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
Thursday, 9 February 2012
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!
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Metropolitan Museum of Art curators talk about maps: voice over and images only. This would be good to show teachers in IT presentation.
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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?
Friday, 26 November 2010
I've had a chance to think
I have had a chance to reflect on my previous post, to think about what is going on and how I can take it in the right direction. Though teachers know that they can bring students to the library for a research lesson, they don't. They also know that I will put together a pathfinder for students on the topic they are researching, but they don't ask for it. So, the obvious question is 'why', which leads to 'what can I do about it'?
First, for a explanation of who has been using the library, for what purpose and who is not using its services as often as before. The majority of classes, which come through the library are from English, science, humanities and music.
The English classes come mainly for book talks. I am hoping that one of the grades, which does a research project on the 50s with their study of The Outsiders, will be persuaded to book a research class but that is for the future.
Humanities use the library a lot, especially in grades 9 and 10, but also in the other grades. They are in the habit of bringing their classes in whenever there is a research element in a unit.
Some science classes started to come in last year and I did give lessons for them on using online databases, on how to find books and on bibliographic referencing. Interestingly, this year the teachers seem to have 'forgotten' to book classes when they are doing projects. Instead, I have students wandering in and asking for help to find material in books. Their teachers require that they have at least one book source but fail to let me know and fail to ensure that their students even know how to find books in the library.
I became quite frustrated and went to talk to one of the teachers involved. I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that the teacher thought that his students would know how to find books because they were in grade 9. He also thought that they would know how to do a search on the Internet or in the school online databases because of course, they're teenagers and they know how to do that. Oh dear! If only that were true!
Well, this talk brought me a little closer to understanding my problem. Many teachers believe that students know their way around the Internet, in which case there is nothing to teach them about doing a search. This is my first hurdle. Bring the message to my colleagues that their students don't know as much as they think they do.
(More to follow!)
First, for a explanation of who has been using the library, for what purpose and who is not using its services as often as before. The majority of classes, which come through the library are from English, science, humanities and music.
The English classes come mainly for book talks. I am hoping that one of the grades, which does a research project on the 50s with their study of The Outsiders, will be persuaded to book a research class but that is for the future.
Humanities use the library a lot, especially in grades 9 and 10, but also in the other grades. They are in the habit of bringing their classes in whenever there is a research element in a unit.
Some science classes started to come in last year and I did give lessons for them on using online databases, on how to find books and on bibliographic referencing. Interestingly, this year the teachers seem to have 'forgotten' to book classes when they are doing projects. Instead, I have students wandering in and asking for help to find material in books. Their teachers require that they have at least one book source but fail to let me know and fail to ensure that their students even know how to find books in the library.
I became quite frustrated and went to talk to one of the teachers involved. I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that the teacher thought that his students would know how to find books because they were in grade 9. He also thought that they would know how to do a search on the Internet or in the school online databases because of course, they're teenagers and they know how to do that. Oh dear! If only that were true!
Well, this talk brought me a little closer to understanding my problem. Many teachers believe that students know their way around the Internet, in which case there is nothing to teach them about doing a search. This is my first hurdle. Bring the message to my colleagues that their students don't know as much as they think they do.
(More to follow!)
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
How do I encourage teachers to bring their classes in to the library?
I am frustrated! Today students trickled into the library during period 1 from a science class looking for books on pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Did I know that a research project in that class was ongoing? Had the teacher checked to see if the library had any books on the topic? Did the teacher know whether the students knew how to find books in the library database? Did the teacher even check to see if the library was available during the time that the students were sent there? Obviously the answer to all these questions was 'no'.
So where do I go from here?
So where do I go from here?
Sunday, 14 November 2010
434% Increase in Fiction Circulation
On Friday I decided to find out how many fiction books had been checked out of the library since school started a little less than 3 months ago. I knew that the numbers would be good. You can tell. And I was right! I'm not sure of our population but I think it is between 250 to 300. I will have to check on that Monday. Whatever the number, we have circulated 622 fiction books. If we have 300 students, that would be just over 2 books per student.
Next I decided to check on the same time period in 2008 and 2009. I started in the August of 2009 but hadn't had the opportunity to sort through the fiction collection and start buying new paperbacks. In that year, 166 books were checked out for the same time period. Now I was really curious. How many had gone out in those months in the year before I started: 196.
I sent the statistics to my head of school and he asked the obvious question. Why had there such a dramatic increase? The answer has been partially answered in the previous paragraph. I was new to the library and so, I had just begun to understand the needs of the students and to weed the collection. However, there is more to it than that.
