Infographics

Before this post if I was asked to do an infographic or even describe it, I would not have had a clue. However, I will say that this school year I did use them as resources to help with my lessons, but had no clue they were called infographics. The tutorials, articles, and podcast helped me understand how beneficial and valuable this tool is and how it can be used in the classroom and library. I like the idea of taking all the information I read or give to students and condensing it into a way that students can truly focus on the important information and use graphics to appeal more.

After signing up and playing around with EASEL.LY, PIKTOCHART, and INFOGR.AM, I ultimately decided to use EASEL.LY because I actually was able to navigate the app more EASILY than the others. I decided to focus on social media in the workplace as I thought it might present great information I can take back to my job for the school year. 

http://www.easel.ly/browserEasel/3976753

Blogs and Blog Readers

Hello Readers,

This week I wanted to talk to you about the opportunity I had learning about information regarding blog readers and feed reader apps. All of this was new to me, as I am not a blogger and have just ventured into this new world and learning lots of cool things the more I explore. One thing that I think we all know by now is that the internet is filled with information just waiting for us to learn about and can often times be a bit overwhelming. That’s where the feed reader apps come in to help clear up some of the confusion we may feel when searching blogs for information.

After careful deliberation and spending hours searching, I decided to join Feedly for several valid reasons. First, Feedly is FREE to join, you can’t get any better than that. It allows me to easily navigate and search the blogs that I want to follow and save by inputting what I am looking for in the search tool. I can easily read the font and understand the format without any extra or unnecessary details and steps. The search tool displays a graphic and quick description of the blog which is great. Feedly, offers a way to save articles that I can view and come back to and also allows me to share content through social media. It basically takes everything I want and wraps it into a nice, neat little package for me!

I decided to highlight 5 of the blogs that I decided to follow through my search on Feedly and Tumblr:

Mighty Little Librarian

I must tell you that this was one of the first blogs that caught my eye and it was mainly because of the blog’s title , Mighty Little Librarian. Considering that I am bit on the short side, I absolutely fell in love with the name of this blog that belongs to Tiffany Whitehead, the new school librarian at Episcopal School of Baton Rouge in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She is a presenter, avid reader, and technology geek and I absolutely love it. Her past posts have been about her wonderful and innovative ideas that she used at her former school as a middle school librarian. Even though I fell in love with the name, I decide o follow because I really enjoyed her posts about proper library procedures featuring the students from her school and her thoughts on how she would like to replace the Dewey Decimal System in the library. I liked that in one of her older posts she refers to how she would categorize her fiction books then as more categories were introduced she updated he categories, which shows that she really wants her readers to stay current. I am a big fan of projects and with my current school always pushing cross curriculum activities, I enjoyed gathering and reading information on the 6^th grade project she collaborated with using the book “Wonder”. I look forward to possibly using the same format and tools in my own library one day.

Awful Library Books

This site also caught my attention because of the name Awful Library Books. As I searched through the site I realized the sole purpose is to help librarians weed out books that just shouldn’t be in the library for kids. I liked the comment used for the caption of the title that states “hoarding is not collection development”. As I am currently taking a collection development class and have taken a course that spends a lot of time discussing the importance of weeding out books in a collection, I found the caption to be amusing. I think the site would be great for someone who may consider themselves a hoarder or even a new librarian who is coming into a situation where the previous librarian was and they need help starting the “weeding out” process. This blog gives insight to why certain books are “awful” in hopes that a school library can be revamped.

YA Book Blog Directory

This YA Book Blog Directory  site is awesome for a lover of YA books like myself. It gives a list of links to book blogs that feature the latest book releases and book reviews. Students who choose to follow this bog site and book lovers can spend several days trying to explore this site and all the information it holds. It is truly a book lovers’ gold mine.

Library Displays

Elaine Pearson is the Librarian at Horowhenua College in Levin, New Zealand and works towards creating innovative ways to promote library books with her Library Displays blog. I work at a Title 1 campus and often need ways to be creative with a low budget, so her blog is great as she gives great ways to display books in the library using a limited budget. She gives links to articles and websites and also tips to generate a great display to showcase books that have been “forgotten”. With a low budget, the books in her library aren’t the newest, so she tries to find ways to get readers hooked on the existing books in the school, which I think can benefit all school librarians.

Alafaya Library

The Alafaya Library used great ideas for interactive displays that I found while searching “Library Displays” on Tumblr. They used a lot of great library displays connecting current pop cultures to different genres of books.  Some of the ones I really liked were the If You Liked This…TV Edition and the display featuring all red books. I think that a lot of these ideas and the way they tie in crafts will spark an interest in any reader and may also spark an idea in teachers to motivate reading in the classroom.

I got so inspired, I decided to create a  Tumblr Account, check it out!

Facebook Pages and Twitter

Facebook Search

I logged in to the cool, new site that everyone on campus was gushing over back in 2004 not knowing that it would one day be a site that takes over social media. What I saw as a web based yearbook for my friends and I has now become a tool that helps to promote learning and engage digital learners.  Around the world many educators and schools are using Facebook to connect with one another and stay current with the ever changing society we teach in. So, the question is, what is a school librarian to do in order to stay current with today’s culture and digital age? Why, have a Facebook page of course, to promote your school’s library.

