Love Prezi almost as much as Google Docs. Groups can collaborate in real time to create presentations that pack a punch! Check it out. (Quick text version available here.)
Check out collaboration in action -- Google Style. Not sure what the true spirit of Halloween is but these folks sure look like they had fun and demonstrate a collaborative spirit we can all aspire to.
Showing posts with label collaboration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collaboration. Show all posts
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
School Days . . .
Wow! Has it been that long since my last post . . .
New school year underway and lots going on. Teachers are excited about Google Docs, specialized searches, Web reference evaluation and focused database research. I am busy making new and affirming old contacts to grow my collaborative network.
I made it to final round of interviews for several librarian positions over the summer only to be edged out in the end by laid off librarians also in the interview pool. While this is financially crippling, I am holding head high and am confident I will find and accept a perfect position.
New school year underway and lots going on. Teachers are excited about Google Docs, specialized searches, Web reference evaluation and focused database research. I am busy making new and affirming old contacts to grow my collaborative network.
I made it to final round of interviews for several librarian positions over the summer only to be edged out in the end by laid off librarians also in the interview pool. While this is financially crippling, I am holding head high and am confident I will find and accept a perfect position.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Google improvements
I logged on to write that Google is now advertising "real-time collaboration" in Google Docs! WooHoo! I was disappointed to see the Google Wave experiment disbanded,, not because I liked the Wave, but because it did allow real-time collaboration that Docs did not. And now! Google to the rescue. They poured the Wave technology back into Docs to make it better than before!
So my next dilemma, why can't I get teachers or our computer services department as excited about these tools for students and especially for group projects? Well check out the white horse that rode into town on my Google Reader yesterday.
Is Google taking over the world? Should we be scared? Well these are questions for a different day, but for now, I see it as important that we teach users how to harness the power of the available tools as a step toward continued advancement and understanding of the digital world and how we can use it to learn and improve ourselves and our real world situation.
So my next dilemma, why can't I get teachers or our computer services department as excited about these tools for students and especially for group projects? Well check out the white horse that rode into town on my Google Reader yesterday.
Google Apps Now In A New York State Of Mind
Washington Post - Oct 5, 2010
This deal will give 3.1 million students access to Google Apps for Education?including Gmail, Docs, Sites and Calendar.
Google Apps Now Available in New York Schools
PC Magazine - Leslie Horn - Oct 5, 2010
... to providing schools the deployment and professional development resources they need to make Google Apps for Education - including Gmail, Docs, Sites, ...
New York schools go Google with Apps announcement
Fortune (blog) - Seth Weintraub - Oct 5, 2010OK, so these are talking about state level decisions. Not sure how they actually affect our district, but certainly should begin to give some credence to my mantra, "like it or don't, Google is real world and offers tools our students need to learn and use."
... they need to make Google Apps for Education—including Gmail, Docs, Sites and Calendar—a powerful tool for teachers and students across the state. ...
Is Google taking over the world? Should we be scared? Well these are questions for a different day, but for now, I see it as important that we teach users how to harness the power of the available tools as a step toward continued advancement and understanding of the digital world and how we can use it to learn and improve ourselves and our real world situation.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Student learning is our priority
Alison Zmuda opened her day-long conference, Librarians as Learning Specialists, with the statement, "Without a curriculum and a robust assessment system school librarians cease to exist." I was invigorated to hear the repetition throughout the day that, "Student learning is our priority." She focused on ways to re-design our lessons and align our standards with content curriculum areas and standards.
Two weeks later I had the opportunity to attend a conference hosted by Dr. Ross Todd on the topic of Evidence Based Practice and School Libraries. He spent the early morning describing our "invisible evidence syndrome," and the afternoon focusing us on "learning outcomes" verified by "evidence based practices." His message and Alison's mirrored and complemented each other. They both agree, and write and speak about ways to alter the image and, in fact, the reality of what school librarians do and how we do it.
Alison offered more suggestions for effective teaching opportunities, while Dr. Todd filled in the blanks with more concrete examples of learning-focused, lesson-based feedback and assessment collectibles. Talking with other conference attendees I discovered that my comfort level with this dialogue of true curricular collaboration and measurement of outcome extends from my business background. Two other librarians at my table, responding throughout the day with nods and smiles, also came from previous business experience. The two career librarians at the table generally agreed with what they heard, but did so with trepidation.
