Library Buzz.

Transmedia as a new method of telling stories

2011-08-29T22:24:00.001-07:00

A library media specialist describes her experience of using technology to engage students in reading and writing. As a teaching method, Laura Fleming uses transmedia, the way to tell stories across multiple platforms. In her blog, she offers an example in which a story is told using text, sound, images, and games and students become active participants.Laura Fleming also provides resources to help teachers use transmedia storytelling in their own classrooms (Edutopia - http://www.edutopia.org/blog/transmedia-digital-media-storytelling-laura-fleming).

Search Engines and Tech Cafe

2011-08-26T01:10:00.000-07:00

We know that the Internet changes every day. It became even more obvious to me this summer when I worked on an Internet course created in 2008. Five lessons are devoted to search engines and basic and advanced options to make searches effective. In reality, the Internet engineers fine-tune their products to the users' demands very fast and Google is the prime engine that works all wonders. We don't see if other algorithms have any advantages over the one developed by the Google engineers. Some people like Yahoo but the reason is political rather than technical.

At Web Cafe, we shared that students use only Google. "There is no way to change their mind to try something else", was said at the gathering today. This is true that teachers' first choice is Google too.

However, Google changes too. Last year Michaela and I were proud to demonstrate Google Wonder Wheel that helped students to be more specific on their search. Google Squared was helpful too. I thought I was ready to show these options in a High School class last week until I learned that WOnder Wheel is any longer available and Google Squared will be seased in a couple of weeks! (Any use of technology must be tried at least a day before the class - good that I was prepared!).

Having an option of seeing a concept map (Wonder Wheel) was very helpful but it didn't disappeared . Google has improved its search by building the function in their search line. It directs the user's search at the time we put our keywords in. We can use Bing with its list of related searches on the left side menu or DuckDuckGo that provides search ideas to clarify the search. But do we really need to?

Google Timeline is helpful. Besides, have you seen the results of an attempt to serve users with different reading levels in Google? Have a look: on the left side menu, click "More Search Tools" and you will see Reading Level (Basic, Intermediate, Advanced). It doesn't mean that the sites that are listed as Basic are good for Elementary but the language is not as hard as the language of the articles under Advanced are.

Next Web Cafe gathering will be next Friday, September 2. Orlee will lead a discussion on Smartboards.

The Era of Digital Skills

2011-08-14T12:19:00.000-07:00

The article '''Google effect' leads to changes in memory" (eSchool News, July 21, 2011) makes an emphases that the internet users are becoming more sophisticated in searching for information rather than memorizing it. They recollect where, when and how information was found rather than facts themselves. 'Google effect' leads human memory work in a way that psychologists call "transactive memory".

The article awoke two questions I would like to reflect on. How do people use their memory and what is the role of school library information and media specialists in this situation?

After having read a number of books on postmodernism and education in the new era helping my daughter work on her paper on philosophy of education this summer, I argue that Modern Times past and the 'Era of Memorization' left together with it. According to a number of educators of our days, "knowledge is the product of an interaction between our ideas about the world and our experience of the world" (Cleve Beck). As the Internet is an essential part of nowadays environment, in order to gain knowledge we cannot ignore it but rather include it into the area where we active and have experience.

In the environment that continually alters and new records overwrite the ones that were just recently found, memorization looses any sense. Users long to know what to do with the flow of information and how to operate with data.

The Internet has replaced mass media and become the place where everyone goes to read the news. From our everyday experience we, educators, know that students treat the Internet as the main reference source as well. They 'Google' to get the most recent information. Search engines find what we need quickly and easily by the key words we use. It's easy but... The users face some problems. One of them is to identify which information is accurate and valid. Another one is to give credits to authors of the content found in various sources.

What is the role of school library information and media specialists in this situation?

Librarians play a role of mentors who pass on "enduring interests" (Dewey) or "tentative frameworks" (Charles Taylor) as universalities common for all cultures are called in philosophical language. Digital universalities are among them. Instead of remembering facts found in books and/or online, students need to know how to find and use updated information. These skills or competences should be practiced and adjusted depending to new tools and gadgets found online. We, librarians, call these skills information fluency that provides continuity of the Information and Digital culture. These skills develop as students grow and don't depend on what platform and gadgets are used. Students are off on the journey and increase their expertise while practice. Educators offer them their sound judgment and critical thinking skills. We claim to be skillful mentors.

