Infographics with PPT

Infographics are something I would like my students to create as part of research projects in the library. However, I don't want to pay for infographic creation tools. I want to use what we already have and what we already have is PowerPoint. I came across this video today and it just might not be as difficult as I first thought!

Google Head

I admit it, I am a Google Head. My students will tell you that. The day I took off to take my daughter to the doctor after she delivered my second grandson I was there at the doctor's office but my students thought I was at “Google Fest.” When I got back to school I had to check out what “Google Fest” was all about. Go Ann Arbor!

Hope you enjoyed your flash mobs and hope you get your Google Fiber!

Anyway, my students know that Mrs. Conger uses Google and GMail, and GoogleDocs, and they also know that Mrs. Conger teaches them how to Google and will be looking over their shoulders while they Google. Friday was Crazy Hair day at my school so since I am a self professed Google Head I made it real, Google Head real. (See picture above). Now Kathy Schrock has come out with this new picture of how Google and Google Apps fit into the new revised Bloom's Taxonomy. She has been getting wonderful feedback on Twitter and Plurk for what she is calling Google Tools to support Bloom’s Revised Technology. Notice that several Google Tools fit into more than one category and notice that Google Advanced Search is considered a tool under the category of Understanding. I have been teaching my students to search using advanced search and I have been thinking that I am doing such a wonderful thing and here we are only in the category of understanding. I got depressed when I thought of all the work my students were doing and the more I thought about it, the more I realized they were going beyond understanding and applying what they knew and transferring that knowledge to new situations. They were doing things that not only met the new AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner; they were becoming 21^st Century Citizens. They were utilizing digital tools to gather information on things they wanted to learn about, they were emerging into life-long learners. Isn’t that what we want them to do? Ok, so some of them were checking the scores on the NCAA tournament but they asked my permission first! :-}

So, I am going out on a limb here and disagreeing with Kathy Schrock, but just a little. I believe that Google Advanced Search falls under more than one category. In applying advanced search principals my students are no longer using copyright sensitive materials, they are applying the skills I have taught them to make decisions regarding materials they are choosing to use in their projects and reports and for their own use. And if Google Advance Search can fit under more than one category can other Google Tools fit into more than the categories assigned? I am taking Kathy’s Google Bloom’s and using it with a grain of salt, realizing that it too is a tool!

Wes Fryer's Blog Caught My Eye Today, December 5, 2010

I have been checking out Wes Fryer's pictures on Flickr the last few days. He has been in Maine checking out some very inquiry driven classrooms. He has been posting the pictures and telling us all about his trip on Plurk. Actually, he has not been on Plurk much lately but has been feeding Plurk through his Twitter stream and with TwitPics of his visit. He wrote about one elementary classroom in the blog post: Be Kind, Do your Best and be a Voracious Reader. He also wrote about Alice Barr's classroom and her 21st Century Tool Kit. Alice is someone we both follow on Twitter.

Walk Across America

SkipZ, a member of my Plurk Personal Learning Network, shared a link to this video. It is wonderful. After you view the Walk Across America click on the link to see how they did it. It is very inspiring. How many places can you identify in the video? How many places have you seen in the video?

My 2 Cents on Library Standards.

In my opinion the State of Pennsylvania is not doing school librarians any favors with its new Standards Aligned System (SAS). If the truth be told there is not much that can be done to make sure Pennsylvania students get a good information literacy education and it is not because school librarians are not doing their jobs. It is because the state does not have library standards. Back in 2005 Commonwealth Libraries put forth Pennsylvania Guidelines for School Library Programs and the document is awesome. However these are guidelines and not state standards so they do not get enforced and therefore do not appear in the SAS. I want to use SAS. I believe in it but I want the state to realize that we need to get our students ready for this century and not the last. I want the state to adopt authorized, clear library standards that can be measured with benchmarks and fair assessments and can be part of SAS. Only then will materials and resources be allocated to school libraries (yes, the state has cut library funding again this year). Anything less will mean Pennsylvania students will fall behind the states that are teaching media and information literacy with concrete measurable goals and prescribed instruction and interventions.

Students Can Write Dynamic Content Too...

