differentiated iPad learning experience

80% of Monday night’s iPad class discussion was above my head. It appears that the majority of people already know their way around the iPad and are ready for more complex activities and discussions.

I ended both classes considering dropping out so as not to hold others back. However, that would undermine the educational purpose of what is supposed to be an introductory class. Especially with technology, we have to find a way to reach total neophytes . . . like me.

I realized this situation is an accurate reflection of what I expect to face as I introduce the iPads to the faculty in my building. As a librarian, I’m not worried about the people who know already know how to use slates. My challenge will be to establish equitable access; to offer encouragement and support to those who never thought about using iPads, who really don’t have much time to learn how to use them, and who are already overwhelmed with CCSS, PLC, and CFAs.

A BYOD environment demands differentiated learning. For beginners, specific, limited, reproducible steps are essential so we can learn at our own pace, practice repeatedly to get comfortable with a process, and review the process periodically until it becomes rote. But the tasks in the process also need to be open-ended to challenge experienced learners.

I recently took a class from the SD State Library that might be a possible model for an online class format:    http://sdlibrarychallenge.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-1-world-book-online-encyclopedia.html 

There is one specific topic for each lesson. Instructors introduce the topic, link to preselected sites with more detailed information, and set tasks. At the end of each lesson, students blog about their experience and how they might use it with classes.

I think this model would meet several goals for iPad introduction:

·         It offers opportunities for differentiation. I dream of a day when I understand enough about Reflector to read Jeff or Dave’s blog to see how they use it in a classroom, but I am a long way from there.

·         It is straightforward and can be used by independent learners after the class ends (like classroom teachers who will borrow the iPads from the library.) This addresses concerns about equitable access.

·         It offers a format for out-of-class learning experiences and an opportunity to experiment with effective self-paced online tech classes.

·         It is reproducible so less experienced people can review and practice at the moment they need the information next year and beyond.

·         It documents specific accomplishments and establishes the basic scaffolding for future learning. I know which sites I am comfortable enough to teach, and which I could learn if the need arose. For me, this is how progress in an unfamiliar territory begins. It is important for inexperienced learners to clearly know what they have learned. Without  stable, written verbiage about a specific topic, it’s hard for me to remember any specific thing I’ve learned.

Here’s my suggestion: If other students think this sounds like a format worth experimenting with, Adam would you be willing to write an introductory paragraph to some specific topic, provide links to more detailed information, and suggest some basic tasks as an experiment? (Maybe you have done all this and I just don’t know where to find it.)

The Civil Discourse grant is pushing teachers to videograph their classes using/doing whatever the teacher received a grant for, then post the video to the Civil Discourse blog here at edmodo. Maybe that would be a good topic to start with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

test posting

I am posting to my out-of-edmodo blog to see how it connects to our class edmodo account.

Lesson 10

My biggest discovery

I have two; favorite one first: We had one 6^th grade core doing animal reports to compare and contrast two animals. Oozing pride, I showed them the World Book Kids’ World of Animals link to bring up a chart on their animal (after showing it to the teacher to be sure this wouldn’t run roughshod over her research goals for the classes.) The specifics listed aligned beautifully with their assignment, even though neither the teacher nor I knew about the chart when she made her assignment. One student noticed that at the bottom of the left column you could click “Compare Animals” and list a second animal. This brings up the option to list a second animal and compare specifics side-by-side on the same screen. Wow! Their research was done for them, and they could proceed to taking notes and writing their papers. I had shown them World Book in part because of the MLA citations at the bottom of each article. We discovered that to see the citations we had to go back to the original articles, but the students were so motivated by having the comparison charts right in front of them that they had no problem going back to the individual articles to copy the citations. For me, there is no better student learning experience than when they can teach me! This was a win-win-win, and there is now a 6^th grade girl in Rapid City who is thinking – correctly – that she could be a pretty good school librarian!

My second great discovery is the HeritageQuest local history books. I got bit by the family history bug 30 years ago when I was living in Virginia, thinking I was the descendant of 19^th Century potato-famine immigrants, and accidentally discovered I had ancestors who settled Virginia in the late 1600s. For more than two decades, I have been looking for a great-great-great grandmother who has no last name of her own, only her married name. HeritageQuest has a variety of local histories and genealogies for the counties in which this woman lived. Her marriage record lists the names of her witnesses including one Brenda Moseley, who I think is her sister. Lo and behold, HeritageQuest has a genealogy of the Moseley family in Bedford County, Virginia. And I can bring up each page right in my kitchen, and dig in while dinner is baking in the oven. How great is that?!