Four years ago in the first paper I ever wrote about school librarians, a literature review based upon current school and library journals including quotes from Dr. Todd, I lamented the need for librarians to map their curriculum to blend with content areas, to find ways to assure progressive information literacy development from year to year and to find ways to document progress and achievement. I am not sure what topics my classmates chose but even as an outsider I saw the need for this change in focus. My advocacy has continued in verbal and written reflections for LIS classes and in my job as a high school library teaching assistant.
Working in a school population nearing 1500 students, this knowledge has been a painful load to carry as I have had difficulty figuring out any consistent ways to measure student achievement or growth across the information literacy continuum. Collaborative opportunities are frequent, but convincing all teachers in a given content area / grade level to approach a project in the same way to allow us to give similar lessons and collect uniform data has proven virtually impossible. As if a symbol of the failure, much to frequently, we are asked to do a "quick, basic database intro," or worse, teachers with low expectations assign information-driven projects without library support.
Coinciding with the conferences I attended, however, I had the opportunity, as part of a required practicum, to work for five weeks each in two different smaller schools, a middle school and an elementary school, both with populations of closer to 500. Suddenly the lights are coming on. When all teachers for a subject / grade level can be counted on one hand (sometimes one or two fingers) the needs and opportunities are easier to identify. As both Zmuda and Todd and other authors I have read admit, the process is still not easy or quick but I am beginning to see light in the woods that may indicate a path.
The beginning of the path lies in continued movement away from "the database lesson" and toward true collaboration with teachers to design lessons, deliverable products, and grading criteria. As teacher-librarians, even as "information specialists," we need to step away from the role of information, material, space and student managers and aggressively into the role of information literacy teaching specialists. It goes without saying that we must be comfortable with the AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner, but to achieve success we must think simultaneously about core content area standards and how to blend the curricula to achieve success.
I still find humor in the sign in the back office of one school library I visited that says, "If it's not barcoded, it doesn't exist," but as I see our budgets crunching and librarians losing clerks or losing their jobs to clerks, and as I see librarians taking over book-rooms and managing study halls, I am increasingly concerned that we must pursue education over management if we are to survive. I certainly do not have all of the answers; in fact I believe I still have more questions than answers but I am agressively seeking ways to make an impact, even one student or one teacher at a time.
Two weeks later I had the opportunity to attend a conference hosted by Dr. Ross Todd on the topic of Evidence Based Practice and School Libraries. He spent the early morning describing our "invisible evidence syndrome," and the afternoon focusing us on "learning outcomes" verified by "evidence based practices." His message and Alison's mirrored and complemented each other. They both agree, and write and speak about ways to alter the image and, in fact, the reality of what school librarians do and how we do it.
Alison offered more suggestions for effective teaching opportunities, while Dr. Todd filled in the blanks with more concrete examples of learning-focused, lesson-based feedback and assessment collectibles. Talking with other conference attendees I discovered that my comfort level with this dialogue of true curricular collaboration and measurement of outcome extends from my business background. Two other librarians at my table, responding throughout the day with nods and smiles, also came from previous business experience. The two career librarians at the table generally agreed with what they heard, but did so with trepidation.
Four years ago in the first paper I ever wrote about school librarians, a literature review based upon current school and library journals including quotes from Dr. Todd, I lamented the need for librarians to map their curriculum to blend with content areas, to find ways to assure progressive information literacy development from year to year and to find ways to document progress and achievement. I am not sure what topics my classmates chose but even as an outsider I saw the need for this change in focus. My advocacy has continued in verbal and written reflections for LIS classes and in my job as a high school library teaching assistant.
Working in a school population nearing 1500 students, this knowledge has been a painful load to carry as I have had difficulty figuring out any consistent ways to measure student achievement or growth across the information literacy continuum. Collaborative opportunities are frequent, but convincing all teachers in a given content area / grade level to approach a project in the same way to allow us to give similar lessons and collect uniform data has proven virtually impossible. As if a symbol of the failure, much to frequently, we are asked to do a "quick, basic database intro," or worse, teachers with low expectations assign information-driven projects without library support.