I came across this blog post by accident while following another Twitter post. It is from Ralph Jean-Paul a marketing blogger who is trying to get more visitors and subscribers to his site so he can turn them into customers, but I think the message can be translated to the classroom no matter what subject we are teaching. Jean-Paul calls for dynamic content and really isn’t that what we want from our students when we ask them to write? Check out Jean-Paul’s blog for his explanations of the following, here’s my take on what he says:
Be Unique- Jean-Paul says not to just share common information but to personalize your writing. In this day and age when teachers worry about plagiarism this is good information. We should ask our students to share their stories, not just spit back the information they have gathered from other sources.
Write for Humans- I know you are going to say... well duh... and Jean-Paul’s reasoning here is blog specific... he says write for humans and not Google. Write so you get human attention and not so the aggregators at Google will pick up your blog and make it a top hit. But in educational terms this is where we can tell students not to use the same words over and over again. Librarians can teach about key words and how if I wanted to learn more about the topic you are writing about why would I want to read or listen to what you have to say!
Be Interesting- Jean-Paul says: “Using captivating and exciting descriptive language will help your readers stay interested in your writing.” And really isn’t that what we are trying to teach our young charges? He suggests using stories, examples, and humor to keep readers engaged. How can we do this in the classroom? How about instead of an audience of one (the teacher), your students had an audience of thousands or millions? How would that change their writing? Even if it is not through technology your students can write well for a real audience. Why not add a comments and compliments page to their next written assignment, or when students are giving a presentation have the other students write comments and compliments as they are listening?
Commit to Quality- Jean-Paul suggests that readers will know and forget your blog if your topic is not “well researched and organized,” if there are too many grammar and spelling mistakes. Here is our library lesson in a nutshell! Research, Research, Research! But after students research they need to read the volumes that they find. If students do not know enough about their topics they will plagiarize. You can not write from your own knowledge unless you first gain that knowledge.
Have a Call to Action- Jean-Paul asks “What do you want your visitors to do once they have read your post?” He says to emphasize the desired action “somewhere in the beginning, middle, and conclusion of your post.” Here is the perfect opening for an inquiry based project. We do not want our students to simply spit back researched information. We want them to ask why and to expect a reply. We want them to make their readers want to do something after reading or listening to their report. For this reasons teachers need to start our projects with the end in mind. What is the action we want to come out of the project? Why are we having our students do a project in the first place? If we ask for a state or country report should the report not reflect a desire to visit that state or country? A call to action on the part of the reader will do away with those dull facts and figure reports. Ralph Jean-Paul has several blogs, none that I have read have dull facts and figures, most are dynamic in content. That's how I want my students to write!

How do you get your students to write dynamic content? Let us know by leaving a comment.

FIZZ Workshop from #PETE&C

Got to attend 3 sessions during Sunday’s Discovery Education Network (DEN) Day at Pennsylvania’s Educational Technology Expo and Conference (PETE&C).

My first session was called FIZZ (which I was given as my first choice because I presented a recess session... a preliminary unveiling of the PicturingAmericaMIAC Wiki that I, the other district librarians, and ELL teacher Kathy Wahl created to highlight the usage of the Picturing American Illustrations awarded to our district libraries through a grant from the American Library Association and the National Endowment For the Humanities. We paired each illustration with DEN Videos that can be used to give students more of a background of the events depicted in the illustrations).

I am not really sure why I chose to attend a session called FIZZ taught by a man named Lodge but my online friend and DEN Guru Stacey Kasse recommended the session and I was not disappointed.

Dr. Lodge McCammon is from the University of North Carolina’s Friday Institute. He shared ideas for using user-generated videos in the classroom (or in my case the library). He started by giving us a formative assessment modeling the use of a Google Form. The free resource is worth checking into for district use. The assessment checked our knowledge of math concepts such as area, surface, and volume.

The first idea he gave was to create an introduction video for the lesson, a teaching tool. He suggested going somewhere other than the classroom or library with a video camera to create a real-world use for the concept you are trying to teach. My idea that I took away would be to go to Lower Providence Library and show students that if they learn how to use the Arrowhead Library they can use the Dewey Decimal System in any library. Creating real-world context and interest is in line with library standards. The idea is to post the video online so students can always come back to it. This will help differentiate instruction as some students may need to watch the video over and over for repetition of the concept.

Next, we were given paper slides, a Flip Video Camera, and a script that went along with the paper slides. We were directed to work in pairs to create a video lesson. The theme of the day from Dr. Lodge, was that the end product did not have to be perfect because the focus is on the content. We only had 15 minutes to create the video in one take, no editing was allowed. This is a great project to use with younger students, I am going to try it with 3rd graders in the library as soon as we finish researching our topics. We never did get to see the results, hope Dr. Lodge puts them on his blog sometime soon.

Dr. Lodge is great at creating songs with lyrics that teach the lesson he is trying to convey. Please check out his blog post from the day’s work, and look for The Base-Morning White video, you will see how my group interpreted the song. Which taught a lesson. Dr. Lodge kept the song playing the entire time we were working in our groups. He also gave us a paper with the song lyrics. Looking at the lyrics while listening to the song gave a different dynamic to the lesson and may be the spark some students need to understand the concepts. I think I would like to see what happens if students are expected to come up with their own lyrics- they could even use their favorite songs, it worked for Weird Al Yankovick but in this case a lesson would be taught. I was thinking of having 4th or 5th grade students create a song about library skills and then use the video they create with 2nd and 3rd grade students. We could also post the video on the district website so students could go back and view it over and over, talk about reinforcing a lesson!

We were split into groups and were assigned a verse of the song. My Morning White group was assigned the Chorus. We had time to prepare our choreography for the chorus, using whatever props we had on hand which was not much. We practiced once as a whole group and then recorded the final product. The results are posted on Lodge’s blog: http://www.iamlodge.com/ryosin/?p=76.

At the end Lodge showed a summary video he created to reinforce the lesson. It seemed like a traditional lesson just video taped and posted online for students to view later. It is good reinforcement and students can watch the video over and over if they need the practice. The day ended with a summative assessment again using a Google Form. The results indicated that everyone in the room had learned quite a bit about math while working with the concepts through video production, not a traditional way to learn math concepts.

21st Century Learning

I think maybe these guys got it right. We need to start thinking outside the box in education.

Love the idea of teaching with Primary Sources but Primary Sources are not just Library of Congress archives. A bus ticket or subway token can be a primary source. Show and tell is an example of teaching with a primary source, and helps students use 21St Century Skills when planning their presentations. As educators we must get on the rocket that is 21st Century Learning or we will get left behind. And if we are left behind so are our students and that can't happen!