Lisa’s EDIT 7500 Blog

I have met with the class I am working with twice in a whole group setting. They formed a natural three way split in their interests, so I have also met with each small group once. So far, I think my project is going well but it is taking a lot longer than I anticipated! I wish I had been able to get it started earlier.

Our problem was basically, “How can we help students at our school select good books to read?” We talked about how the students in this class chose the book they were reading and how they usually pick a book. After a second brainstorming session, I showed them several types of selection aids- blogs, web sites, posters, podcasts,  polls, etc. to provide them with additional background knowledge. They decided they wanted to create a web site with different pages for featured authors, series, and genre. The students decided how they like to select their books and created small groups based on this.

The first group I met with was full of ideas, the second group also had much to offer, but the last group took a little more prodding on what they would like to do. As I met with each small group I had them sketch out what they wanted their page to look like and think about how we would navigate the web site. I also had them write a plan as to how we would accomplish our task. They were each charged with developing a book recommendation for a book of their choice before our next meeting. I had a book fair all last week which kept me from meeting with them at all. The other barrier is we have only a two day week next week one of which is Math Fun Day, so we are racing the clock at this point.

The students are excited about their project. Several of them have asked me questions about it during the book fair, in the cafeteria, and in the hallway.

My major takeaways at this point are that time is a huge challenge and that the students are excited about being tasked with this big responsibility.

Question: How close is your school district to implementing 1 to 1 computing? What are the barriers in doing so?

At this point I have not heard anyone talking about giving each student their own notebook computer or other handheld computing device. However, all certified staff have been given their own notebook which has been very much appreciated and useful.

Our school system has been very supportive of technology. They have a fairly aggressive hardware replacement program and have invested in many technological programs to increase student achievement and support instruction. At this time, and in this financial environment, I don’t see how they could implement 1 to 1 computing where all students are issued notebook computers.

In addition to the expense of the hardware, there are also concerns about infrastructure, repairs, updates, obselecense, and even basic help desk type support.  Salaries for needed extra personnel is another concern, and we already have students who move with library books, personal cassette players, and textbooks… what would happen if they moved with a notebook computer? What type of activities would students be allowed to do on their school issued computers? How will teachers be able to control what students are doing on their notebooks during class? What happens if they lose their privileges and the rest of the students are using their computers to complete an assignment?

I am sure their computer skills, information literacy skills, and probably even academic achievement would increase, but I see a lot of obstacles that must first be overcome. At the GaETC conference Ron Clark talked about how people quit vandalizing his academy in Atlanta when he actively involved them in renovating the abandoned warehouse he had selected as the site for his new school. Perhaps students need to help raise the money to purchase the computers for the school. Not necessarily their individual machine, but the computers as a whole. This may help them to take better care of them.

I see small notebook computers that are advertised as inexpensive models for providing a computer for every child. What are their capabilities and limitations? They can’t be as versatile as regular notebook computers, but I do wonder. If computers continue to decrease in price… could students raise enough money to purchase inexpensive computers that they could keep?

First I want to say I enjoyed listening to the presentations I got to hear. My main regret is that I didn’t get to hear all of them. Hopefully reviewing the presentations on our own time will suffice.

As with anything else, when you have to teach (or in this case create a presentation) about a topic, you learn so much more than when you just hear or see something. I think my biggest takeaway was learning about COPPA- The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. I wonder how many parents know about this act and what website operators are required to do to protect the privacy of children under 13. I am surprised that teenagers are not covered by something similar although perhaps not quite as restrictive for the older teens! As a teenager you don’t really think about the consequences of your actions especially long term consequences that can affect your ability to get a job!

I also wonder how many elementary school teachers are aware of this act and their authority to give students permission to share personal information about themselves. That is a big responsibility.

In my presentation, I also shared the things you should think about when uploading and sharing your videos and photos online. People both young and old need to stop and think about background details that can identify where you live…. Yes I know most of the time that is not a big deal, but if the wrong person devlops an obsession….

I look forward to visiting the website Lucas suggested www.archive.org to look for public domain photos etc. As a media specialist, I am considered the copyright go to person at our school. Learning about resources that can be used legally is always of help.

And thanks to my blog buddies, I learned more about the pros and cons of internet filtering. It is amazing what slips through the filters. We recently had Google images restricted in our county. Luckily our excellent tech people figured out a way to filter the less desirable images even more at the firewall level so that we were able to access them again. I personally have never felt comfortable letting students have free reign with this tool, but I have certainly used it to locate images for them. I’d rather let them look through NetTrekker’s images.