While I was searching through Facebook for school library pages, I was able to find a few updated school library pages that had great photos and good ideas. The majority of the elementary schools that I found use Facebook pages to give book information and recommendations, ways to promote reading at home, eBook information for parents, and how to check out books from home. The times students can visit the library, articles for parents to read on different topics, such as ways to encourage reluctant readers, and pictures of the great things that happen in the library were also showcased on the Facebook pages. One school’s page that I truly enjoyed used it to show how much they appreciated their librarian and what she means to them. Polly Ryon Middle School Library used their page to showcase the kids’ technology activities in a “Show Off Day” that showed the demonstrations kids created using code and spotlighted their STEM creations. I thought this was really exciting because I was able to have my first taste of coding this school year and the students at my school and we ALL loved it!

I think like almost everything when you deal with technology, it will always have its advantages and disadvantages. Some of the advantages I feel about having a Facebook page to promote the school library are that it might draw in more students who may not frequent the library once they see pictures and read comments online. Facebook will help to showcase the learning that takes place everyday to people who may not always get to see what goes on inside the library. Librarians can use the page to post student work to invite parents to see a glimpse of their student’s learning and give support to parents with hectic schedules and keep them up to date on the calendar of events such as book fairs, technology night, author visits, and etc. The page can also share tips with students and parents, give relevant resources and links, promote new books and allow students to give reviews and share their thoughts.  Some of the disadvantages may be that some librarians may feel that students will not feel the need to visit the library if everything is online. Also, if students are able to make comments on the library’s page then those comments will need to be supervised and require more work on the librarian’s part in addition to maintaining the page and keeping it current and fresh.

Twitter

I personally am not a huge fan of Twitter’s site for my own personal life, but I do understand how it can be beneficial for teachers, librarians, and parents.  While searching through postings I was able to find great articles that mentioned different instructional tools that can be used in class and showcased some cool professional developments that I wouldn’t mind checking out. I was able to really see how a few of the leaders like Jim Lerman @jimlerman promotes STEM learning and some good reads they promote on their Twitter pages. I was really interested in checking out some new books for summer reading before heading back to school in the Fall and now I have what I think is a fabulous generated list. On his page he also tweeted an article on the 10 Tools for More Interactive Videos that gave some different ways that might engage learners more than a Power Point presentation.  I feel that Twitter may be a better choice for librarians to promote the events and happenings in their libraries than Facebook based on the postings I have seen and the commentary and retweets.

We are not escaping social media anytime, so we might as well ride the digital wave and see where it takes us!

Bloom, Schrock and Prensky

21st Century Learners: Digital Natives

Technology is not a thing of the past, but a thing of the present. It continues to change just as the role of the educator, librarian, and administrator do in a school setting. The idea of learning and how students learn also continues to change and grow as the majority of our students have grown up with technology according to Beloit College’s Mindset List( Beloit, 2015). In order to understand 21^st Century learners we first need to realize that students were born using, knowing, touching all of these different aspects of technology that some of us are just now learning how to use as tools in the classroom. Gaming, social media sites, apps, and online reference tools have continued to make technology a part of their daily lives and they no longer learn in the way of their parents.

Across my district, the clip from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,  where the economics professor stands before a room of bored, unenthused students trying to lecture, has become the prime example of what ineffective teaching is. I immediately refer to this in my mind as I listened to Marc Prensky because this is what lecturing is to the 21^st Century Learner who would rather have a hands on approach utilizing technology than being lectured in class. Prensky’s presentation tells us that 21st Century Learners are most engaged and involved in the learning process when they are able to share, search, learn and communicate through technology. Wit technology continuing to change then it is an educator’s role to be open to those changes and rethink of the ways technology can be utilized in their lessons. As a librarian it is important that they are the advocate for their school library program and for incorporating technology to help close the technology gaps between educators and student learners in order to better support student achievement.

As an educator, I want what I believe all educators want, which is to have students who are so deeply engaged and involved with their learning that they are able to find connections and meaning to what they are taught. So, if this is what educators are wanting, then why are we not engaging them in the way they learn best? I agree with some parts of Beloit College’s Mindset List and how learners today have grown up in this new and different world using technology and where educators now need to learn new vocabulary to communicate effectively with students of today. So, if learners have grown up in this world of technology, why are we not implementing more ways to incorporate technology, like B.Y.O.D.-bring your own device?

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy (Churches,2009) which has changed throughout the years of education is based on the changing needs of the learner and how to use tools of technology to facilitate learning. I enjoyed reading how the updated Bloom’s allows readers to understand how H.O.T.S can be integrated into different aspects of technology to better interest and relate to 21^st Century learners. Prensky states in his presentation that technology for a digital native is and should be part of the foundation upon which learning is built, not used as a tool. I see technology as a tool for learning and as a foundation piece for learners of today because of how meaningful and popular it has become. I remember being a student in the mid 90’s-2000s and being excited over using an overhead and learning Power Point, which is something that is now considered outdated and boring to digital natives. However, it was a tool that I needed to learn to use and help me throughout my education. 21^st Century learners are not the same and I believe that we are moving into a time where technology will become more of a foundation as different generations in the field of education continue to learn more about it.

Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything, (Schrock, 2011) provides great information on different apps that can be applied for the differing Bloom’s Levels and I think would be important to share with administrators to explain why certain apps and games should be used. Her Web 2.0 Apps Graphic is something that I am interested in sharing with others on my campus to show how it utilizes Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy with apps most educators are aware of. As technology and the way students learn continues to change then it is important to find ways to maintain a supportive school environment where everyone can learn. I think that a school librarian would continue to care about the changing technological world in order to be a source of reference for classroom teachers and learners to help learning continue to be meaningful and exciting.