Coinciding with the conferences I attended, however, I had the opportunity, as part of a required practicum, to work for five weeks each in two different smaller schools, a middle school and an elementary school, both with populations of closer to 500. Suddenly the lights are coming on. When all teachers for a subject / grade level can be counted on one hand (sometimes one or two fingers) the needs and opportunities are easier to identify. As both Zmuda and Todd and other authors I have read admit, the process is still not easy or quick but I am beginning to see light in the woods that may indicate a path.
The beginning of the path lies in continued movement away from "the database lesson" and toward true collaboration with teachers to design lessons, deliverable products, and grading criteria. As teacher-librarians, even as "information specialists," we need to step away from the role of information, material, space and student managers and aggressively into the role of information literacy teaching specialists. It goes without saying that we must be comfortable with the AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner, but to achieve success we must think simultaneously about core content area standards and how to blend the curricula to achieve success.
I still find humor in the sign in the back office of one school library I visited that says, "If it's not barcoded, it doesn't exist," but as I see our budgets crunching and librarians losing clerks or losing their jobs to clerks, and as I see librarians taking over book-rooms and managing study halls, I am increasingly concerned that we must pursue education over management if we are to survive. I certainly do not have all of the answers; in fact I believe I still have more questions than answers but I am agressively seeking ways to make an impact, even one student or one teacher at a time.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Share the message
In my first free moments I have pursued my newfound interest in shared creativity allowed through Creative Commons licensing of copyrighted works. According to current US law, as soon as we create it in a tangible form, it is © copyrighted. I don't "own" my ideas, but I do "own" the text on this page. As of today, however, I am sharing this text with you, any of you who read it and may find use for it (sorry it is not more useful ☺ )
Through Creative Commons, by answering four or five multiple choice questions and copying and pasting a small bit of HTML code, created specifically for me, what's mine is yours. You may use it as long as -- you give me credit for it, -- you do not use it to make a profit, and -- you share alike with others. Check out my new CC License:
This work by Greg Lloyd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
"Why can't we all just get along," (Rodney King) comes to mind. I fully support Ralph Clevenger's right to earn a living from his beautiful portrayal of the underwater portion of an iceberg. I support musicians and writers and perhaps even someday myself in pursuit of profit from publication. But for those of us who are not making a living from our work, why not allow others to enjoy the use of your efforts in exchange for the right to enjoy theirs when you need to?
It is simple and painless! You can go directly to the licensing page or check out the whole Website at CreativeCommons.org. Licensing is free and easy. Embedding license code into your website is as easy as embedding a video. Join the movement!!!!
This clip, also from Creative Commons, called "A Shared Culture," is very well produced and worth watching!
Through Creative Commons, by answering four or five multiple choice questions and copying and pasting a small bit of HTML code, created specifically for me, what's mine is yours. You may use it as long as -- you give me credit for it, -- you do not use it to make a profit, and -- you share alike with others. Check out my new CC License:
This work by Greg Lloyd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
"Why can't we all just get along," (Rodney King) comes to mind. I fully support Ralph Clevenger's right to earn a living from his beautiful portrayal of the underwater portion of an iceberg. I support musicians and writers and perhaps even someday myself in pursuit of profit from publication. But for those of us who are not making a living from our work, why not allow others to enjoy the use of your efforts in exchange for the right to enjoy theirs when you need to?
It is simple and painless! You can go directly to the licensing page or check out the whole Website at CreativeCommons.org. Licensing is free and easy. Embedding license code into your website is as easy as embedding a video. Join the movement!!!!
This clip, also from Creative Commons, called "A Shared Culture," is very well produced and worth watching!
(And finally, where did I get copyright symbol and smiley face from? Two ways to get there! (1) Start Menu, (2) All Programs, (3) Accessories, (4) System Tools, (5) Character Map -- a chart of over 1200 characters that can be copied and pasted into any document pops up! Letters with accents, foreign language characters, fractions, arrows, hearts, and unimaginable creations - a very useful tool!! -- Much easier than searching throught all the different Webdings fonts). An alternate path for the geekier set is (1) Start menu, (2) Run, (3) type 'charmap'. Enjoy!)
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Where the rubber meets the road
In addition to, or partially in correlation with, my courseload, I am attempting to keep up with current library literature, including blogs of librarians in the trenches. In her blog, Wanderings, Jacquie Henry recently discussed difficulties with Website evaluation in cases when decisions are not clear-cut. She commented, "I am not working in a theoretical world. I am living right here in high school - where the rubber meets the road."
