Vision for the Future...

nextyearcountrynews.blogspot.com

To be honest, it took awhile to wrap my head around this assignment. Being a detail oriented person, I needed to stretch my brain and try to grasp the "bigger picture" of my role as a 21st century teacher-librarian. In Richardson's book, he cited Friedman, "What we're entering is the 'main event, and by main event I mean an era in which technology will truly transform every aspect of business, of government, of society, of life'... And, I would add, education" (Richardson, 11). When I started my library diploma courses, over and over again, I would hear my professors state that, "Right now, you are part of an exciting change in teacher-librarianship." Desperately, I wanted my vision to show that I am prepared to embrace the ever-changing technology and challenges in order to keep current in the span of my library career. It is easier said than done! I am glad that I have my family, staff members, and online librarian community to journey together. 

This prezi highlights four key elements a 21st century teacher-librarian must embrace:

1. Personal Learning Network  - Twitter, Ning, RSS, Google Reader

2. Collaboration - Wikis, Blogs, epals.com, global connections

3. Technology - Mobile devices, apps, Web 2.0 tools

4. New Literacies - (multi-literacies, evaluating Web content, presentations)

Digital Bookshelf 2.0 on Prezi

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REFLECTION

Immediately, when I think about before and after photos, they are usually about weight loss, plastic surgery, or home decor photos. However, here is my interpretation of a before and after teacher-librarian photo.

             

picture by Lucien E. Martin

Book cover: Thomas Peters and Lori Bell

This course has equipped me with many different Web 2.0 tools that I could share with the staff and students at Vancouver Christian School. Sharing this knowledge and experience with them has gradually shifted their stereotypical perceptions about teacher-librarians. Having my Nexus 7 tablet as my mobile library has drastically increased circulation, improved the reference interview, and upped my teacher-librarian status! This course provided opportunities for me to explore and play with the different Web 2.0 tools. Wikis, Twitter, Podcasts, and Google Hangout/Reader were new tools added to my "Web 2.0 toolbox." Here are a few highlights of utilizing these tools at my school:

• The school's first wikis!!! Foods and Math 8 wikis. The VP and I bought 8 mics and headsets and we will be using these to screencast lessons. Also, the students will be screencasting their lessons. The most exciting thing is that we will be able to invite other math experts to participate! In the Foods 8 wiki, I taught students how to make their own cooking show video. It was uploaded to the wiki. For the last class, we will watch the videos with snacks provided by moi.  
• Podcasting with the music teacher (my hubby) with recording and uploading band songs to his blog. 
• Promoting different presentation sites and classrooms actually using them - Glogster, Animoto, Photostory 3, and Storybird (picked up from one of our classmates' blog).
• Helping individual teachers and students navigate around the Web and databases using Screenr. When Aaron used Screenr in Vista, I quickly wanted to sign up for an account. 
• A presentation to middle school students about using Easybib, citing sources, and research skills (now some students are bugging their homeroom teachers about citing their sources.)

Here are some of my personal learning highlights:

• Building on my PLN with connections made in Twitter, Ning, and Blogs.
• Google Reader/RSS added to my iGoogle page with instant access to reading materials of my choice.
• Google Hangout with friends, family and other librarians in my school association.
• Shamefully, uploaded my first video to Youtube. Yikes!                      
• Encouraging students to leave a positive digital footprint                                                                 

LIBE 477 is a practical, relevant, and useful course. I am surprised that it is an elective course instead of a required course considering where teacher-librarianship is heading. I would like to leave this last post with Joyce Valenza's quote: "The library should be more of a kitchen than a grocery store." Well, I better roll up my sleeves and start cooking! 

Weblogs and RSS

RSS is a fantastic tool to keep my digital reading materials in one place by using Google Reader. Richardson writes that he keeps folders for different topics to organize his reading materials (RSS feeds). For now, I have created some main categories: library, magazines, news, podcasts, and recipes. Later on, I might add a folder for dogs, especially Yorkshire Terriers. I had a Yorkie for 16 years! Wonderfully, my Nexus tablet comes in real handy to access reading materials anywhere. Furthermore, I read that Google Gears allows me to access Google Reader when Internet access is not available. Now, I can read on a plane without paying the high wifi fees. 

At the teachweb2 wiki, the author provides a comprehensive list of the pros and cons lists for using Google Reader. More importantly, it highlights on how to use this tool in a classroom setting - particularly for individual research projects for current events. Here is the link for this wiki;

Google Reader Wiki

I created a screencast to best explain my discoveries of Google Reader. I did forget to mention a great feature of Google Reader is that I could easily share my feeds with others by simply clicking on the email button below. Furthermore, in this screencast I shared that I added the Google Reader gadget onto my iGoogle homepage to make my feeds even more accessible.