I look forward to hearing how everyone’s individual projects turn out later this semester. I have implemented two days of my project and so far all is going well.

Lisa

To what extent do you teach, model, and have students engage in critical thinking? Is it important? What do you need to learn to feel comfortable with critical thinking?

I don’t feel I have a lot of opportunity to create lessons requiring critical thinking. I usually play more of a support role; however, I am conscious as I interact with students about making them think for themselves. Our faculty once watched a good professional development video about making the students solve their own problems. I specifically remember a very simple example in which the speaker said that when her students tell her they are cold on the playground she doesn’t tell them to go back inside and get their jackets; instead she asks them what they can do about it. Even that slight change in approach can help students to learn to be better problem solvers. In the library when students ask me where they can find a certain book or type of book, I will ask them besides asking me, what they could do to find the book. When they lookup where to find a book using the online catalog, I usually tell them to try to find it themselves first. If they tell me they have already tried and couldn’t find it, I make them show me the exact spot where they think it should be. When I help students who don’t have any clue how to find books, I talk them through the process using the end of row signs and shelf labels even though I know exactly where it is on the shelf.

Requiring students to develop critical thinking skills is extremely important… it is critical. You can use the word critical to mean both evaluative and essential. As I talk to students about different resources they can or should use for research, we talk about finding conflicting information in the sources and what to do about it. We talk about how easy the internet has made it for everyone to post information, the importance of looking at the reputation of the person or group posting information on the web, and how important it is to them to maintain their reputation as trustworthy source. One of my favorite activities is to pull up Dreamweaver and have the kids tell my fanciful “facts” to post on our media center website (e.g. all boys at SJ Ele. can fly). We then visit our web page from another computer that I have connected to a projector and I show them that anyone in the world could login to our website and see what we posted.

What I probably need to learn more about is how other elementary school media specialists are teaching critical thinking skills to the students in their schools.

The obvious answer to the resource I will probably use the most from my Diigo list is Edublogs because I am in the process of creating a readers’ advisory blog for my students. As I mentioned before, I have chosen Edublogs because 1). it allows me to moderate the posts, 2) it is ad free, and 3) it is not blocked at my school. Students and teachers will (hopefully) post books they recommend on our blog. They must include title, author, a brief summary, why they liked it, their first name and last initial, and tags so we can look for books by the tags. I will also use the blog as a forum for sharing award winning books and book selection strategies.

Another resource I plan to learn more about and perhaps use is Shelfari. It is similar to LibraryThing but the interface looks a little more appealing. I have been reading interesting ways for libraries to put a LibraryThing widget onto a blog or website to show books librarians have recently added to their LibraryThing shelf. I need to learn more about this idea and Shelfari’s capabilities to see if this would be of value to us. Of course VoiceThread and Flowgrams also intrigue me!

Good news! I’ve talked to the teacher that I hoped to work with and she was excited about my project. She wants to start on Monday. She has a lot of good ideas, so we are currently fine tuning the… learning experience (lesson sounded too one way).

To begin with I have been thinking a lot about Edublogs. They have been swapping out some hardware evidently to provide better service, but for awhile every time I tried to access my blog I was getting an IE error message and didn’t know why. I am planning on using Edublogs for my Applied Project for the School Library Media Program (a multi-semester action research project) and this was a big deal. I have chosen Edublogs because it is ad free, is not blocked by my school system, and it allows me to moderate student posts (or not). Now that this issue seems to have calmed down I can turn my attention back to my related project for 7500.

I am hoping to get feedback before I begin to implement my project for this class. I am a little nervous about implementing it… but that always happens to me when I have to impose on someone. I think this is also a result of having never been a classroom teacher. I know the project I have planned will benefit the students as well as the school as a whole. I need to just go ahead and dive in! I am looking forward to hearing the students’ ideas for helping themselves and others locate books they will enjoy reading.

My project plan included the following statement:

Students will be asked to discuss with a partner what they usually do to find books and what would make the process of book selection easier. They will be encouraged to be creative and contribute ideas even if they don’t know how to implement them. After five to ten minutes, all groups will share their current strategies and improvement ideas which will be recorded using Inspiration or bubbl.us to organize their thoughts.

One way I can increase creative responses to our brainstorming process will be to go over the rules for brainstorming as listed in our textbook (Egbert, 2009, p137):

·       Do not criticize any idea during the brainstorming process. There will be time for this later.

