Being a Lifelong Learner means stepping out of your comfort zone. As education and technology changes, we have to change. We don't change who we are but how we do things! Many times we are scared of the unknown like building a website, creating a blog and using new tools for your students.
I have learned that Digital Citizenship is so important and should be on the top of everyone's list as to what to teach and how to teach your students. Here is a great video on how to make your very own digital citizenship video. I am planning on creating one with my students this year for next year's students.
Another tool I loved that I found this year was FlipGrid. Here is another look at Flipgrid with Fifth grade students and math.
Another lesson I learned is to ask for help with technology when it comes to learning something new. When you struggle, there are other educators around you who have strengths you don't have.
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Pokemon Go! What is this? When Looking at different Virtual and Augmented Reality programs, websites out in the world today, there is one that stuck out in my mind! It is called...
POKEMON GO!
Here is a video explaining some of the World around us and Pokemon creatures! Our music teacher at my elementary school has a group in the Spring that he takes out and about to hunt for Pokemon in and around our school. He has created a Spring Club that teaches students about Virtual reality and even shows kids how to use VR googles. This is a group in the Spring that is provided for kids of interest to reality worlds and who have kept up with good grades.
Great resources for Pokemon Go is to look in the area in which you live in to see where you can find a map or where Pokemon creatures show up. Downtown in our area, they have in the spring a big Pokemon Go contest to find creatures downtown and to see who can finish and complete the race. Here is some information about South Carolina and Pokemon Challenge
MakerSpaces...... Making it Work!
When I first moved into the library, I was amazed at how libraries had changed. I was able to go and visit three different libraries within my state to get some ideas. My principal gave me a great start on money and getting my Makerspace together. One thing that I have found is that you don't have to have alot of money but a big imagination is needed. The Blog I loved reading lately was the blog called. "Mighty Little Librarian" by Jill Whitehead. She talks about how she started out with just a few things. She had some great ideas from Makey, Makey which ares ideas put together with normal things you have around the house.
One tool I love the most in my maker space is my IPADs with my Sphero. Every year for our Tech night, I find three volunteers to work and create sphero the robot's path of adventure. We read a book and they design his path with cardboard, legos and wooden blocks. They take construction paper and build the town we describe from our book. It is a great and exciting adventure for all. My students every year take around three months to build their own as an example for all on Tech Night to See. Many Patricia Polacco books are used to describe the town's surroundings.
Here is Sphero!
Also, once we program Sphero, we are able to change speeds, colors and lighting. This has been a favorite of my students. I have been given money from our PTA to buy new robotics for my robot area of my makerspace. We have just added ozobots for coding.
If I could make my makerspace look like a dream, here is what it would look like.
First of all I am going to go back in the 80's when I was in high school and digital citizenship was something that was not even talked about. As I think about today's times and raising teens , the time of social media and cyber bullying is here. It is very important to not only educate students but parents also. Each year at the beginning, our school puts on a small fifteen minute session to parents about social media and cyber bullying. It is a big turn out each year.
In our readings this week, Orech talks about how using social media and teaching students how to protect their information go hand and hand (Orech,). It is so important to make students understand that whenever they are online posting pictures, making a comment, there is always a trail behind of what they have created and posted. For many students, they don't understand what it really means when teachers say the words "digital citizenship". We first must break down what citizenship is and what it means to be a "good citizen". Authentic information given to students helps with overall understanding of why it is important to create a student full of knowledge about the wonderful world of social media.
Here is a video that I found when searching for my upper grades . Here is a great video that is narrated by a student.
With reading so many things about the cyber bulling and the seven deadly sins of why cyber bullying exists, it creates easy access to how students bully each other with words and pictures. One thing that students tend to is give out password information that is harmful for security reasons. Students are trustworthy in how they relay their information. I have found within my classroom settings, students who can't remember their passwords, use each others to be able to sign into their student issued chrome books. I use one of my students for example. A student from two years ago decided to give a student their password only for that student to visit inappropriate sites. Because of this, he was suspended from his chrome book for a month because it was his userid that was signed in to the inappropriate site. This was a great lesson to him and his classmates. I use this lesson each year with my upper grades. With my lower grades, a district wide video is sent out through our district coordinators to show lower grade students.
Within the schools, I find that many teachers and students don't know what copyright means and how not to break rules about copyrights. Students will grab pictures off of Google and site it as google images but in all certainty, Google compiles their images from many different sources ( Davis, 2014). Copyright infringements is important to understand and needs to be addressed.
One of the tools through research that I found to be informative is a cyber bullying symbaloo. This symbaloo creates a great way to gather many resources on cyber bullying and a tool students can use to go back to as a reminder. This creates great dialog between the student and the teacher to collaborate on the ideas of how to stay away from cyber bullying, how to report it and what is cyber bullying.
When doing some research of cyber bullying and studying the readings, I found this chart that really put cyber bullying in a picture for me.
This is a survey completed by broadbandsearch.net . It shows issues kids start to face and feel as the result of cyber bullying.
