FCIS- Annual Conference

If you are from outside of Florida, or you are not aware of our statelyacronym,  the Florida Council fo Independent Schools ( FCIS) met this week to hold their annual conference in Orlando.  Educators from independent schools across the state met  to discuss issues facing  education in private insitutions…funding,  technology advancements,  curriculum development etc.

I considered myself to be very fortunate to attend this year.  In a year of financial belt-tightening, funds  for many activities are limited.  Many thank yous to Mrs. Pullen, my Head of School, Mrs. Ann Wolcott our Professional Development  co-ordinator for allowing me to attend  this year.

An early morning drive with  my two   colleagues got us to the  Orlando conference site at 7.30am.  Mrs. Ewert and Mrs. Nixon were set to present  a workshop Smile and Breath! Yoga Based Activities for the K-8 Classroom during the 10.25 am session.   I was  able to duck into  a  workshop related to blogging  as an educational tool.   Blogging is an obvious interest of mine.  From there , I was able to sit in on Web 2.0 Tools for Teaching to learn more about  web 2.0 applications and who they can enhance my teachings.Varios sites  of interest, used by our neighbours at Out of Doors Academy were discussed.   And finally, the reason for my conference attendance , was to  learn more about serving on an FCIS accreditation team.   This session highlighted the responsibilities of accreditation team members when  carrying out  a visit . ( Each year,  FCIS schools  must prepare for an accreditation visit of their peers to measure their successes and   list ways in which schools can be more efficient in  their mission to educate their student population.)

Above all else, it is an excellent opportunity to meet with other educators , from local independent schools to share ideas and commiserate on what works well and what needs to be tweaked.  A useful day of professional development  was had by all.

 

@SantaClaus Is Not Using Twitter Lists

Twitter, a current fashionable social networking tool allows  mebers to publish current posts of their activites .   Many Twitter users are  embraing “Twitter Lists,” a feature which allows you to organize Twitter users into groups and share that list with others.

But apparently the news hasn’t gotten all the way to the North Pole; Twitter user @SantaClaus has yet to create a “Naughty” or “Nice” list, which makes you wonder whether Saint Nick’s holiday operation is really embracing technology at the speed of Elf or if Santa Claus is merely dabbling with Twitter because it’s considered the  fashionable thing to do.

Even apart from the obvious benefit it would provide to Father Christmas in organizing information and having, at a glance, a list of behaviorally-organized names and profile photos, I think Twitter users would benefit greatly from knowing where they stand, in regards to naughtiness/niceness. The microblogging social network, where the jolly, rotund gift-giver apparently spends a significant chunk of time, would be a very efficient place to convey that information.

I would hope that Santa would take this not a mean-spirited criticism, but as a gentle, but firm nudge in the black patent belt to embrace change before change leaves him behind. I would hate to be the first person on Papa Noel’s “Naughty” Twitter list.

Update, 11 a.m, Nov. 3: The @SantaClaus Twitter account has been updated to include “Nice” and “Naughty” lists, but apparently the move was made under duress. In two posts this morning, the North Pole resident wrote, “Everyone is making a big deal over the fact I do not post a Twitter list for my naughty and nice lists. Do YOU want all to know if YOU are on the Naughty list? It is not anyones (sic) business except for me which list you are on. Does everyone REALLY want that published to all?” Perhaps I’m being oversensitive, but this does not strike me as jolly.

As of this writing, only @MrsSantaClaus is listed on the “Nice” list and no one has yet been added to the “Naughty” list.

as cited  from http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/santaclaus_custom.JPGhttp://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2009/11/santaclaus_is_not_using_twitte.html?sc=fb&cc=fp, November 3, 2009 By Omar L. Gallaga, of NPR

 

Falcons creating History Heard

Web site provides 1st-hand history interviews

Dr Robert Kahn who is considered a co-creator of the Internet

Imagine hearing Sgt. Sammy Davis talk about being the real Forrest Gump and winning a Medal of Honor.

Or how about listening to Drs. Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn talk about how they created the Internet?

“First-person accounts of history are impossible to come by unless you meet the person,” says Kathleen Addison, 17, of Bradenton.

So she and her 15-year-old sister Amy created History Heard — a Web site to preserve peoples’ stories and to make researching history projects for students more fun.

History Heard is the single largest attempt to chronicle modern American History ever undertaken. There are a few projects which have tackled different, much more limited, pieces of the process but History Heard is the first to try the “big picture”. Here’s a link to the site; www.historyheard.com

Mrs. Juanita Eaton with Addison sisters

The goal is to create an elaborate “tapestry” of video interviews with newsmakers who were first person witnesses to some aspect of modern American history.  Rather than read an account written by someone removed from the event, History Heard offers students a video account of what happened in the words of the people who were actually present.