In fact, we can use our expertise and experience to prove our role being mentors. However, we learn along with our students.

Librarians are qualified specialists in the area of information but our qualifications should be upgraded constantly. Otherwise, we cannot ask questions to make students think critically, we won't be able to present what digital tools can do and lead the students in their research process. Along with the tribe of information users we go per aspera ad astra and choose pearls in a zillion of links.

Information and media specialists lead their patrons thought digital sources and draw their attention on what works well, what needs some improvement, and what should be changed completely.

Thanks to well elaborated algorithms search engines retrieve documents as a response to key words users try. The better our students understand this mechanism the better the results of their searches will be. Is there any reason to use more than one search engine? Why would Tekmom or Boolify work better than Google?! We have to practice together.

Besides training students to locate information, librarians show them the importance of identifying if the find is a boon. Information and media specialists provide exercises on evaluation of information, organization of the results, their use and building a new knowledge.

Librarians organize information and show a variety of ways to others how to find what they need in print on library shelves and in digital format on line. Same skills students will use to organize information and products on their laptop, school drive, or a virtual place later during the school year and in their future life. Seeing us doing it and practicing new skills, students organize titles of books read during the year, links found in the Internet, images, videos, media presentations, and traditional papers on their computers or online.

Students learn to respect rights of others and how to protect their own rights as creators of new content and forms. We talk about the importance of citing sources and compiling of bibliography, how to paraphrase and create their products original. Librarians show students where to find free images and videos, license their products in Creative Commons.

We discuss issues regarding students' image online and keeping a good name when they communicate on a social networking. Librarians lead a discussion whether cyber space is different from a physical environment and how to stay safe online. Username and strong passwords are one of the everyday issues our students face and need good advice. Staying alert because of business desiring to learn their tastes and preferences to sell their products to young adults, their fast growing clients.

Services for teachers:

Teachers, we are your sojourners. We are eager to join any of the projects you work on. We are your hands and legs. We are looking forward to pulling resources that your students will use, organizing a virtual place where you and students will work on a project, thinking together on assessments and final products, helping you create a rubric, delivering a lesson or paying a series of visits to your class to explain how to... (any of the topics talked through above).

You and your students are welcome in the library or we can come to your class to show resources, databases and talk about plagiarism.

Librarians are a liaison between information and those who uses it.

We pursue student competence in research and study skills that develop greatly when integrated into classroom instruction. We tailor information skills to the instruction, assist students and teachers in using library resources and technology tools.

Librarians are specialists who turn the chaos into collections and encourage new generation reach the stars. This is my invitation to students and teachers to a journey to new places we don't know yet. Take me along!

Reference:

Clive Beck. Postmodernism, Pedagogy, and Philosophy of Education http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/PES-Yearbook/93_docs/BECK.HTM

Reading Is Fun

2011-07-30T07:43:00.000-07:00

Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) raises a question that parents are often puzzled: why their children don't like to read. The article Children Who Like to Read, But Don't... defines some reasons why kids can be hesitant readers and describes what techniques don't work. The author equips the adults with 20 ways to encourage children to read.

The News Industry

2011-07-22T09:35:00.000-07:00

(Economist. Jul 7th 2011 | from the print edition)

"The internet has turned the news industry upside down, making it more participatory, social, diverse and partisan—as it used to be before the arrival of the mass media, says Tom Standage" read Bulletins from the Future in Economist.com

Creative Commons

2011-05-21T06:22:00.000-07:00

Public use of pictures:
Flickr Creative Commons - many people open their photos for public use. They license their pictures in Creative Commons under "Attribution - Non Commercial/No Derivatives License". Read more about different kinds of licenses in http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/

Are you confused: copyright and fair use.

2011-05-21T06:01:00.000-07:00

Who doesn't use texts that include audio, video, and digital materials? How should we teach our students to use media legally? Do we ourselves demonstrate the appropriate way of including pictures and YouTube movies into our presentation?

