Blog #6 - Can you hear me now?

This week we explored tools for creating podcasts and discussed ways to build learning communities to facilitate interaction and critical thinking. With all these tools available, what are the implications for changing the way we work, teach and learn?

I think the way we work, teach, and learn can become a much more “at your own pace” and “as needed” environment. It would be nice for my teachers to be able to access tutorials to do what they need, when they need it. Anything from adding a printer to using the Pillow wiki would be cool.

Here's my first attempt at a podcast on how to access the Pillow wiki:  http://screencast.com/t/BatOk6dI

What is preventing us from such changes?

All kinds of things play into why we can’t do all the cool things we want to do when teaching. For my teachers, I would say the biggest factors are: time, funding, and fear of the unknown or anything new. For me, it’s lack of sleep, curriculum people trying to justify their jobs by coming to our campus and criticizing everything we do, having to attend school board meetings just to make sure they don’t cut librarians, having 43 computers donated without an OS, serving 670 students every week, and lack of the full time library clerk I’m supposed to have according to the state elementary library standards.

If you could wave a magic wand, what would you change and why?

First, I would want my full time library clerk that I’m supposed to have. Then I wouldn’t have to spend all weekend shelving books and could do the cool tech stuff I love.

Blog #5 – Information Literacy

After completing the MAPping information activity, what are your reactions to your findings? What will you do differently while searching on the Internet for information now? How confident are you with the information you've used in the past (as part of your college career and/or in your profession)?

I was only moderately savvy on the Information Literacy Quiz. It’s been a while since I used Whois, but I should probably start using it more often. Usually the only sites I visit that aren’t my usual haunts are new shopping sites that have something I was looking for. I should start to use Whois so I can keep from getting scammed. I think most of the information I’ve used in the past has been good because I usually use the district’s online databases when looking for information.

What are some implications for the future of our students if we fail to teach them these skills in school? After all, the schools may block access to sites, but students still have access at home.

Students (and teachers) could be terribly mis-informed or led astray. I need to do a workshop with all the teachers ASAP. I have some teachers who still do Google image searches even after I told them to use http://yahooligans.com/! Hopefully they will all be more aware when they see the Information Literacy Quiz site.

Do you see any advantages for organizing your information via Delicious? What else did you find when exploring the other bookmarking applications? What are some ways you think you could use tools like these in the future?

I originally signed up for Delicious to set up a baby registry so I could list things from multiple sources. It’s a great way to store bookmarks online. I could have a set of bookmarks for every class that comes to the library based on the class’s favorite authors and types of books. I could also create a Web Quest and have a list of links for the Web Quest right in Delicious so that the students don’t wander around the internet.

Blinklist takes a snapshot of the website on that date. This would be good for saving news articles and any sites that change often.

Diigo lets you create student accounts for a whole class. Just click “Educator”. It looks like Diigo will let you highlight certain information and add sticky notes to a webpage.

Del.icio.us is good for organizing bookmarks, but I wish it would remove links for items that no longer exist. The bookmark took me to the store just to find a page saying the item was no-longer available.

Stumble Upon is going to have to wait until summer. It looks like it was made for bored people who have time to aimlessly look at sites for just about everything they’re interested in. I’ll see if I can check it out this summer.

Toobla seems like the perfect thing for a pack-rat. You can save a ton of videos and other things, but not take up any additional space. This would be good for if I created video instructions for various tech troubleshooting and then teachers could access the videos as needed.

Blog #4 - Assessment for Learning

Which tenent did you most relate to and why?

I most relate to the assessment for learning tenent that assessment for learning develops the learners' capacity for self-assessment so that they can become reflective and self-managing.  When I teach students, I teach them so that they will have the skills they need to learn independently.  At some point students leave school, and I don't want them to stop learning just because no one is making them learn. 
 
What potential if, if any, do you see for portfolio assessment?
 
In elementary school, portfolio assessment could be a way to unify learning.  Right now we are teaching each subject indepently.  It may be beneficial to teach subjects in context, such as incorporating math and language arts into science and social studies so that they are taught at the same time in a project based portfolio.
 
A portfolio could also show the student's progress over time. Perhaps students who wrote an essay at the beginning of the year could include revisions to show their progress, an revise as they see fit throughout the year as new skills are acquired.
 
What do you think the creation and development of your portfolio will do for your learning?
 
My portfolio will serve as a chronicle of my work and show others my capabilities.  I am finding more and more that I need to prove my worth with regard to helping students and promoting student achievement.  Having something to show for my work such as a student book club wiki and student reading blogs could go a long way as evidence of assisting with student achievement.
 
With the budget cuts and having to go to board meetings to fight for having full time librarians in each library, it couldn't hurt to stay prepared and keep a portfolio and my resume up to date.  Here's a sign I made to take to the board tomorrow:

Blog #3 - Reflection

This week, you explored the concept of wikis and created a wiki for a specific purpose. What purpose did you have in mind when developing your wiki and have you started to implement your ideas yet?

Earlier this year I started working on putting the Pillow Elementary Teacher's Manual in a pbworks.com wiki. I liked that the wiki is searchable, so that if a teacher is looking for the field trip form, they just have to search "field trip" and can get the necessary information.  I started puting up information, but still need to get a lot of the documents from Mrs. King and have a long way to go.  Slow and steady wins the race... 

What advantages do you see in utilizing wikis?

The idea later expanded when I was on the literacy night committee, because no one had the forms and fliers from the previous year. We needed a place that all the teachers could use to pass information on from year to year without losing a ton of information just because someone retired or had to resign.  That's why I made like 5 different people administrators on the school wiki.  I would hate for all that work to be lost just because of a freak accident.

What disadvantages do you see?

I'm still just setting up the wiki. Earlier this year I told the teachers about it, and a few were interested enough to check it out, but overall the response was "We need training on this thing!" Most of our teachers are digital imigrants. Mrs. King, our principal, wants me to get it as fleshed out and user friendly as possible before training everyone on it at the begnning of the 2011-2012 school year.

Think back to the digital natives reading. Do wikis have the potential for engaging them? Provide examples.

I would like to start up some wiki book clubs. This would be a great way to encourage students to read and to discuss what they think about what they're reading. Before starting student wikis, I would probably upgrade to the $99 a year version of pbworks.com that allows you to control who has what priveliges, page by page.

A wiki would also be a good way for our GT kiddos to communicate across the grade levels on their Panther Paws projects. This year they researched panthers (our school mascot), made scale dioramas of a panther habitat, and then made a life-size habitat in one of the hallways. In the students' research, they found that "panther" is more slang than scientific, and refers to black leopards or black jaguars. The project I would like for them to do next year is to hypothetically campaign for a new mascot, researching the new mascot, designing a T-shirt, and writing a persuasive letter to the editor explaining why their mascot should replace the panther. A wiki would help the students show off their work to the other students and hopefully raise the bar to challenge our highest level students.

If we had a computer in front of every student, physical classes could be made up of age peers, and online "classes" in wikis could be made up of academic peers. For example, if you have a student who is reading on a 4th grade level but in 2nd grade, perhaps they could try out the 3rd grade curriculum for a week or two, and if that's still not high level enough, then try the 4th grade curriculum. In a school such as mine with a high mobility rate, people jumping in and out of groups all the time would hopefully keep students from getting "stuck" the way traditional ability grouping did. One problem would be constantly training incoming students in wiki use.