How embarrassing to read posts what you have written in the past. It is rather like looking back at your teenaged self in your diary. Cringeworthy to say the least. I have decided to start posting again in this blog in order to give myself a place to write and think about what I am doing as a librarian. I have weeded out previous post, which really have no further relevance and may take down more. However, for the time being I think that the ones I have left will give me subjects to contemplate over the course of this next spate of writing.
Last year I was inspired to write as part of 28 days of writing on Twitter. I will put up some of those posts here and make further comments on them and well as exploring some of what has been written here in previous posts.
However, to start with I am going to write about and examine the "project" I am working on for next year's grade 9 study skills class. You will find this in the next post.
Friday, 3 June 2016
Friday, 2 March 2012
Forging the Technology-Curriculum Link
Last night, I attended a webinar offered by Edweek, entitled “Forging the Technology-Curriculum Link”. It was described as “a webinar exploring the need for educators to be thoughtful and deliberate in aligning both technology and curriculum to develop the most successful programs for students.” The speakers were Noreen M. Walton, director of learning support services for the 33,000-student Poway Unified School District in San Diego; and Mark Hofer, associate professor of educational technology, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va. In a few days time, a link will be available to the archived webinar and I will send that out to interested parties.
I found the speakers and the questions, which followed to be very helpful in my own deliberations on how to help teachers integrate information technology into their curricula. I have been offering workshops on various applications, which I have been using and which I felt would be of use to certain teachers in certain subject areas. The difficulty has always been to avoid becoming so enthused by the application or the technology that you try to find a place to use it, whether or not it is the best solution. In other words, one can end up layering the technology on top of the curriculum, rather than embedding it. One needs to learn to see each technology or application as one of a series of tools, which may or may not be appropriate to the task at hand. It is a sobering reminder of how carried away one can become when one offers a high-tech solution to a task, which only required a whiteboard and marker pen. I find myself guilty of this at times.
Noreen Walton talked of the need to have members of her IT department go into the classroom to see how technologies are being used and to meet regularly with teachers to discuss their needs and problems. Mark Hofer discussed his work with identifying the activity types in each subject area and the possible technologies, which could be used for each. You might like to have a look at: http://activitytypes.wmwikis.net/HOME)
When the archived webinar becomes available, I will post a link. I think that any librarian or teacher, involved in the integration of technology would benefit from it.
I found the speakers and the questions, which followed to be very helpful in my own deliberations on how to help teachers integrate information technology into their curricula. I have been offering workshops on various applications, which I have been using and which I felt would be of use to certain teachers in certain subject areas. The difficulty has always been to avoid becoming so enthused by the application or the technology that you try to find a place to use it, whether or not it is the best solution. In other words, one can end up layering the technology on top of the curriculum, rather than embedding it. One needs to learn to see each technology or application as one of a series of tools, which may or may not be appropriate to the task at hand. It is a sobering reminder of how carried away one can become when one offers a high-tech solution to a task, which only required a whiteboard and marker pen. I find myself guilty of this at times.
Noreen Walton talked of the need to have members of her IT department go into the classroom to see how technologies are being used and to meet regularly with teachers to discuss their needs and problems. Mark Hofer discussed his work with identifying the activity types in each subject area and the possible technologies, which could be used for each. You might like to have a look at: http://activitytypes.wmwikis.net/HOME)
When the archived webinar becomes available, I will post a link. I think that any librarian or teacher, involved in the integration of technology would benefit from it.
Monday, 20 February 2012
Oh no! Number 11! Top 10 Revisited!
Did I really think that I would be able to stick to only 10 top sites for teaching and learning? I should have known better for within moments of making the post, I had already thought of another. Today I have to add number 11: RCampus, a site where I made a rubric this morning for the Prezi presentations a group of science students are doing tomorrow. I can see that this site definitely have the potential of being one of my top 10.
Thursday, 9 February 2012
I'm having a "what about" moment!
