PSLA Conference Wiki

The PSLA Conference Wiki is getting some use and improvements each day. I see that at least one conference-presenter has edited the information about his session stating that the PowerPoint he's showing will not be printed but will be linked to on the wiki. What a great way to be green--and to give access to content to people who are unable to attend his session!

One of my biggest frustrations about attending conferences is the wide variety of choices that are available and the difficulty in selecting the ones that will suit me best for the coming year. It's always tough to know what will be the best choices--and then even if you've made selections there's the chance that those sessions will be high-demand for other attendees as well and you end up sent to another session that isn't going to be as meaningful to you and your situation.

I'm really excited about the prospects of the wiki and using it to get some of the information I'll miss out on from sessions I'm unable to attend! I hope that others will find the wiki useful as well. The more people who use it, the more useful it will be. Thanks to Joyce Valenza for getting this up and running for us!

technorati tags: PSLA08,, professionaldevelopment,, library2.0,, SLL2.0,, wiki

PBWiki project

I was talking with one of my co-workers yesterday afternoon and I think we're going to work on his annual Calendar project as a wiki. I spent this morning setting up parts of it (hopefully he and the students can do the rest!)

We still need to hammer out whether it will be public or private (so you may not be able to access the above link) and how to set it all up, but it's started.

Wiki Webquest

In Joyce Valenza's podcast, she mentioned that any pathfinders we create should be in the form of a wiki so they can be edited by the teachers and students who are using them. In looking at WikiSpaces Blog today, I found this post about a wiki webquest done by 7th and 8th grade students on popular musicians.

My music teacher does a project with her students on composers which has slowly evolved to include or allow popular contemporary performers as well. We've been talking about how to revise the project so she gets a better product and the kids aren't just regurgitating information. I like the interactivity of the wiki and the fact that there's an opportunity for discussion and critique of classmates work, but it certainly would need to be monitored to be sure that kids aren't being abusive. I've forwarded the links to Marisa in hopes of adding to our list of potential projects for the future. I really like this idea!

#23 Reflections and what's next

Participating in the CSLA's School Library Learning 2.0 program has been beneficial to me. Even though I was familiar with some of the tools that were discussed, I really took the time to reflect on how I can use these in my instructional practice and how my colleagues can use them with students.

Prior to beginning the program, I used many of these tools in my personal life (blogging, flickr, YouTube) as a way to record the things that are going on in my family and so that relatives and friends who live far from us are still able to keep up on what is going on with my children. I've even used my blog as a professional journal to track the things I want to remember related to work, like articles I've read, things I've done in the classroom that have worked well, and my notes on previous professional goals like last year's collection analysis and comparison to the other secondary schools in my district. I've struggled with what's appropriate to put on that personal blog and found that for my own comfort, I really need to keep my personal and professional blogging separate. I expect I'll continue to use this blog professionally because I want to be reflective about my instructional practices.

One of the things that happened this year in my school was very exciting to me: I had a teacher whose professional goal was to have her students blog. A few years ago, I created a blog that I host from our home server called Read Write Think Repeat. We used it briefly during a summer reading program and I also used it to post announcements about new materials as they were purchased. I worked with Robyn and her students to begin using that blog for student-created book reviews and discussion. The students voted to change the name to Rockin' Reads so that's its current title.

Changes in the way our network is administered meant that I can no longer make that page the library computers' homepage. I cannot even add it to the bookmarks on computers as everything is wiped from the history and bookmarks on our computers when someone logs out of them. One of my biggest personal frustrations about technology in our schools is the lack of communication and information sharing that goes on.

To get to my school library site, one has to start at the district website (every computer lab and library computer's homepage), click on schools, click on schools again and find my school in the dropdown list, click on library and the click on website in that dropdown list. It can't be bookmarked by students at school. (Teachers can bookmark it, but based on the phone and email requests I get, I'm pretty sure no one has.)
Because it's not used, I'm not very motivated to work on the site. Because the site has limited use, it's not used. It's a Catch-22. I think I could use the library blog site to be the library website adding pages to it, but that probably involves negotiations with the district technology department to figure out how to make that work. At least it is a relatively easy address to remember.

As a district we applied for the Improving Literacy through School Libraries grant. Technology and technology training is a significant portion of that proposal. Some of the things that teachers said they wanted to learn more about are PowerLibrary (our state-provided online databases), pod/vodcasts, wikis and blogs. I will probably be involved in providing some of those trainings, so participating in SLL2.0 has helped to prepare me for that--but I'll certainly need additional work to provide the best possible training. I've signed up for some training at our state conference and I'll probably do some additional self-discovery and learning to supplement what I've learned from the CSLA program.

