Monthly Archives: May 2010

A Prescription for Healthier School Librarianship: Transforming Our Practice for the 21st Century

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The brilliant Buffy Hamilton has agreed to share her presentation on A Prescription for Healthier School Librarianship: Transforming Our Practice for the 21st Century with readers of Bright Ideas.

A Prescription for Healthier School Librarianship: Transforming Our Practice for the 21st Century

As Hamilton states, the challenges we all face such as:
  • budget contraints
  • filtering
  • fear of change

Can be overcome by:

  • seeing change as an opportunity, not a threat
  • creating a participatory culture and environment
  • multiple forms of literacy
  • multiple modes of learning
  • shared knowledge construction through collaboration
  • listening, sharing and risk-taking
  • Energise your mind by plugging into your PLN

This is a presentation that is thoughtful, creative, intelligent and timely. As Hamilton states, “Libraries are in the change business”. A visit to her website, The Unquiet Librarian is highly recommended.

Google Earth Outreach Showcase

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The Google Earth Outreach Showcase is a terrific way to teach students about how “how non-profit and public benefit organizations are using Google Earth and Maps to visualize their cause. You can see both Earth and Maps projects, and read about the impact the organizations have had using these different mapping technologies.”

Examples include:

  • World water map
  • Clean water in Haiti
  • Southern Forests for the Future
  • Chile earthquake maps

A fantastic resource for geography; fantastic maps with lots of added information for students to make connections with. A reminder that you will need to have Google Earth downloaded on your computer before you can access these maps.

Little Big Planet @ McGuire College

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Award winning teacher Adrian Camm has been using the Playstation 3 video game Little Big Planet with his classes at McGuire College as a learning tool. Adrian explains:

The aim of this particular project is to engage year 7 and 9 students in game-based learning using the Playstation 3’s multiplayer functionality and the game Little Big Planet. Not only to students have to communicate and collaborate to solve problems within the game, but it then allows for students to be level designers and developers. The game includes an accurate physics engine that allows for exploration of a host of physical and mathematical concepts such as force, momentum, gravity, drift, scale and radius, to name a few. This initiative covers many other VELS domains and includes scope for cross-curricular opportunities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

LBP

The project is only really just starting but we envision that students will initially participate in multiplayer game play and then will develop game levels that reinforce or perhaps even expose them to science, technology, engineering and mathematics concepts. Students will learn about scientific concepts by exploration, will be engaged in self-directed, non-linear learning and contribute to a vibrant community of Little Big Planet developers and enthusiasts. Other classroom content would encompass game design principles, game play, debriefing to talk about application of game design principles to current levels etc.

It is proposed that this method of teaching science concepts (having the student at the centre) will lead to improved learning outcomes as opposed to the traditional textbook approach. In addition to measuring changes in skill at level design and changes in knowledge of scientific concepts, the evaluation of the project will investigate attitudes and perceptions of using game-based learning in the classroom from a student, parent and teacher perspective.

Adrian is a true innovator and is passionate about using technology to help students attain their very best. Thanks Adrian for sharing this amazing project.

Weekly links (weekly)

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

ClassChats

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If you think your class would like to connect with other classes around the world, then ClassChats may be for you.

ClassChats

The website explains more:

There are plenty of reasons to join ClassChats.com – chief among them is that you will become a member of a world wide community of educators. ClassChats.com is a great way to teach your students about social networking in a safe educational environment, meet educators from around the world, share ideas and collaborate on lessons. Site membership is FREE, now and forever!

The about page elaborates even further:

ClassChats.com is striving to become an online social network of educators. After seeing how a third grade teacher was able to engage her students through the use of video chat we decided to create a site which would help other educators connect in a similar fashion. Out site contains audio\video chat functionality, shared resources, an interactive whiteboard, blogs, forums and more.

We know that students learn best through being connected, so ClassChats could be an excellent way to foster such connections.

Vicki Davis – @coolcatteacher passed on this link to ClassChats. Thanks Vicki!

Alan November – How Can We Make Change?

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Recently Alan November spoke at the ACEC2010 Conference. On his ‘soapbox’ he discussed how teachers who want to use technology in the curriculum can help to encourage and make change within their schools.

  • It is the role of the Principal to manage change.
  • We need to change the way Principals are trained to include information about embedding technology into the curriculum.
  • When teachers go on PD days, take two students to PD to build in urgency to make change once back at school.
  • What do you love to teach? Custom design tools for that.
  • Principals should ask teachers ‘which countries are part of your work?’ They need to make contact with teachers across the world for kids to work together. The Principal should organise this so there are no excuses.
  • Assessment: capacity to show students in any subject fitquest library.
  • Find 12 student projects for this unit. Kids develop rubrics for assessing projects. They design the assessment.
  • Who owns learning? is an important question we must consider.
  • Publishing student work online is vital. Continuous assessment over years by comments, etc.
  • Different search engines for different problems. An example is to narrow a Google search down to articles coming from a specific country eg for Turkey you would type in Site:tr after your search phrase. To narrow down to government sites, use Site:gov
  • Technorati is  a search engine for blogs. Includes comments.
  • Good tools to create content and communicate are Jing and Skype. We must have fearless global communicators and learners. Teach them well.
  • YouTube is blocked? Teachers should be able to create folders inside your school filter. Every teacher can have their own filter.
  • School Leaders need to learn how filtering software works.
  • See Alan’s web literacy book./website Information literacy. Add to PLN
  • Teach strategies for search – setup a Google custom search engine at (you will need google account). This makes searching safer and more reliable for students as the only results are from the sites you’ve nominated to be reputable. Designed by teachers, students won’t get distracted by millions of search results as the only results are ones you put in. Students can contribute sites as well. More information on how to implement this – read this handout by Alan November.
  • A good idea is to have students with specific tasks, change the students daily:
  • Tutorial designers. Students can design and produce learning lessons and tutorials for other students, within their class, school and across the globe. An example of this was featured in a previous Bright Ideas post about Mathtrain.TV.
  • Official scribe. Create a Google Docs account which all students can view. Have one student take comprehensive notes for the class daily. Students will take great care when taking notes on behalf of the class, teaching them responsibility and good writing skills.
  • Daily researcher. Adding resources for class study every day. Set up a Diigo or Delicious account and have students add links and tags. Set up tagging on the first day. Teachers can see who is tagging what.
  • Collaboration coordinators. Have a small team of students who take responsibility for organising and making contact with other classrooms across the world via Skype.
  • Curriculum reviewers. Students can review the resources and curriculum via their own podcasts.
  • Contributors to society. Kiva is an excellent website that organises small loans for third world countries. Great for geography.
  • The best job for kids is to make a difference.

