Elementary LM Discussion Group on dpslmc.pbworks

I have read 5 of the articles for the Media Coordinators.  I previous blog postings I have commented on :
*The Media Center:  From Musty Old Library to 21 Centeury Program by Mary Alice Anderson, Multimedia Schools, January
*Librarian Brings Kindles into the Classroom by Kathy Parker.

At the dpslmc.pbworks I have commented on:
"The Class of 2022: How Will We Meet Their Needs and Expectations" by Elizabeth Haynes.

I have also read
*The Case for Social Media in Schools by Sarah Kessler
*Carr, N. (2008). Is Google making us stupid? The Atlantic

What I found in commenting on these articles from my blog is that while easy to do, it is only going to reach someone reading my blog.  (This is a very limited population.)  In reading someone else's blog, who happens to have read the same article and then making my comments there, I have shared my thoughts with one other person, or maybe more if their blog is also read.  By reading the article online and having the ability to post directly to the article, my thoughts are expressed and read by lots of others who happen to read that article directly.  (As in the case of the "Is Google making us stupid", I like others felt compelled to read every last comment, as well as the article itself.  This was indeed time consuming, but for the compulsive types like me, I didn't want to negate someone else's thoughts by not reading them, having the feeling like in school, that if you raise your hand or in this case post a comment, you have somethig to say and it should be heard.    The last format tried was the dpslmc.pbworks.  I know that ultimately my comments should reach all of the other media coordinators, however; I found the site frustrating.  It seemed like my computer froze.  I was able to add my comments about "The Class of 2022: How Will We Meet Their Needs and Expectations" by Elizabeth Haynes to those of Anita's, but it took a couple of tries, hence the comment with no comment. 

I thought that I would like to create another page to start the discussion on "Is Google making us stupid?" by Nicholas Carr.  It didn't happen.  Perhaps it is all "user error" on my part.  There is something to be said for many of our frustrations and inabilities to get things done be a "problem between the mouse and the seat" as my sister says.

That said, "Is Google making us stupid?" by Nicholas Carr says that because of the online articles ans web surfing, the way we read has changed.  Many people are only willing to read the first two paragraphs of an article to gain information and if the points aren't made in those two short paragraphs, many will surf on to the next article to see if they can quickly glean necessary information there.  People complain that they just can't concentrate for the length of a very long article.  The more they surf the Web, the shorter their attention span.  Many times people are also multi-tasking while they surf and this too can reduce focus.  One person made the point, in France news stories tell the important info in the first paragraph and as you continue through the article less pertinent information is found, wheras in the US many of the news stories will start out with less pertinent info and toward the bottom will be the focus of the story. 

I can see what they mean.  Generally, I feel that news stories do try to focus the who, where, when , why at the beginning of the article and the human interest are to ones that have the wide view narrowing to topic as you read through the piece.  With people crunched for time, trying to do the most with less, there is a rush rush to gain the knowledge in a 2 paragraph bite.  It may be the wave of the future.  Use the fewest words, symbols, pictures to get your point across, but along the way, people are going to stop reading/listening to what all of the group are saying and only focus on the top two or three speakers/writers and that would be sad.  Maybe one of those people toward the end of the comment line had the most pertinent thing to say, but if you were the type to only read the first two paragraphs, you'd have never read it.  Maybe it is also a cry that we need to help our children gain that first line of concentration early on, so that they develop the ability to delve deeper into a topic than just a cursory glance.  If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.  A great motto.

Challenge 5- Shared GoogleDocs

If you haven't checked out iPaddy2, do you? Challege 5 teacher tips doc you should.  http://wgpipaddy.blogspot.com/2011/08/tips-for-teachers.html  It has a great list of sites to go to for a wide range of learning areas.  I would also include The Charlotte Mechlenburg Library site (view my comments on it below).

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=8772658003003538659&postID=6334079305616254352&page=1&token=1314541616558


http://www.cmlibrary.org/bookhive/zingertales/zingertales.asp  Zinger Tales by real Storytellers.
 
http://www.cmlibrary.org/bookhive/nccba/   North Carolina Children's Book Awards and activities.

Wikipedia- Quilting

I explored Wikipedia.  Generally when I am looking up something on Wikipedia, I am searching for something that I have a question about so as to find the answers to questions.  Generally I know something about the topic and I am looking for details.

