Final Thoughts

This course has offered a wealth of material that I will be exploring and experimenting with for some time to come. I will not be using the platforms of Web 2.0 for personal networking, because, as I mentioned in my introduction, I am fundamentally an introvert. I simply want to know what the sites offer and how to navigate them so that I continue to hone my skills as library media specialist. I want to understand the digital worlds of my students and use those worlds to enhance learning experiences.

The best thing about Web 2.0 is that the applications are free; I do not have to apply to the school administration for funding. I do not have to worry about school size for licensing agreements, updates, or whether students will not have access to the programs at home. As long as they have access to the internet, they will be able to participate.

Web 2.0 offers a certain anonymity to its students, and I am not just referring to virtual worlds like Second Life. Blogs and wikis remove the students from the classroom “stage” and allow them to contribute without having to perform before a live audience. It offers them greater time for reflection and an opportunity to share their writings with a wider audience. For students, who are immersed in the new technologies, Web 2.0 is an attractive means for communicating information and ideas.

The explosion of Web 2.0 does make my job more difficult. A basic search nets every possible source of information. Students must be able to critically and competently evaluate the information they uncover. They must be able to distinguish among fact, point of view and opinion. K-12 students have a habit of taking everything they find on the internet as gospel. Some blogs and wikis provide invaluable information, but students must be taught the need to determine authority and accuracy. The online services allow anyone to make a slick presentation and this can be very deceiving to a middle schooler.

My networking forays have not yet gone beyond professional interests and those are quite limited: seeking solutions for specific problems from library communities. I now see the possibility for all kinds of interactive projects both for students and staff. I am hoping to incorporate many of these tools into the curriculum.

Finding Fiction

Home Office

The Bermuda Gombey

Gombeys are a "crowd" of male dancers and musicians who appear on the streets of Bermuda on holidays, particularly Christmas, performing a unique dance form to the beat of drums. The basic origins of th edance form stem from West African tribal dance. West Indian, Native American, Military music , the Mummers and the slaves' conversion to Christianity were powerful influences on the Gombey dance in Bermuda as we know it today.

from The Bermuda Gombey by Louise Jackson

Gombeys in Training

Click To Play

Bookmarks

I generally organize my bookmarks into two distinct categories: professional and personal. As the school librarian, I am a resource person and I subscribe to many databases such as Librarians Index to the Internet (LII). When I review the feeds I receive from these databases and I find a site that is of particular use to a teacher, I tag it with the subject name. In that way, I build up a bank of sites that subject area teachers can use in their classes.

My personal bookmarks revolve around household and family topics; for example, travel, shopping, recipes as well as topics that I am researching.

It is important to have a system. Bookmarking is not unlike filing your documents on your computer or filing cabinet. If you misfile them, it may be along time before you find them, if at all. If you are not consistent with your tags, you run the risk of overlooking information that you have bookmarked or being frustrated by not being able to find a site that you had previously bookmarked. It is for this reason that library cataloguers must use a set of predefined “tags” to categorize books.

My Delicious account had been dormant for some time and I spent time deleting many of my entries: they were no longer useful or current. I had also not followed my own advice above and had to re-organize bookmarks. It is amusing how I now question the relevancy of tags I applied two years ago.

Cats Have Nine Lives: Humans Have Two

Anonymity – the state of not being known an identified – is a liberating feeling. It is the same feeling I have when I leave Bermuda – population 70, 000, 20 square miles- and visit New York City – population 8million. That is what I looked forward to as I signed up for Second Life. Ironically, I was self-conscious more self conscious in SL than I was in New York even though I hidden behind my avatar. I attribute it to my unfamiliarity with protocol in SL and how to interact with the environment. One has to dispense with first life codes of behavior, such as crowding someone else’s personal space and common greetings. Codes of behavior definitely change in faceless communities. I soon learned to forgo traditional introductions- you simply begin talking. I wasn’t certain whether other figures standing around were actually “in play”. They did not always respond when I attempted to talk to them. They appeared to be doing nothing. Perhaps the virtual characters were away from their computers and had not indicated this.