More information is available in Alan’s “Power Up or Power Down” chapter of Curriculum21.

Moving from Facilitation to Constructive Partnerships

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Recently The Journal featured an interesting article on how schools can use technology to change relationships with students.

The article The Changing Role of Instructors Moving from Facilitation to Constructive Partnerships looks at:

  • Guides and Coaches and the Art of Facilitation
  • Learning Partners
  • The Importance of Democratizing the Process
  • Learning as a Process–not a Product

The article states that with technology enabling students to author and publish a wide variety of digital materials and products, students and teachers are becoming collaborators and partners in learning. What are your thoughts?

Pass it on!

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Over the past few days, Bright Ideas has been fortunate to be recognised by some wonderful peers.

Interactive content corner award

An award has been given out to Bright Ideas by a number of other blog authors and in turn, I am awarding some blogs the same award. Thank you to Interactive Content Corner, The Nerdy Teacher and I Learn Technology

For those I am awarding below, here are a few rules to follow:

1- Copy and display the picture of the award given to you;

2- Link back to the blog that nominated you;

3- Nominate 10 different blogs yourself;

4- Inform the people you nominated, so they can in turn, continue the chain and spread the word about other great blogs out there.

My awards go to (in no particular order)

Many thanks to @ktenkely for introducing me to many of these blogs via the wonderful I Learn Technology blogging alliance.

Gateway to 21st Century Skills

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Teachers can access a wide range of educational support materials via The Gateway to 21st Century Skills website.

gateway

Teachers must register to use The Gateway, however, it is free to do so.

The “about the Gateway Project” page explains more:

Mission

The Gateway expands educators’ capability to access Internet-based lesson plans, instructional units and other educational materials in all forms and formats. The Gateway’s goal is to improve the organization and accessibility of the substantial collections of materials that are already available on various federal, state, university, non-profit, and commercial Internet sites.

The Gateway is administered by JES & Co., a nonprofit serving educators and trainers at all levels in the USA and around the world.

Vision

The Gateway will be the world’s leading digital library and metadata cooperative, helping educators serve students by providing access to educational knowledge through cutting edge innovation and collaboration

Resources are listed by subject:

There are thousands of links to sites available for learning and teaching.

Thank you to Helen Boelens for passing on the information for this site.

OLMC Facebook Fan Page

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Our Lady of Mercy College, Heidelberg teacher librarian Michael Jongen has recently developed a Facebook Fan page for the students. Michael explains:

After a meeting of CLANS (Catholic Network) librarians where we had discussed social networking, I decided to create a facebook fan page for the library.  This is an attempt to engage with the students but we will maintain the page so that is current, informative and fun.  Several of the creative faculties already use facebook fan pages to communicate with students.  We also set up a twitter account which was linked to the facebook page.  This was an attempt to tackle the facebook conundrum directly and to see if, as educators we can communicate through our students’ choice of social media.  After a year of working to inform teachers of the potential of Web 2.0 in learning and assessment, I also wanted to look at my own area and how we could utilise these tools.

olmcfacebook1

Head of Library Tricia Sweeney and I feel that we will use this as our main medium of communication with the girls and as a tool to showcase our web 2.0 projects such as book trailers and book blogs.

Some newspaper reports in April 2010 suggested that teachers should not ‘friend’ students on Facebook. OLMC has addressed these issues in the following way:

Our Facebook page was devised as a fan page.  Several other subject areas use the same approach, this enables students to fan the page rather than have to become a friend of the teacher.  olmclibrary facebook page has three administrators, including Tricia Sweeney as Head of Library.

We have an eSmart committee at the School which Tricia and I both sit on alongside the IT manager and the Vice Principal. We have draft protocols.

Facebook  is a good way to engage and communicate with students. Fan pages can be created in Subject areas and domains e.g. olmclibrary, media, drama and dance pages. It is not recommended that Facebook be used for assessment or assignments.  It is recommended that teachers do not ‘friend’ with students.

At OLMC the message is very strong that teachers should think very wisely about ‘friending’ current students.  Any current Facebook controversy or issue is raised at the weekly staff briefing by the Principal.

An excellent idea by Michael and Tricia to meet the students’ interests by joining Facebook, but also by setting up a number of procedures that ensure that students stay safe online.