In my search this time I was looking for something that I know quite a bit about, so I chose quilting.  I must say that I was pretty impressed by the breadth of information about quilting that was on Wikipedia.  Having just received EQ7, a quilting software program for Christmas, I decided that I could update that aspect in Wikipedia from EQ6 to EQ7.  If I were to add anything else it would be to mention Crazy Quilts and Bargello as other forms of specialty quilts.  Signing in and editing Wikipedia was very easy to do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quilting#Quilting_software

Creative Common/Flickr can help in Kindergartener's Science

Creative Commons and Flickr are great ways to share photos of topics that kids and adults can use to  explain something enhance something or encourage the creation of something totally new.  I decided to use mine with the Kindergarten Weather unit.

http://prezi.com/99rlqrqqvaoy/brown-bear-brown-bear-what-kind-of-weather-do-you-see/


Although I could use prezi for my products to use with the kids, I would have the kids use Little Bird Tales.  It is much more user friendly.

Little Bird Tales: My Cruise from San Fransisco, California to Alaska

I looked through Google Docs and decided that the calendar is a pretty good one to use to track activities and accomplishments.  My Favorite of the activities that I have explored however is Little Bird Tales.  I have seen half of the ones available in the public tales and I must say I am impressed with the creativity.  This is a great way to produce a class tale, an individual or small group story,  research report, or how-to do something demo.  My favorites were the Slippery Fish by Lizzy, Ocean ABCs by Mrs. Gorospe's Class, Tessa's Habitat by Tessa, Our 3-Digit Number Stories and the How-to tales.
I created my Cruise from San Fransisco, California to Alaska.  Uploading the pictures was easy as was adding the text.  (Recording the voice-over is more challenging without a mic.)  I'll re-embed it after I achieve the solution, but here it is for now.

• Click to view my story.
• 

http://www.littlebirdtales.com/tales/view/story_id/27447

I hope to encourage my teachers to have our students create tales of their own.

Prezio efforts: How does your garden grow?

Prezio can be an interesting format, although for the most part it makes me feel "motion sickness".  I worked on my presentation for most of the day and while I knew there would be a learning curve, I didn't take into count that there were just some aspects that would become intolerable.  The motion sickness.  I tried to have the print be close to the same size in an effort to reduce the amount of zoom and flow that it would do and then I would "watch it" again, and again.  If someone would assist me in identifying how to negate this, I'd appreciate it.  (Also there is a mistake that I couldn't get rid of off to the far right.  Help.)

http://prezi.com/1sxhmbg4luvm/how-does-your-garden-grow/

Voki, Blogs, and Tweets

Maybe you didn't need any help with Voki, but if you had to resort to embedding it to make it work like I did, then maybe the information from the University of Richmond Global Studio January 2011might help you.

http://chalk.richmond.edu/langtech/instructions/webtools/vokiquickstartGS.pdf

Michael Gorman has 20 uses for Voki in the schools and it covers a lot of bases.
http://21centuryedtech.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/voki-creates-ad-free-site-for-education-plus-20-ways-to-use-talking-avatars/

In fact sign up for his blog. It is incredible. http://21centuryedtech.wikispaces.com/21+Blog

I signed up for Twitter and am now following Mark Brumley. I posted my first tweet. It covered Mark Brumley, Michael Gorman, and David Hawgood and the value they pose as sources for ideas and uses of technology. I don't know that I am likely to use Twitter much myself though. I could see it as a way of communicating new books, school or Media activities, or help needed in the MC and the type of help, so interested parents or students wanting to volunteer might do so in a speedy way.

Other Challengers' blogs
I am following a number of peoples' blogs. I find that I am facinated by the variety of styles included. Country=Pays was very interesting to me because of the use of multiple languages and the experience of feeling like you are travelling along with her, but learning new things at the same time. Education is a lot like that. As you go from participating in an activity to reading or listening to a book being read (or a Voki), to taking part in a discussion, play, or song little bits of that experience are embedded in you to be sparked at a later date in creating something, like a solution to a problem or a random doodle.

Most of the ones I have marked to follow though are ones that introduce me to new or different ways to view and use technology. For all of the Media people in elementary or middle school, check out Sean's (http://spsg-librarian.blogspot.com/ ) EBoB quiz and NCCBA online voting for 3-5th graders.

http://homepage.mac.com/seanps17/spsg/NCCBA-ballot.html

"Tools tried"  by Alison made me want to try wordles with my students this year.  I want to have the kids research what job they'd like to do and discover some of the requirements for the job.   For the first part they could have their own names and describe themselves now and then have a separate one that tells the job/occupation they'd like to have and the characterisitcs/skills for that job.  http://ajlesueur.blogspot.com/2011/06/tools-tried.html

FindThatBook said...

Thanks for sharing your ideas. I too have experienced the frustrations by lack of computers or inability for kids to login.
I haven't tried Wordle yet, but this makes me want to do it. Norma

August 3, 2011 9:02 AM

 

Voki - version 3

Book Talker

I had thought that perhaps after seeing Sean's Voki Panda that perhaps I could manage to create Spin and Twirl the Hurricane mascots that Alana DeVito created for us.  I am not so sure now.  I am even more impressed with your efforts Sean.  

