Category Archives: Assignment 2

After the shock of the first week (my head was spinning a bit) and thinking that we were going to be spending the next three weeks frantically signing up for everything available on the internet, I feel much more calm this week.  If nothing else, I feel that I have the confidence to give any kind of technology a try, after all, what is the worst that could happen?  I have a unique opportunity this coming year to teach with another fantastic teacher in the library space at my school.  Her funding is coming from some math and science collaboration funding so all the library duties are still mine but since we are both going to be based out of the library.  I was finally able to synthesize a bit of what I have been taking in in both my classes and this is the copy of the email I sent her yesterday…

I would like to revolutionize the library in some small ways this coming up year.  These new laptops, iPads and that big TV need to be used.  While I think that it is a bit backwards to be planning around the technology (technology should be purchased around need) I do feel compelled to really embrace technology this year.  Here are some of my ideas…

-I would like to try to figure out a way to get book trailers playing on that big TV, on a loop, especially during book exchange times.  Eventually this year I would like to do a project with some classes where they create book trailers for the library books they are reading, a way of encouraging others to read what they thought was good.  Way better than recommendations on a piece of paper.  iMovie could be used for this…

-I would like to work with a class or two and write and illustrate books that could be transferred into book format.  I am pretty sure that we can do this with some scrapbooking software and then get them done in hard cover for not much money (maybe even through Costco, definitely online).  Even if we just do one copy and keep it in the library, or parents could buy a copy if they turn out well.

-I would like to do some inquiry based units this year, kind of like I have done in the past but implementing more technology…web quests, movie presentations, cartooning presentations, animoto…???

-Would love to write a graphic novel with a class…

 -I would like the library laptops to open to the library website rather than the school website and would like to spend some time updating and improving this site

-I think we need to sit down together at some point and outline the services that we can help with this year so that everyone has an idea of what we can offer, help with and support.  I am not always sure that people fully understand what we can offer. 

-Insignia has some cool features I think, like we can link it to the website and it will highlight our newly catalogued books…very cool.  Looking forward to learning more about it in September

-I would also like to see if I can connect a blog to a SharePoint website so that students (and teachers) could make book recommendations directly to the library website rather than on little pieces of paper  

-I would kind of like to push us past PowerPoint this year if we can.  If I have learned one thing these two weeks, it is that I am not so bad with technology and all you have to do is give it a try:)

What do you think?  (Overwhelming….yes.  Good to have high hopes….YES!)

My project next week will help flesh out the inquiry based teaching and learning aspect of my “to do” list for the coming year.  I am particularly excited to be working with this other teacher as the library position is so isolating in a school, I am the only one who does what I do.  I look forward to implementing ideas and bouncing ideas off this other teacher as I think that with support and collaboration I have an even greater chance of success.  For the first time since beginning this class, I was actually able to put into words a technology vision for the upcoming year.  Yay!

Is there a connection between World Libraries and Inquiry based teaching and learning?  For sure!  Many times, our inquiry is to look at other cultures or areas of expertise where we are not the experts.  What better way to find the answers to these questions than to go right to the source.  We had a good discussion in our little group about websites where you can connect with schools around the world.  What better way to learn about a different culture than to talk to a student in that country?  We also talked about a longer lasting relationship where our students become pen pals with another class and actually begin to build connections around the world.   Another option would be to Skype with experts.  Sure, not as good as having the person come to the classroom, but I am wondering if there would be an inclination for people to agree to Skype, or perhaps even just respond to a well informed email if a class were to make a request.

We also felt that world libraries could perhaps provide more up to date information than we may have access to in our school library.  Let’s be honest, no one in a school library really has the budget to be completely comprehensive and current in all areas of the curriculum.  Further to this, perhaps a good web quest could be a link between the question at hand and the larger world.  We also thought that perhaps our experience in world libraries could help form our inquiry questions rather than only answer our inquiry questions.

Lastly, we were hoping that our libraries could also become a virtual learning commons, a part of the world libraries.  This would be a place that our teachers could come to link to topics and resources as well as for our students.  Perhaps we could also become a resource for others who are interested in what we are doing in the classroom, or to inform their studies about school and libraries in Canada.  If we all share our information and our resources to the best of our abilities, then I think we are all contributing to the idea of world libraries at a grassroots level.

