Week 7: Building & Refining My PLN

Blogs Added to Feedly:

• A Media Specialist's Guide to the Internet:  http://mediaspecialistsguide.blogspot.com/  I found this on an Edublog list of Best Library/Librarian Blogs of 2013, and after reading through the recent content, I can see why it made the list.  Not only is this loaded with lesson plans, game ideas, and presentation materials, but it also has nice how-tos for computer programs like MS Word, which students use all the time.  I am really surprised I have not seen this before.  

• The True Adventures of a High School Librarian:  http://www.nikkidrobertson.com/  This was another find from the same Edublog list as the blog above.  The very first post is a step-by-step explanation of how to set up flipping a classroom.  This is brand new for me, but it sounds like exactly what I was going for with the AP classes I've taught over the last several years.  Clearly I have a lot to learn from this woman.  

• Annoyed Librarian:  http://lj.libraryjournal.com/blogs/annoyedlibrarian/  I added this blog because the writer is dealing with the kinds of everyday issues and problems that I fully expect to be facing as a librarian in addition to "big-picture" theory questions.  Everything from access and funding to misconceptions of the job (librarian as babysitter, for example) and library evolution over time are covered just in the past few weeks.  Many of the comments made on individual posts are valuable in giving a useful, even broader perspective, which I did not expect.    

Twitter Users Added:

• AASL (American Association of School Librarians):  I will be joining this organization soon, and I use their online resources on a regular basis now.  We always say in education, "Don't reinvent the wheel." The AASL has many wheels.
• School Library Journal:  I pillage their book reviews on a regular basis.  Content provided by SLJ is typically quite good.
• YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association):  YALSA is a respected organization within the umbrella of the ALA, and I find myself on their site all the time for ideas on how to conceptualize policy. 
• Fairfax County Library:  This is the local library system where I live, and they are apparently tweeting about library events on a regular basis.  It can be difficult to find that information on the library homepage, so this has potential.
• Phil Bradley:  He focuses on Internet technologies relevant to library science, and he offers reviews of a variety of tools and resources.
• Gwyneth Jones (The Daring Librarian):  I found her being followed by a librarian I respect, and when I Googled her, she turned up all over the map.  Her blog posts are being referenced by respected news outlets, which is another strong endorsement.

Honestly, I have largely neglected these sites since setting them up.  I have tried to minimize my online presence over the last several years because the school district where I live (and in particular the school where I worked for the past 7 years) frowns on teachers being too "out there."  (Even my instructional YouTube videos make no mention of my name or where I am lest the school demand they be removed from Blackboard.)  I have limited myself to what I really needed to use and not much else.  Keeping blinders on in this way, however, has probably not been the most professional solution.  If I make checking these sites part of my routine, I will be much more likely to do so--and that could be very useful to my development as a competent librarian.   

Week 7: Wikipedia, Etc. As Trusted Sources?

As a classroom teacher, I fought the Wikipedia fight for years.

The biggest problem is not the comparative accuracy of Wikipedia as a resource.  If that is a valid measure, then when I play Powerball and get 1 correct number as compared to an Easy Pick where I have no correct numbers, does this mean I have done particularly well on my own playing the lottery?  I hope not because whatever the prevailing opinion, I am still out $2 if I bought 2 lines and won nothing.

Teaching students to discriminate among various pieces of information is incredibly difficult as the teenage brain is oftentimes focused on finding the path of least resistance.  They have the same 24 hours per day that everyone else has, but the sheer volume of what they try to pack into the average day means something has to give.  For example, a class of my world history students, freshmen, were supposed to be defining/explaining a set of terms from their textbook.  This was a unit on a variety of Mesopotamian civilizations, so when "Nebuchadnezzar" showed up with the definition "a really big bottle of wine," I had a serious "Huh?" moment.  Entering "define:  nebuchadnezzar" in Google pulled that up as the first option, which apparently looked good enough--not good, but good enough.  There again is the comparative problem.  I have many examples of this as an ongoing issue, and most are not nearly so ridiculous.