Cyber Bullying affects many children of today at all ages. It was eye opening to me to see what comes with the end results of kids being cyber bullied. It is a subject that can not be swept under the rug and has to be monitored at all times. It is important to create a clear picture of the wrongs of using social media in the wrong ways.
resources:
broadbandsearch.net
Orech, J. (2012). "How it's done" Incorporating digital citizenship into your everyday curriculum". Tech and Learning 33 (1). 16-18
Sunday, October 20, 2019
How to use SC DISCUS in your classroom!
SCDISCUS.org is a great website and tool to use in your classroom. It is a free resource for teachers and students to research with. In our ISTE standards, research is a key component as librarians for us to implement and to help teachers do this in their classroom. On the Discus website, you can find a page that I show to my teachers every year during our training on what SCDiscus is and how it can be used.
Every year at the beginning of the year, I do training with my teachers on the different areas of SCDISCUS especially DiscusKids
Serving in an elementary school, it is important to teacher our students one step at a time through the different grade levels and to give them more information as they grow academically. I love STUDYSC on the website along with TumbleBooks.
STUDYSC is a very important feature of this website in that my third grade students study south carolina and its history. I love it shows as they grow through the grades, the civil war and south carolina's role in this huge war.
STUDYSC.org Please check this out! I learned alot about our state through this website.
Here is a video I show every year from Youtube to my teachers.
This explanation of the benefits of this website helps my teachers with all of their needs. As a Librarian, I was paying for TumbleBooks and Learn360 up until last year when both of these became free through the SC State Library and SCDISCUS.org.
As Librarians, we need to work together with our teachers to give them the best possible resources to help them become more successful in their lesson planning. I love these free activities and websites that were created and put all in one place for easier access. My students love the way they can look up something for research and then talk about in on FLIPGRID.
FLIPGRID is a creative tool to share with others different resources you have found and to video and talk about these.
SAFE search is also a bonus on this website for student access and safe student searching at school and at home.
Great Tool for Assisting Struggles with Typing Documents
Facts: When you have a disability that you struggle with typing, sometimes hold a pencil and definitely stapling, there are many tools to assist you to make life easier and more accessible.
During the Year of 2011, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Being an educator and now working toward my certification for Media Specialist, it has been a struggle with all of the classes, school workload created for teachers and part of our job. Within this time of my eighteen years as an educator, I have used Google classroom to grade things (google forms), short hand ascribing and two of my favorite tools, Google Voice and an electric stapler. 💗
Here is an introduction to Google Voice/Typing
With my school district being a GOOGLE district, we are limited to other things we can use other than Google in our weekly class objectives. Google Voice is an adaptive technology resource I use along with many of my students. You have to first open your Google Docs folder and then you can access voice. My district IT person had to give me access to this.
In our readings this week, two things stood out in my mind. The first one was how we as librarians need to work toward understanding different learning styles along with meet learner's needs . Students have different needs as we all do and learning differently. We have to create an ample amount of different choices for our students to feel successful. (Copeland, 2018)
We as librarians need to be vigilant in finding and researching different tools for students and adults with disabilities. Creating an open environment and a positive environment for all is important.
Here is a video I would love to share : Why design should include everyone. We all struggle with different things whether it be MS, our size, math lessons, lesson planning, picking out just right books, and reading, we can try to think about things from people who have disabilities or struggle with certain things in everyday life. The first four and a half minutes is what I tried to post but I think it posted it all.
Design greatly impacts on all lives. Tools help you access more!
youtube videos: Design: why it should include everyone TED
Copeland, Clayton (2018) School Librarians of the 21st century
Chromebooks in the elementary classroom are here to stay. As we move toward a global one to one for every student in the classroom, we must learn how to use a chrome book in the way it is intended to. A chrome book is easy to use for its long life, few technical issues which means more time to spent on the learning and teaching aspect of the lesson. With schools being GOOGLE certified schools, chrome books are updated and hold everything in the google cloud which makes it easy to make sure everything is saved. Dealing with elementary students, chrome books are user friendly with buttons that are easily accessible. With chrome books, it allows the students to be their own technology technicians by allowing them to easily figure out what is going on by learning to use it by themselves.
As technology moves and changes daily, our patrons must be able to keep up with learning on their own by experimenting with what they are creating and visualizing on their chrome books. With this, the teaching of taking care of the chrome books they are given is as important. Here is a video that I show each year.
Important things to also have is a chrome book cheat sheet for teachers that will help them solve issues with students. I created a chrome book cheat sheet that I share with teachers every year. here is a copy of the shortcuts/ cheat sheet:
Chrome Book Short Cuts/ Cheat Sheet for teachers
control shift + L = LOCK SCREEN
control shift + Q + QUIT
alt E = BROWSER MENU
control switcher (or F5 key) = SCREENSHOT to DOWNLOAD FILE
alt search = CAP LOCK
control shift + = INCREASE SCREEN SIZE
control shift - = DECREASE SCREEN SIZE
control shift right parenthesis = RESET SCREEN SIZE
Google Safe Search=WWW.GOOGLE.COM/PREFERENCES TURN ON SAFE SEARCH
control shift refresh (or F3) = ROTATES SCREEN 90 DEGREES
The Technology Integration Matrix When thinking about chrome books, I think about the Technology integration matrix.
