Karen Bonanno: Time to Change the Game Plan

Karen recently spoke at the Australian School Library Association conference, answering the question, "What will be the future if you do not take charge of your own seismic shift?"  It is 30 minutes well worth watching as a school librarian, challenging us to take charge of our knowledge and our teaching and our jobs.


http://vimeo.com/31003940

Online Thanksgiving resources

With our 5th grade studying Colonial America and the Revolutionary War, I'm always on the lookout for engaging resources that provide them with glimpses of what life was like in the 1600s.

Scholastic.com has a colorful and interesting slideshow with audio about the trip the Mayflower took from England to America.

I share the story of Sarah Hale, who wrote letters to every president for decades until Abraham Lincoln gave in to her request for a national Thanksgiving holiday by reading Thank You, Sarah: the Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving by Laurie Halse Anderson.  You can introduce the resources of the Library of Congress and the definition and use of primary sources by showing her original letter and the text.

• Original letter from Sarah Hale to Abraham Lincoln
• Text of Sarah Hale's letter

Colonial Williamsburg has a teacher resource section of their website with multimedia presentations, electronic field trips, and information about life in the 18th century.

Plimoth Plantation has a website with teacher and student resources, including virtual field trips.

Kindergarten VoiceThread

I love collaboration, and our half-day kindergarten teacher and our general music teacher and I put together a VoiceThread by the 23 students in the half-day kindergarten class. They learned the song "Down by the Bay" in music class, and then their classroom teacher had them write sentences that rhymed to complete a verse of the song, including an illustration of the sentence. She did a fabulous job of individualizing the task to each student's abilities, some just had to fill in rhyming words, while others wrote the whole sentence.

Once the papers were done, I scanned them and imported them into VoiceThread, then recorded each student saying their own sentence. I also recorded the class singing the whole song during their music class and included that singing at the beginning and end of the VoiceThread.

I am proud of our students and teachers, and hope to do even more collaborative projects like this next year.

Down by the Bay VoiceThread

Peer Coaching Delicious Links

Now that Delicious seems to be staying around, I am posting my collection of Peer Coaching links, which I will be adding to frequently over the next year.

http://www.delicious.com/joannafreeman/peer_coaching

Interactions with teachers

A short blog post about a technology teacher's interaction with a classroom teacher really struck a nerve with me. I struggle daily with how to approach specific teachers in my building. Some are open to new ideas, some are in denial that they will ever have to learn much beyond how to send an email, some want to try things that are way beyond their abilities, but I don't want them to experience deep disappointment and become discouraged. It is a constant balance of assessing their needs and wants and how they will react when I discuss technology with them.

The teacher in the article was honest with a classroom teacher, telling her essentially that if she really wants to be using technology, she needs to move beyond the projector, computer and PowerPoint. Now, we all know that she is using technology, but technology integration in education has moved far beyond that level of engagement. This connects with the last post on the Technology Integration Matrix. This teacher is using technology tools in a conventional and procedural way, without student choice or self-directed work, as far as we can tell from the blog post. She is ready to move on, based on the conversation, but it took knowledge of the classroom teacher and her comfort level to begin this conversation this abruptly.

I know most of my teachers well, but I only know two or three who would welcome this kind of open conversation. I need to think more about how I will approach my teachers about collaborating on technology integration, without raising their defenses.

Technology Integration Matrix

I have spent some time examining the Technology Integration Matrix from the Florida Center for Instructional Technology, thinking about how it applies to specific teachers and situations in my school. I appreciate the labels given to each axis, as they are much more meaningful and realistic than many other matrices (i.e. the standard rubrics given to students and teachers).

Characteristics of meaningful learning environments:

• Active
• Collaborative
• Constructive
• Authentic
• Goal-directed

Levels of technology integration:

• Entry
• Adoption
• Adaptation
• Infusion
• Transformation

I am rethinking how my technology-related rubrics are worded to make them more understandable and meaningful than just giving a 1, 2, 3, or 4. Wouldn't a student appreciate being told they are in the Adoption stage of technology, rather than that they earned a 2? The descriptions of the levels of integration lead a teacher or student to believe they are on a continuum, and that they will one day achieve Transformation, and that it is an achievable goal for everyone.

