The following is the slideshow I created for my first ETL523 assignment (uploaded onto SlideShare). I am far from completely happy with it, and am yet to know what mark it received. I will be presenting it next week, in the scenario of a teacher librarian presenting to a school staff meeting. I feel that it was rushed, as I did not have nearly as much time as I would have liked to spend on it. If you download it you can see the notes to go with it as far as I am aware (be warned that the notes needed to be written in an academic style, and are quite extensive!).

Now to prepare myself for the actual presentation... preparations so far making me more concerned rather than less! I am not sure whether to condense what I have written into notes, or to speed read what I have got as I present it. Will practise both ways and hopefully that will give me a good idea about what I should do.

The library without walls

View more presentations from jessthomas49.

PS - those pictures on the first slide were joined perfectly when I made it, I'm not sure why there is a gap between them now :(

Hey Jude, thanks again...

My lecturer for ETL523, Judy O'Connell (Blog: http://heyjude.wordpress.com/), just keeps providing us with interesting information and cool videos. This time I started looking at her LiveBinders folder (a new Web 2.0 tool to me!), and immediately came across some interesting videos (including the one below) and some fantastic resources all round.

The provision of a cool video... well I can't help myself can I! I feel the need to show off my embedding skills again.

This one addresses the information overload we have today with the huge amount of information that is available online, and it encourages us to think about what this means for education.



What it means for me:

I need to be able to support my future students, and to encourage the rest of the school community to help provide that support, to gain the skills to get what they need from the Internet, and to not get lost in it. This is something that I will need to continually work on myself as well - there are so many ways to get lost.

It also means that I have yet another online tool to investigate: LiveBinders

Learning moment

I know that this idea is perfectly obvious, but it is obvious in a way that means many people miss it. I am completing my readings for topic two of ETL523 and came across this paragraph:

We are well aware, of course, of the many challenges that
teachers currently face: increased high-stakes testing; a bewildering
array of national, state, and local standards; new
demands for higher qualifications and recertification. Given
these challenges, it is difficult to find time to teach even core
subjects, much less anything new. This is why we believe that a
detailed understanding of the nine elements of digital citizenship
(and the issues that accompany them) will help teachers
recognize the “teachable moments” that may occur as they are
teaching other content, and use those moments to reinforce
digital citizenship principles. When discussions about technology
use arise, digital citizenship can act as a cornerstone
of that discussion.
(p73)

Sometimes the myriad of things that need to be covered in the classroom can become overwhelming - I know this, and I have not even done any full time teaching yet! What we need to remember is that a lot of the 'new' things are about learning itself - whether it be the learning process, or learning for life, or life-long learning - and as such, they can often be incorporated into other learning that happens in the classroom. If you are pausing the class for a tiny amount of time for a teachable moment regarding technology, or being a digital citizen, then it does not necessarily need to be planned (though it may happen to be), and it is likely to help students rather than hold them back.

Ultimately, we need to remember the absolute importance of preparing our students for the future, ensuring that they are going to be good digital citizens.

Reference:
CHAPTER 5: Teaching Digital Citizenship to Students. (2007). Digital Citizenship in Schools (pp. 73-79). International Society for Technology in Education.

Facing the challenges

It has been a slow week. Finding it hard to keep the motivation levels up at this stage, especially with weekends filled with travelling and weddings at the moment. Falling back into my old habits, spending too long doing things that I don't need to be doing, and finding any kind of distraction from what I should be doing. Hoping to get my brain back on topic by focusing it in this blog post.

I finally finished the readings for topic 1. At this stage I am not going to search for other relevant readings, and I feel that I have some catching up to do, and I need to make sure I am organised for my assignments as next week is going to be very challening, trying to study away from home (well, my current home, and I'll have my family around to distract me, and no James to keep me on task).

I am finding it a little difficult at this stage to directly apply what I am learning, to make comparisons and see what impact what I am learning will have. This is because I am not working in a library, and have not found the time this year to really get involved with one. I will now try to specifically apply what I have learned about digital citizenship so far to what I will do as a teacher librarian.