The teacher begins the entry and the kids adapt through the conventional use of technology with their devices. The teacher is still the facilitator of this model. This means that the students are given time to explore but it is directed and monitored. Choice of tools is given to students to adapt to their project they are trying to achieve. The active part is student choice and exploration with the chrome books.
Today I want to share with teachers of ELA how fun it could be to use FlipGrid and how it can change a child's voice! As a former elementary school teacher in the grades of second and fourth, I was always looking for new ways to have students express their writing while using reading and interview skills as the focus. I searched for many ways to integrate technology into my lessons to make it exciting for students. Technology is changing daily and as teachers it is really important as we are global 1:1 in our classrooms to research many ways to implement technology into lessons to change the way students do things.
ATTENTION ELA TEACHERS! I have found a great blog called The Library Voice and here is the address: https://vanmeterlibraryvoice.blogspot.com. We want to build students who are technology leaders in our world. We want to give them different experiences in their learning world.
In the blog The Library Voice by Shannon Miller, she used FlipGrids ( a recording) of book talks for her class as a quick assessment of their understanding and a another way to do reflections. Reflections is also another great way to assess understanding of what they are reading.
Teachers of ELA, this is a great way to have fun with your students and give them a sense of taking control of their own learning. Students are able to record and have a partner observe what they recorded and share what they have learned with their book talk/reflections.
Here are some great resources and an example of how to start your FlipGrid Book talks today in your classroom! Technology has become crucial element of teaching and learning and moving into the 21st century, we have to keep working on new and exciting ways to bring our lessons alive! FlipGrids is a way to make a child's voice be heard and helps us listen to their thinking.
Smith, D. (2010). Making the case for the leadership role of school librarians in technology integration. Library High Tech, 28(4). Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/07378831011096277
Have you ever thought about learning and how it is hard keeping up with rapid change in technology? If so, then you must be in the world of a media specialist and information technology manger. As we move within such a media technology driven world, it is a must that we keep up with the changing world around us within technology. Learners who are taking in information from various sources need to give credit to the original ideas. When given information, we have to not only process information but we have to decide how to process it. What that means is that information is given to use. When deciding on how to use that information, you must question what you want the reader to pull from the information shared. Learners take that information and create an opinion on the information provided. With the continuous opinions of "fake news", it is been found that many legitimate news coverage networks have been deemed as unpredictable news with a underlining targeted agenda. With this happening more and more, it is hard for many to decipher what to look at as real news. More and more there is some kind of reasoning behind what people report instead of it being credible information. As librarians of today, we need to have an "information diet" that creates useful information for our media related technology. We have to know how to filter, search and plan out the information we are going to provide. We have to move with the "times" and help others with technology of today. We have to use information that we research and learn continually as lifelong learners. I try to stay away from politics until it is time to do my own research especially in local races. I find that when given information, I need to create a list of the positives and negatives. This a great video on Fact vs. Fiction and Kids today
If you would like to know what my life as a librarian is like this school year then it begins with four letters-STEAM. Our elementary school of over 800 students will be going through STEAM accreditation this year as the first elementary school in our district to proceed with this big overwhelming task. Over the past four to six months, I along with a team of teachers have been looking at ISTE standards along with state standards and AASL standards. During this time I have felt very overwhelmed in what is what and how to accommodate all of these together as a librarian, media specialist and a teacher for six library classes a day. In my day, I see six classes with a forty minute lunch/break a day. I am also the chrome book manager and technology fixer of all things. So to understand where I am at on my journey, this information for pertinent for all of you to know. With that being sad, I am amazed at the information I have found through my journey of both set of standards. Both standards guide the learner to set personal goals and both encourage end results. ISTE standards I have found creates learning opportunities that challenges the students to solve problems which are mostly self directed. AASL standards provides experiences and access to information which helps learners find possible answers with the investigative approach of questioning.
As we grow as librarians, our focus should be on the learners and what our students need. Freedman and Robinson talk about how the key commitment should be how to discover and innovate in a growth mindset developed through experience and reflection (AASL,2018, 38). When thinking about this and reflecting on the similarities of both set of standards, I feel that I need to challenge students more to reflect and discover on their own instead of creating the questions for them and having them answer them. In the article School Librarians Level Up by Jennifer Freedman and Alice Robinson, it specifically talks about many of these topics but one that sticks out in my mind is the structuring of activities to learners to collaborate and find a solution to a problem. With ISTE standards, I have found that they seem to be more geared toward students taking an active role in what they get out of their lessons and learning time. As we use maker spaces and blocks in the library, students using reading directions instead of waiting for directions.
Throughout this whole process of learning through gearing up for our STEAM accreditation, I have felt that at times I struggle with knowing the difference at times and forgetting but I also know that both have similarities through reading information in any format and encouraging questioning through peers and self led discovery.