Weblogs        

In our middle school, every teacher is required to maintain and update their classroom blog via Wordpress. I know that almost every class in the primary and intermediate department also have a class blog. Teachers post homework assignments, photos, artwork, etc. into their private sites. Parents are given a log-in to access the information. Last year, several of the middle teachers tried Edmodo. However, teachers with the smartphones found Edmodo easy to update and the teachers who did not own one could not embrace Edmodo. Being a new TL, this is my first year working with the middle school and I am interested to see how Wordpress pans out this year. 

In this post, I wanted to make connections between Google Reader and Weblogs. As a result, I used Google Reader to subscribe to different educational blogs that interests me. First off, I subscribed to my friend's blog who teaches at Richmond Christian School. He is an Apple fanatic. Here is the link to his excellent blog: Teaching with Ipad.

From his blog, I gleaned information that pertain to me - the different apps he discovers and how he uses these apps in the classroom. My school's IT person is anti-Mac and a fan of Android. I am extremely happy with my Google Nexus. I am not so much concerned about which operating system I use, because ultimately, it is how I apply the technology appropriately for student learning! 

My library weblog is incorporated into my library website as a sub tab. This feature is convenient because my visitors does not need to leave the library website to access the blog. You can check it out at 

VCS Library. 

Some things I would like to post this year in the blog are:

-student made book trailers and book reviews

-highlights of student projects (projects that I collaborated with different teachers)

-book club podcasts

-any other ideas, Aaron?

To end on a humourous note, this video was my first post on my library blog. You gotta love the "Old Spice" commercials!

Tweet, Tweet!

In my previous post I mentioned that Twitter is one of those Web 2.0 tools that I am learning to embrace. Working in an elementary school, it is hard for me to visualize how to use this tool in the classroom setting. I am beginning to realize that as I look deeper into the world of Twitter that this tool would help me learn, discover, and connect more with others who share similar interests and passions. As suggested, Aaron encouraged me to use the #hashtag to find what interests me. He also mentioned that he # alot during the BCTLA conference. 

First, I #bctla and Twitter revealed people who used this hashtag in their post. As a result, I found tidbits of wonderful ideas that others have picked up from the conference (which I was not able to attend). Jeff Yasinchuk shared Tripline for making maps. I instantly fell in love with it because in March we will be surprising our children with a trip to Hawaii. Tripline would be a perfect documentation of our family trip. (Ben K., you should use this for your European expedition!) Upon signing up for Tripline, it linked me to Meograph, a 4D digital storytelling tool. The tool triggered a memory where the Grade 7 and 8 teacher were wondering if there was a tool that students would be able to create maps online and make connections to their Social Studies units. It was time to TWEET! I clicked on the Twitter icon and it instantly created my tweet. Strangely, I felt so proud when Aaron retweeted my tweet! I am sure that feeling will soon pass when I use Twitter more. Richardson reiterates my experience when he wrote, "I really value those folks who are posting links or experiences that impact my own thinking and learning. The more you participate, the more followers you'll get" (Richardson, 88). 

In a classroom setting, Twitter could be used to generate discussions among staff members and older students on a certain topic using Tweetdeck or Hootsuite (local Vancouver company). Unfortunately, in my staff there are only 2 other staff members who have a Twitter account. Nevertheless, when staff members discover that many of my professional connections and ideas are attained from Twitter, they will start using it and build on their open learning network. 

After watching the video below, I picked up on a few more tools - chirbit and twitpic with "Twitter-esque" features to use in elementary classrooms. Profoundly, using Twitter will be the fastest way for me to build up my Web 2.0 database and teaching ideas. Recently, the grade 7 teacher and I created a math 8 wiki where students will need to screencast their math problem. Later on, we want to invite math experts or other students from our sister school to join in on the wiki. I will definitely tweet and invite others to view the wiki! (You never know what other connections you will make.)

Facebook and Ning

photo: lorrwill.blogspot.com

For last week's post I shared that presentation sites were my favourite. Ironically, this week we need to post about social networking and these sites are NOT my favourite! I had an account with Facebook and this past year I deleted it. I know that my account is deactivated. Yet, I am not sure if it is completely "deleted" from Facebook's servers. Here are some reasons why I deleted my account:

1. Time management - I realized Facebook was taking too much of my time away from my family. My son commented, "Why are you always on the computer?" That was the breaking point! 