There are some particular things that I have learned about that I will cover here:

- Transliteracy: I will need to support students in applying literacy skills and learning to different kinds of texts and technologies. I expect to do this by:
+ Encouraging both students and teachers to try, and apply, new technologies/programs/Web tools.
+ Ensuring I have an up to date knowledge of these technologies.
+ Set a good example by showing my own transliteracy skills.

- Digital Citizenship: This is more than just participating in the digital world, it is participating responsibly. I expect to be a good digital citizen, and to encourage my students to be the same, by:
+ Adhering to, and advocating, the 9 Elements of Digital Citizenship as outlined in Digital Citizenship in Schools. These could be advocated with posters, within lessons/units of work, and in discussions with students in groups or individually as issues arise.
+ Always showing my respect for others when online - thinking about how what I write/do may affect others, and making this thought process clear to students.

Forseeable challenges in the role as promoter of these things:
- Amount of time spent with each student - Would I have classes of students at specific times? What would be the focus in these lessons? How would digital citizenship skills and understandings be portrayed to those students who do not get regular library time?
- Teacher attitudes - Will the other staff in the school in which I work understand the importance of digital citizenship and transliteracy? Would they see it as something for the TL to deal with on her own, or would it be a whole school issue with the TL the leader to turn to for support and ideas? Ultimately I would aim for this, and would work towards it by educating staff over time if necessary.
- Facilities - What technologies will be available to students, and where? Will they have computer access in the classroom as well as the library? What will the student:computer ratio be? Laptops are a great way to combat this, especially as the become more affordable, and I would encourage this as an option, but obviously would have to find ways to work around this challenge depending on the situation.

This has been helpful - starting to apply what I am learning to what I may encounter in the future. I shall try to do this more in my blogs. Application helps the learning process.

Now, to move on to the next step and get some more reading under control.

References:

The Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship. (2007). Digital Citizenship in Schools (pp. 13-37). International Society for Technology in Education.

Digital Citizenship

Slowly I am getting through the readings. Today I started on the last page of Topic 1 - Digital Citizenship. Some of the the things that struck me as interesting, useful or new to me are discussed below.

The article by Stripling appears to be a very useful one for Teacher Librarians, looking at digital literacy and inquiry skills in the context of the 'inquiry/learning process'. With a focus on the things teacher librarians can do to support their students, it would make a good resource to refer to to ensure that students are supported in their learning appropriately at every stage of the learning process.

Stripling, B. (2010). Teaching Students to Think in the Digital Environment: Digital Literacy and Digital Inquiry. School Library Monthly, 26(8), 16-19.

(Note, the link to the Stripling article will only work for those who have access to the CSU Library database, or the EBSCOhost database.)

Transliteracy

Quite the new buzz word. Or is it? The impression I got from the readings is that it has the potential to become one. It is a new word, for what seems to be an old concept. A concept that has taken place for years, but perhaps has not been put in a box like the term transliteracy tries to do. It is something that we do without realising, to different extremes, and is now coming to the fore because of the myriads of new platforms that we are using as a society, and thus the vast range of things we apply our literacy skills to.

Thomas et al describe transliteracy as:

“the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks”

So as you can see, only recently has 'transliteracy' become so widely relevant, and perhaps this has made it worth pulling apart and creating a word to describe it.

It is relevant to teacher librarians because it is something that we can support with our knowledge, resources and skills. Meredith Farkas writes of fears that it will become a buzz word that is only associated with teacher librarians, when in fact it needs to be applied school wide so that students are gaining transliteracy skills for life. I can see her logic, and feel that as teacher librarians we must make sure we are promoting these things (the important concepts we learn about, information literacy being a prime example, as well as transliteracy) as school wide endeavors where we are there to support everyone, but are the leader of a school wide team, rather than the only instigator.

It does seem a lot to think about, but then really transliteracy involves things we already do (or plan to do in my case) - ensuring that students have access to a range of literacies as listed in the description above, and supporting them in gaining the skills to tranfer their understandings between these different platforms.


