Dung Powered Devices

The topic for Module 8 is HUGE in that it incorporates both the idea of global education and world literacy and how organizations are using technology as a viable solution for the lack of print resources available to students in developing countries.  Although my school has a global education program called Students Without Borders Academy (SWB-A) SWBA ,  I did not know much about other organizations such as CODE, the World Literacy Foundation, UNESCO,  One Laptop per Child (OLPC Canada for Aboriginal Youth) and  Feed the Children.   

   Many of these organizations strive to fight poverty by educating the population.  As it has been a challenge to provide quality,  age appropriate, culturally relevant print resources in the proper language and textbooks for different subject areas, one of the solutions has been to provide students in developing countries with technology that allows them to access the information on the internet.   

While delving into the topic of world literacy, I couldn't help but notice that the lack of resources was a key road block in each of these ventures and that there are many different organizations that strive to solve this problem.  In our own school system, we are also dealing with a lack of funding for resources in education and there are many inequities within the same school district as to what each school can provide for its students.  Within my school district, my school is considered to be one of the "have" schools and yet my library's budget is thirteen percent of the budget of one of the other high schools that have a population with overall lower socioeconomic status.  And, we are the only school in our school district without a smart board.  In areas where there is a perceived need, many people rally to fund raise to provide resources that are deemed lacking.  For areas deemed "privileged" such as my school, the lack of fundraising and community support has resulted in us being left behind.  

I think it is wonderful to have people rallying for education whether it be locally or globally. The students in our school district can expect to have laptops provided in a ratio of one laptop per four students.  I have looked into the one laptop per child program for students in developing countries and  I had a lot of questions.  For example, how do they have the bandwidth to deal with all of the individual devices when my school district is still struggling with this issue.  Currently, the WIFI in our schools cannot support student's bringing their own device; we have been told that it would crash the system.

Also, how do they power the devices in rural communities?  In my research, I came across laptops that had cranks on them to generate electricity and watched a YouTube clip describing innovative ways of generating electricity such as having cows attached to a turbine that walk in a circle (Cow Power).  Learning about this topic has been fascinating and humbling in that it makes me feel like we have been less than creative in troubleshooting our own technology issues.

While exploring the topic of bring your own device to school, I once again had to relate the topic to my own situation before considering how it would look in a rural school in Africa or South America.  Although most of my students have a device of their own, they don't all have a device of their own.  I have some students that do not have internet at home and rely heavily on the technology at school to complete their homework.  Many people think that students at my school are all privileged and as such, would have no problem providing their own devices.  One advantage to having the students provide their own devices would be to save the school district the cost of providing these devices.  I'm afraid that based on my school's reputation as a "have" school, that our budget could get cut more than most.

Students are already bringing their own devices to school-they just have to use their own data plan to access the internet.   I have looked up some articles on BYOD and there are many that outline the pros and cons of providing WIFI to students and encouraging the use of these devices in school 20 Pros and-Cons-of--BYOD-in-schools .  Although BYOD will come with its own set of problems, I feel that students need to learn appropriate use of their devices somewhere as they are not learning it at home.  So although I think we should open our doors to the use of student devices, I think it's very important that there be guidelines as to when students are allowed to use them and when they are not.  Alberta Education Guideline for BYOD ,

 5 Pros and Cons for BYOD

As for using technology to provide students in developing countries with educational materials, I think that we should support organizations that advocate for those who want to improve their circumstances.  As our world becomes more global thinking, it is important that people be literate and have access to information so they can make informed decisions and be good global citizens. It is also important that we maintain educational standards here in British Columbia, advocate for public education and educate our own students to be globally aware. 

