Washington State EdTech Standards

Over the next few weeks I am participating in an online course to better familiarize myself with the Washington State Educational Technology Standards and how to integrate and assess them.  My goal is two-fold, to integrate these standards into my own teaching, and to help teachers find ways to integrate the standards into their curriculum as painlessly as possible.  I cannot possibly cover all the standards, but I can help make sure they are covered between my library lessons and classroom lessons.

So far we have had good discussions in the forum for the class, which is presented by OSPI (Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction here in Washington State).  One of the most helpful elements of the course is links within each lesson to relevant documents on the OSPI website.  As a teacher-librarian, the most helpful is the crosswalk between the EdTech standards and Information and Technology standards, including the Big6, NETS-S from ISTE, AASL standards and Washington State information literacy standards.

In addition, with the adoption of Common Core in Washington State, OSPI has a crosswalk between EdTech and ELA Common Core makes the connections that teacher-librarians and teachers need to find ways to integrate both EdTech and Common Core within their curriculum.

Lastly, OSPI offers a crosswalk between EdTech and core subjects to further emphasize the many ways in which technology can be integrated.

As we move into more lessons (we are in Week 2 now) that discuss what hardware and software we have available to us, and examine the standards more closely, I will have more ideas for my own integration of the standards and how I can support teachers in their implementation.

Google Search

Last week I began working with the 4th graders on search engines and searching skills, using various lessons from the Google in Education Classroom Tools and Google Search Education websites.  Last year I found the "Start Your Engines" presentation, which introduces terms that I want my students to know and having in common, such as "browser," "search engine" and "query," as well as the video with Matt Cutts which explains briefly how Google indexes webpages and ranks search results.

After that introduction, I taught a short piece of the Beginner lesson on the Search Education website about "Picking the right search terms."  It is difficult to fit in a whole lesson in about 30 minutes, while still allowing for book checkout at the end of library, but we do what we can in each class.  I have the laptop carts reserved, so each student has a MacBook at their fingertips to do hands-on searching and gain experience.

This week I had students work in small groups while we discussed choosing keywords and how to turn a question into a query.  Too often I see students typing entire questions into a search engine, and then getting results which are difficult to weed through to find one that answers the question.  We simplified some questions, then I gave them a few to work through in their groups.  They worked together to do searches, trying different combinations of words, then reporting back about the search.  They focus so much on finding the answer, and sometimes finding the wrong answer, that we need to take a step back to look at the keywords we are using and adjusting until we get a good collection of results before we look for the specific answer to the question.

We will do more practice with selecting good search terms this week.  I was planning to use past questions from the Google a Day website, which gives a search question of the day, but found that it has changed format recently, which makes it less useful for me.  I have specific days bookmarked as good search questions for elementary students, not too complex, not requiring certain background knowledge or alternate query terms, but I can't seem to get to specific days in the Google a Day website any more.  I will spend time trying to do this over the weekend, but it's disappointing.  I found being able to go back to previous days' questions an invaluable teaching tool.  Now it appears to be more of a game and less about a teaching tool.  I'll report back next week after I have had time to play with it.

Kindle Paperwhite

I read a review of the new Kindle Paperwhite, thinking I might consider it for my ereader grant, but the review points out two potential problems for our school situation:

1. The Paperwhite doesn't have an audio out port, and we like to have some struggling readers listen along while they read the text.
2. It doesn't come with a separate adapter, so I would need to purchase one for each device we order.  It is too cumbersome to try to recharge every device on a computer.  I do this currently with the iPad2 I have in the library.

I saw an iPad2 in action last week at a staff development day, as each of our high school students has one, as well as teachers who have gone through training.  The question we were discussing as we were looking at it was: Is the iPad too much for what we want it for?  We need to look at the cost vs. what the purpose of the device really is.

The high school students and librarians find it useful because they can access databases and other research sources through the iPad, but our elementary students would only be using it for reading for now.  We would download apps such as Google Play and the Kindle app for our ereader software.  We also looked at Mackin and Follett as possible sources of ebooks and will continue to research those options.  With the iPads we could expand our use of the device beyond reading ebooks to having apps for math or other subject areas.  Would we really do that, and how would we manage that with 518 students and just a few devices?

One more may enter the mix if the iPad Mini is introduced this week as some have speculated.  I'd like to see the specs and actually hold one to see what I think, along with thousands of other people, I'd guess!