The unique aspect of History Heard is that it is designed to be entirely managed by students in high school and middle school.  As of October 2009, our first group of interviews have been viewed more than 4,300 times!

Carl Misch, a WWII veteran with Addison sisters

So far, the sisters have interviewed 22 people, including some they went to see in Washington, D.C. They are choosing people who have made an impact in history. Amy’s favorite interview in Washington was Juanita Eaton, the widow of a World War II Tuskegee airman pilot.

“She talked about being in an African-American military family and wife of a military general,” Amy said.

Sgt. Davis is one upcoming interview Kathleen is looking forward to. Another is Bill Reinert, who invented the Toyota Prius. She wants to know his thoughts about how the vehicle has had such an impact on the transportation industry.

Because the girls want to continue building their library, their site allows students to add their own interviews.

Dr Eugenie Clark, “The Shark Lady” and founder of Mote Marine

The girls should be commeneded  for creating the site because it wasn’t an assigned school project.

They created it during their spare time.
As  inspired by  recent article  in the Bradenton Herald,Posted on Thu, Oct. 08, 2009 http://www.bradenton.com/news/local/v-print/story/1762863.html

 

Socialnomics…revolutionising our mode of communication

Is social media a fad? Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?   Welcome to the World of Socialnomics…..rethinking the way we as humans  communicate…..

 

Social Media for Online Learning

A recent article by Ruth Raynard,  Beyond Social Networking: Building Toward Learning Communities highlights  the ability for social media and social networks enhance online learning , geared towards students with a highly developed skills set  in the online arena.

My discussion here… introduces the idea that social networking is only the beginning of a longer and more complex process of socially constructed learning and ultimately collaboration and knowledge building. That is, if educators only integrate the ability of students to connect and socialize, deeper points of learning will be missed. (emphasis mine)

How can we improve learning spaces for our students by employing the best  of online collaboration?  By loosely modeling current ( and very  traditional) classroom structures in an  online  format ( such as an email listserve) ignores  many  benefits of learning in an online environment. Raynard’ article  supports  resources sharing between students:

While in more traditional learning environments much of this must be orchestrated and planned by the instructor and organized through the grouping and pairing of students, when using a social networking tool this level of connection can happen immediately.

Using social media to augment  collaborative learning  does require careful monitoring and guidance  by the instructor/teacher.  This guidance , as Raynard suggests,  will keep a course’s blog or wiki space from jumping the rails and becoming  a depository of  e-junk.   Also, the instructor must foster an e-environment  which promotes a student’s comfort  to  share their ideas publicly within the group.  This learner autonomy’ exists in all learning  environments,  including online.   In a  related article,  The 4Cs Social Media Framework, breaks down the levels of collaboration and community building that are standard  in many social media sources. The third C is community, or “the idea that social media facilitates sustained collaboration around a shared idea, over time and often across space.”  Similar to a successful online classroom? I wonder…….What is currently  missing in the professional writings  about social networking and online learning is a need to reevaluate the context of learning theory and education psychology to support  and/or deny the types of collaborative creation that occurs via social media tools.  How does this learning benefit students?  Compared to a more  traditional style of learning or as preferable to a more traditional online classroom, as we currently know  it to be.

citation from  D. Hooker http://blog.danielhooker.com,  who is an insightful librarian

 

Social media to use in libraries and classrooms

Web 2.0 tools, or more commonly know as social media can increase  the quality of library/information media  teachings.  I am approaching this article  as a means to better deliver information  during reference questions in a library setting, though  these tools do have an application within the classroom setting.  The intention  of this blog is to better  illustrate the possibilities to our  classroom teachers.  Faculty members throughout the country are  quickly  recognising the  use of these tools to convey information and enhance our students’   understanding of the curriculum being taught.

Below is a list of social media elements  which better explain how we can incorporate these tools in our libraries ( and for teachers in the classrooms) to better deliver information to our students.

1. Promoting Content

Social media tools bring traffic, and they connect with users who aren’t physically able or necessarily willing to come into the library. We already do a lot of passive web advertising on library home pages, and of course some form of virtual reference services is available almost everywhere. We also talk a lot in library school about reaching users, but so often social media doesn’t even make the discussion–being considered by so many as trivial or merely concerned with the banal updates of someone eating a sandwich. But I leave it to you to discern the difference:

Not helpful. But:

If you can cut the noise and spend the time constructing a useful and relevant network of users with whom to share your library’s content (and, as is the case here, reviews of your library’s work), the benefit to your users is palpable. It’s time to start discussing how to effectively using social media, instead of assuming everyone on Twitter has nothing more to offer than THE_REAL_SHAQ.

