Glogster

The educational version of Glogster allows for the creation of classes with some complications in terms of account names and passwords for our elementary students. The educational account provides no advertising and access to other Glogs made only in the edu site. Pam Syndercombe, technology teacher at CES and Ed Wolf, 5th grade teacher at CES, are preparing to use Glogster in an upcoming learning activity and will provide all of us with some suggestions on how best to use Glogster with a whole class.

As Glogster use evolves, I'll add an update on some of its relative advantages in a future post.

This practice Glog will eventually have links to each of the 5 contemporary literacy areas identified in our "21st Century Skills" workshops over the past 2 years.

CES: TECHNOLOGY SHOWCASE

Yesterday, December 9th, CES administration, teachers and parents planned and presented an amazing technology showcase for parents at a 9:30 PTA meeting in the library media center. CES has been using a variety of ITL tools in their everyday teaching and they decided to share some recent lessons with specific ITL tools.

This was the agenda:

Welcome and overview of meeting - Melissa Paolini
Overview of ITL Steering Committee/ ITL Curriculum - Bill Derry
Blackboard Background and Explanation - Natalie Carrignan

INTEGRATION of Technology--CES Staff Members

o Smartboard Application/ Kindergarten - Jessica Lack
o Google Earth-2nd grade- Social Studies - Eileen Carroll
o Scratch-3rd grade- Science - Kate Lyle and MaryJo Lombardo
o Truthfulness/Usefulness-4th grade - Sarah Spencer
o Discussion Board-5th grade-Language Arts - Joe Pullia
o Wiki-5th grade-L.A., Science, S.S. - Ed Wolf

CES LIVE – A behind the scenes look at the TV Studio - Pam Syndercombe

FUNDRAISER PTA Co-Presidents - Lisa Laudico and Ginny McGovern

Later in the year there will be a PTA fundraiser, possibly used to move the current CES TV station from the corner of the library media center into its very own ROOM. (More on that initiative later in the year.)

This Technology Showcase was a model presentation for demonstrating how kids and teachers in one school are learning, using and sharing contemporary literacy skills. It was very clear that there has been a school-wide effort to make ITL tools and skills an essential component of every child's education at CES! Great job CES!

AASL Conference

Barbara Eilertsen, LMS at LLS, and I attended the AASL (American Association of School Librarians) conference in Charlotte, NC. We also took part in a pre-conference School Library Think-Tank called Treasure Mountain, the 15th event put together by David Loertscher (our keynote and workshop leader in the first ITL Summer Institute in 2007).

Treasure Mountain focused on the changing role of the school library media specialist/teacher librarian and the new environment that is being envisioned for a flexible, inquiry-based, real and virtual library. David Loertscher calls this new space the Learning Commons, and he has written a book about it with Carol Koechlin, and Sandi Zwaan. Carol Koechlin was at Treasure Mountain and engaged all of us in a final "Big Think" to synthesize the learnings from the workshop.

Other presenters included: Jean Sausele Knodt (author of the book Nine Thousand Straws: Teaching Thinking Through Open-Inquiry Learning ), Valerie Diggs (the LMS and founder of the first High School Learning Commons in Chelmsford, MA), Dr. Violet Harada, professor in the Dept. of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Hawaii (author of many books for educators focusing on the role of the school library media specialist) and many other university professors and practitioners working in information and library media professions.

The actual AASL Conference started with an Exploratorium, where practitioners from around the country set up tabletop presentations on a wide range of BEST PRACTICES in SCHOOL LIBRARY MEDIA CENTERS (see the entire list) including redesigning your high school library media center to resemble a popular book store to using T.R.A.I.L.S., a free online information literacy assessment program. The conference opened with "the high priestess of social networking," danah boyd and closed with a presentation on digital media in the classroom by Marco Torres. During the conference we attended workshops on web 2.0 applications, the new AASL 21st Century Standards, information problem solving processes, and many others. We followed our now traditional conference note-taking routine and created a wiki: http://westportaasl2009.pbworks.com .

We did the same thing for the recent CECA/CASL conference that I did not write about in this blog -- but there were many more people who attended, hence -- more notes!
http://cecacasl09.pbworks.com .

ITL PD Day -- November 3rd

This Tuesday, November 3rd, most teachers and administrators, grades 6-12, will take part in an all-day series of workshops focusing on ITL skills and tools that can be used to plan engaging teaching and learning experiences for students. All Technology Uses are NOT Equal: Accelerating High-Yielding Practices will be the keynote topic provided by Bernajean Porter, who will also be conducting two workshops later in the day.

This past summer we set up a Blackboard class on Contemporary Literacy (our new title for 21st Century Skills), which is a class now available to all Westport teachers. Those teachers wishing to add information to the class must request to be changed from a student in the class to a teacher in the class. All participants in this past summer's ITL workshops are listed as teachers, and three other teachers have requested to become teachers rather than students in the class. Many of the handouts for the November 3rd workshops are under the appropriate ITL tool in the TOOLS button in the Contemporary Literacy Class.

An evaluation for the ITL PD Day has been created and will be available via e-mail to all participants the afternoon of November 3rd. The results of this evaluation will help with determining the value of the day, and the changes that could be made to improve a similar professional development day for teachers and administrators in the future.