As a Technology Integration Peer Coach next year, I will be using this matrix to help me begin conversations with teachers about where they are starting and where they want to be. I do not expect that everyone will be at the Transformation stage (I am not convinced that I am at that stage yet, but I am striving for it every day). I appreciate that there are clear objectives and procedures as examples for different subject areas, including videos. For teachers who work mostly in isolation, just seeing a lesson modeled sometimes gives them the confidence they need to try something new.

I continue to study this matrix, and find new treasures every time I dig around through the links. I can't take it all in at once, but know it will be a key tool for me as I am acting as a peer coach next year. Even if I wasn't a formal peer coach, I would use this in my planning with teachers. My goal is to track teachers throughout the year and hope to see some growth across the matrix. We will start small, in one or two subject areas, but hope to see that spread throughout their teaching over the next few years.

I will create a pre and post survey tool for teachers this next year, hoping to gain some insight into their knowledge of themselves as regards to technology integration. At the end of the year I will survey teachers again along the lines of this matrix and hope to see growth. I will share that tool here as I complete it over the summer.

Poetry Centers

April is National Poetry Month, and though I share poetry with students all year round, this is a chance for me to focus on this genre for a few weeks in a row. Working with K-6 students is an opportunity to use technology with different grade levels to see how they respond. What are they ready to use in Kindergarten? What do most 6th graders already know how to use and how can I build on that knowledge?

I borrowed an idea for a Poetry Picnic from A Year in Reading and created poetry centers that students experienced for two weeks during their scheduled 30-45 minute library time. The centers each had a focus of writing, reading, art, and/or technology, giving students a variety of positive experiences with poetry.

The technology centers included a Kindle, an iPad, an interactive whiteboard, and computers.

On the Kindle students read "Poetry Tag Time," (99 cents) reading out loud poems by Jack Prelutsky, Joyce Sidman, and many other poets for fluency practice.

On the iPad, they had a choice of several poetry apps:

• Animal Tales (99 cents)- a hidden object app based on Mother Goose's Animal Tales
• Fridge Poet (free)- a magnetic poetry app
• A Kid's Poem: My Wagon and I (free)- an audio poem with illustrations
• Shel Silverstein's Animations (free)- short animated poems and excerpts from Shel Silverstein's books.

Students had two choices while using the interactive whiteboard:

• Poetry Splatter - from the Reading is Fundamental website, students choose words to complete poems
• Magnetic Poetry - the official Magnetic Poetry website has several online kits

Several poetry websites were bookmarked on computers in the library for students:

• Giggle Poetry - poetry to read and games to play
• Poetry4Kids - Kenn Nesbitt's website
• Shel Silverstein's website
• Tagxedo - create shape poems with tag clouds online, students enter words and phrases to fill the shape, then publish the result
• Phrasr - online image generator, where students entered a line of poetry they had written

Most center activities were successful with all grade levels, though Kindergarten students did not use the computers to access websites. We looked at Giggle Poetry and Poetry4Kids as a whole class, reading a few poems and playing a few games.

All of the students wanted to use the iPad, the Kindle, and the interactive whiteboard. Technology draws them in and they are receptive to ideas and topics they might have ignored before, such as poetry. Some students immediately shut down when poetry is mentioned, but those students clamored to use the technology and came away with some exposure to poetry through these centers.

Teacher-Librarian Peer Coaching

Washington State's Educational Technology Support Centers and Educational Service Districts are offering peer coaching training for teacher-librarians to help teachers integrate technology into their curriculum to enhance student learning.

I am thrilled to be a part of this program and hope to reach as many teachers in my building and district as I can throughout this year-long class. There will be eight sessions, including a three-day class during the summer and an online meeting. The ESDs are using Moodle as the online platform for communicating and sharing information throughout the year.

Having an opportunity to sit in the same room with other teacher-librarians who are trying to support their teachers in technology integration is powerful. We work in isolation so often and yet are expected to be the experts and leaders in our buildings and districts in educational technology.

I want to use this blog to collect and share ideas related to peer coaching and educational technology throughout schools. The technology should not and does not begin and end in the school library. Technology permeates our schools, homes and workplaces, and preparing students to use it must begin with the teachers who work with students and technology every day.