As to promotion, I still like the idea of a floor-to-ceiling list of what’s at different resource sites. I’ll be working on that this summer. But the main promotion I do is to teach students the sites in front of their teachers. The students don’t yet understand how valuable it is to have reliable information, but more and more of their teachers do. I emphasize the same six or eight sites for a variety of projects. My goal is to have students automatically going to SDSL sites when they get a research assignment by the time we send them up to high school. This is working pretty well, in part because the number of Google hits for any given topic is now astronomical. And, through their use of social media, students are beginning to realize how much inaccurate information is available online.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to dive back into all these great resources. Even (no, especially) when I got stuck, as I did with CAMIO, I am helped by remembering how it feels to search when you don’t know how to get what you want, or even if what you want exists in the resource. The Challenge reacquaints me with the frustration and confusion my students feel as new researchers. That’s important.

When I teach the SDSL resources in front of our middle school classroom teachers, they are ecstatic that our students have access to so many reliable, vetted sources of information, and that the resources cover all reading levels and all topics. From our perspective as educators of South Dakota’s children, this is absolutely the best way to spend SDSL’s limited funding. I have only been a middle school librarian for four years, but even in this small slice of time, many teachers who come to the library for a research presentation are now requiring only SDSL sites. They are telling their students not to waste their time sorting through six million hits on Google or checking the reference notes on Wikipedia to figure out what is reliable. This is not the case with teachers who conduct research in their own rooms. Slowly, with the availability of the SDSL online resources, we are raising the level, the expectation, and the rigor expected of South Dakota students one teacher at a time. You are providing the resource that makes that possible. Thank you so much!

Lesson 9

AncestryLibrary 

Titanic’s Sister Ship(s): Under the New Collections tab, I went to Pictures, then to Passenger Ships and Images on the right; I entered England in the location box and used the keyword Titanic. I got 6 results and scanned for White Star line. The Majestic was too early, but the Olympic was launched the same year as the Titanic and its entry does list it as the sister ship of Titanic. There is a picture of the Olympic. The Britannic is identified as “similar to the Titanic” but not specifically identified as her sister ship. Indeed, I doubt White Star lines would want to identify any ship launched after Titanic as her “sister ship.”

Hindenburg: I don’t see a link for Newspapers and Publications nor do I see that phrase in any of the dropdown lists from the tabs across the top of the homepage, but I have a link for Newspapers, so I tried that. I entered Hindenburg in the keyword box and got 432 hits. If I slide down a bit in the left column, I now get a link to Newspapers and Publications. I clicked on that and increased my results to 436. The first few results are photocopies of card catalog entries. If one clicks into the View Image link on the first entry and then advances through the card using the prompt at the bottom of the image, a student could piece together the basic facts about the disaster, and find which pages to search in the New York Times archives for May 1937 to get the original stories.

As I search further, I realize that almost all of the pertinent results are these images of card catalog entries; the rest appear to be obituaries for people named Hindenburg. Under the Publications side, the articles include an entry for Col. Von Hindenburg prior to the disaster, and a review of a novel written after the disaster attempting to explain how it happened.

I wouldn’t really use AncestryLibrary for this kind of question. First, you can only access it in school so I only recommend it for information the student is very unlikely to find elsewhere. Secondly, why would a person go to AncestryLibrary to figure out what date to search in the NY Times archives? Finding the date of the disaster is a great reason to let the student use Wikipedia, then jump right into the NY Times archives. Moreover, the card catalog entries are so badly typed that it would make me hesitant to trust their accuracy. I would require the student to go to the Times anyway.

HertageQuest: I had instant success! I chose Search Books, then Places, then entered “Huntington, NY” and got a list of 16 results of which 8 were pertinent to the exact town I wanted. If you are patient, you can get the images of the pages in each book to come up, so I can sit in my kitchen in Rapid City and read the original town histories for cities across the US. To a local history geek, this is heaven!

Lesson 8 WorldCat and CAMIO

WorldCat I searched for keyword   martin luther NOT king  and got 153,000+ books. I scrolled down looking for familiar works and on the 4^th entry I found a book by Martin Marty. He is a renowned scholar who is a very accessible writer. Even though this work is aimed at adults, I would still request it for 4^th and 5^th graders and bring it to class to show them. I clicked on “See more details for locating this item” and found several in South Dakota. I would probably borrow from Augustana. They may not be the closest institution, but I have borrowed from them before and I know they act quickly on requests.

