Where I am now!

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When I first started the MLS program at Dominican, the thought of teaching technology to students was a little frightening.  I thought, “Kids seem to know more than I do…have you seen a seven year old use an Xbox controller or a keyboard to manipulate an online game!  What the heck am I going to be telling THAT kid!”  About two weeks into the program, I knew.  Sure, students can engage in the technology behavior that they know and love, but do they understand when, why and how to really utilize it.  Do they know how to make it work for them in a school setting, how to communicate with it, collaborate with their peers, share important content, create and disseminate?  It is a really exciting time to teach kids technology.  There is just soooo much out there and it is all at their fingertips, literally. 

Where do I stand...

Over the last 6 weeks of this most recent technology course, I have learned some tools that are going to make my life easier in the classroom and some tools that are literally just fun and engaging.  If it helps students better absorb the content that they need to cover, the more the better.  I feel pretty certain that I will be incorporating as much as I can in the library space and I hope that I am the kind of 21^st Century Librarian who is always pushing the envelope to get even more tools in students hands.  I am even more certain that this won’t be my last “Technology and Curriculum” or “Teaching Media Literacy” or “Technology in the Classroom” course.

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Great Moments

When I think about it now, I realize that utilizing technology in education is not just about teaching it, it is about being a partner in it.  Having spent limited time already in the classroom with students and technology, I have already had the fantastic experience of saying to a student, “Did you know you can do it this way?” and showing them something new and having them say back to me, “I didn’t know you could do that. That’s cool.  Did you ever do this?”  And saying back, “I didn’t.  That’s cool, too!  Thanks for showing it to me!”  It was pretty great!

QR Codes….A Librarians Best Friend!

What is a QR Code?

  

A QR code is a machine-readable code consisting of an array of black and white squares, typically used for storing URLs or other information for reading by the camera on a smartphone. 

So a lot of librarians use QR codes in their stacks to help generate interest in books that students may not know about or may not think they could be interested in, but there are other ways that teacher-librarians can utilize QR codes to teach and engage students and to step things up in an old boring lesson

 What can you use a QR code for?

Any content, video, photos, text, audio, can be converted to a QR code.  Want to have a interactive museum project?  Have students put up their work and then explain it via QR code?  Want to host a 3^rd grade treasure hunt to teach genres or Dewey?  You can use QR codes for that.  There are so many applications and for older students you can teach them the technology and let them decide how they want to utilize it in presentations or for testing their own understanding.  Content converters are free and easy to use and students can download a reader right onto their iPod or iPad or smartphone. 

How would I use this technology?

In thinking about how I would use this technology, I couldn’t help but think about teaching students the parts of a particular story.  In the sixth grade classes in my district, students are reading “The Giver”.   What makes this story so good to use with QR codes is that it has a very easy story arc.  There are very prominent examples of exposition, rising action, obvious climax, falling action and a quick resolution.   

 Making a note of some of the better examples from the story, I put them in a text into the QR Generator (http://www.qrstuff.com/) and created an easy template for students to attach the physical print outs of the QR codes to, by story part.  After a refresher on the parts of the story, students would scan their set of 15 codes and put them in order on their template.  They have a summary of the plot, have gotten to refresh their memories about story parts and used some technology in the process.  Below is an example of my son completing the assignment. 

Good or bad?

I think that most librarians are smart to use QR codes the way they do.  I love when I walk into a school library and see the codes taped right to the shelf under a series or a book with a great trailer.  I have even seen librarians use them for summer reading lists and in their book displays as bookmarks.  This is just one more way to step things up!

 

Vialogue: Invite Discussion, Check for Understanding and Engage your Students!

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When looking at technology to incorporate into curriculum, especially for school librarians, a great place to start can be the American Association of School Librarians Best of the Year: Website list.  Every year the AASL puts out their favorite new or updated Apps and websites for teachers and librarians.  As I was considering some the picks from year and last, I decided to try a relatively unknown collaborative website that incorporates video and allows for discussion called Vialogue (https://vialogues.com/).

 

 

Why is it good?

With so many schools going to 1:1 technology or allowing for technology with BYOD, I think it is even easier for students to discuss and contribute.  What I really like about options like Vialogue is it enables students, even those not comfortable raising their hand in class, to join in the discussion and can allow teachers to better know all their students and gauge their understanding.   

Once the moderator (teacher) has downloaded a video, they can add “multiple choice”, “check all that apply” questions or even short answer through the comments section at various points of the video for students to answer.  Likewise, students can comment on the video at any point and as they do, the comment is attached to that portion of video.  This is really a nice feature for teachers to begin or contribute to the discussion. 

 

How would I use this technology?

For the sake of this blog, I have chosen to use Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as the topic and the 1968 Zeffirelli movie as my video.  For the audience, I was thinking 9^th graders, as this is a typical time for students to be exposed to Shakespeare.  Vialogue would fulfill two important elements of studying Shakespeare:  watching it, as opposed to simply reading and being able to interpret the language for better understanding.  Students would read the scene and then comment and answer sample questions while watching the Vialogue. 

 The discussion on the the comments section of the Vialogue, would allow the teacher to focus on certain elements in class for greater understanding.  Further applications could be found in a history class, this could be used to show actual footage of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech or, in science, footage of a tornado touching down along with the instructor’s comments on how it begins and continues.  There are really are all kinds of instructional content that could be opened for comment by using this tool that I am kind of surprised it hasn’t taken off a little bit more.

 

How would students use Vialogue?

Vialogue allows for the instructor to create a group that would be private.  Students would create an account, which is free, and log in with their created user name and password.  The instructor would include the user names on the create page of the Vialogue and then students would have access and could comment, but no one outside the group would have access.  The site does stress that this is not for children under 10.  I would highly recommend it for middle school and up.