Copyright and fair use are serious topics that we, the 21st century educators, want to understand and explain our students. To know what exactly is happening in this area is the task of librarians. We need to clearly understand what copyright and fair use are because in other way we are no help to the teachers, we cannot show students how to deal with the media properly, we don't want to share our works or come up with our own rules that are much more strict than the real ones and again, we limit our productiveness and effectiveness.

Renee Hobbs (School of Communications and Theater Temple University) clarifies on fair use and copyright issues:

Free audiobooks and resources

2011-03-24T01:29:00.000-07:00

Russell Stannard published ten new videos (Teacher Training Videos.com). Among them are these that I think will be useful by our students and teachers:

Lit2Go is a collection of audiobooks. You can download audio (MP3) files and see the text of the books as PDF and a web page that allows you and your students to read and listen to the story being narrated to you.

MeeGenius! is a collection of K-3 audio books, some of them are free.

Bat Lyrics

Short Stories - free ELL stories and exercises, listen and read a story. Related vocabulary and activities are suggested for each story.

ClickNLearn is a collection of exercises for ELL, French and Spanish students of different levels.

Mousebreaker free games. To select a game click on the top search A-Z Games button. There are some that you won't play but you might like Drop a Block or Sudoku.

2011-03-21T22:50:00.000-07:00

Smart Boards: A Classroom Asset: share
The article published in Record-Journal encourages the educators to use Smart Boards in their class. The author also warns teachers to not use the new technology as screens for the projectors and continue delivering lectures but use Smart Boards for interactions. Teachers at WBAIS practice various ways to use Smart Boards to engage students and save their classwork. Presentations made by the teacher in class are saved and posted online allowing students to review the material.

Sites and tools for ESL and Foreign Language teachers

2011-02-18T00:04:00.000-08:00

            Below you can find several sites that might be useful for your purposes. Some of them specialize on teaching and learning vocabulary and grammar of English and foreign languages. Some of them help students improve their listening and speaking skills. Click and play them to see how to apply some of the new technology into your teaching.
Digital Dialects - vocabulary builder, grammar, spelling, games, and other in French, Spanish, Hebrew and other languages.
Wrds.eu is an easy way to learn words. Students can create word lists and test themselves at any time.
Listen and Write improves listening skills and understanding of news in English, French, Hebrew, Spanish, and other languages.
Photobabble.com or “talking photos” can be used for practicing verbal skills.
Breaking News in English is used by ELL teachers to improve their students’ listening skills.
Quizicon.com - learn and teach 100 most common English words
Smories.com - original stories read by children for children.

            VoiceThread: A new version of VoiceThread now allows people to browse entire collections of media while making a single unbroken comment. Now any faculty member will be able to edit any student's VoiceThread, moderate comments, or remove inappropriate comments.
Next month's issue of TEACHING Exceptional Children contains an article showing "how a web based learning tool (VoiceThread) can boost the learning skills and motivation of these students and many others as they work with multimedia to explore subject areas, express their ideas, and share information—and all at their own pace and learning level". You can read an excerpt here.
VoiceThread presentations can be easily embedded into Moodle.

Google Search Engines

2011-01-25T23:20:00.000-08:00

There are many Google tools that we know but yet there are some that are new! Joyce Valenza, a librarian guru, describes them in her "Re-framing Google Search Options" article in Tech & Learning.

My recent discovery was Google Squared, Google Sets, and Google Search Video Creator. These search tools are effective, and your students can benefit from them when "googling" for worthy links.

When your students work on a research project and you feel like reviewing search and web site evaluation skills but would rather a librarian do this, feel free to arrange a search skills session with your librarian. The library services are no longer confined by library walls.

What have you "shipped"? (copying Doug Johnson)

2011-01-03T07:40:00.000-08:00

I've just read Doug's posting in his Blue Skunk blog and was very much encouraged not by the long list of publications and demonstrations presented by him in 2010 but by him saying, "I "shipped" - you can too". Indeed, we can share our "shippings" with others and by doing this enspire our colleagues to evaluate their productivity of the past year and project future achievements.