Having posted about my top ten web applications, I've just thought of another, which I really can't leave out. So, I am going to take out Twitter and replace it with
Jog The Web! When rethinking it, I decided that though I find Twitter really useful, it is probably less so for classroom teachers. So the list is now:
Top Ten
1. Netvibes
2. Diigo
3. Prezi
4. Noodletools
5. Jog the Web
6. Glogster
7. Wikispaces / PB Works
8. Blogger
9. Google Docs
10. Wallwisher / Wordle
Jog The Web! When rethinking it, I decided that though I find Twitter really useful, it is probably less so for classroom teachers. So the list is now:
Top Ten
1. Netvibes
2. Diigo
3. Prezi
4. Noodletools
5. Jog the Web
6. Glogster
7. Wikispaces / PB Works
8. Blogger
9. Google Docs
10. Wallwisher / Wordle
Diigo List for IL Workshop
One of my favorite web applications is Diigo. With it I organize my bookmarks and share them with others. Often, I will set up a Diigo list for a particular research project and the students are given the link so that they can use the sites on the list as their jumping off point. Today I discovered that I can put a list in a blog post directly from Diigo. Thus, the list below!
-
Metropolitan Museum of Art curators talk about maps: voice over and images only. This would be good to show teachers in IT presentation.
-
5 Fantastic Ways to Use Wallwisher in the Classroom – SimpleK12
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Class blogs: a better way to teach? | Education | guardian.co.uk
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web2 - what the Internet can do for you as a creator, a collaborator, an active participant
Finally I'm back blogging! My Top 10 Web Applications for Teaching and Learning
I know that this list will be different for everyone according to their need but here is my top ten for teaching and learning. I realize now that I have come up with the list, that they meet the criteria of the questions below.
1. Does it make my life easier?
2. Does it enrich or further enable learning?
3. Is it fast and easy to learn to use?
4. Is it sustainable?
Top Ten
1. Netvibes
2. Diigo
3. Prezi
4. Noodletools
5. Twitter
6. Glogster
7. Wikispaces / PB Works
8. Blogger
9. Google Docs
10. Wallwisher / Wordle
1. Does it make my life easier?
2. Does it enrich or further enable learning?
3. Is it fast and easy to learn to use?
4. Is it sustainable?
Top Ten
1. Netvibes
2. Diigo
3. Prezi
4. Noodletools
5. Twitter
6. Glogster
7. Wikispaces / PB Works
8. Blogger
9. Google Docs
10. Wallwisher / Wordle
Monday, 5 September 2011
Are books still needed in K-12 libraries
Article based on the session: Are books still needed in K-12 libraries
I was quite taken aback this spring when I read about the decision of Wellington College, an independent school in Surrey, to remove most of the print books in their library and replace them with e-resources. Are they mad, I have to admit wondering. Was I willing to do this in my secondary library? Was it even appropriate or necessary? Too busy to really think it through, I put the issue out of mind, until I went to the ALA's conference in New Orleans. One of the workshops was entitled "Are Books Still Needed in K-12 Libraries" and I decided that this would be a good opportunity to confront the issue and my preconceptions.
I went to the session not sure what to expect. Moreover, I couldn't help wondering what other librarians might think of the idea of doing away with their print collections. I felt that most would be as reluctant as I was and the side conversations before the start and even after the presentations, proved me right. However, I can't say that I didn't change my mind on certain aspects of the issue. In fact I had the opportunity to think through the various options for my library and to form a clearer idea of the needs of my users.
I was already aware that my student users look for digital solutions to their information needs and only consult print format sources, such as books, if compelled to do so or if they have exhausted other sources and are pointed in that direction by the library staff or teachers. This raised a number of questions.
1. Is it inevitable that students will gravitate to digital sources and rarely consult print format sources?
2. Are students more likely to consult book sources in their digital format?
3. Or, if as I suspect, are students averse to the perceived length and complex nature of the material in either format of books?
As with my third question, I have my suspicions about the answers to the others based on anecdotal evidence and observation of my library users. My conclusions are that my students want quick solutions to their information needs. Thus they perceive digital sources found through a search engine on the Internet to be easier and quicker to access. One of the obvious conclusions coming from this is that both teachers and librarians need to find ways to demonstrate to our students that finding the most appropriate sources for an information need may require hard work. Furthermore, we need to demonstrate that there are times when the appropriate source is a print or an e-book.
Having formed this conclusion, I tried it out on a librarian from a local 6th form college. Her experience surprised me. She said that her students do not have the skills to effectively search the internet for resources and rely on her book collection for their information. I wondered if her observations were correct, and if so, they demonstrated to me the obvious, that different users have different abilities and therefore different needs.
As with all my internal conversations, I have continued over the last few months to muse on the questions I posed myself. Then by chance or serendipity I came across The Shallows: How the internet is changing the way we think, read and remember by Nicholas Carr (Atlantic, 2010). It had been sitting on my shelves over the summer waiting to be processed when I came across it while looking for something to read at the doctor's office. I suffered one of those light bulb moments.
