Google Goes Interactive

I was on a bit of a hiatus last week, attending a fabulous artisan baking class with my Dad at King Arthur Flour.  If you like to bake, and ever get a chance to take one of their classes, I highly recommend them!

Here's a picture of the brioche I made.  Far better than the one I tried on my own a year or so ago!

Anyway...

Google is jumping on the interactive tutorial, flipped classroom bandwagon and provided a set of ten lessons on various aspects of digital citizenship, from copyright to YouTube.  Each lessons comes with lesson plans, quizzes and a video tutorial. From their site:

Lessons

Below is a list of lessons, and the recommended flow for delivery. Lessons are designed to fit within 50 minute classes, but can be adapted to fit your schedule:

1. What Makes YouTube Unique - Basic facts and figures (40 minutes) - Teacher's Guide Lesson 1,Slides Lesson 1
2. Detecting Lies - (35 minutes) - Teacher's Guide Lesson 2, Slides Lesson 2
3. Safety Mode - (5 minutes) - Teacher's Guide Lesson 3, Slides Lesson 3
4. Online Reputation and Cyberbullying - (45 minutes) - Teacher's Guide Lesson 4, Slides Lesson 4
5. Policy - The Community Guidelines (20 minutes) - Teacher's Guide Lesson 5, Slides Lesson 5
6. Reporting content - Flagging (20 minutes) - Teacher's Guide Lesson 6, Slides Lesson 6
7. Privacy part 1 - (40 minutes) - Teacher's Guide Lesson 7, Slides Lesson 7
8. Privacy part 2 - (50 minutes) - Teacher's Guide Lesson 8, Slides Lesson 8
9. Copyright - (40 mins) - Teacher's Guide Lesson 9, Slides Lesson 9
10. Additional resources/Appendix including parent resources - Teacher's Guide Additional Materials, Slides Additional Materials

Or you can download the Full Teacher's Guide or the Full Set of Slides in PDF.

EXQUISITE FOREST

As long as we're talking Google....

Back in my English teaching days,  I used to do an lesson with students on group storytelling.  I would give each student a sheet of paper with an opening sentence on it. The student would write the next sentence, fold over the first sentence so that only his/her sentence showed, then pass the paper to the next student.  This pattern would repeat until the papers came back to the original owner. Then we'd unfold them and read the resulting story.  Most of them were pretty silly, but occasionally you'd get one that was rather profound.

Well, Google has partnered with the Tate Modern in London to create a similar online art experiment they call  The Exquisite Forest.  You'll need Google Chrome for it to work, but it looks like an interesting collaborative storytelling project.  I'll let the video explain more.

I Love This Meme

I put this together for the Connected Learner/Intro to Research video I'm recording.  Here's the generator if you want to create your own.

I Should Have Thought of That: Evernote for Formative Assessment

Along with the Mental Health Break posts, I'm going to start another semi-regular feature on Bib 2.0: I Should Have Thought of That!

These will be links to ideas for  tools that have been around awhile, but used in ways I wish I had thought of myself (and am somewhat chagrined that I didn't!)

First up:  Evernote used for formative assessment--or self assessment, with older students. You can collect documents, images and voice or video discussions.  A great idea to share with faculty.

For library uses, it would be marvelous for gathering documentation on collaborative lessons, students working in the library, and other aspects of your programming.

ISHTOT!

Vialogue: Making the Flipped Classroom Better

Have you seen Vialogue?  A product of Columbia Teacher College's EdLab,  it's a pretty nifty online tool that allows you to upload a video and add an interactive discussion by adding comments, surveys or questions linked to specific points in the video.

As the flipped classroom gains an ever stronger place in the educational system, Vialogue should become a standard pedagogical tool.

The very core of a flipped classroom is watching tutorials at home, and somehow linking to or sending home an accompanying list of questions.

Here, you have both in one place with the added bonus of students being able to see each other's comments.  It's basically a video discussion board.

Vialogue allows you to use YouTube videos or upload your own. It currently doesn't play well with Vimeo, TeacherTube or other video aggregators, but they're working on that.

Here's a sample Vialogue that really gets participants talking about a poem and the nature of language. And, as you can see, they are embeddable on a classroom blog or website.



Vialogue also has a feature that allows you to group lessons.  As I spend this year digitizing all of mine in one format or another, that's a great feature.  Students could easily work their way through a series of lessons, and they are inherently doing more than just sitting and watching.

Finally, for film studies classes, this is a no-brainer!  What a great way for students to view and analyze video clips!

As of now, there's not "an app for that."  I hope they're working on it, because making this mobile would be immensely powerful.

UPDATE:  I should mention they were listed on the ALA's  top 25 list of best website for teaching

GOOGLE! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!