My "shipping" list is much shorter but anyways I want to make one to see where I am at the beginning of 2011:
In 2010, I've got a new title. Now I am Librarian/Technology Integrator and Periodicals and AV Equipment Assistant.
Our e-book collection has grown, and I am learning how reading books in digital format effects students' interest in reading.
I am working on integration of Information Literacy skills into core curriculum. Two collaborative projects, High School course on Information Literacy and Middle School Elective "Web Cafe"can be put into the basket.
Let the number of start-up projects be listed here as well:
Preparation for a presentation at NESA Spring Conference in Bangkok, April 2011
Organization of NESA librarians' gathering and round table presentations at ECIS in May 2011
Development of a Middle School course "Books Digitally" where students will read books on Kindles, iPads, and their PCs and create digital projects about them.

Many digital tools are added to the MBtoolbox collection, and a few articles are written for the school newsletters and NESA News.

Thank you, Doug, for showing us what fun it is to summarise our "shippings"! For us, librarians working in American International Schools, shipping is even more vital than for those working in the Land!

Tech for Holidays

2010-12-09T00:29:00.000-08:00

If you are not traveling this winter but would like to get connected with your dear ones in other than just making a phone call way, there are various creative tools to stay in touch with them during the Holiday Season due to technology we are surrounded with!

Gathering together with Skype, organizing your pictures and transforming your photographs into comics with Comic Life or Glogster , capturing the sound of the season and send your personal voice greeting with Audacity, Garage Band, and VoiceThread, making memories with iMovie or Flickr, Windows Movie Maker and 280 Slides, and you name other ways you want to get connected with others - choose any of a thousand!

Flip cameras? Are you using it in class?

2010-12-03T04:58:00.000-08:00

Our library has purchased several Flip cameras and advertises it among the teachers to use in class. If you used video cameras in class before, you have ideas on how to integrate the camera's use with your the content of your subject. Like most cameras, the Flip camera can be used for reviewing the topic covered in class, summarizing it and posting for students who missed the class, recording presentations, and for purposes listed in the MPtoolbox wiki.

Teen Read Week

2010-10-15T05:56:00.001-07:00

Every year in October, Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) promotes reading among young adult readers. They provide an opportunity for teens to vote on books they like and participate in various activities during the week. This year, the focus is in on books with beat!
Audiobooks is the theme of the week at WBAIS. Teens select books on tape and in MP3 format and recommend their favorite titles.

There are a good number of avid readers at our school. They share their taste in literature with friends and peers. Here is a place where they display their favorite books. It's a shelf of fantastic choices!

New audiobooks made in just on time as well!

Celebrate the Week with new reading and listening.

A 'Market Place' as Professional Development.

2010-10-02T09:57:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, October 1, WBAIS held an in-service day lead by Teacher Professional Development Group. One of the activities the group suggested was a 'Market Place'. Teachers were encouraged to come up with ideas and projects they thought would be beneficial for others to know. Teachers who wanted to present any technology tool, idea or a teaching unit arranged their 'marketplace' to engage visitors and exhibited their educational materials in the library.

The 'Market' in the library looked and sounded like a true Oriental market, at least as the one that we have here in Jerusalem. It was a great experience.
Visual Thesaurus, 23 Things, Sky Drive, Conflict Management in the Classroom, iEARN, using the new HP Tablet laptop, Silent Conversation & Wonderful Words; Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics; Word of the Day, Using Prezi, distributing research responsibilities in the one-to-one classroom, iGoogle, teaching French with technology, teacher/librarian collaboration and some others were topics presented by teachers. Read more about each of them on ais-sharing wiki.

Teacher-Librarian Collaboration

2010-10-02T05:58:00.000-07:00

Just on time I received a link to Edutopia on Project-Based Learning approach to teaching!

Students are engaged in exploration of real world problems and investigation of the subject much deeper than they are when reading textbooks and listening to lectures.

A couple of weeks ago High School students presented their final projects at their Ancient History class. Both their Social Studies teacher and I, the librarian, were satisfied with results of the work. For the first time we worked as a teacher/librarian team on this project: we planned the steps of research and agreed on our expectations by putting a rubric.