To find a Martin Luther book for children, I did an Advanced Search for    martin luther NOT king    and chose Juvenile from the subtype limits dropdown box at the bottom of the form. I found one by Sally Stepanek from 1986 that is owned by elementary schools and the Cedar Rapids Public Library. The cover was attractive, and although the copyright date is somewhat old, I think it will have the basic information needed for a children’s Sunday School class.

To find a graphic novel version of a classic, I did an Advanced Search for the keywords classics AND graphic novel; I chose Juvenile in the subtype limiter dropdown list. My results included several Garfields, which I wouldn’t really consider classics or graphic novels, but there were also many graphic novels of classics in the list including The Wind in the Willows, Kidnapped, and Tom Sawyer. The one I would choose for my collection is Journey to the Center of the Earth published by Barron’s. I like the cover illustration, and in this case judging a book by its cover seems like a reasonable approach.

For the third question, I did an Advanced Search for “My Fair Lady” (in quotation marks) and checked the box for Musical Scores under the Limit Results To section in the middle of the page. The Accession number is 26429906.

 

CAMIO   I am not having much luck with this search. First I chose Costume and Jewelry from the homepage, and limited it to 1800 using the time limiters on the left. I got 114 results but they were from all over the world and I could not figure out how to limit it to England, British, Victorian, or any other related terms.

Next I used the general search term Fashion, and then tried to use the time limiters. I could not figure out how to enter my own time limiters, and most of the ones available to me were outside the time period. I tried 1800 and got 16 results, but all of them were French. I tried to combine this with an Advanced Search for England, Victorian Era, Victoria, or the dates 1837-1901. Nothing got me any more specific results.

I repeated all this with the general search term Clothing, and had basically the same results, except that this time I had a few Native American results as well.

Next I tried a general search for Dress and used the limiter for 1900. I got 16 results of which 2 were identified as British. Both were actually identified as 20^th Century and were drawings done on Japanese rice paper which were muddled, muted, and unhelpful. A student could not see the details of dress to inform them in any specific way about how British people dressed in the Victorian Era.

Then I began to wonder if the search feature was malfunctioning, so I went to see if other students had better luck. The only person who had anything posted from this year was Shelley Rath, and she seemed to have the same problems that I was having. Jane Healy had replied, so I tried following Jane’s instructions, which were essentially what I had been doing anyway. I did not have any different results.

What exactly are you choosing as the time limiter? I only have the choices of 1800 or 1900. If I use Advanced Search By Date, I still don’t get pertinent results. How many useful results did you get? Can you figure out what I’m doing wrong?

Frankly, I like CAMIO and use it frequently. But if I were a new student doing the Advanced level challenge, this question would put me totally off CAMIO. It makes me feel better that I just bought some new books on costume through the ages. Another, better, place I would send students would be the printed World Book Encyclopedia. I did try searching World Book Advanced online but could not find helpful results there either.

 

Lesson 7 EBooks on EbscoHost

I never found the Visual Search box, though I looked in EBSCO Webhost, Student Research Center, Searchasaurus, and Kids Search. I did try several graphics search box options in Searchasaurus and Kids Search, and they were attractive and worked quickly, but I didn’t find what I wanted. I was looking for information on growing kitchen herbs. I would like to start some indoors now, and move them outside in a few months. I found dozens of articles on medicinal uses for herbs, but nothing on growing them came from searching “herbs,” “garden herbs,” or “growing herbs.”

While searching in Kids Search, the second hit I got for “growing herbs” was titled, “Long-term ecological and biodiversity monitoring in the western Himalaya using satellite remote sensing.” Here are the first two sentences of the abstract: “The IPCC in its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) described the Himalayan Region as data-deficient in terms of climate monitoring. This is a serious impediment to global research initiatives and thus necessitates long-term ecological monitoring (LTEM) across the Himalaya.” This is confusing to me: the colorful graphics and the designation of “Middle School and Elementary” on the homepage made me think I’d get articles suitable for middle school students. Perhaps, the sites vary by appearance only, but all tap into the same article database.