·       Generate as many ideas as possible. Do not worry whether they are practical or possible at this point.

·       Do not stop to discuss the idea- keep generating them for as long as possible.

·       Try to piggyback on other ideas, generating still more ideas. Do not worry if they are only incrementally different.

Students may provide more creative ideas if they know it is ok to provide impractical ideas and to piggyback on other ideas before we begin the process. When writing my plan, I assumed that students would know these rules, but while reading the textbook I realized they may not!

We may also come up with more creative ideas by using the “Fresh Eye” creativity technique (Mycoted, n.d.).  Students will be encouraged to present the problem to family and friends to elicit their ideas for supporting book selection. During the second class session (which I think should not be the next day so that students can think about the problem more thoroughly), the students will be asked to share any of their own new ideas, their family and friends ideas, and/or their modifications to any of the ideas presented by classmates, themselves, or people they consulted outside of the classroom.

Once students have decided on an idea to develop, they will be encouraged to brainstorm what their product should include and/or look like using the same rules listed above.

The modifications listed above are definitely important enough to incorporate in my project. Any other suggestions to enhance creativity?

Egbert, J. (2009). Supporting learning with technology: Essential of classroom practice. Columbus, OH: Pearson Education, Inc.

Mycoted. (n.d.). Fresh eye. Retrieved October 2, 2008, from http://www.mycoted.com/Fresh_eye

Progress:

Now that I have developed a tentative plan for implementing my individual project, I am ready to approach the teacher that I hope to work with. She has expressed interest several times in working with me on helping students with book selection. I need to sit down with her and discuss my ideas and get her suggestions and agreement to work together. I am nervous about beginning implementation because I do not have control over access to the students and the teachers are always pressed for time; however, I do feel this is very relevant to the curriculum and an important life skill.

Basic plan:

Day 1: introduce problem to class and let them share what they do now for book selection and what they think could make the process easier, ideas will be organized with Inspiration or bubbl.us; together we will complete a modified KWL chart of what they know, what they don’t know, and what they need to find out more about to help solve the problem of selecting a good book when faced with thousands of book spines when they walk in the library

Day 2: provide students with background knowledge- tools other readers use to learn about good books, e.g. blogs, wikis, databases, webpages, podcasts, online reviews, posters of award winning books, etc.; students will work in pairs or small groups to develop a tool to assist in book selection- must use technology in an authentic way to develop the project; students aren’t limited to something they already know how to do

Day 3+: I will work with students as whole group or individual groups to develop their ideas and provide instruction on using technology as needed; “completed” projects will be presented to the class; viable products will be implemented in the media center

Assessment:

I plan to use both formative and summative assessments. Through out the creation process students will be required to tryout their product on students outside of their group. They should make revisions as needed. Students will also be asked to write ongoing reflections as they develop their product to help them self assess and keep me informed of progress and difficulties. A teacher and student created rubric will be used to assess the final products and to assist students in self assessing. The students will be required to present their project to the class. After each presentation, audience members will provide written feedback which may include praise and/or suggestions for final improvement. Students will be given additional time after the presentations to incorporate revisions based on this feedback as needed. Students will be required to turn in their project plan, reflections, a brief summary of their project (purpose and how to use it), final product or information on how to access their final product, and rubric with self assessment.

I have been thinking more about how I can give students more ownership in my individual project. Perhaps I could present a class of students with an authentic problem we are having at school: Many students don’t know how to thoughtfully select a book. (By the way, according to my literature review for my applied project, this is a very common problem.)

I would ask the students to brainstorm ways we could help students locate books they will enjoy. At this point they don’t have to know how to implement the idea, only come up with the ideas. Next I could show them ways other schools, public libraries, book “stores”, etc. help people select books to read through the use of technology. I could then have students work in groups of 2 or more to develop some sort of support using technology (as long as it is an authentic use of technology) to help students select good books at our school. Depending on the time the classroom teacher can give me, we could work as a whole group or I could work with individual groups at various times convenient to the classroom teacher. If students come up with the basic ideas, I might know of technology that would make it viable to suggest to them. A fourth grade teacher approached me recently requesting my help in coaching her students on selecting books, so I know this is an interest and it applies to Language Arts standards for both reading and writing.

This revision of my original idea, based on a real world problem not limited to a school setting, would give the students more choices as they work on their solution to the problem. This should move my project up the LoTi scale and perhaps provide multiple solutions to our authentic problem.