The schedule for the day can be found at: http://nov3itlworkshops.pbworks.com/FrontPage

WESTPORT READS

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa is the book selected by the Westport Public Library for the ONE book that all interested readers in Westport will focus on in January 2010 as part of WESTPORT READS. Many activities are being planned to complement and enhance the themes of this book.

The book deals with a math professor's brain injury and resulting short-term memory loss after each 80 minutes. The story details the relationships between the professor and his housekeeper, and the housekeeper's young son, "Root." The professor relies on his knowledge of equations and mathematical relationships, as well as his knowledge of Japanese baseball, to create strong, meaningful connections between the principal players.

Today Maxine Bleiweis, director of the WPL and Marta Campbell, collection development & readers' services coodinator, met at Staples High School with Lis Comm, 6-12 English curriculum leader, Frank Corbo, 6-12 Math curriculum leader, Julia Roberts, SHS library media specialist, Robin Stiles, SHS library media specialist, Rita Hennessey, BMS library media specialist, John Horrigan, CMS library media specialist and me.

We learned about some of the plans the Westport Public Library has for Westport Reads, and the curriculum leaders and library media specialists talked about how they could support the upcoming January community event. Here are some of the ideas or plans that were presented, planned or discussed during the meeting:

• The translator of the book, Stephen Snyder, a teacher at Middlebury College will present at the WPL on January 11th.
• A neurosurgeon will speak at the WPL about memory loss.
• A speaker on Japanese baseball will possibly present at the WPL.
• WPL wants to involve school kids in Westport Reads.
• Frank Corbo reported that Bill Walsh, Math teacher at SHS, had presented about the book at a Math department meeting. Talked about the possibility of creating a panel of kids who could talk about why they enjoy Math.
• Possibly the panel of Math kids could present during a lunch time activity in the library media center.
• Is there a possible ART connection that can be made?
• There are 10 community book groups that are planning to focus on the book in January.
• Could be a connection with Math Counts in the two middle schools.
• Maybe students will create a promotion for the book on SHS, BMS and CMS morning television programs.

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Lis Comm is planning to purchase 24 books, one for each English teacher.

The library media center will purchase 10 copies of the book, create a display and plan for some lunch time activities and presentations in January.

BMS - FIRST ITL MEETING OF THE YEAR

The BMS ITL committee met for the first time this year from 3:00-4:00 this afternoon. Rita Hennessey, LMS, and Lauren Bullock, technology teacher, are the new co-chairs of the committee and Rita Hennessey led the meeting. Members of the committee able to attend included: Meg Tiley, assistant principal; Laurie Gray, math teacher; Anitha Bolar, math teacher; Jeremy Royster, social studies teacher; Kathy Fleming, technology teacher; Lauren Francese, science teacher, and new member, Susan Cyrulik, science teacher.

Rita provided an overview of this year's ITL Summer Camp. 1-2 participants from every school learned about, used and explored the relative advantages of using: Smart Recorder to create screencasts, Flip cameras, MovieMaker, Diigo, Skype, Bubbl.us, Scratch, Google Forms, evaluation tools for websites, and Google Earth to create virtual tours.

There was also a discussion that I led about the Nov. 3rd ITL professional development day for all staff grades 6-12. We looked at the existing list of possible topics, and discussed if there were any topics missing. No new topics were added. We also discussed the structure of the day (8-9:30 - Keynote by Bernajean Porter; 10-11:30 - Workshop 1; 12:15-1:30- Workshop 2; 1:45-3:00 - Workshops 3; OR one afternoon workshop from 12:15-3:00). The group looked at the other possibility of having ONE workshop from 10:00-3:00, and although there were some advantages, everyone thought it was more important that teachers be exposed to at least two different topics.

Rabbit Hill, a Festival of Children's Literature, was briefly discussed. (There will be future posts on this, I am certain!) This amazing literature program sponsored by the Westport Public Library will bring five authors to Bedford and Coleytown Middle Schools on Friday, Oct. 23rd. On Saturday Oct 24th, the authors present at Saugatuck Elementary School at a free morning event, with workshop sessions offered in the afternoon. The reason for putting Rabbit HIll on the agenda was to support the preparation of students as much as possible for the authors' visit to maximize the impact of their presentations. Kathy Fleming and Rita Hennessey discussed connections with the TV Studio and the LMC.

Two future faculty meetings may be used for ITL workshops this year after the ITL PD day on Nov. 3rd.

Attending the meeting and hearing about potential ITL work this year at Bedford was a great way to end the 2nd day of school (for students).

Contemporary Literacy

A new year is about to start. 17 teachers recently attended the SUMMER ITL CAMP focusing on Contemporary Literacy. A Blackboard class has been set up for all teachers to access information about a wide range of contemporary literacy tools and concepts. All teachers will be members of the class in September.

We looked at the relative advantages of using the following tools and concepts: Smart Notebook, Flip cameras, MS MovieMaker, Diigo, Google Earth, Skype, Scratch, Bubbl.us and strategies for determining the Usefulness and Truthfulness of information.

Planning has begun for the ITL professional development day on November 3rd for all 6-12th grade teachers. A survey will go out to all 6-12th grade teachers soon to determine the areas of most interest for that day.

ITL staff will have a full day meeting with professional development on Friday, August 28th.

Looking forward to an exciting year where more and more teachers are engaging students in learning activities which require ITL skills for success.