Imagine, dream, believe, read ...you can have it all.

What are your dreams for your next reading adventure?  

Librarian Brings Kindles into the Classroom

Kathy Parker did a fine job sharing her experience with 7th and 8th graders and thier use of the Kindles in her article, Librarian Brings Kindles into the Classroom and I can definitely see the appeal of Kindles especially in the middle and upper levels, but the "unknown" recurring costs would seem to preclude most library budgets from being able to have them.  The other factor that I've wondered about is "keeping them".  You'd want any child to be able to check it out to use, but there are some children who have recurring damages to print books whether it is by themselves or family members and others who may be homeless, in shelters or in other situations where having either a "safe place" to keep the kindle or being able to keep much of anything due to space restrictions and recurring moves might make them less than ideal candidates for checking out a kindle, yet they are memebers of one of the groups of people who might benefit most from the use of the school technology.  As technology continues to explode, reductions in internal size and costs to produce the item, and with the creation of the "Tuffy-style" Kindle, Kindles will become more affordable for a widening range of Media Centers. 

Another consideration, is that currently DPS school media collections are shared in Destiny for cataloguing purposes and as individual inter-library loan checkouts.  As e-books become more of the norm, will the schools continue to have their own purchases or will the schools join to purchase items or even have just a central DPS entity purchase for the "group" to use and have a DPS e-library like the Durham County Library currently does?  For the upper grades, this will probably become the norm, but for the elementary crowd, there is still a need for printed books.  An example is the Birthday Book Giveaway that we do at Hillandale.  Each child comes to the Media Center on the giveaway date for their birth month and chooses a desired book from 25-75 possibilities.  Many teachers and parents have commented on the positive reactions of receiving and sharing the pleasure of getting the book with family and classmates that the children experienced.  The excitement and feel of a new book that you get to select just wouldn't be the same with a download.

Librarian Brings Kindles into the Classroom

Media Center Changes

From the article The Media Center:  From Musty Old Library to 21 Centeury Program by Mary Alice Anderson, Multimedia Schools, January 2004  http://homepage.mac.com/maryalicea/Sites/Anderson/MMS/Musty_Library_0104.pdf we can see that change is possible for any Media Center, even the one set back in what seems "dinosaur times".  She is also right that communication, collaboration and energy are the keys for change.  Communication being the most important.  Collaboration is a close second. In my media center, I tried improving the "small group literacy books", i.e. "bagged books" by changing the call numbers first to more of a "Dewey-style" (E CON, F CAP, E 583 BEC, etc), but it didn't fit the needs of my adult patrons or myself in locating these books.  The reason, because the book's reading level was the most important part of the call number.  Wanting to use Destiny (the online catalog) and its capabilities in creating call number labels for the entire section's shelf list of 450 titles and being limited by the field selection choices available and the need to create labels that would be "teacher friendly" I opted for creating call numbers that were non-Dewey.  The Fiction side call numbers are:  BS FIC A-1 Dino (fiction, level, and first word of the title up to 5 characters) and BS NONF M-20 Explo (Nonfiction, level, and first word of the title up to 5 characters).  The leveling does not include Lexiles unfortunately because it is not a field that is easily reached via reports.  Perhaps with nudging, Follett will include lexiles as a choice in future releases.  We shall see if it helps the teachers when I unveil it in August in a training session.  (Note: these do not include books in the Bookroom that go with the LA adoption, but with the booksets that remained in the MC collection although it could be used in there.)
Another area of change for me is the use of a Document Reader.  One of our teachers won the DPS Technology Showcase Document Reader and after that I wanted one in the Media Center to use with the kids.  Online we searched how we could create one to use in the Media Center on the cheap.  See http://help.conroeisd.net/hardware/eyecamd/ver1 (Conroe ISD Technology to set up the EyeCamD document camera and for many other helpful technology issues) and http://www.friedtechnology.com/2010/03/update-document-camera-under-100-now.html for instructions on how to make one.  It works great for small books and other things.  For the larger picture books, the distance between the book and the camera needs to be heightened.  I am still working on that one, but I am hoping that this helps the kids all be able to see what's being read better than last year.  On to the future one step at a time.
What are your solutions for dealing with an underwealth of technology?

Why Blog?

It is generally better not to recreate the wheel.  People sharing information can often reduce the time and suffering of others following the same pathway.  There are many forms of communication and in those various formats different types of information can optimally be shared.  Quite often if you experiment with a number of avenues, there will be one or two favorite pathways that you will be drawn to utilize.  I am in search of those favorite pathways of communication.