows someone to leave a video comment on any web page. Good for class webpage. You get a new URL with video comment on your original webpage, and they are left on the original page as if you were never there.
• Google > Show Options - search goes vertical, filling in contextual information with related searches, and the Wonder Wheel is great because it creates a mind map of the Google search. Allows user to drill deeper into the search. Timeline also allows for more meaningful search results. Google Squared a meta-search with graphic organization.
• edu.Glogster.com - media rich poster, allows you to mash up lots of elements including graphics, video, sounds, music. Called a "glog". Teachers can register up to 200 students. Secure for students. Future iteration will give teachers more power to organize class lists. Walled garden.
• Firefox Add-On - Fireshot - captures, annotates, organizes, exports screenshots. Free! Capture screen and annotate. No audio.
• Socrato - Contet library you can browse by state standards to assemble worksheets, etc. Content area by tag cloud, question bank, shopping cart for questions to share. Ex. poetry, grade 10, passages asociated with questions, create test. Students log in for assessment or print out as assignment.
• Aardvark - utilizing social network for answers. Question is sent out to real people via email or IM, facilitates meeting new people. People tag themselves as experts on various topics. Twist on Cha Cha without the reference skills.
• Livescribe PulsePen - Adaptive technology. Love this. Digitizes notes and makes them searchable. $187 through Costco online through end of month, w/ 4 notebooks, earbuds, all the stuff. Target, Amazon also stock this.
  
• Instructables - How to do just about anything. Explain and teach how you do something. Could be a good alternate assessment.
• Image Chef - Really cool customized images. LOVE THIS! Embed code, share, huge gallery. FREE! Use this for presentations.
• Xtranormal - text-to-movie application, good for UDL. Great resource for alternate assessment. Can add movement, animations, camera angles. Intuitive. Show this to Andy Sapp for teaching filming. Good for teaching concepts, building social stories, etc. Lots of potential applications.
• Stixy - Digital bulletin board, good for reading lists. Drag and drop. Alternate to Glogster, a little more organized. Kind of like post-it notes.
• YoLink - Sneak peek into links. Download toolbar to search any site and any site it links to. Splits screen and brings back full paragraph results from each link. Keyword highlighted n results. Save and share / social bookmarking feature. Alternative to static Google results, bringing back richer esults. Color coding lets you look for density of color for added support in searching, brings efficiency.
• WolframAlpha - semantic/computational search engine. Great for mathematics instruction. Homework will now have to be different. Also has country codes - tons of data, maps, satellite images, geograhpic properties, demographics, etc.

August 14th - free ed tech conference - SocialTechEducation

Lisa Thumann's notes with links and Twitter names

Why you should tweet

This is a terrific article courtesy of ReadWriteWeb:

Evolution of a Revolution: Visualizing Millions of Iran Tweets

During the height of the political protests in Iran it was possible to follow an amazing stream of tweets, and witness history. Twitter was the main conduit for getting news and images out of the country, and for protest coordination within. Iranians outside the borders worked feverishly to unblock government filters to protect Twitter access.

Tracking the "computational history" of the event gives real insight into the evolution of social clusters, and the organic nature of these platforms. Analysis like this provide compelling evidence that digital tools like Twitter are vital for students to use and understand if they are to have a true global understanding. We need to change how we teach to include these new literacies.

Whack a Mole

Do you remember playing Whack a Mole? You get a big mallet and wait for a mole to pop up out of the game board. The second you smash one mole, another one pops up quicker than you can whack 'em. This pretty much describes finals week in the CCHS Library, except for the whacking part.

The first and second floors of the library are for regular teen-style studying. Groups reviewing test prep packets, some light banter to relieve the tension, surreptitious snacking. We reserve the third floor for quiet, individual study. No group review sessions, no chit-chat. Many students seek out the silence, and this is the only place in the high school they can find it. Good 'ole library "Shhhhhhh."

We pack away the chess and Scrabble boards, and computers are strictly for academic use only. With so many students waiting to finish papers, download ActivBoard flipcharts and check online review material, the demand for keyboard time is high. No Facebook.

Monday was busy and sooo quiet. Kids were a little panicked.

Tuesday and Wednesday the panic was gone, and students were showing up more to relax than study. The chatter was at 11 (homage to Spinal Tap). We would get one group to quiet down and another table would bubble over. I feel like I'm out of quarters!

It doesn't really matter. At the end of the day CCHS has really nice kids who work really hard. The Library is where they want to be, and that's a good thing. I won't get out the Whack a Mole mallet just yet.

Photo credit:
Flickr Creative Commons

Busy week with the kids... by Life in the Pumpkin Shell

Google Launches a Community Service Search Engine

"All for Good helps you find and share ways to do good."
Google continues to lead the pack in organizing global information.

The All for Good website has a very nice video from First Lady Michelle Obama (just love Michelle!) explaining the program. I can see this as particularly useful for students looking for U.S and international opportunities for community service. It will be interesting to see how this platform develops.

This link from the indispensable social media guide, Mashable, also explains it very nicely.
Google Launches a Community Service Search Engine

Photo credit:
Flickr Creative Commons

sky repair........ by *hb19