At first, I was reluctant to approach anyone except at the Help Institute. There I found a greeter who assisted me with resetting my avatar so that I did not appear as a cloud. At that point I tried to customize my avatar, but only succeeded in adding clothing without removing any. In the end, she looked as if she were dressing for a Halloween party so I settled for “the girl next door” look.
I visited TC Educator a few times, but did not meet anyone else there. I have to say that the replica of TC is impressive. I found my way to Starbucks, took a seat and waited, but no one else arrived. In fact, every professional or educational site I have visited was deserted save one – that was ISTE. I am advised each time I logon to SL that my system does not meet SL’s minimum system requirement, and that I may experience poor performance. I question whether that has affected my experience in SL.

I would need much more time exploring SL to offer an opinion on its potential for educational purposes. My initial forays were not very encouraging. As a librarian, I visited the American Library Association site – ALA Island. I cannot fathom what SL offers that I cannot experience in another platform. I feel encumbered by the avatar.

My previous experience with a virtual community such as SL was limited to Toon Town. My own children participated in this a few years ago and invited me to develop an avatar and join them in various activities. I did so to entertain them but could not understand the appeal except for the competitions which resembled all any other online games. My reaction to SL is no different. I grow impatient trying to navigate around SL or to customize my avatar. I commented in an earlier class that I have little time for my First Life; I definitely have no time for SL. I doubt if I’ll return to this forum after this class.

Technology Woes

My work telephone has a permanent red light indicating a message in my inbox. I asked the administrative staff how to access it. No one knew. I asked teachers how to access messages. No one knew. They all had a similar problem: permanent red message lights. They had all tried, but the phone kept asking for a password and no one had been given a password. I tried all possible generic set-up passwords: 000, 0000, 999, 9999 etc. None worked.

I went online to look for a manual. I found one, but it did give an instructions about passwords.

When I heard that the phone system would be down for 10 minutes, because the phone company technician was on sight to make upgrades, I dropped everything I was doing and sought him out. He immediately reset my password and I cleared 79 messages going back 2 years. That is no exaggeration.

I have set up my mailbox and am now receiving messages. I have invited any member of staff to email me if he wishes to have his password reset and have arranged with the phone technician to forward the info on to him. I have also invited teachers to attend a workshop on how to navigate their phones.

Never did I think that I would be working at this level when I decided to take on the job of media specialist.

Experiences with Social Media

My multiple intellience inventory pegs me as a intrapersonal- it is number one on the list -and not interpersonal so I am not a very good candidate Social Media. As I indicated in my introduction, I do not make much use of the media. I am also not a letter writer and email has not motivated me to communicate more frequently with family or friends. With that said, I feel like an onlooker more than a participant in most of the platforms that we have been introduced to throughout the course. I have had to go outside of my comfort zone in sharing information with class members.


If anyone noticed, I started my Blogger account in 2006 but never made any entries. I had no intention of developing it at that point; I was simply exploring the medium. That is also true of my Delicious account: I subscribed to it in 2004, used it aggressively at first and then only sporadically. Some colleagues with whom I have shared the site since 2004 rely heavily on it. My sole purpose for taking the course is to be able to provide instruction to others who wish to use the media and to develop ways to incorpoorate them into a middle school curriculum.


The course has provided a wealth of resources that I am sure I will be continuing to explore long after the course is over. For example, my most recent search in Technorati using "middle school libraries" uncovered a site entitled Free Rice that is a vocabulary builder. For every correct word, the site donates rice to the U. N. World Food Program. The site has been a hit with my students and staff.

I have a new perspective about the media - their inter-connectivity. Previously I viewed Blogger, Delicious, Flickr et alia as self-contained and independent, but the course has shown how to draw all of the applications together and to meld them into a framework that is uniquely one's own.