The project was about one of the a tribe that is currently living in one of the part of the world and still their life style is similar to the life style that people during the Stone Age had. The goal of the project was to identify the stage of the development of the tribe supporting the hypothesis with examples and explanations.

Students spent a block in the library. Without realizing that they were learning new skills, students browsed the library catalog and located books on shelves; they followed my instructions on how to build a background information by using World Book Online and find scholarly articles in EBSCO.

What time to learn citing sources can be more appropriate than that when the students work with resources for their projects?! "Where to find a good picture?" , "Map?", "Music?", "How to insert them in your presentation?", "How to give credits to the sources?", "Where to put those credits?" - students puzzled.
They helped each other and had our support all the time.

Besides learning the content the students exploited technology. They worked with Google documents and learned how to share their presentation online. Seeing that all of the students chose Power Point Presentation to demonstrate their final projects, we agreed that we'll introduce new tools that can be used for making interesting presentation at our next collaborative project. There are so many of them: prezi, glogster, slideshare, photostory, and several more.

SJ is adroit at running the "Tribe" project. She's been working on this project with students for a number of years. However, the results of our collaborative work were impressive. Students' understanding of the subject and the range of materials they use in the project were much wider and the use of the information was deeper than before.

Edublogs and Curriculum

2010-09-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

Edublogs team is proud about their support services, and they are really doing a great job:

Check their Curriculum Corner page to get some ideas how to use it with students and present your subject in an engaging way:
English and Lnaguage Arts
Foreign Languages and ELL
History and Social Studies
Math and Sciences
Technology Education

Web Cafe

2010-08-25T05:06:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday, August 25, we started a new season of our professional web café gatherings.

Both, sharing with each other features that we use in our just-started moodle courses and chatting at the table with a plate of cookies and dates made us feel welcome back to school.

In the library, teachers join for discussions of issues on using technology in education and showing what they do with web tools in their classes.

Foreign Language: Technology

2010-07-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

Teachers and students... Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants... How to overcome the gap? What language should we speak to be understood and understand? It should be the same but isn’t English enough?

Technology became the language in which teachers should become proficient in order to communicate educational content and expect to be heard and understood.

What does it take to master a foreign language? Teachers of Modern Languages and from ELL department know it better than anyone else! Commitment, determination, and practice are the factors that lead to success. Your foreign accent and lack of fluency will always betray you as a foreigner and be areas to bring to perfection through the whole life, but we can do something about it.

Why do we need to bother? Technology does not replace the instruction. Web 2.0 tools are just new delivery mechanisms that are used to present the instruction to the individual learner! The reason is that technology is a part of students' life, the language they speak, and the environment they live in. Technology helps us find the way to conduct educational content that students enjoy and be gladly engaged to studying the subject. Why not to use it?

Technology integrators, once also being beginners and intermediate, threw themselves into the ocean of technology and immigrated to Second Life.
They have built some sites that connect us with others who decided to learn more about technology in education:
Classroom 2.0 - an online network of those who are interested in using digital tools in education;
The Educator's PLN (The Personal Learning Network for Educators) - a ning that encourages teachers to communicate with others and get an update on technology tools;
ISTE Community Ning comprises a number of group that can be of your interest (like Moodle group, 1-to-1, etc.)
Don't ignore our local connections as well - we try our best to let you exercise your new skills and learn new vocabulary words:
WBAIS Staff ning (WebCafe group), Library Buzz blog, and MBtoolbox wiki. Feel free to add your tools and participate in professional discussions.

Tech Learning TL Advisor Blog and Ed Tech Ticker Blogs from TL Blog Staff – TechLearning.com

2010-07-09T13:41:00.000-07:00

Joyce Valenza has pictured an image of nowadays' library media specialist at
Tech Learning TL Advisor Blog and Ed Tech Ticker Blogs from TL Blog Staff – TechLearning.com

I agree that library media specialists cannot work the same way they worked three years ago and a significant part of our profession is to learn, support, and educate others on how to use technology tools to share and collaborate. We have to demonstrate 2.0 technology to teachers and students to equip them with tools adequate to their needs and the demands of the modern age.