2. Keeping up with the Jones - Many times I was getting the overwhelming sense of self-pity. Some of my friends were posting "happy" photos of their family trips, what they recently bought, their home renovations, etc. I know that I should be happy for them but commenting/reading on those wall discussions did not sit well. 

3. Connections - Being a little bit old school, I found my face-to-face and phone connections with my close friends more meaningful and personal than on Facebook. If I had time from my busy schedule, I would want to hook up with people that meant something to me than the "FOAF". 

4. Privacy - My family and I choose to lead pretty quiet lives. We like to have close friends over for dinner occasionally or the 4 of us will just cozy up on the couch and watch Little House on the Prairie together. Our school IT guy and his wife had their first baby. He did not want anyone posting a pic of his girl on any site, especially Facebook. He told his sister-in-law to take the photo off Facebook and remove any tags. 

So...there is my rant about Facebook. Even if I wanted to do a test on this blog regarding this site, I can not because it is block on our network server. Now, on to happier things...Nings!

photo: Joyce Valenza

Some time ago, I recalled signing up to the TeacherLibrarianNing. I am not sure why I did not completely embrace it at the time. Revisiting it, I am amazed by the amount of video, photos, discussions, etc. that is available on one site. Amazingly, there are 6925 members currently registered with this Ning. I am quickly realizing that Joyce Valenza is the poster child of the library world in the States! Unlike our other Web 2.0 sites, it seems like managing a Ning could potentially be a lot of work. Yet, it is very rewarding. Richardson writes, "While it hasn't been easy, Kevin has been amazed with the result" (Richardson, 143). At this stage, I am not ready to create my own Ning. However, I have signed up to ArtSnacks, Teacher Librarian, and the 21st Century Teacher Librarian Nings. By signing up, I will be able (first and foremost) read and explore what other teacher-librarians are doing. I will also be able to share, post video/photos, and ask countless questions in the groups or discussion forum. A negative point for the TeacherLibrarianNing is that the home page is very cluttered. I found it difficult to navigate with all that text.

Here are some things I picked up explore the different Nings:
As mentioned, library photos, videos, forum, etc in one place.

Santa, can I have this computer lab?  Photo by Marilyn Fry from TeacherLibrarianNing

Alright, I am starting to get that Facebook coveting feeling again. Nevertheless, I'll give myself permission to dream big. Here is a photo of a lovely computer lab from Brisbane, Austrailia of a IB PYP school. Marilyn's library looks amazing! She has many more photos in her profile. Like epals.com, she is looking for a class to be involved in her project. She writes, "I have an amazing project for next year and would like it to have an international and multilingual focus. Anyone interested?" (source). I am interested in learning more about what her project is all about by contacting her. However, my membership is still pending approval. 

Here is another great link from 21st century librarian ning that I could incorporate into a classroom setting. The VP at my school recently went to a teachers conference in Portland. Immediately, she came back enthusiastically and wanted to podcast. Good thing we covered it in this course already! 

Podcast Lessons

These Word documents that Janine Kowalsky shared about podcasting are excellent examples on how to start podcasting with your students. The rubric and information sheets provides teachers an idea of what to expect. 

Lastly, ArtSnackNing  is a safe, appropriate site for my school's art teacher to use. After emailing her, I am curious on her thoughts about this site. I particularly enjoy the Art Works tab. It is nice that there is a search function for pictures. In the photo below, I searched "drawings" and a lovely display of works were revealed. Quite inspiring! I just might start drawing and painting again.

 ArtSnackNing

Wikis

Tapping into my open learning network, I solicited the help from our high school librarian at Carver Christian School. Michelle loves making wikis and being able to view the wikis she created immensely helped me in my wiki learning process. She used pbwikis and I am using wikispaces. Nevertheless, I assume that they both do pretty much the same thing. First off, I was going to create a teacher resource wiki. Michelle shared that the teachers do not really use it much. I wonder why? Possibly, teachers just bookmark their own useful sites and do not have the time to log on and share their ideas. There is a student research wiki that Michelle created and this wiki is used more often by the staff and students. A few years ago, I was not completely sold on wikis because I found the majority of wikis to be text heavy and not visually appealing like a website.   Also, for students to collaborate isn't Google Docs a whole lot easier to use? Deciding what to do with the wiki from a library standpoint proved to be difficult. I think to have a successful wiki the teacher-librarian must collaborate with a classroom teacher to involve students in submitting their work and use the "Discussion" tab to comment and discuss what should be on the page. The new comments feature is pretty neat. You need to highlight the text that you want to comment and like a post-it note you can make a comment.