Here is a quotation from an article I got when I searched “South Dakota” in Kids Search:  “Paying farmers to quit plowing marginal, erodible lands was a strategy conceived under the Reagan administration mostly as a means of stalling overproduction.” There were some articles that would fit my students’ reading levels, but it’s too much to sort through. I can see that there are lots of good resources at EBSCO, but I’ll stick with SIRS Discoverer and the Discovering Collection for research in my building. This is too frustrating to use with students.

For the second question, I went to EBSCO Webhost and clicked until I got a search box. I entered “fairy tales” and scrolled through the results list until I came to The Violet Fairy by Andrew Lang. The copyright date seems reasonable for my grandmother to have enjoyed it, and the cover of the book is one color (though not violet.) Next I checked The Blue Fairy, also by Andrew Lang, but the cover had a picture on it. I took the question to mean that every book cover was a different color, but maybe it means each book was about a differently colored fairy. If that’s the case, I think I’ve found the correct series. I also found The Yellow Fairy and The Red Fairy, all by Andrew Lang. I searched for “Andrew Lang” to confirm I had found all the colored fairy titles, and I had.

I went back to search for the Kathy Ross books. I loved these books, and found them to be as charming and encouraging as I remembered them. I’m thrilled that we have free access to them, and now that my schools are encouraging ebook use, I think I will be better able to blend using the SDSL Online books into students’ and teachers’ minds as a reasonable option. We can barely afford a basic collection of craft books, but making crafts is a tremendous learning experience for children.

With ebooks, marketing and promoting titles is developing into our biggest challenge. If I can get people into a database, then they’ll nose around and find what they need in it plus discover things they didn’t know they wanted. I’m envisioning a floor-to-ceiling list of selected SDSL resources with some cover picture prints and pictures of what kinds of information kids can access at the site – a Chilton cover for 1996 Mustangs; some words written in Arabic, Japanese, and Italian by the Mango site; the cover for Crafts to Make in the Spring by the EBSCO site; a portrait of William Shakespeare next to the WB Student edition, etc. Does the SDSL have any promotional materials or ideas about how we can advertise the online resources?

Lesson 6 Gale Virtual Reference Library

I first tried searching for “spring festivals” under Multicultural Studies and got 20 hits, mostly about Asian cultures that celebrate the Chinese New Year. That occurs between January 21 and February 20, so I didn’t think that would be what this patron wanted. I did find some information on the Powhatan tribe, but the celebration described was distinctly 20^th-21^st Century and seemed rather generic.

Next I searched for “spring and summer” in the Religion section and got 9 hits. Neo-Paganism was by far the most interesting. On May 1, Neo-Pagans celebrate Beltane to honor spring flowerings and birth, and on the spring equinox, they celebrate Ostara. Ostara is the goddess of fertility. A variation of her name is Eostre which has been corrupted into the word “Easter.” Her symbols include the egg and hare. Once I lived with a flock of geese that laid huge green eggs underneath plants and behind fences for 10 days each spring, and that’s where I thought our custom of gathering eggs at Easter came from. Wrong again!

I also discovered that Black Elk associated the direction east with green and spring. Searching under Nations, I found that Poland has a multitude of spring celebrations centered on Easter including fairs, pysanky or painting eggs, housecleaning rituals, and decorating pussy willow branches with ribbons.

The patron is asking for “spring” celebrations, and I kept finding Easter celebrations, but the Neo-Pagan article makes me think the connection between spring and Easter is pretty strong albeit subtle. So I stayed under Nations and clicked on Easter on the left menu. That brought up specific articles including recipes from such countries as Spain, Poland, Greece, the Ukraine, and Australia. In these articles, I discovered that spring housecleaning is a multinational activity, and that spring is also a good time to whitewash your windmills.

Several countries mark the coming of spring with something like an Advent calendar. In this case, it is a cardboard cutout of a woman or an animal with seven legs, one for each week of Lent. As each week is completed, a leg is torn off the calendar, and the calendar is burned during Holy Week. In Spain, bullfighting season commences around Easter. Perhaps most curious and disturbing is a photograph I found in the Spain article of people taking part in religious parade dressed in costumes reminiscent of those made notorious in the United States by the Ku Klux Klan. Next time I’m in Ancestry, I will be looking to see if Nathan Bedford Forrest has a Spanish ancestor.

In Advanced Search, I found that GVRL has added dozens of cultural heritage books since 2011 including many on individual Native American tribes. These resources are far more detailed than anything I could keep in our library. I also found a number of business books on topics ranging from Market Behavior to Rossignol to Offshore Agricultural Production in Saudi Arabia.