I decided to revisit one of the older things for this weeks assignment. I feel like I have been doing a much better job sharing what is happening in the library on both Twitter and Facebook, but like Nikki Robertson addresses in her blog, A Love Story, I need to get the students seeing what is happening in the library. Let's face it students aren't using Facebook and Twitter like adults do, they are using SnapChat. So, I decided to take the plunge... Eek!!!
I found that SnapChat a much bigger learning curve than I had anticipated. Not, that it was hard, but it certainly wasn't as user friendly as I had hoped. Thank goodness for the students. Once I asked a few of them and couple of "trendy" teachers, I was in business in no time.
After playing around with all of the features, I can definitely see why students love this App. It is a lot of fun! Like all Apps, I needed to think about my purpose, which was to share what is happening over the course of the day in the library without sending multiple postings in one day. For that reason I think that the stories feature is going to be the most useful tool for me. It will allow for me to post pictures all day long without having to stop and take time to carefully think about my wording in a post, which I need to do with bothTwitter and Facebook.
I also think the app will be great for showcasing new books to students. It is my hope that when a new box of books arrives in the library that I can quickly take a photo of a few of my favorite covers/books and send it out as a story.
Of course, like Nikki discusses in her blog, none of this is going to work, if I don't have an audience, otherwise I will just be sharing with myself. So, I took Nikki's idea and made posters in Canva to hang around the school with my code on it. I am also hoping to make notices to go home after the holiday's with tools and resources for anyone who received devices for Christmas. I plan to have a link to Overdrive, Facebook, Twitter, the library website and now SnapChat. Anything to get information out to students and parents is a win in my book!
I am excited to say that I have two followers already. I even gave them a challenge to get as many students as they can to join. I even sent them back to class with a flyer. Hmm... that gets me thinking... maybe bookmarks with my Snapcode.
Thank you so much for addressing this topic. It has kept me up at night during pre and post election events. I keep thinking, what can I do as a librarian to help address this issue of "fake news" and how do I help people become more media literate. At the same time, I begin to question my own ability to be able to determine the validity, and origin of information and was/am in desperate need of time to process and educate myself further on this topic.
I started off reading Joyce Valenza's article Truth, truthiness, and triangulation: A new literacy toolkit for a "post-truth" world and was exposed to the term "post-truth" for the first time. I had been wrestling with this concept and had no idea that there was a word for it. For some reason it helped me to put a label to the concept I had been wrestling with. Anyway, there was so much great content in that article and I spent a lot of time venturing off onto the links and resources that were embedded throughout the article, which to be honest overwhelmed me. My head started spinning with all the things I need to teach and areas that I need to address. Then I began to think about "where can I fit this into the curricular content?", "What will this look like in 2nd grade versus 6th grade?", "What teachers should I start with?", ahhh.... it was too much to process!!!
The problem was that I kept reading and reading many great articles that were validating my concerns and I had this sense of urgency to address this issue in light of the recent election, however the topic is so big and complicated, that I just didn't know where to begin. So I decided to take a step back and think about what connections I could make within the my current instructional content that I am working within.
In 6th grade the classes have started a teen activism unit in which I have already gone in and helped them develop good questions for their research. My next step was to go in and help them locate valuable resources, however I decided to take it one step further and "touch on" the issues that Joyce Valenza addressed in her article. We began by reviewing some of the strategies for website evaluation that we had addressed the year prior (I was happy to see that collectively they remembered everything that we had learned 😀) and then I told them that there is a lot more to consider when reading the news. I then shared the TedEd video: How to Choose your News. Originally, I was worried that this was going to be too much for them to process, but decided that it was worth showing even if they only were able to take away 1 or 2 things. When students shared out their takeaways, I was impressed with what they were collaboratively able to pull-out of the video. Some of the main points were that there is a lot of information out there and the best source of information comes right from the people who were at an event and not from a second hand person. They also shared that people can be persuaded to write information a certain way, that there is a difference between fact and opinion and that you should always check the facts in more than one place to verify. I was very happy these takeaways, especially since my original goal was only to show them good resources. After the discussion I was able to share Youngzine that I had explored through this assignment and explain that this was a site that brings them current events, free of bias and sensationalism. Then they went off to investigate and they rocked it. The best part is another 6th grade teacher walked in and said, "I know you already worked with my class, but could you come in this afternoon and do this lesson with my group." I am glad to see that teachers also see the value in this!