References:

Farkas, M. (2010). Transliteracy from the perspective of an information literacy advocate. In Information wants to be free blog.

Thomas, S., Joseph, C., Laccetti, J., Mason, B., Mills, S., Perril, S., and Pullinger, K. (2007). Transliteracy: Crossing Divides. First Monday, 12 (12)

Becoming informed

"Do you know what augmented reality is?"
"No..."
"Oh! I do!"

This is becoming an almost regular exchange it seems. As I learn about new technologies and how they might apply to Education in the future, I realise that I am becoming a resident expert. Though I still turn to James for support when it comes to things not working, or the Internet not connecting, there are things that I now know about that he has not heard of.

I quite like this... more learning here I come!

Recent inspirations have come from the Horizon Report, which looks at up and coming technologies (such as cloud computing, augmented reality, and mobiles), suggests when they may be regularly used in Education, and explains their applications in this area.

Slow progress

I am not sure how to feel so far this week. Overall I am getting more anxious/edgy each day as I do not complete my quota of study hours (4 per day to begin with). I am keeping a tally on the wall so that I can keep track of the hours spent on each subject each week. I am not sure if this will be a positive tool in the long run or not - I will keep you posted. It does not help that Mondays and Saturdays are my regular work days - would be nice to have a good start to the study week... I am sure I will get a system going eventually!

On a positive note, I spoke to Judy, my ETL523 lecturer tonight on Neatchat, and she is lovely. I feel like I am going to have the support I need in that subject, and that it might even be much more interesting than the impression I got from the outline given when I was umming and ahhing about which subject to choose - it's looking like I have made the right decision after all. She also introduced me to Meebo, which she as embedded into the blog (which is embedded into Interact, our study platform) - very clever. Learning about new things every time I sit down and focus it seems.

I managed to do a little bit of work following the study schedule for EER500, completing steps 4 and 5 of the library tutorial, and learned how to use EBSCOhost and Informit (libary databases) more effectively through the CSU library - this page in particular will be very useful in the future (I wish I had known about it earlier).

But for now I am going to have to leave further exploration of these exciting new pieces of knowledge until tomorrow, as it is I am going to be sleep deprived...

(PS - sentence structure: should I have phrased the clause, 'as it is I am going to be sleep deprived' like I did, or: 'I am going to be sleep deprived as it is'? The emphasis is on 'as it is' when you read it (if that makes sense).

Oh the irony of spending time wondering about a clause about sleep deprivation...

'Why the Net Matters'

Still slowly working my way through the first module for ETL523...

The video of the presentation on this website is interesting (though long). It discusses how the presenter, David Eagleman, thinks the Internet will save our civilisation - he gives six reasons why.

The video embedded at the bottom of the page (and below in this blog post) shows the potential for interactive books. This is one he has written just for the iPad, looking at the same topic - 'how the Internet will save civilisation'.

I think it is a very clever concept, and look forward to seeing this sort of thing as resources in schools in the long term, but I do hope that children continue to be able to be entertained purely by the written word and their imagination... I hope that our future generations are able to problem solve, and use their imaginations, and do not solely rely on technology for amusement.

Do check it out, and see what you think:

Another interesting article:

Interview: Change Agent

Will Richardson makes some really good points. Not only did it make me think about what should be happening on all levels of the education system, but it made me think about the little differences I can make as a TL - how can I encourage the teachers I work with to embed technology into their students' learning? This is a question that I have some answers to at this point, but I am sure it will be a continued learning journey, where in many cases I will have to earn these teachers' respect before I will be able to make a significant difference.

Where is Web 2.0 taking us?

This is a video I gleaned from my Digital Citizenship subject (ETL523). I found it fascinating. It really highlights the role that technology plays, and the role that we play using technology.

The part that I found most profound (this was also highlighted in the module notes) was the question 'who will organise all this data?', and the answer that was given.

Check it out:



PS- feeling quite the sense of achievement: I worked out how to embed the YouTube video, AND changed its size to fit the page properly, all by myself :)