-I won't spend a whole lit of time talking about myself but I think giving you some context is important for this presentation.\n-this is my 6th year at Bishop Stang High School, co-ed Catholic School in North Dartmouth with about 700 very energetic teenagers.\n -for the first four of these years I was happy being a librarian, doing what librarians do but with all of the cool new tech tools and apps, I began incorporating more and more of this into the information literacy side of my job and.... \n
-I guess I went a little overboard because at the end of my fourth year, the administration asked me to assume to role of Director of Library and Technology Integration.\n-So now I wear even more hats and, although most days I don't know what direction to move in, I really do love what I do.\n
-BSHS has a very small but warm and welcoming library media center. Students can elect to spend their study in the library and many do. \n-We have a BYOD policy and more and more students are indeed bringing their own devices (laptops and tablets) to school.\n-We also have desktops, laptops, and iPads and that's why most come to use the space. \n\n
-Another library space that's just as important to the students, teacher and to me as the curator of library resources, is the virtual space, open 24/7 \n-When I began at Stang in 2007 the library website was designed using incredibly frustrating, clunky software such that making changes was a serious waste of time. And no matter how much time I spent on it, it NEVER LOOKED GOOD.\n-I learned about LibGuides from a librarian colleague and never looked back. \n-Although there is a cost involved ($549/yr), subscribing to LibGuides was the best decision I could have made....it is the backbone of our library resources and worth every penny!\n-Anyone who knows me even a little, knows about my love for LibGuides. I call it my third child: my two boys, Cooper and Noah (advance to next slide)....and then LibGuides (go back to previous slide). It has made my job, my ability to organize, my life easier. With so many online tools available to us it's easy to feel like "Am I using the right tool for this project? For my students? For my teachers?" I can answer yes with confidence to all of these questions. \n\n
Cooper\n\nNoah\n
Cooper\n\nNoah\n
-Everyone (whether you are a student, librarian, technology integration specialist, administrator or teacher) has at one time or another gotten swept away by the latest technology, web tool, gadget, app. It is really easy to do this, it happens to me a lot!\n-I think it is critically important to constantly be reminding ourselves of why we are here. Why are we in the classroom or the library or working in a school? We are there for the good of our students; we all know it's our responsibility as educators to provide for them the best quality education that we can. \n-And while technology integration is important, it's got to be the curriculum that is driving those cool gadgets or apps. Those tools absolutely help us to (as this image states) "uncover" the curriculum.\n-Thomas Daccord's article on Edudemic "5 critical mistakes schools make with iPads (and how to correct them)." Really resonated with me - focused on iPads but the concept was this same idea...go to article, ad Latin teacher example. \n-I hope today I am able to add some tools to your toolbox that will help you to uncover information literacy for your students, whatever that may look like in your school. \n
-How can we effectively support (and sustain) the information literacy skills of our students? \n-the tools I am going to share are the core of what has helped to make me a more effective and organized teacher and has helped to encourage much more student engagement and definitely improved their skill level. \n\n
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-in order for information literacy to stick and pop with students, I think there are three things that need to happen:\n The skills have to taught with consistency\nThe students have to be held accountable\nIt has to be fun! \nSo I really struggled with this, so much so that I used it as the subject of a case study for graduate work I did a few years ago. How can we implement an effective information literacy curriculum? We have so many feeder schools, kids come to Stang as freshmen with all different levels of info literacy. What could level that playing field? A course that is integrated into their curriculum (English) so that I see them consistently and they are held accountable....and they are, it is 10% of their total English grade. \n-they see me as more of their teacher now rather than their librarian....and I have learned 175 names which is a huge thing for the librarian! \n- and they pay more attention because they are being held accountable...Ono more instruction at the point of need or out of context. It's all being delivered for a reason and building to some form of an assessment and they know that. \n
--It's been through this class that a lot of the useful tools and apps have surfaced because I am constantly trying to keep things interesting and students engaged. \n-The remainder of this presentation will be focused on the tools I have used primarily with my digilit class. I will use the course curriculum as an outline to discuss the tools. \n\n\n
-students create their own tumblr blog and it essentially becomes their class notebook. \n\n
Commonsensemedia.org\n
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The research process - takes a solid quarter of the year and I work closely and carefully with the English teachers to ,are sure I am introducing students to the concepts and allowing them to practice these within the context of a project that has been assigned in English. This may be their major term paper or not. Last year it was a VoiceThread project based on the life of a poet and the analysis of one of his or her works. \nI will take you through that process now kind of from start to finish showing the tools the students and I used along the way! \n
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A few tools that make teaching citation style easier and learning it a little more fun and engaging:\n\n1. OWL - show site with a few of the features\n\nZ. NoodleTools - more familiar with NTs but students are talking more about EasyBib and I am definitely listening. I do like it and will explore more this year as we get into our research unit. \n\nGoing back to noodletools (go to site and demo the citation features) NoodleTools also provides many wonderful resources to support the bigger research process one of my favorites is "choose the best search for your information needs" and "noodlequest" which is the interactive version of this tool. Goes through questions and then gives a research strategy report after submission. \n\n\n\n
Here to speak to us about one of the most commonly-used research sites by students is our favorite Michael Scott.\n\n(Play video)\n\nLike many of us do, I struggled for some time with where Wikipedia fits into the students' process of research and learning. And the more I listened to teachers (myself included) explaining to our kids all the reasons we shouldn't use it, it became clear to me that something needed to change. \n\nWhy not EMPOWER kids with using it? and in doing so, teach them HOW to use it effectively it rather than restrict their access to it. Focus on the ways in which it functions as an effective research tool....use it to teach about it topics, sub-topics and keywords and to reinforce the importance of citations/original sources.\n\nGo to an article. Demo the topics, subtopics, keyword thing. \nList of sources at end of article. \n\n\n
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And projects!\n\n
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Pinterest - it's important for us as professionals to have our own favorite curation tools. Aside from libguides, which is my public curation tool (benefits other), Pinterest is my own but I have the flexibility of sharing these resources if I want to! I absolutely love this tool for curation. Last year I began using it a bit as a pathfinder tool for students as well...poetry board for their poet VoiceThread project. They like it for the same reasons I do, it's visual, clean and very accessible. \n
