Choices, Choices

Have you ever been to a restaurant where they let you build your own meal? After weeks of agonizing about how to end our digital citizenship unit, a trip to Friendly's inspired an idea. On the table was a pad with options for build your own burger. Although, I didn't want a burger, I really wanted to fill out the burger order form. When you love your curriculum and the technology, sometimes it’s hard to make a decision about what to cut. I knew I wanted to do a project but I kept vacillating between topics, audience, and mediums for the project.  A few days prior, our Superintendent had mentioned incorporating student choice into our curriculum. On Sunday morning while contemplating an end-of- unit-project, I was thinking Aaaahhhhh! I can’t decide what should be the focus of this project; I should just let the kids decide. A perfect storm of recent experiences and necessity, and the Build-Your-Own-Project was born.  

Like me wanting to complete the build-your-own-burger order form, my students were drawn to the idea of building their own project. I have never seen students get so excited about a project.

Is it Rigorous?

One of my district's goals is to increase the rigor and relevance of our curriculum. Last year our superintendent began educational rounds (like doctors do in hospitals) with a focus on rigor and relevance. At first it was just administrators making rounds, but not long after teachers were invited along. The group would visit various classes for approximately one period observing what students were doing, then meet for another period to complete a chart based what again we saw students doing. We were told, it didn’t matter what the teachers were doing, focus on the student’s activity and we were allowed to ask the students to explain what they were doing. For each class, we had to place a post-it in the quadrant that we believed the students were working.

   

 So, this rigor and relevance conversation has been ongoing for over a year. As we begin using the new teacher evaluation tool this year, many teachers are making it a goal to increase the rigor in their classes and the discussion about what is rigorous continues.

People always think rigor means hard. Calculus and physics by most people's standards are challenging subjects, but if you enter a classroom and the teacher is giving direct instruction what are the students doing, they are listening, watching, and maybe taking notes. Listening and watching is not very rigorous. A teacher can't say my subject is hard therefore my class is rigorous. So if rigor is not a challenging subject, what is rigor?

Rigor is about designing tasks that force learners to think about a strategy, to test that idea, to reassess the strategy, and to try again with a new strategy in a rinse and repeat fashion until they are successful.   I like a Hansel-and-Gretel-follow-the-bread-crumbs metaphor for rigor rather than the Wizard-of-Oz- yellow-brick-road metaphor. On the yellow brick road, one can enjoy a stroll through the country side while making their way to their destination, the answer. If the route to the answer is following breadcrumbs of information, this is much more challenging. Sometimes the crumbs of information are smaller than other crumbs, sometimes there are large gaps, maybe even a river, between bread crumbs, and sometimes what you think is a breadcrumb is a small pebble. A task like this requires strategizing, analysis, planning, applying prior knowledge, determining what's missing, experimenting, perseverance, and maybe even creating a river-traversing-system.

                                         photo source: http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/archives/2012/03/50_very_awesome.shtml

Often people also think rigor is assigning a lot of work, which is rigorous as a time management activity because the learner must plan and strategize how they will get all the work done in a limited amount of time, but a heavy workload is not content related rigor. In fact, the learner may think less deeply about the content activity because completion in a specified time frame is the goal, not learning. Creating a rigorous learning activity, requires the teacher to plan backwards and maybe share the the expected end-result, then start dropping the breadcrumbs that will get the learners to strategize a route to the answer. 

Recently, after a lesson about digital reputation, specifically who owns one's image once online, I challenged students to get themselves untagged from a class photo that I placed on a wiki (I had not introduced wiki’s yet). I gave them a bread crumb in the form of a blog post about how to get oneself untagged from an unflattering photo online. The blog post, however, was more a treasure map than a road map. Only one student was able to untagged themselves, and two others were close. It appeared all students waited until the minute, not giving themselves enough “trial and error” time, and many didn't bother to read, or they misread the “breadcrumb” blog.  What I learned was that I needed to add a few more breadcrumbs and closer together. Next time, I will prep the students with the Hansel and Gretel bread crumbs analogy to start. I think informing students that this is a challenging activity will encourage a more serious attitude.  I would also set a “questions for the teacher” deadline about half way through the time frame to force strategizing earlier in the process.

Parent Engagement

Recently, during the roll-out of the new evaluation tool, our superintendent mentioned that eventually we would be pulling into our teacher evaluations, student and parent feedback. He used the phrase “parent engagement.” Engagement is a big buzz word in education of late and it has me contemplating how to “engage parents.”  Engagement is more than connecting, involving, or getting feedback.  To engage is to engross, secure, charm, absorb, and attract parents. I began thinking about how I can attract and engross parents.