An article by the World Literacy Foundation:  The Economic and Social Cost of Illiteracy

Sources:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Cow_Power

http://www.securedgenetworks.com/strategy-blog/20-Pros-and-Cons-of-implementing-BYOD-in-schools

 http://www.worldliteracyfoundation.org/The_Economic_&_Social_Cost_of_Illiteracy.pdf

 http://education.alberta.ca/media/6749210/byod%20guide%20revised%202012-09-05.pdf

 http://blog.tophat.com/5-pros-and-cons-of-byod-in-education/

 http://en.flossmanuals.net/class-acts/_all/_booki/class-acts/static/Waveplace-haiti_kids-en.jpg

 http://www.globaleducationmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Screen-Shot-2012-06-08-at-7.58.37-PM-e13391970188182.png

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NMWIF16JOk

 http://www.worldliteracyfoundation.org/

 http://www.olpccanada.com/

 http://www.canadianfeedthechildren.ca/what/education

http://blogs.cisco.com/wp-content/uploads/pic.jpg

 https://growingupwell.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/back-to-to-school-cartoon-twitter1-598x4901.jpg

Showing Leadership in the Library

 

This is my second year as a Teacher-Librarian.  I spent much of my first year learning where everything was, cleaning the place up, improving the fiction collection and getting to know the students. This year we have moved over to a new computer system and I have the opportunity to be more of a leader within the school in this regard. In particular, I have made an effort to use the new technology with the Science 8 class I teach and then share what I have learned with anyone who will listen.

  People won’t listen and learn from you if they don’t first respect you.  As a new member of a well-established staff, I have looked for ways to get to know and help the members of my staff.  I have gone out of my way to take on jobs that help others in the school; one of the responsibilities I have taken on is that of the Pro D Rep.


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Although the job I initially volunteered to do was to handle the Pro D money, I quickly became the go-to person for what was going to happen on Pro D days.  So far, my staff seems very receptive to my approach which encourages teachers to form small inquiry groups based on their professional development needs or interests.  In my role as Teacher-Librarian, I would like to get involved with a few of these inquiry groups and to help them find any resources they need to further their professional development.

One such group in my school is a book club that was formed to discuss current research in education.  The group includes individuals teaching different subject areas and each person has chosen their own book to read and discuss with the others.  From this group I have gathered some good titles for the Professional section of our library.  Books by David A Sousa (How the Brain Learns Mathematics) and Kelly Gallagher (Reading Reason) came highly recommended by this inquiry group. I have also requested that the books be donated to the school library once they are finished with them and if they feel like sharing them.

I found quite a few resources devoted to the topic of how Teacher-Librarians can engage teachers for collaborative inquiry on use of ICT in the classroom.  One useful research paper titled “Collaborative Inquiry” was written by a group of Teacher-Librarians in Windsor, Ontario. In this research paper,

 

“fifteen teacher librarians from fourteen schools, along with classroom teachers at each of those schools engaged in collaborative inquiry to learn ways to improve their practice and student achievement.  Projects addressed current educational issues such as technology implementation, student reading engagement and attitudes, parental engagement and how teacher librarians provide support to classroom teachers.” Collaborative Inquiry
 

This year, what I would like to do to support teachers in their ICT professional development would be to start the process described in the “Collaborative Inquiry” research paper. The first step would be to give the teachers a survey to establish their comfort level in performing a list of ICT tasks and then determining which teachers would be open to using collaboration to further their learning in this area.  We could also form small inquiry groups based on these tasks and use the results of the survey to focus our future school based professional development.

School Libraries Matter: The Changing Role of the School Librarian
 

I also came across a Pinterest site titled “Teacher Librarian Resources” which highlights many of the hot topics in ICT education such as “7 Ways to Teach Digital Literacy Skills” (ipadeducators.ning.com) and “15 Lesson Plans for Making Students Better Online Researchers”(edudemic.com).

Pinterest - Teacher Librarian Resources

Lastly, although the internet has endless resources on these topics, I would like to make use of the more experienced high school Teacher-Librarians in my school district.  Most of my colleagues in the library have been doing the job for at least twelve years and have favourite lessons they do with classes and teachers they collaborate with.  Their wealth of experience should not go untapped.

Fart Research - Highly Effective School Librarians Cultivate 21st Century Learners  

 

Every Day is a ProD Day

I'd like to think that one of my positive traits, with regard to my job as an educator, is that I genuinely like to learn.  I take vicarious pleasure in being part of the learning process with students, but beyond that, I enjoy the learning process for my own means as well.  So when it comes to professional development, I'm always quite happy to jump at opportunities to better myself. 