Accelerated Reader

I started working at a middle school as the teacher-librarian (TL) in September. The TL is responsible for administering the online reading program, namely Accelerated Reader (AR). This presented me with somewhat of a challenge because I’d never worked with AR and there was no training. I had to resort to online manuals and on demand webinars. Additionally the school had moved to an up-graded program that was hosted by the vendor and not by the school. This required a number of technical changes that to date have not yet been sorted out. My biggest technical challenge is creating a short cut on the desktop that is NOT a favorite. I am trying to cut down on the number of steps students must take to access the program. At the moment they must logon with their district username and password; open Internet Explorer; type in the AR address; respond to security dialogue boxes; logon to AR using their AR username and password; and finally search for their quizzes. This is problematic for the majority of students: 50% tested below grade 5. I simply want them to click on a desktop icon and have access to the program.

Selling AR to Teachers

AR, originally published by Advantage Learning Systems (now the School Renaissance Institute), is not the only "computerized reading tool" on the market; however, it is the most widely advertised and used software available. The program begins with the Standardized Test for Assessment of Reading (STAR). Renaissance Place describes STAR as follows:

1. Student takes the test. Questions continually adjust to the student’s responses.You get results.
2. Detailed reports help you place new students, measure progress, and identify those who need individual help.

You make data-driven decisions. Match appropriate books and curricular materials to each student.

(There has been some criticism of the validity of the test which I will discuss at a later point.)

From what I can gather the program has never been fully implemented. Homeroom teachers, who are the designated lead teachers in the program, have little involvement. Some have never seen it in operation and none have accounts to access the program and monitor student progress. The librarian is the only one with this access, and even though there are only 215 students, it would be impossible for one person to monitor all students that closely. Teachers simply supervise the sustained silent reading period each morning. They are given the initial STAR report for each student and disseminate the student reading levels. Students then visit the library, choose books and complete the quiz when they have finished reading the book. There are no incentives in place although AR has several built into it: there are graduated reading levels and students receive a certificate when they achieve the next level. AR also recommends extrinsic rewards and in the program’s first year, there were footballs and movie tickets to name a few, but that no longer exists. Consequently, only those students who are self-motivated are participating.
At the moment my mandate is to get the program up and running. Lead teachers are expected to set goals for individual students; read to or with students who are challenged; review individual quiz results; initiate interventions by reporting lack of student progress to the appropriate staff members; and liaise with parents.
Teachers have a mixed reaction to the program. Some embrace it; others see it as another responsibility that they have little time for. My biggest challenge is to get teachers to buy in to the program and become more involved with it. To this end I have given presentations to small groups of teachers and worked individually with teachers who are uncertain about the program.

Final Project

I am trying to position myself as tech coordinator/librarian in the school to which I have recently transferred; hence the Master’s in Computing and Education at TC. My final project is to develop a technology plan for the school at which I currently teach, and I will document my progress through this site. I have been rather delinquent in developing this blog as I have been expending much time and energy in transitioning from one school to another, but the issues I have faced thus far will provide a focus for this assignment.

Introduction

My name is Heather Stafford. I am a teacher-librarian at a middle school in Bermuda. I am in the intensive Masters program in Computing and Education. This choice is somewhat ironic for me because I do not gravitate toward digital technologies. I do not have an MP3 player of any kind; I never use instant messaging: I find it tedious and as a former English teacher, I could never use IM language; I have never played computer games and I prefer to view my movies on a theater screen. Podcasts, blogs and wikis hover on the periphery of my consciousness.

I want to become literate with the Web 2.0 media. It is the media of choice for my students and my own children. They have their iPod, Facebook and MySpace accounts as well as the myriad of other sites mentioned in the readings. I use none of them and am beginning truly feel like a dinosaur. I wish to learn how to navigate in these environments and to harness them for use in the classroom.