Her quote has stuck with me as I have dealt with issues in our library and as I discuss theoretical issues with other students and professors in my coursework. Our theories and ideals are great and worthy but is it fair to judge them without the temperance of real world application? More importantly, and with stronger motivation, how can we adapt our real world situations to meet the goals described by our theories and ideals?
This week we have discussed "Creativity - Copyright & Web 2.0" in class. Two particular issues come to mind from our discussions. In both, the theory makes complete and total sense and seems as though no other possible alternative could exist and yet, the reality is that students and teachers are not always receptive to our suggestions and teaching. It is this challenge that we must work to overcome.
Discussing creative uses and applications available on the Web including podcasting with Audacity, ability to create historic narrative videos through Primary Access, create photo or video, audio logs on VoiceThread, and more, the educational theories are easy to grasp. The reality, though, is the need to sell these technologies to our teachers in order for our students to realize the benefits. Much like a sporting event or theater ticket, the enjoyment is not accessed until the ticket is spent, or in this case, until the technology is used! To be successful we have to learn to market these technologies to teachers who may be receptive.
Coupled with our discussion about creativity was a discussion about copyright law and digital images. The legal alternative when creating content to be published is to use images in the public domain and to give credit to the creative individual or organization. We discussed the many ways to acquire images from government websites and through Creative Commons. In theory, this is a wonderful solution. In reality, the frustration is the difficulty of using multiple search databases to find government and Creative Commons images compared to the relative ease of image availability on the Web as a whole. To be successful, we have to teach students about the hazards of copyright law violation, how to use the tools available to find copyright free images, and how to avoid plagiarism through proper image citation.
It is important that we do our best, "where the rubber meets the road," to stay true to our ideals. It is just as important that we stay flexible and stay real regarding situations and the world around us. But, within that "real" framework, we must constantly strive to find ways to bridge the gap back to the theories and principles that guide us. These theories and principles tend to be not only legal and ethical, but also a solid foundation for the argument in favor of librarians in our schools - a critical issue as our governor threatens to cut school and library budgets yet again - a topic for another post . . .
Her quote has stuck with me as I have dealt with issues in our library and as I discuss theoretical issues with other students and professors in my coursework. Our theories and ideals are great and worthy but is it fair to judge them without the temperance of real world application? More importantly, and with stronger motivation, how can we adapt our real world situations to meet the goals described by our theories and ideals?
This week we have discussed "Creativity - Copyright & Web 2.0" in class. Two particular issues come to mind from our discussions. In both, the theory makes complete and total sense and seems as though no other possible alternative could exist and yet, the reality is that students and teachers are not always receptive to our suggestions and teaching. It is this challenge that we must work to overcome.
Discussing creative uses and applications available on the Web including podcasting with Audacity, ability to create historic narrative videos through Primary Access, create photo or video, audio logs on VoiceThread, and more, the educational theories are easy to grasp. The reality, though, is the need to sell these technologies to our teachers in order for our students to realize the benefits. Much like a sporting event or theater ticket, the enjoyment is not accessed until the ticket is spent, or in this case, until the technology is used! To be successful we have to learn to market these technologies to teachers who may be receptive.
Coupled with our discussion about creativity was a discussion about copyright law and digital images. The legal alternative when creating content to be published is to use images in the public domain and to give credit to the creative individual or organization. We discussed the many ways to acquire images from government websites and through Creative Commons. In theory, this is a wonderful solution. In reality, the frustration is the difficulty of using multiple search databases to find government and Creative Commons images compared to the relative ease of image availability on the Web as a whole. To be successful, we have to teach students about the hazards of copyright law violation, how to use the tools available to find copyright free images, and how to avoid plagiarism through proper image citation.
It is important that we do our best, "where the rubber meets the road," to stay true to our ideals. It is just as important that we stay flexible and stay real regarding situations and the world around us. But, within that "real" framework, we must constantly strive to find ways to bridge the gap back to the theories and principles that guide us. These theories and principles tend to be not only legal and ethical, but also a solid foundation for the argument in favor of librarians in our schools - a critical issue as our governor threatens to cut school and library budgets yet again - a topic for another post . . .
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