The WebFooted Booklady

A Twitter Story

2011-01-21T09:06:00.000-08:00

A request is posted:

An answer is found:

And this is why I know tools like the iPhone have a place in classrooms; why I believe in teaching kids processes and skills, not focusing on content cramming is so important. I love technology!

The Traveler Returns

2011-01-14T09:25:00.000-08:00

It is all a bit overwhelming trying to jump back into the world of digital education when one's mind has been focused on daily survival in foreign lands, things like not getting run over in streets crowded with cars, trucks, scooters, buses, tuk-tuks, songthaews, vendors, dogs and cats.

My mailbox and reader will take the resources of a team of archaeologists to dig through.

Looking forward to exploring others' blog posts with new ideas like Tech & Learnings Top 25 sites for 2010. Note: their list is not hyperlinked so may take some time to browse but there are many new sites I've not explored before.

Image taken by me at The Elephant Nature Park, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bookminder/5321587143/in/set-72157625601445658/

Some rights reserved.

Hello from the ROK

2010-12-02T15:02:00.000-08:00

They say learning keeps you young. I've been on a steep learning curve these past two days as I left family at home to travel to Korea and visit my daughter. There's a lot to take in when you don't read or speak the language. Fortunately I have discovered two things, many Koreans speak English and they are all overwhelmingly considerate and helpful. The biggest challenge so far has been trying to figure out how to turn on the lights in the hotel room. Tip to travelers, the keycard has to be in the little slot.

Korean Air was a delight to travel with. The flight crew were first rate. This morning I'm off to explore a little on my own before joining my daughter. Here's to learning and happy trails. Oh yes, this post was by way of letting you know I won't be posting any of my usual tips on tech tools or educational ideas until the new year.

Blogging First Steps

2010-11-20T13:45:00.000-08:00

Photo credit: xenia from morguefile.com

Thinking about starting your own blog? I'll be doing an Elluminate session on Monday Nov. 22 at 8:15 PST to have an informal discussion around the benefits of blogging for teachers and their students. Along with others from the LAN44 Innovative Learning Team I'll share resources, give some getting started tips and sources of inspiration. Join us in elluminate.lan44.ca.

Resources used in this session will be posted on the LAN44 blog following the session along with a link to the archived session.

More QR Ideas

2010-11-13T08:28:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

Another source of QR code use information is The Active Class: http://theactiveclass.com/?s=QR

Embracing Cell Phones Elluminate Session

2010-11-12T09:58:00.000-08:00

Still feeling uncomfortable with mobile technology in the classroom? This might be a great place to learn more about using it successfully. Catch it live or at your leisure in the archive at Classroom 2.0 LIVE.

The Innovative Educator: The Innovative Educator Discusses How to Go from Banning to Embracing Cell Phones Live! on Classroom 2.0 - Saturday, November 13th

And while you're there have a look at the other fabulous archived sessions. You'll find a wide range of topics in a variety of subject areas.

Alerts = Connections to Great People and Resources

2010-11-11T07:02:00.000-08:00

Some time ago I set up alerts through Google that feed into my RSS reader. This service searches for mentions of The Web-Footed Booklady and bookminder online. Most of the alerts that filter through are for mentions I already know about such as Twitter comments but occasionally an alert will lead me to a new contact or some great resources.

Today an alert led me to @auntytech 's delicious page because she had bookmarked my post from yesterday. Browsing through her other bookmarks I came across some useful QR code resources I didn't know about. Like the 1 Tool at a Time: Build Your Own Toolbelt wiki which just happened to have an archived Elluminate webinar on using QR Codes along with the Slideshare used in the presentation and a list of links to other resources. Thanks, Donna!

Splash!

2010-11-09T12:17:00.000-08:00

A URL shortening service I've been using for some time just got better. When using a projector/screen to show sites to groups of students or teachers you inevitably come across some with long URLs. Some people will want to copy them down and the presentation stalls while you wait for them to do this.

This is where SplashURL comes in handy. Simply install the bookmarklet on your toolbar. When you want to shorten a URL for easy copying click on the bookmarklet. You'll get a short URL in large font like this, a good trick for quick URL shortening in the middle of a presentation.

Today when I used it I discovered that SplashURL also creates QR codes. Here's the one for a page of resources I created:

So how might QR codes be used in the library? My friend @bryanhughes is going to have students write book reviews, attach a QR code and then insert them into the corresponding books in the library. Any student with a smart phone can scan the code and read reviews created by peers.