I would wholeheartedly recommend this to any teacher, administrator or librarian who wants to learn more about web 2.0 tools. Thank you to CSLA for making it available to anyone! I was supposed to have a partner working on the tutorials with me, someone from LM_NET, but she ended up not posting much after her initial few posts and the emails that I've sent to her asking if she needed help or support have gone unanswered, so I'm not sure what happened to make her abandon the tutorials. We're also supposed to discuss a book we were planning to read together, but I suspect that will go by the wayside as well. I hope it does not impact my evaluation because she hasn't followed through.

A few weeks ago, I found reference to the next 23 things (Library 2.1) from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library and I believe I will continue my learning by doing those things as I have time.

#21 Podcasts

I've listened to podcasts from NPR and The Onion for a few years now. I've listened to some educational podcasts and Voice Threads and have a VT account. I like being able to use iTunes to subscribe to updated podcasts.

The best podcast I found in my recent searching is Joyce Valenza's 21st Century Librarian's Manifesto. It's got an accompanying wiki for people to edit and add their thoughts and vision.

I would really like to encourage my students to do some podcast-based booktalks or book reviews. At this point, I don't really have a teacher who will work with me but I'm working on that for the coming school year. I know that if we get them started it will open a whole new aspect to my library program and engaging learners in the use of various web2.0 tools. I'm hoping to learn more about podcasting at PSLA's annual conference in May.

#17 Wiki on curriculum uses of web 2.0 applications

In perusing the California Curriculum Connections Wiki, I looked at suggested applications of social bookmarking tools. I followed a link to The Clever Sheep and found some great suggestions. I can really see applications for del.icio.us and ease of creating weblinks for coursework--whether it's me or a teacher doing it. This suggestion:

7] Teachers can invent unique tags for each of their classes using the subject or course code as a tag. Students could then access any site deemed worthy... anyplace, anytime! Tags for a grade 11 science course might be found in a place like this: http://del.icio.us/mrteacher/sci3u. Better yet, if a teacher shares a really unique tagging code like 'luciersci3u' then students could add bookmarks to their own del.icio.us accounts, and since you can search bookmarks by any and all users at once in the root of del.icio.us, students would be able to conveniently access the bookmarks made by any and all members of the class.

looks particularly useful to me. I think it's something I can recommend to colleagues and they can implement as they have time. I can begin to create links for class projects that happen annually and not have to use district server space to store the data!

I posted a link to my student book discussion blog Rockin' Reads in the Sandbox. Blogging was a colleague's professional goal this year and we've been working on encouraging students to use the blog. I hope I can get these kids to continue to use it in the coming years.

I was a little disappointed that people who are taking the course couldn't add to the Wiki itself--that seems like it would be the best way to use the wiki and would save people from having to visit all of the different blogs linked on the main SLL2.o page, but I can also understand wanting some editorial control of the wiki.

Editorial Note: On March 31, I got a comment from another participant correcting my misconception that I couldn't contribute to the California Curriculum Connections Wiki. Today I posted a link to our book discussion blog on the Blogs and Avatars page.

#16 Wikis

While visiting the Educators/Librarians Wiki, I found a webinar scheduled for April 8th on using wikis and getting staff and student buy-in. My district has applied for an Improving Literacy through School Libraries grant and we're hopeful that we'll be awarded the funds we're requesting. One of the things we really need to work on is expanding the access to technology within the district. Wikis are great for collaboration and building a resource--as long as you remember that it's only as good as its participants make it. The most famous of wikis, Wikipedia has been much-maligned. Even so, I admit that I do use it on occasion. :D I just hope that I'm as mindful of the possibility of something being hacked by someone as I want my students to be. I don't want them using only an encyclopedia for research either!

I could see students using a wiki to present the results of a class project (i.e. country reports, recipes, science fair resources). I can see educators using it as a tool for storing lesson plans and resources, sharing ideas with others and even collaborating with classrooms throughout the district and the world. I even think my neighbor who does an annual diversity calendar could use a wiki to create and flesh out his student products, with kids building on it from year to year.

Being an editorial control freak though would probably get the better of me if I were trying to participate in or manage a wiki myself. I want people to accept that my verbiage is the best or my design is the best (I learned that the hard way this spring when something I spent a lot of time on was changed but my name was left on it even though I would have sooner died than have someone think I did what was done in that instance.) The problem with collaboration is that there must be some agreement among the collaborators.