Here is the thing…I am finding that this topic is so broad that I could spend a very long time learning all there is to know about this topic.  So, I am beginning to think that the best thing to do would be to create some sort of resource that is easy to be shared and easy for others to have input on where I would organize all these resources into one central location and provide a forum where a group of us could share on this topic.  After class today, Doni and I sat for  a couple of hours and explored a variety of way to organize this information.  I have not been a huge fan of any of the mind mapping sites that I have visited thus far in this course.  Pearltrees didn’t give me the look I want and MindMeister again is just not as clean cut as I would like.  I really liked the look of Popplet but found that when I put links into the web, they weren’t active, so what is the point.  I then found a site called bubbl.us which seemed to be the aesthetic that I was looking for.  However, when I went to share with someone else, I found I couldn’t.  I think this site has great potential for what I would like to do but at six dollars a month, I think that is too steep a cost.  True, it is not too much for one site but as we are exploring a variety of these sites, I can see how monthly subscriptions could get pricey for a schools worth of subscriptions.

Doni then showed my Yammer which is a space she uses to collaborate with other TL’s in her district.  It seems to function in a similar way that First Class used to work in my district and I think SharePoint will work in a similar way.  From what seem to see, this may be compatible with SharePoint.  While I am not sure that the storage of my brainstorming ideas will be aesthetically what I had hoped, I have high hopes that this forum will be easy to access and provide a place for discussion among TL’s as well as classroom teachers in my district interested in Project or Inquiry Based Learning.  I look forward to exploring this platform further in the next several days.

We heard a lot of big words today, institutional isomorphism, sociocultural homeostasis and conservative dynamicism.  Really what does this all mean?  Well, I am not sure I know the clear answer to this but this is what I do know.  I am an active part of an institution, a dynamic institution in that the individual characters are always changing, however the roles tend to remain the same.  this institution encompasses teachers, students, parents, administrators and all others that participate in the daily lives of our schools.  I know that there tends to three different camps of teachers in our schools. There are the teachers that will find any excuse and reason possible to never touch technology in their classrooms.  There are teachers who use every opportunity to embrace technology and use it to enhance what they are doing in the classrooms not just directed to students, but involving students in an active way.  There are also teachers who, as Larry Cuban states, “hugged the middle” and used technology in their lessons without transforming how they teach.  (You can read his blog here http://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/dynamic-conservatism-and-stability-in-teaching/)  I would argue that the vast majority of teachers fall into that last category.  Many teachers have been presented with technology and have begrudgingly begun using it in their lessons but have simply transferred their lessons from overhead to Powerpoint to Smartboard and are not using the technology beyond a glorified presentation tool.

As the teacher librarian in my school it is my job to be the one to buck the trend and be on the cutting edge of facilitating the use of technology with my students.  How do I do this?  By not being the teacher who says don’t even try because the internet will fail.  By not being the teacher who sits in the staffroom and complains of a failed lesson if something doesn’t go right and then just give up trying.  I need to be the one who is designing learning explorations that embrace technology.  I need to be the one to advocate to my principal, my district and my province for the support needed to teach what is being asked of me to teach.  How do I do this?  Well, I am not sure.  I think that in my case. my first conversation will be with my principal who is quite on board with any technology ideas as long as you can show that the technology will actually be used.  I look forward to this conversation and by the end of this course, I suspect I will have a long list of points to present and questions to ask.

Today as we broke into our small groups, I found it interesting to note that three of our members were from elementary schools and thcompleting ree from middle and high schools.  This was exciting to me because this indicates that project based learning has a place in Kindergarten to grade twelve education and I find that best practices in teaching are often applicable in many teaching environments.  This also means that I better do a very good job at implementing this type of learning with my students so that they are capable of projects in this manner as this is something that they will be doing for the rest of their educational careers if not the rest of their lives.

Our group had a good discussion about the International Baccalaureate program as Jenny teaches in an IB school.  It was good to hear that this type of learning can actually be effective in a classroom setting.    We didn’t, however, get to much of a discussion about technology in this type of setting.  I can see the possibilities of using technology to enhance these types of projects, both as a research tool but also as a presentation tool.  I am curious if students get in a technology rut and if given a chance they would always present in the same format ie. video or if they would be self motivated to try a blog one time, a video the next, a cartoon the next etc.

Project based learning does have a variety of resources on line.  The above image shows an outline of the PLB framework.  This PBL site seems to have good resources available (http://pbl-online.org/) and a good outline of what PBL is.  I am wondering if there is a way that I could set up some sort of forum within our school district SharePoint where people could share unit ideas and ideas about how PBL is working in their classrooms.  I wonder if my forum has to be restricted to SharePoint because as the one go to place for all members of our district, perhaps people would be more inclined to contribute rather than having to check two different places.  Perhaps people would be happy to check two different places if the information was valuable enough?