2. Interviewing

The concept of the journalist’s interview perhaps translates most directly to librarianship into the reference transaction. We are already here as I mentioned briefly above. Services like Ask a Librarian ( a project of the Florida Electronic Library), here in Florida, exist all over North America and being knowledgeable about the social media tools that make a service like that possible is absolutely necessary. Meebo is common and easy enough to figure out on one’s own, perhaps, but what about the many other channels through which reference could take place? Skype, for instance? If one of the challenges of the virtual reference interview is missing out on non-verbal cues from patrons, then what is stopping the library from implementing webcam reference? A unique, personal touch is always good for business.

3. News Gathering and Research

Hello. This seems like a no-brainer, but the challenge I always hear is how can a social media tool like Twitter or Delicious possibly be good for real research? The key to leveraging social media for quality information retrieval is identifying a network of positive and valuable information sharers, not one filled with the noise and minutiae of everyday life. For me, Twitter can be just as powerful an information gathering tool as the most robust RSS feed, but it requires maintenance and diligence to find the right people to listen to. The point is this: diligent and educated use of social media, just as in proprietary database research, can yield fruitful and valuable results.

4. Crowdsourcing

Gaining your users’ perspectives on your initiative can often make or break the success of that program in your library. Social media tools provide unprecedented ways to interact with a large user base with very little effort. Once you have established an online community, be it on Facebook or Twitter or Ning or wherever else your users are, it is not only useful to you, but fun and engaging for them, to be included in the programming process.

5. Publishing with Social Tools

Publishing in the library community is perhaps most often encountered in the academic library community, but this is an applicable point to the field in general as well. As open access publishing gains steam, and the free availability of quality, peer-reviewed articles grows, it will become increasingly important to share these sources via social media, if only to offset that signal-to-noise ratio that we so often lament in our Twitter community. Pushing your openly accessible research out through social media only provides further benefit to those who are following your web presence.

6. Blog and Website Integration

So often I come across library websites that have blogs and even Twitter feeds, but don’t integrate the content into the page thereby forcing users to add another click to see the content. Couple that with yet another two or three to subscribe to the RSS, and we are looking at several unnecessary steps between your patrons and your live content. Learning to integrate social or syndicated content into websites is extremely valuable and there are a number of free tools out there, like feed2js, that will help you to do exactly that. Often times, social media services themselves will even offer pre-made widgets (Facebook and Twitter both do this, for example) that you can place on your home page.

7. Building Community and Rich Content

For me, this point goes beyond the simple signal-to-noise ratio. Community has long been an essential part of the library’s function, and it only follows that your library should be doing everything it can to encourage the growth of its user base, both physical and virtual. And rich content? By providing social media tools and the opportunity for your users to provide commentary and feedback on library programming and services–especially if those comments are acknowledged or even acted upon–is an easy and unbelievably effective way to increase appreciation and support for your organization.

8. Personal Brand

The ability to create an online identity for anything, be it for yourself or your library, provides a way for your users to easily identify and connect with you. Personalization of your web presence is a great thing, and the increased inclusivity it brings is a great boon to prospective employee or library setting.

9. Ethics

There comes a point at which we all have to decide whether we are broadcasting our personal brand, or our professional one, and it is of the utmost importance to encourage all users to access library services, not just those who perceive that they have similar facebook interests.

Encouraging social media use in the library can often feel like pulling teeth because of the intensity of privacy concerns that are at the forefront of many librarian’s thoughts. I represent myself and can be proud of the things that I support on facebook (like Alec Baldwin’s genius on 30 Rock), but I am also aware of what message this sends, and how it might need to change if this were a professional or organizational profile. This is yet another reason why educating  students on responsible and effective social media use is so important. Without an understanding of how to separate personal and professional or public and private identities online, it is far too easy to end up excluding or alienating users that normally could have found a home in your library’s online community. Social media is too exposed, and too exposing, to ignore in our education any longer.

10. Experiment, Experiment, Experiment

This final point is something that I feel is grossly underlooked in our education as librarians today. There are a number of people who are experimenting with social media, but not necessarily due to much encouragement from employers, faculty or practicing librarians. Personal interest can indeed take you far in the world of free social media tools, but having the go-ahead from management can be appreciated.

So: the tools are out there and so are our future users, but it is time to talk about them, together, meaningfully to increase our working knowledge and be able finally to start understanding the benefits of social media in the fields of libraries and education.

as found on http://blog.danielhooker.com/2009/06/23/10-ways-library-schools-should-be-teaching-social-media/

Thank you D. Hooker for your inspiring content.