                                          Photo Source: Freefoto  http://www.freefoto.com/preview/04-08-5/On-the-Phone

An opportunity soon arose when planning for our (I am co-teach a class this year) Digital Citizenship unit, it dawned on me that this is an area that nearly every parent in the country has concerns about. I enlisted the help of the administrative assistants to get me the parent’s phone numbers for each of our students. I set a goal to use the time between 2:30 and 3:00 each day of that week to call all our parents. This short after school period was the quietest of the whole day in the library, and I knew there would be fewer interruptions. My plan was to introduce myself as their child’s Digital Technology teacher and then say this,

“We are beginning our Digital Citizenship unit which covers topics like online safety, digital reputation, privacy, and cyber-bullying. I know these topics are concerns for parents in general, and I was wondering if there was something you specifically wanted us to cover?”

This is my twentieth year teaching, and this exercise was by far the most wonderful parent-teacher experience of my career. The parent’s first reaction was stunned silence. I don’t think any of them had ever been asked by a teacher to guide curriculum. All but one parent had concerns. Each shared a story about an “online” issue and thanked me for addressing these topics in class. If I couldn’t speak to a parent in person, I left the same message on their voicemail. I ended all calls with “if you have any concerns at all, please do not hesitate to call or email me at school.” 

This was literally an experiment for which I was very nervous. I had a horrific parent(s)-teacher interaction in 2005 during open house when a group of hostile parents literally ganged up on me about a difficult reading I had assign their honor’s students. I left school that night in tears and the next day enrolled in a graduate program and within two years, I was out of the classroom. It was so bad that a parent who was a bystander to the scene called me the next morning herself crying to apologize for even being in the room.  

                                          photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gccommunication/3965583947/

I know I am not alone, when I attend my son’s open houses or parent-teacher conferences, his teachers are nervous wrecks, and when I try to engage my son’s teachers in a non-parent but a collegial, teacher-to–teacher manner their walls are so high I can’t breech them. It’s clear with every interaction that they have been burned and those wounds are still fresh. So, with my son’s school and teachers, I don’t interfere, but try hard to be supportive. However, as a parent, I would cherish a teacher who would call and ask “what would you like me to focus on this year?”

Teaching is risk-taking, and not for the faint of heart. We must acknowledge and overcome our fears for the benefit for our students.

Why I Grade

Why I Grade

I do not have to grade. As a librarian with a flexible schedule and no set classes, I do not have to grade student work, and honestly I love my non-grading life. I think any high school teacher will tell you the worst part of their job is grading papers.

 

Photo credit: USC Center for Teaching for Excellence

When I transferred to the library from the classroom seven years ago, I celebrated the fact that I didn’t have to grade papers. It’s definitely a perk of being a librarian. However, I love data. I like to see how much students have learned from my lessons. So my grading began by asking students to complete electronic assessments/surveys after each major lesson, and I asked the social studies teachers, who assign the research paper, to collect two rough drafts from each student, one paper for my action research.

For a few years, I collated the results for these E-assessments and looked at each paper to determine how many students correctly footnoted and paraphrased in their research papers. That has evolved over the last four years to me actually co-assessing the ninth grade research paper with two out of three ninth grade Social Studies teachers. Each January, I get excited when research season is upon me. I love to teach the research process and then guide students through the procedure of producing a research paper. In March, however, I dread the arrival of the research papers. I actually hate to assess, but I see the value in assisting teachers in grading research papers.

First, although there is no time to collate the data of student skills learned. I do get anecdotal evidence of their skills (or lack of skills), and use this to tweak my Anti-Plagiarism Lesson the following year. Second, helping a fellow teacher wins favors. Teachers are more willing to co-teach with me in the future, and are willing to help me when I need, for example, students to take a yearly Home Computer and Technology Use Survey. Third, after one of the teachers responded to my assessments with, “WOW! You’re Good,” I realized that helping assess gives classroom teachers an opportunity see me as a fellow teacher. Whether classroom teachers would admit it or not, there is resentment toward school librarians who collect a teacher’s salary, but may not teach, or may not teach well, and do not have the hours of grading each weekend. Co-assessing research papers helps my “teacher” badge shine in the eyes of other teachers. Finally, students now see me as more of a resource. I have always offered to edit student’s research papers, but only the most dedicated students took me up on that offer. I see change. Previously, students would ask their teachers research-process questions in front of me, but many now come straight to me with their questions. Their estimation of me has increased now that they know I will also be grading their papers, and now every student gets feedback on their research paper from a research specialist. 

  Photo credit:  https://wordpress.org/openverse/image/8e09db69-932f-4927-b61d-651472641d1b 

 

So as I enjoy this Sunday, free to work on what I please, waiting for research papers to arrive on Tuesday thus ending my library bliss for the next two weeks. The respect, favor and insight I gain will be worth every unhappy moment of grading research papers.

Your Library Website as the Tool

Library Websites as the Tool

This article was first published in the MSLA November Forum

http://maschoolibraries.org/content/view/1061/670/ 

Six years ago when I moved from the classroom to the library, I had a vision that the Pentucket Regional High School library would be the “Hub” of the school.  An integral part of being the “Hub” is having resources available 24/7 and that set me on a journey to build a dynamic website that in and of itself was a tool for student learning. The website that exists today is the result of a marathon not a sprint.  The first year I added the Research Guide, the next year the Databases Page, but each in very much a beta form. Each year I have tweaked and added pieces as I saw other’s sites that I liked, and as I learned new technology tools. Having been a classroom teacher, I am sensitive to designing tools that all students can easily navigate, and access; identified students as well as regular education students.