Lots of questions, more research to come, and then a decision needs to be made by the beginning of November, when the grant applications are due.

E-reader grant application

I am in the process of writing a grant for e-readers for my library to check out to teachers, and eventually students to take home.  The first step is to get enough for a small novel study group, see how often they are used, then decide if they can be checked out next fall.

E-readers are appealing for the same reason as buying iPods and MP3 players for downloadable audiobooks was exciting two years ago: instant access to books for students.  I like being able to hand a student just the right book when they want it or desperately need it for their class.  It is satisfying and helps build that idea that you can find things successfully in a library, whether it is a book or an audiobook or information.

The discussions I am having with staff lately is centered around the question of which e-readers to choose.  We have a very supportive public schools foundation that invites grants from classrooms (including the library) for projects and materials, including artists-in-residence, dance education, books, technology, and many other ideas.  I am in the process of writing my grant application, and have found several good resources for supporting information to help complete the form.  Many questions have come up both on the application and in my conversations with teachers:

• Why would e-readers be a helpful tool in the library and classroom environment?
• How would students be limited and protected in their use of e-readers?
• Who would benefit from having e-readers in our library?
• Which grade levels would use them?
• How would we protect our investment?
• How will students be trained?
• How will we purchase new e-books?
• How will the decisions be made as to which titles to purchase?
• Where will the money to sustain this program come from?
• What additional money/items are necessary to complete this project?
• What connections can be made with the curriculum?
• How will we measure the success/failure/usage of the e-readers program?
• Are teachers supportive of e-readers and have shown interest in using e-readers?

I am just beginning my research, and have found several interesting articles online with bits and pieces of information that I am using to inform my own grant writing.  I thought I would collect them all here and then follow up after I have made decisions and written my grant application.

Articles of interest:

• Travis's Excellent Ereader Adventure - an explanation of a year-long e-readers rollout in a fifth and sixth grade elementary
• Kindle Fire vs Nook Tablet - comparison of the features of both e-readers
• The Truth About Tablets - difficulties in getting tablets and e-readers to students
• Middle school boys who are reluctant readers value reading more after using e-readers - a study from SMU
• E-reader Madness - a blog article about deciding between a Nook and a Kindle for an elementary school library
• Gilbert School embracing e-reader technology with Nook Club - a school loaning Nooks to sixth graders, who then train another group to use them when they are done reading their books

Storybird stories

Last spring I worked with a group of 1st graders who didn't need extra phonics or comprehension work during our Reading RtI time, so we did projects, research, read books, studied authors, and wrote stories.  I found Storybird to be a great tool for writing stories, particularly for this age group.

Storybird has sets of illustrations available for students to choose from, then they write text for each page.  Students can change the layout of the page and put the images in whatever order they choose to illustrate their story.  This allows them to focus on their writing and not illustrating a book.  I encouraged them to think beyond what was in the pictures and tell more of the story, not just describe what the picture showed.

Another fun aspect to Storybird is that students can invite each other to collaborate on a story together.  The teacher creates logins for all the students, and then they can choose one of their classmates to work with them on a story they have started.  They had a lot of fun working together, taking turns writing text and choosing pictures for their collaborative story.

Examples:

The Seasons by Teja on Storybird

Friend Ninjas by Newton on Storybird

I love Spring! by Reza on Storybird

Animoto

I had a lot of fun playing around this summer with Animoto, a website where you import photos, then choose a theme and music and it creates a video for you.  Often flashy, always well designed and professional looking, I think there are a lot of uses in schools for this tool.

I plan to work with 5th and 6th graders to create 30-second book trailers later this year.

Forgive the repetitive loud music, but I wanted to start up the year in an upbeat way.  Here is my 4th-6th grade introduction to the Ridgecrest library video, highlighting some important ideas I wanted them to remember.  I used Keynote to create some slides with some text then exported them as jpgs and imported those right along with the photographs.  I thought they would enjoy hearing and seeing it in a way that didn't involve me standing up in front of them and talking.  We had short discussions after the video, but it definitely worked as an attention getter, even if some of them were dancing while watching.

I did another one that is about me, but I haven't had time to show it to classes yet.  I may save it as an example later on when we talk about other uses.  Book trailers, autobiographies, biographies, there are a lot of potential uses for Animoto.

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