As an aside, I have been wanting to document student learning more and make it transparent for students, teachers, parents. Since I was typing this up for this lesson, I decided to add it as my first transparent documentation of learning to my website. If you are interested, you can check it out: http://lakegeorgelmc.weebly.com/sixth-grade1.html.
This may be one of those "things (assignments)" that I end up doing for two assignments, because I feel that there is still so much for me to explore and definitely more that I need to teach. My goal for the year is to work this in at every grade level. Now the challenge is to think about what it looks like at each level and how I can work it into the units I already work on within the classrooms. Thanks again for the great assignment!
Welcome to my blog! In case you didn't read my introduction on the discussion board, here is a brief introduction about myself:
My name is Bridget Crossman, I am the Elementary Librarian at Lake George School. This is my 6th year as a librarian, prior I was a 2nd Grade Teacher. My library runs on a flex schedule so I spend a lot of time integrating "literacy skills" into the classroom curriculum. We are a 1:1 school focusing on the 4 C's and New Literacies. I play an integral part in providing PD and sharing resources with both teachers and administrators in these two areas. This is my 3rd or 4th time taking Cool Tools and look forward to having new ideas to share with my school. This class always motivates me and helps to keep my resources and information current.
When I am not in the school, I can be found spending time with my three children & friends, exercising, or running a not-for-profit literacy organization.
Since I started taking Cool Tools for Schools I have been blogging. I even started my own blog for my school where I showcase different lessons/ units in the classrooms for other teachers to see what is happening around the building and potentially get some ideas for their own rooms. If you are interested in viewing it, it is called Inquiring Instructors. Both the High School librarian and myself collaborate on it.
As much as I have been using blogging for myself and in the classroom with students, I am just starting to become better at viewing other people's blogs. Of course I love Joyce Valenza (who doesn't) and I often get ideas from Library Lady and Richard Byrnes, but for this assignment, I took some time to look at the 23 Great Library Blogs. I saw many blogs that I certainly won't be following, because I didn't like the layout of the information or it didn't fit my needs. However, those were helpful in teaching me what not to do in my blogs.
As much as there were several blogs that I didn't love there were some great blogs that I will definitely be following. In case you haven't gone through each of the 23 blogs, the ones that top 2 I would suggest checking out are:
😊 The Heart of the School: Not only was the information displayed nicely, the ideas that were shared were amazing. First off the blog has a beating heart on it with the quote,
“Libraries should be the beating heart of the school, not mausoleums for dusty books.”
Stephanie Harvey
There are lots of ideas for projects based on books, library space, clubs, etc. One of my favorite ideas was her featured project that was an Advent Calendar of books for the month of December. I think I might borrow that idea and display it the week before Christmas. I might even have interested students help me to put one together for each of the elementary grades.
I loved her ideas so much that I am now following her @HeartOTSchool
😊 England Elementary Library: Although this blog didn't captivate me visually (it was bit overwhelming), it had great ideas. Emily Kuoersztoch displayed an infographic with the library statistics, which was a great idea. I would love to do that monthly and celebrate that with the students and staff. She also had a great idea on her blog for an annual reading contest where students could submit pictures of themselves reading in the most unusual spots. This could be a fun contest to run over the holiday break. If you check it out she even has printable forms. You won't be disappointed with some of the ideas she shares on this blog.
I also decided to follow Emily Kuoersztoch @mrslibrarian.
Blogging is a great tool! It can not only be useful as a reflection for teachers, librarians, students, etc. It is a great way to share and learn from others. My goal this year is to utilize other blogs that are available to gain ideas and information from other experts in the field!
After playing around with all of the features, I can definitely see why students love this App. It is a lot of fun! Like all Apps, I needed to think about my purpose, which was to share what is happening over the course of the day in the library without sending multiple postings in one day. For that reason I think that the stories feature is going to be the most useful tool for me. It will allow for me to post pictures all day long without having to stop and take time to carefully think about my wording in a post, which I need to do with bothTwitter and Facebook.
Of course, like Nikki discusses in her blog, none of this is going to work, if I don't have an audience, otherwise I will just be sharing with myself. So, I took Nikki's idea and made posters in Canva to hang around the school with my code on it. I am also hoping to make notices to go home after the holiday's with tools and resources for anyone who received devices for Christmas. I plan to have a link to Overdrive, Facebook, Twitter, the library website and now SnapChat. Anything to get information out to students and parents is a win in my book!