What constitutes validity?  We teach primary and secondary sources, not tertiary.  Every tertiary source is going to have problems.  I never met a textbook that didn't.  I have been saddled with many textbooks over the years, but the absolute worst was laden with political bias which drove me nuts.  Students of history learn a variety of techniques to judge whether a particular work is worth citing--beginning with questions like who wrote it, what authority does the creator have, how is the writer judged within the context of the academic community, when was it written, on what sources was it based, can it be confirmed, and so forth.  The anonymous nature of contributors to wikis like Wikipedia make them automatically suspect, but the bottom line is that any encyclopedia is a tertiary source, which is well beneath older students to use for anything but quick reference or background reading anyway.

Several years ago, I read an online article explaining how Wikipedia entries were actually generating their own references.  A story, fact, or anecdote lands in an entry without citation.  Then it is used by a reputable journalist or writer, at which point that use is added as a citation to the erroneous information on the Wikipedia page.  Anybody else running across said story now has what appears to be a perfectly valid reference for it, and he/she cites it as authoritative.  This is a really frightening chain of events made possible by the online environment and the way wikis work.  

YouTube videos pose some of the same problems.  Obviously the quality and content are all over the place in terms of consistency.  I am a pretty heavy user of YouTube, and I have dozens of videos which have for years been embedded in my Blackboard site for my students to play at home without having to search for them.  Now, I know the value of the content I teach and the validity of the information I post to YouTube.  It's there for my students, and if that benefits other people, then that's just a bonus.  Occasionally I get really good questions from people that are worth answering in that forum.  The comments, however, can be really horrible!  Our YouTube account is in my husband's name, and he automatically bans people critiquing my body or making other nasty, personal remarks.  Most account holders just ignore the nastiness, which then poses a problem when a teacher wants to share a video laden with irrelevant or disgusting comments no matter the quality of the video itself.  The high school I recently left adopted the policy last year of requiring any video, regardless of source, to be approved before it is shared with students during class, on Blackboard, or through email.  Teachers grumbled about that, but it was better than the outright ban on YouTube that many schools in my county have in place already.

There are no easy answers to questions like "Should students trust information from non-vetted sources?"  The answer for me is a resounding, "Maybe."                        

Week 4: SAMR Model of Tech Integration

This particular model (Substitution-Augmentation-Modification-Redefinition) is new for me, but I had a couple of light-bulb moments reading through the steps.  I am taking this year off from teaching, which in retrospect was not a bad move, all things considered, but I previously spent 11 years teaching high school social studies.  I am going to focus my post this week on AP Economics, which is a specialty of mine...and my first love.  Okay, that's not entirely true.  My first love was a raggedy teddy bear named Gus, but that's a different story entirely.

Substitution:  Having students take notes during my AP class turned out to be a HUGE waste of time, so I posted all my notes on Blackboard for them to study before we covered topics in class.  (The incomprehensible textbook spurred this along as well.)

Augmentation:  Realizing how difficult it is for students to review completed AP graphs and remember the process of constructing them, I started videotaping short graphing review segments, posting them on YouTube, and embedding those in Blackboard.  This turned out to be a real godsend to students too busy in the afternoon to stay for help.

Modification:  When Snowpocalypse hit the DC-Metro Area a few years ago, students had a group freak-out over all the school they were missing.  I set up specific time blocks to be available for collaborative group hang-out sessions using Blackboard for them to talk to me and each other.  This definitely helped me to address their immediate concerns and for them to cooperatively work through their questions, thereby making it a much smoother transition once we actually got back to school.  Having these conversations in real time was a brand-new thing for all of us, and I got very positive feedback from my students and their parents.  (A drawback was that not every student participated.)

Redefinition:  I'm going to change gears here to World History I, which covers prehistory and runs through the early Renaissance for high school freshmen.  A standards-driven add-on was developed at Blackboard for Fairfax County Schools which allows teachers to share materials.  Students are required to take quizzes for each course unit; these are computer scored and automatically pinpoint which standards must be remediated before end-of-course testing.  These quizzes can be set to give students immediate feedback on their own answers, which they prefer.

I am not yet sure how I will use these tools in my future role as school librarian, but the current unit's materials certainly have my brain percolating.