For the past two weeks I have been helping the one computer teacher with a class she is taking at on Web 2.0 applications. Other than having deadlines, killer projects - you know the usual grad workload - this online class we have worked on, for no grad credits BTW, I would say we have learned the same things. Sure, some of the applications in their class were a bit newer, but by next month they will also be old news. The bottom line is the application of these Web 2.o tools for student learning.
Her final project was two fold - one a wiki and a class project utilizing some application. It seemed there were major roadblocks with every project she thought of, so she asked me for assistance. We decided to do a VoiceThread and allow the class to select the topic, find an image, write twenty seconds of text to explain their picture, complete with a bibliography. At first the kids were struggling, but after some guidance and exploration they really embraced the assignment.
It really showed the students a few things: collaboration between teachers, a group project with individual input, teachers learning with the students, trial and error, and collaboration outside of the school. The collaboration outside the school occurred with a picture on Flickr that was copyrighted, but encouraged contact with the photographer. I sent the photographer an email asking for permission and within hours received a lovely reply granting permission with even more information and his thoughts about the topic. What was really exciting and really outside the classroom in Hershey was he was in India! Talk about a global learning community!
So, check out the VoiceThread on the page. Leave a comment for the kids.
I posted #60 entry in the California sandbox. It is about a wiki for a school district's teachers to use to quickly access those site everyone needs - like differentiated instruction, learning support, ELL, etc. Since wiki means quick - quick easy access, one stop shopping for the hurried teachers. My colleague and I plan on doing this for our independent proposal this year.
Also, like Mary, I too could not sign into the PA sandbox since we did not receive an invite key. I sent an email to PBwiki and being impatient, decided to post now. Too many things to do since summer is ticking away too quickly. BIG sigh. What I would post under applications is VoiceThread. Last year a teacher asked me to book talk 30 books (2 literature circle units combined) in one 40 minute period. Well, I can talk fast, but doing the math, that just wasn't going to work out well at all. Enter Voice Thread. I could record my booktalks, the students could access on their time and listen to the books that appealed to them, or not. This was very successful and I didn't have to booktalk the same 30 books four periods. Time saver!
Been giving LOTS of thought to Thing 15. I read most of the postings, looked around on my own, and have been thinking about this off and on for two, maybe three days. Well, I did go see Get Smart, Indiana Jones and the Nuked Refrigerator, and read The Pretty One, but I was thinking about this too. And what it made me realize is that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
The kids I work with have no concept of life without a computer. Our grandson, at two, turned on the TV and DVD player using the remote, put in the DVD, and pressed play to watch Miss Spider. Can he read? No, but he seems hard-wired to anything technological. The world these kids live in requires them to be technologically competent. We need to prepare them for their future, whatever that may look like, but it certainly is not going to look like our past. Earlier this summer I read the book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink. To summarize this book quickly, school and society, have celebrated the left-brainers and the right-brainers have been overlooked for too long. If his supposition is correct, and I do think it is, we have to radically change education, and the library along with it to prepare these students for their future by stimulating and promoting creativity, collaboration, communication, and computing skills.
Which lead me to the conclusion - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. For years I have been beating my head against the wall to have teachers schedule time in the library for research. Visions of showing the databases and the students preferring them over the internet and having wonderful, meaningful, relevant projects with real learning occur just never happened...often. What happened was I gave myself a bloody head, alienated some staff, and the kids kept using the internet. If you were at PSLA, Allison Zmuda annoyed many in the audience with her keynote address, if I remember correctly, by saying something to the effect of "Don't waste time stressing over working with the teachers. Work with the kids." When she said it, I was annoyed because we have worked so long to be seen as teacher-librarians and now what?
Well, the now what is teach the kids to survive in their world by preparing them to evaluate information. Try as we want, we are not going to have them stop using the internet. The important skill I am going to focus on is information fluency - author's purpose, accuracy, relevancy, currency. Sure, I can create links, provide databases, and buy books for projects, but does that really help them in real life? As Rick Anderson said, we cannot buy enough of books (they don't use them anyway), there is one of us (usually, if we are lucky), and they may or may not come (or their teachers don't require it).
Last year I had some conversations with darling seventh graders and asked them how I could improve the library for them. They looked around, and in that voice of a 13 year old girl, one of them said, "I don't know. There is so much woooood." Truer words were never spoken. As we brainstormed, they suggested that I move the fiction section to where the non-fiction section is because that is what they like to read, provide more comfy chairs for reading, and paint it lime green. (Building and grounds wasn't hot on the lime green) The rest I am going to do. I loved Dr. Wendy Schultz's comments after all of the technological changes, the library should be a retreat, a sanctuary, a pampered experience with information—subtle thoughts, fine words, ... rustle of pages.
Kids need a safe haven and someone to help them make sense of all the information with which they are bombarded daily. So much of what I now believe, and ultimately hope to implement and practice, is in this video from YouTube titled A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto.
My philosophy is "A day without reading is like a day without sunshine." Being a middle school librarian and encouraging students to read and providing outstanding literature for all of them is my mission. Once in a great while I will read a grown-up book, too.
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