Nicholas Carr proposes to his readers that the Internet is rewiring our brains and that as a result there have been profound changes to the ways in which we communicate, socialize and engage with the world around us. Of most relevance to my role as a librarian is the observation by many people he interviewed that they can no longer read long passages of text without becoming distracted. The way they read has fundamentally changed. They skim, they scroll, they flit from one thing to another and when they try to read longer, more complex material they become bored.
The 2008 study by eGenera on the effects of the internet on the young reveals that they don't necessarily read a page from left to right or from the top to the bottom. Instead they skim for information or something of interest. (Carr, 2010) If I am right in the conclusions I am drawing from this, readers who use the Internet regularly will read both print and on screen material in a fundamentally different way than they have in the past before the coming of the Internet. Therefore, the way in which I, as a librarian and teacher, organize and present information, and the types of information I make available must also be different. Thus, the new questions I have for myself are:
are my conclusions correct and what changes should I be making if they are?
I was quite taken aback this spring when I read about the decision of Wellington College, an independent school in Surrey, to remove most of the print books in their library and replace them with e-resources. Are they mad, I have to admit wondering. Was I willing to do this in my secondary library? Was it even appropriate or necessary? Too busy to really think it through, I put the issue out of mind, until I went to the ALA's conference in New Orleans. One of the workshops was entitled "Are Books Still Needed in K-12 Libraries" and I decided that this would be a good opportunity to confront the issue and my preconceptions.
I went to the session not sure what to expect. Moreover, I couldn't help wondering what other librarians might think of the idea of doing away with their print collections. I felt that most would be as reluctant as I was and the side conversations before the start and even after the presentations, proved me right. However, I can't say that I didn't change my mind on certain aspects of the issue. In fact I had the opportunity to think through the various options for my library and to form a clearer idea of the needs of my users.
I was already aware that my student users look for digital solutions to their information needs and only consult print format sources, such as books, if compelled to do so or if they have exhausted other sources and are pointed in that direction by the library staff or teachers. This raised a number of questions.
1. Is it inevitable that students will gravitate to digital sources and rarely consult print format sources?
2. Are students more likely to consult book sources in their digital format?
3. Or, if as I suspect, are students averse to the perceived length and complex nature of the material in either format of books?
As with my third question, I have my suspicions about the answers to the others based on anecdotal evidence and observation of my library users. My conclusions are that my students want quick solutions to their information needs. Thus they perceive digital sources found through a search engine on the Internet to be easier and quicker to access. One of the obvious conclusions coming from this is that both teachers and librarians need to find ways to demonstrate to our students that finding the most appropriate sources for an information need may require hard work. Furthermore, we need to demonstrate that there are times when the appropriate source is a print or an e-book.
Having formed this conclusion, I tried it out on a librarian from a local 6th form college. Her experience surprised me. She said that her students do not have the skills to effectively search the internet for resources and rely on her book collection for their information. I wondered if her observations were correct, and if so, they demonstrated to me the obvious, that different users have different abilities and therefore different needs.
As with all my internal conversations, I have continued over the last few months to muse on the questions I posed myself. Then by chance or serendipity I came across The Shallows: How the internet is changing the way we think, read and remember by Nicholas Carr (Atlantic, 2010). It had been sitting on my shelves over the summer waiting to be processed when I came across it while looking for something to read at the doctor's office. I suffered one of those light bulb moments.
Nicholas Carr proposes to his readers that the Internet is rewiring our brains and that as a result there have been profound changes to the ways in which we communicate, socialize and engage with the world around us. Of most relevance to my role as a librarian is the observation by many people he interviewed that they can no longer read long passages of text without becoming distracted. The way they read has fundamentally changed. They skim, they scroll, they flit from one thing to another and when they try to read longer, more complex material they become bored.
The 2008 study by eGenera on the effects of the internet on the young reveals that they don't necessarily read a page from left to right or from the top to the bottom. Instead they skim for information or something of interest. (Carr, 2010) If I am right in the conclusions I am drawing from this, readers who use the Internet regularly will read both print and on screen material in a fundamentally different way than they have in the past before the coming of the Internet. Therefore, the way in which I, as a librarian and teacher, organize and present information, and the types of information I make available must also be different. Thus, the new questions I have for myself are:
are my conclusions correct and what changes should I be making if they are?
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