OK, somehow this one managed to escape my radar. As of November 2013, Google is dropping iGoogle.  If you haven't used it, iGoogle is the personalized homepage that comes with every Google account.  Here's a screenshot of mine.   It's set as my browser landing page, so the first thing I see when I log on each morning is my calendar, email, and the  blog postings/RSS feeds I really want to keep up on.

Very cool, keeps me organized, and I like changing the look with the seasons. It's also a great workshop with teachers, showing them how to use it to create their own organizers and PLN's.  They always love playing with it.

More importantly, it is my go-to tool for students to create information dashboards as a way to organize themselves and their research.  Students and I both prefer iGoogle (over NetVibes or Symbaloo) because not only does it play well with the other Google Apps, it also played (reasonably) well with our database feeds.

Despite repeated trying, I have never been able to get Netvibes to work with our Gale feeds.  And I just don't like the look of Symbaloo.  Kids are very visual; looking at a bunch of similar tiles isn't all that informative for them as to content.  Netvibes and iGoogle both show the content in the widgets.

Here's a screenshot of the sample Netvibes  ID I use with students.

And Google's taking it away.

They say because mobile apps make it all redundant.  I beg to differ.  The great thing about iGoogle is both it's personalized nature AND the fact that IT'S ALL IN ONE PLACE.  I'm sure I could use several different apps to do everything iGoogle does, but why should I?  And why should students?

So come on, Google.  It's not that I'm a Luddite resisting change. This is something that is still really, really useful. 

As always, there's a petition.  You can sign it here.

Aack!

Post and link removed.  Mea culpa. 

Is This School Library Heresy?

Here's a question for you:  If they took away your books and your budget, would you still have a library program?

 I thought about this the other day while reading about yet another school media personnel layoff.  I wondered, what if they kept the LMS, but zeroed out the budget?   Now, granted, most of us cost more in salary and benefits than losing our budget would cover, but go with me here.

But a brief side-trip before I develop that idea further.

Doug Johnson asked a question in my comments a few days ago that I've also been thinking about. As librarians, we talk a lot about collaboration. Whether it's in library school, our professional journals, or the conferences we attend, the "cutting-edge" librarians, the ones who are "with it,"  all promote collaboration with teachers as our raison-d'etre.  We read articles on tips to improve collaboration ("Hang out in the staff room!"),  articles on documenting collaboration, attend workshops on "Collaborating with the Science Dept!"  There are even ALA awards for examples of the best classroom/library collaboration.

So here's what Doug asked the other day: Should the library program need or have goals other than making sure teachers meet THEIR goals?

In other words (and correct me if I'm misinterpreting, Doug) Is collaboration REALLY our ultimate goal?

I have to admit, I always thought it was, whenever I thought about my ultimate goal. I'm always telling teachers and students "My job is to make your job easier!"  I even felt that was kind of noble.
The more I think about it, though, the more I realize it's mistaking the trees for the forest.

Collaboration isn't the goal, it's the means.

I've been reading Lankes' Expect More, and highlighting like crazy.  A couple relevant quotations:

If you threw out the books and the buildings and left a dedicated group of library professionals, you could invite the public in and and they would construct the future.


Too many librarians...are stuck in a sort of professional conservatism that favors what they do over why they do it (emphasis mine).


Bad libraries only build collections. Good libraries build services...Great libraries build communities.

Our goal isn't collaboration.  Our goal is learning, and learning happens through conversation, with teachers, with friends, with ourselves.  Thus, as Lankes' states above, our goal as librarians is to build and empower communities.

Now, collaboration is one way to do that, as is maintaining a good collection. These are both important parts of our job.   But the point of my question above is if we are REALLY focused on that goal, we could lose our entire collection and all of our budget, and still be able to run a meaningful program, because it's about our patrons, not our tools.  Collaboration is what we do;  we need to think more about why we do it. We need to ask  ourselves not "How can I better collaborate?",  but "How can I better facilitate learning? How can I build a community?"

Collaboration isn't always going to be the answer, and certainly not collaboration at the faculty level.

True story:  Last fall, I was talking to our MYP coordinator.  In IB lingo that means the guy in charge of ensuring all the 6-10 teachers are on board with the program and that students are on track.   I had been struggling to get some of the teachers using  my services, but in this case I was talking to Dave about a pathfinder for his Humanities class.   In the process of conversation, he said, "These are great. I need to tell all of the teachers to talk to you first before doing any research projects."

Wow.  In one fell swoop, I had the entire MYP faculty on board by mandate.   No matter what we do, some teachers are just NOT going to get on board, but they have Department Heads, or supervisors, or principals,  who tell THEM what to do, and THOSE are the people we need to be "collaborating" with, because they set policy.

So ask yourself that question above, and figure out what you do that isn't about tools, isn't about the collection,  but IS all about connecting students and teachers with each other and with their own ideas.  What do you do that allows them to create? That gives them voice?

THAT is your library program.