In those early days I didn’t have control of the library website so I had to find tools that could be linked on the website, but could be accessible to me outside of the library website. That’s where www.netvibes.com came in. Netvibes is a start-up page similar to igoogle. David Loertscher would describe Netvibes as my personal learning environment, it is where I house my PLN (personal learning network), and where I organize my personal digital life, but more importantly each free account provides a public space thus allowing me to organize and share my professional life as well. I actually have several Netvibes accounts; the Online Resources Page is used as a place to share all the cool tools around books and technology that I find or create, and the Pathfinders Page is where I house the research paths that I have created for reoccurring projects in which I collaborate. Additionally, I have set up a public page for my school’s NEASC E-portfolio and another page I am using as a professional portfolio for certification (each of these require a separate email address or you can pay for a premium site).

Being the “hub” of the school while students are at home is a challenge, but Jing and screencast.com bridge the home-school gap. My first thought when I am teaching students or staff, is how will I reach them when they are not in front of me. Screencasting is that answer. I am a strong proponent of the flip-curriculum model, and I use screen casting for everything, many videos to teach all the great features of my MassCat catalog. I have screencasts on how to renew ones library books and how to take a screenshot. I use it to teach lessons like Photostory and how to check the audio controls on the library computers.  I use screencasting for many of my Digital Literacy Challenges (DLC) and to teach the staff how to use the electronic gradebook. At one point last year, I even had the experience of being in two places at the same time with the help of Jing. On one side of the library I was teaching (live) part of my Anti-Plagiarism lesson, and on the other side of the library I was teaching (virtually) students to create an outline for their research papers in www.mywebspiration.com  via a screencast.

The librarian whom I did my student teaching under and whom I eventually replaced, Sheila Callahan,  gave me the best advice ever. She said document everything! She (and now I) kept records on student use of the library, and she strongly encouraged me to prepare an end of the year report to share with administrators. The reality is your library program can only get appreciation and support if everyone (teachers, administrators, parents and students) knows what you are doing. When I can say 31,412 students walked through the doors of the library and received services last year-that’s powerful!  I am a data fiend and couldn’t live without Googleforms.  I use googleforms for everything from getting student suggestions for the summer reading program, to assessing my library orientation, to gathering information about our student’s home computer and technology use. I used Google forms to collect information for our NEASC self study and long range planning, to collect staff’s favorite books for a display, and I use it every time I provide professional development.

The two things that have made all the difference for the Pentucket Regional High School library website site has not been technology but collaborations.  I am a founding member of Pentucket’s Grassroots Technology Group and this is where I learned much of the technology that I used for the library website. We meet every Friday morning for a half hour before school, and it’s a group of teachers teaching teachers to use technology to improve classroom practice. One week someone presents a tool and the next week we play with the tool, and then try to use it in our teaching. The second group is my Student Library and Technology Advisory Group, we spent last year’s meetings looking at exemplar library websites, and then analyzing our own website. The student perspective is crucial when creating a tool for student use.

When we switched webhosting companies two and half years ago, I finally gained “control” of my website to the relief of everyone (I was a bit of a pest to the webmaster, which I think helped in finding a host which would allow each Department to maintain their own web space). This website is not finished, it will always be evolving as student needs evolve. I recently added a mobile library site when I realized seventy-five percent of our students own a handheld device.  In five years I will think that the 2011/2012 version of the site was a beta version. Websites, like life, are journeys not destinations. The Pentucket Regional High School library website is the home for gathering and sharing, teaching and learning; it has become the tool itself.

List of electronic tools and tips

www.netvibes.com – I use it to share everything.

www.jingproject.com and www.screencast.com –screencast tools to teach when they are not physically present

Googledocs – to collect data

italk App- Recorded all the research guide audio files on my Ipod touch

audacity.com- recorded the podcast option for library orientation

Evanced-Provided free by MLS for summer reading program, but I use it all year as an Online Book Club

http://www.proprofs.com – for the research guide quiz

photostory3 – Free Download, I use it for the video option for Library Orientation, but teach this to many classes

www.glogster.com – where I house the whole of my library orientation, and I teach this to many classes

winksite.com – hosts my mobile library site

Get an electronic catalog and link it on your website- I cannot say enough good things about MassCat.

Teach yourself to take a screenshot, and then learn to crop it in Paint.

If you don’t have access to your library website, then find a tool that will give you access and then link it to your school website.

Use your student Learning Management System, to improve your library’s scalability. Our LMS is School Loop ($3.75 per student). They have a webhosting, gradebook, and student/teacher accounts. I use the calendar feature to post library related items on every student and teacher's portal. I use the News feed to share library related information and I use the Groups feature for our summer reading program and as a private blogging tool, and I use the Loopmail feature to communicate with students