The collection I inherited was for the large part hardcover and all the books were stored on shelves which went around the walls of the fiction section. Because of the type of shelving and some overcrowding, there was no way of displaying the front covers of the books, other than by removing the covers and putting them on a bulletin board. Unfortunately, there were no bulletin boards in the fiction area so that was not in fact a possibility.
I started by buying paperback spinners and pulling out books from the collection, which would fit on them. There were a number of permabound books so I manage to sparsely fill the spinners. Next, I weeded those hardbacks left on the shelves to gain some room to pull books with exciting covers out and display them on the shelves. Yes, we know that one shouldn't judge a book by its cover but students do (and to an extent, so do I if I'm honest). I've done three more weedings since then and we are now down to a very compact hardcover collection.
Once I started to understand what kind of books my students were interested in, I started to buy new paperback fiction. Some I bought on the recommendation of the students, others from lists of suggested titles and finally, last Easter I spent the day at Blackwell's in Oxford and bought a £1000 worth of new titles. We were off! And we've never looked back!
I have spent a lot of time pouring over catalogues and looking at how bookstores display their stock. I've bought Plexiglas display units for some of the hardcover shelves and also to go on the top of lower shelving. These allow me to display hardcover books with their covers revealed to the patrons.
I move my stock continually so that students always see new books on display. I also move the books around on the spinners so that books which have been at the back are moved to the front. Finally, though not really since I am always looking for new ideas, I have made room for 3 bulletin boards which I use to advertise new books, genres, authors, or just books I think might be of interest.
One of my favorite displays last year was of a group of hardcover books, which had never been taken out of the library. They were my 'lonely hearts' books, looking for someone who shared the same interests. Each one had a stick coming out of the top with a note attached (pictures to follow!). For example: Lonely book seeks lover of adventure, danger and mystery. Guarantees a good time!
I have just started on this journey to help my students discover that books can be exciting. In the process, they have introduced me to so many authors and genres I had never encountered before. The journey continues and I shall continue to chronicle it.
Next I decided to check on the same time period in 2008 and 2009. I started in the August of 2009 but hadn't had the opportunity to sort through the fiction collection and start buying new paperbacks. In that year, 166 books were checked out for the same time period. Now I was really curious. How many had gone out in those months in the year before I started: 196.
I sent the statistics to my head of school and he asked the obvious question. Why had there such a dramatic increase? The answer has been partially answered in the previous paragraph. I was new to the library and so, I had just begun to understand the needs of the students and to weed the collection. However, there is more to it than that.
The collection I inherited was for the large part hardcover and all the books were stored on shelves which went around the walls of the fiction section. Because of the type of shelving and some overcrowding, there was no way of displaying the front covers of the books, other than by removing the covers and putting them on a bulletin board. Unfortunately, there were no bulletin boards in the fiction area so that was not in fact a possibility.
I started by buying paperback spinners and pulling out books from the collection, which would fit on them. There were a number of permabound books so I manage to sparsely fill the spinners. Next, I weeded those hardbacks left on the shelves to gain some room to pull books with exciting covers out and display them on the shelves. Yes, we know that one shouldn't judge a book by its cover but students do (and to an extent, so do I if I'm honest). I've done three more weedings since then and we are now down to a very compact hardcover collection.
Once I started to understand what kind of books my students were interested in, I started to buy new paperback fiction. Some I bought on the recommendation of the students, others from lists of suggested titles and finally, last Easter I spent the day at Blackwell's in Oxford and bought a £1000 worth of new titles. We were off! And we've never looked back!
I have spent a lot of time pouring over catalogues and looking at how bookstores display their stock. I've bought Plexiglas display units for some of the hardcover shelves and also to go on the top of lower shelving. These allow me to display hardcover books with their covers revealed to the patrons.
I move my stock continually so that students always see new books on display. I also move the books around on the spinners so that books which have been at the back are moved to the front. Finally, though not really since I am always looking for new ideas, I have made room for 3 bulletin boards which I use to advertise new books, genres, authors, or just books I think might be of interest.
One of my favorite displays last year was of a group of hardcover books, which had never been taken out of the library. They were my 'lonely hearts' books, looking for someone who shared the same interests. Each one had a stick coming out of the top with a note attached (pictures to follow!). For example: Lonely book seeks lover of adventure, danger and mystery. Guarantees a good time!
I have just started on this journey to help my students discover that books can be exciting. In the process, they have introduced me to so many authors and genres I had never encountered before. The journey continues and I shall continue to chronicle it.
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