Or you could use QR codes on posters around the school to advertise new books or special library events. Miguel Guhlin (@mguhlin) has published a great list with further suggestions on his blog. Has anyone out there used QR codes in your library or to promote reading? Do you have some other creative ideas? Please leave a comment.

Comparing 20th and 21st Century Educational Paradigms | Educational Origami

2010-11-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

Comparing 20th and 21st Century Educational Paradigms | Educational Origami

Thanks to Dave Truss @datruss for sharing this excellent chart in Google Reader. Think about how it could spark discussions around moving classrooms towards more collaborative, process focused, learner-centric environments.

YouTube - Academic Excellence in 140 Characters

2010-11-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

This YouTube video talks about an interesting study done recently to examine how using Twitter in class might benefit students. The results are encouraging.

YouTube - Academic Excellence in 140 Characters
Social Media in Higher Education Blog

A Sharing Community

2010-10-12T05:05:00.000-07:00

You never know when your small idea will ignite a fire
in the mind of another.

I get an interesting reaction from people who know that I've retired but am still involved in education and the online education community. "Why are you doing this?" they say, "You're supposed to be retired!"
So why am I doing this?

I think because interacting in an online education community has become such a passion for me. It's a way to keep on learning, interact with an intelligent and interesting community and share or help out where I can. People choose to give back to their communities in a variety of ways through volunteering their time and sharing their resources. For me, that community resides online.

Which brings me to the K12 Online Conference keynote presented by Dean Shareski. Dean makes the point that all teachers have a moral imperative to share and I agree. Why not share his presentation with your colleagues? The K12 Online schedule is posted here. I'm always amazed at the depth and breadth of these offerings, there really is something for everyone.

Image used under a creative commons licence by furiousgeorge81 - Thanks for sharing, George!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/furiousgeorge81/177926979/sizes/m/

TweetUp

2010-10-02T11:57:00.000-07:00

Meeting with people you've only interacted with on Twitter takes conversations to a whole new level. Last night I took part in a Vancouver area educators Tweet-Up along with a couple of colleagues and four others. We had an established comfort level to build on, we knew each other's interests in education and technology and some of the barriers we deal with on a daily basis.

As we enjoyed some refreshments and good pub food we shared ideas, resources, philosophies and discussed the possibilities for future meetings and joint projects. It was a great evening of laughter and some undirected Friday night Pro D. Thanks @davidwees for organizing this event.

Resources I bookmarked this week:

Guest blogger Melissa Smith on Differentiated Professional Development on Wes Fryer's blog offer's some great online suggestions for Pro D. opportunities.

Google Docs tip sheet and resource guide. More Google Docs resources can be found in Delicious.

Free easy and useful creation tools from New York Times The Learning Network.

Where Good Ideas Come From a 4 minute video that would be useful for starting conversations around teaching methods and classroom structure.

The Return of the Blogger

2010-09-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

The view from my new office.

This morning a lovely tweet came my way from someone who reads this blog and had noticed that I hadn't posted in over a month. Thanks @bookchica!

I am indeed alive and well but have been enjoying the first few months of retirement. It seems this is the time in your life when you wonder how you ever found time to work. I'm exploring the balance between time for personal projects, family and doing some contract work in various education related ways.

It's interesting to see how stepping out of the system has allowed me to clarify my own thoughts around education. I am more convinced than ever that the old sage on the stage model of teaching has to go! Having said that, I know it would have made me very uncomfortable as a beginning teacher. I needed those texts, worksheets and the structure to shore me up.

This morning I watched "Where Good Ideas Come From and thought that classrooms could be re-defined as spaces for ideas to mingle, share and create new forms. This would require teachers who were confident, not afraid of taking risks, and learners in their own right. It's hard for some to let go the reins or even hold them more loosely and turn the learning over to their students.

So the blogger is back. For how long or in what capacity, time will tell. There are just so many other interesting things vying for my attention. Take for instance a simple walk through the park last week which turned into a prolonged stop to watch a film crew shooting a scene for an upcoming TV show featuring a live cougar. Or my current planning for a mother/daughter trip to Thailand for two weeks.

And if you enjoyed reading this post please thank Tara!

Unlearning Cont.

2010-08-25T08:39:00.000-07:00

Following on the Unlearning post I came across this list of 10 Things Teachers Should Unlearn on the What Ed Said blog. I wholeheartedly agree with most of the items on this list but am perplexed by the third one.

3. Teachers are responsible for learning.

I think I understand what this question is getting at, that students should be responsible for their own learning. Yes, students are more apt to engage and learn when they take ownership but I think teachers need to be there as coaches, mentors and learners in their own right.