Our district has made available a number of courses and organized inquiry groups to support their technology roll-out, and I have been a part of a few of these, including a Moodle/Blended Learning inquiry group (Moodle and Inquiry ) and a variety of informal tutorial efforts, both in the role of a student and as a facilitator.

Having someone within the school setting looking to develop similar technological skills and programs is particularly useful.  I've already cultivated one or two relationships of this sort, and you definitely spur each other on and magnify the learning.  Maintaining an open, receptive and opportunistic attitude is vital to seeing these opportunities, and I will continue to look for ways to make the library a hub for not just for students, but for teachers as well.  I found an article called Collaboration Generation: Teaching and Learning for a New Age collaboration generation  (edutopia.com)  which discusses how some teachers are collaborating in innovative ways. 

Additionally, in terms of a teacher's professional development, it shouldn't be dismissed that one might look to the students themselves.  By this, I mean that students are in many respects

at the forefront of technological advancements, and the best among them can reverse the teacher-student role and provide real means of professional development.  For instance, IBM representatives are directing the implementation of the new technology in our schools, but students have already discovered flaws in their security systems.  Happily, these are good students, and they've already let me know, and in the process I certainly learned something new, as did the representatives of IBM!

Courses like these are particularly useful for my learning style in that they expose me to new things which I then pursue on my own.  For instance, I have discussed on an earlier blog my interest in the flipped classroom, and Screenr would be a useful tool for teaching remotely.  Specifically, in my Science 8 class, with an upcoming unit, I intend to summarize the lesson with Screenr and give students the opportunity to use it as review.  screenr

 

Additionally, I've come across an interesting site which seems geared towards self-directed professional development.  DIY Professional Development: A Resource Roundup DIY Pro-D is on Edutopia's site, and includes some great links which can be used to "build your network and learn new skills on your own." 

Sources:
vsta.ca
http://www.eclass4learning.com 
tamarackcci.ca
multimedialearning.com
acronymsandslang.com
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to+use+screenr 
edutopia.com

Helping Kids Who Can't Read Good

As a teacher-librarian, my first priority was to foster a reading culture in my school library.   I have focused a lot of  energy into promoting books by:

• Setting up book displays – such as “Good Reads”, “New Books “and “Featured  Books”  

• Acquiring couches for students to read on

• Reading books from our collection so I can discuss them with students

• Knowing our collection so I can recommend books to students

• Asking  students to request books they would like to have added to the collection

• Providing high interest lower level books for reluctant readers and ESL students

For other great suggestions, I checked out a website called Te@ch Thought and perused the article “25 Ways a School Can Promote Literacy and Independent Reading.” 25 Ways A School Can Promote Literacy 

Compared with the elementary level, reading incentive programs at the high school level dry up considerably.  Elementary schools have book fairs, local companies such as Natures' Fare and Dominoes Pizza provide reading incentives by offering prizes for students meeting reading goals, and there is a competitive annual district wide battle of the books. This got me thinking about how I can help students make connections to others  in the school and the community that would  encourage students to read.  I would also like to promote  different genres of books and have students try reading different types of books.  Some of the ideas that I would like to explore are:

1.  Starting a book club where students can make connections with each other and share their love of reading.  I found a number of websites that include tips on starting your own book club and possible books to use for the club.  

Setting up a book club       Popular High School Book Club Books
 

2.  Starting a "Battle of the  Books"  for high school students in our area.  I found a newspaper article describing how this is actually happening at a school in Montreal.   There are many American websites that are informative on this topic.  They give a step by step description on how to set up your own "Battle of the Books."  This would be a great joint venture with our local  library.
 

 Newspaper article about high school battle of the books

Iowa high school Battle of the Books

America's Battle of the Books

Oregon Battle of the Books - Book Choices

3. Making connections with local businesses or request PAC money to run reading contests or to provide reading incentives.   This could be connected with the "Battle of the Books" idea.  Asking local businesses to provide prizes or prize money would help to connect to the community and to forge relationships based on their love of reading. 

Publishing Perspective Article on Funny Raps about Reading Books

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