Here is an example of Michelle's fabulous student research wiki (I noticed that all the edits were made by her so does it count as a wiki or it is merely an information "website"?)

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For my first official wiki, my goal was to create a real "collaborative environment" where my Foods 8 students will experience an online cooking community within the class. I set up my wiki so they would be able to share their favourite recipe, post discussions about cooking topics, and comment on the recipe itself. My homepage is the instructions and I created an example of my favourite recipe on another page. Sneakily, I have also included a page for the Grade 8 homeroom teacher to contribute. Hopefully, if he creates something in this wiki, the rest of the students will be excited as well. It is SO cool to be able to generate student usernames and passwords without them signing up with an email address. 

Aaron, I would appreciate it if you could check back on this wiki later on to see how my students created and shared their own wiki pages. 

My Paella

Here is the link to my first class wiki with my Foods 8 class (sorry, only Aaron can view it because I have not made it public yet):
                    VCS Foods 8 Wiki

More on Podcasting...

After podcasting my son's Canadian Idol debut two weeks ago, I wanted to play around with the podcasting on my Ipod touch. I have download audiobooks, podcasts of my pastor's sermons, children's stories, BBC, etc. Besides music, my family and I can now enjoy listening to quality podcasts in the car. Interestingly, I feel I am using my Apple device to more of its fullest capability. 

Richardson recommended the Radio Willow Web from the Willowdale Elementary School. These student podcasts are well-done. These students speak clearly, expressly, and the content is varied. I especially like the "Bad Joke, Good Joke" part of the podcasts. Furthermore, there are several students speaking in the podcast which keeps it moving and entertaining. The tinyurl link for Radio Willow Web is broken so here is the direct link: http://mps.mpsomaha.org/willow/radio/listen.html.

I would love to try this with a class this year and have their podcast posted on a class blog or the library website. Keep you posted on how this goes!

I added a QuickVoice recorder app that was recommended by Richardson from our text. I would not recommend this app because it did not record properly and it was fuzzy. Also, having an older Ipod Touch limited me in downloading better recording apps that requires a higher iOS. Boo hoo! Therefore, I resorted to the voice memo app to record my pathetic evening plans. I downloaded my file, dragged and dropped it into Audacity. In Audacity, I added background music, deleted some 'ums', added fade in and out, and voila! Well, not really, it took awhile to get a mp3 file from Audacity. I needed to download yet another converter linked to Audacity called "lame" and it was truly lame because it did not convert my file to an mp3. I used a "4music WMA to mp3" converter which worked with my son's song but it did not work for my Apple podcast which I already converted to a windows media file. Anyhow, it finally worked old school. I emailed my husband my .wav file and he saved me by using REAL PLAYER to convert it to a mp3 file!

Lastly, I noticed that podcasts with fade in/out music adds more depth and quality to the overall listening experience and makes for a better podcast! Have a listen:

Social Bookmarking

Alright, signed up for my Diigo education account. On Monday, I will talk to the Grade 7 teacher to see if he is willing to group and add his students to the education account I created. I am really looking forward to working with the teacher on getting students to share their research and be able to bookmark their links in the cloud. It was a little discouraging this week when a few grade 7 students came in and wanted to research about Mesopotamia. They were use to getting the first 3 Google hits and be satisfied with that. Also, when I showed them a few books that we had on mathematicians, he sarcastically replied, "What is a book?" Sigh, I countered with, "Well, you are basically reading a book on the computer. The information you are reading is just presented in a different format!" Quickly, I showed them a few links I found on Awesome Library, World Book, etc. Hopefully, this week I will be able to set up their Diigo accounts and send them these links and highlight certain sections. In the meantime, I just posted the links on the Follett homepage because it would be easiest for students to locate it for now. I'll keep you posted on how this pans out! 

Diigo vs. Delicious

This is a link about the pros and cons about the features in each site.

Diigo:

1. Highlighter, sticker notes, annotations for students to pay extra attention to certain parts of a webpage.

2. Education group - send out links via group and find other group that are researching the same thing.

3. Still need time to explore and play with it.

Delicious:

1. Tags and search bar are great for quickly finding a link

2. Group links in a bundle 

2. Have been using it for awhile.

Here is a screen capture of what I am learning so far:
It was a hard week to play with Web 2.0 tools because both my kids and husband were sick. Schools are GERM factories!!!




Twitter: I have an account and have not really tweeted anything. I guess being a teacher control freak I might be apprehensive in posting tweets left and right about nothing useful. Tweeter seems to be filled with tweets about useless knowledge. I guess I am still trying to come up with a profound tweet that will benefit others!