The new Information Literacy Curriculum in Questar III and Capital Region BOCES focuses on inquiry based learning and student-to-student collaboration for learning. Integration of new technologies is a given. Students need to know how to use the tools available to them to work effectively and efficiently. Many of the newest tools, such as wikis and tagging, provide for collaborative work. School library media specialists are strategically positioned to lead learning communities in the responsible uses of technology for learning.
Writing, critiquing, analyzing, research chronicle, journaling, sharing projects.
Replace the traditional 'log' notebook. Teacher can review log without student handing it in and being without it while it's being graded.
Students are more engaged in the writing process. they have a global audience, parents can be more involved, students can learn from each other, connections with students around the world.
Team Projects: Wikis are perfect for team projects. Everyone on the team can add to and edit the group's project on a wiki page. It's as easy as clicking on the "edit" button and adding your content. Older versions of the edited pages are preserved, so students can retrieve earlier work if they want to. This history also lets you view the history of their work and who edited what. You can even leave comments for the students about their project. Other students can leave comments too.
Research Organizer/Journal: Wikis also work well as a place for individual students to keep track of their notes and progress on a research project. Other students, teachers, parents (whoever you give access to) can also view the work and leave comments.
Student showcases: Students can use wikis as a portfolio of their work. It's easy to create links to other documents that they've created throughout a class. And this gives them a simple way to present all their work and offer reflections on their work as well.
Go Global: Find other classroom partner and collaborate with students around the world.
RSS makes it possible for information from one web site to appear on another web site and for it to be updated whenever the original site is updated. This opens up all sorts of possiblities for re-using information and creating our own 'mix and match' web pages.
Aggregate Information: bring lots of RSS feeds together in a feed reader like Bloglines or Google Reader. Scan lots of content quickly.
Student Research Organizers: RSS feeds from newspapers, magazines, news sites, databases and other sites can help students keep up to date on their research topics. RSS does the fetching and students do the sorting, sifting and thinking!
Subject Guides that update themselves: Use RSS from your del.icio.us account, news sources, magazines, etc. to create subject guides for students that don't need lots of updating.
Set up account for group projects, have students add links with annotations and tags
Students with their own accounts organizing research resources for their own projects.
Students sharing links with others in their networks.
Teachers/librarians sharing links for upcoming projects
Set up an account to feed new links to a web page or wiki page (or to RSS news readers). Creates a "live subject guide" - when links are added to del.icio.us, they appear on the web page, wiki, or in the rss reader.
Video & audio projects offer wonderful opportunities for creativity. Students learn technology skills in using the equipment to record and software to edit. Creativity takes center stage in these projects. Organizational and presentation skills are learned while creating an effective, engaging project. And like so many technology tools, students are excited about creating and sharing their work using these tools.
We all have stories to tell and our stories help us all connect with each other. Your libraries and communities have stories to share too. These easy to use tools can help you tell your stories through photos, voice and music. Great for student projects and after school activities. These would also be fun tools to cover in a technology series for the public and have them create their own stories to share. Let your creative spirit, imagination and memory loose!
The tech camp was such a positive experience from meeting people in the profession to being on the cutting-edge (not the bleeding edge). I can't wait for the follow-up sessions!
polly:
Mindy - So glad you enjoyed the training. I had a great time too and learned a lot from everyone who attended. - Polly
Mindy Holland:
Linda, Polly and everyone else.
Thank you for a wonderful experience. I feel totally empowered. Tech camp was an inspiring experience!
-Mindy