Changes like these will not come easily for most. We are hard wired to impart knowledge, to be the expert. That's why most of us became teachers. Letting students take over the learning requires that we take a big step back while still keeping our hands on the helm. Thinking back about colleagues whose students have thrived and been universally successful, two individuals stand out above the rest. Both taught in an atmosphere of controlled chaos. The walls of their classrooms were covered with student made work and displays. Walking into their classrooms was like entering a workshop where creativity and individualism reigned. Yes, they covered the curriculum but they did so by taking many little side roads that interested them and their students along the way.

The blog post is worthwhile reading as the author feels the ideas are outdated and asks readers to comment, update or revise the list.

Unlearning

2010-08-21T10:28:00.000-07:00

This post, Unlearning Teaching, from Will Richardson (@willrich45) got me thinking this morning. It talks about teachers as co-learners and co-creators with their students. It talks about the fact that teachers are no longer central to networked student learning, a fact that should make us all more than a little nervous. Unless of course we learn to change with the times.

I think this would be a valuable way to re-purpose staff meetings. I can remember few staff meetings, or professional development sessions, where the focus was on ways to change our basic practice. Most were focused on news updates, or perhaps an examination of the current bug bear: students late to class, homework not being done, chronic absentees or the new report card software. I always felt as if we were on a merry-go-round, same issues, same suggestions for improvement.

But what if principals took an approach that explored the rich opportunities that networked learning affords? If this exploration was done together, as a staff, co-learning, there could be many benefits. Hesitant teachers would feel supported, successes and failures could be celebrated as part of the learning curve. Those early adopters on staff could act as mentors.

In a world where information is easily found and cheap what do we as educators really have to offer our students? Maybe that might be a good focus for a start-of-the-year staff meeting.

What do we have to offer that's of value to students that they can't find elsewhere?
How do we foster skills in our students that their future employers will find useful? What are those skills?
As a staff how will we examine what teaching as a guide and mentor might look like?

From Twitter this Week

2010-08-20T04:12:00.000-07:00

Facebook is at it again assuming everyone will want to have Places running on their accounts. Phil Bradley posts on how to change your settings to protect your privacy.

Social Media Competencies for Librarians Two specific lists of the basic knowledge and skills teachers and librarians should have and be able to engage their students in around using social media in the classroom.

VoiceThread Digital Library a database of articles about successful VoiceThread projects.

The Networked Learner

2010-08-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

A tweet from @courosa got me thinking about the power of networked learning and this is the result. A person with a well-tuned PLN has a far greater chance of coming up with thoughtful solutions because their questions can reach a wider audience. For a more readable image go to the website.

The diagram was created using Gliffy, a simple-to-use diagramming app. Unfortunately this is not a free app. however they do allow you to create 5 diagrams using a trial account.

iPost about iPad Pilots

2010-08-16T12:35:00.000-07:00

Image used under a creative commons license from Kominyetska
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kominyetska/4524717824/sizes/m/

Here are a few interesting blogs about school iPad projects happening around the world. I've included one that outlines a proposal as it was well thought out and may serve as a guide for others and another that serves as a question and answer forum. The list is saved in delicious and I'll be adding to it as I come across other interesting projects.

Fran Speirs Blog

iPad Pilot Project a wiki from Palm Beach School District with lots of resources and information.

iPad Trial @ Epson Primary School

My iPad Journey - This is the one that has the good proposal. I hope he's successful!

The one-to-one Newbie at the Digital Party

Expanding Teaching, Exploring Technology

iPad 4 Education - question and answer forum

iPad's Promise and How to Use it Now on the I Education Apps Review blog

Brandt Schneider is blogging about using iPads in music class.

A few Twitter Gems

2010-08-15T09:27:00.000-07:00

Iconscrabble: This tool is similar to Spell with Flickr but instead uses icons to spell the words you type in.

NewsCred: Create your own newspaper with topics you choose from papers around the world. Choose from world news, sports, entertainment, business, technology, politics. I can't see any way to embed your newspaper in a blog without going to the pay option but you can share it out using twitter or email. I think if you wanted to use this with a class you could tweet out the link to a class twitter account. You can add your own editorial comments. This would be a good place to write questions for discussion, prompts or observations. There are a range of options for adding in links, images, lists and other style options. Very easy to use. Once posted, editorials can be edited, deleted or unpublished. Comments may be added.

Search the Internet for guides on any topic of your choosing.

The GuideDB searches for pdf and other eguides, ebooks, manuals etc. The search also returns a list of related guides. Finds guides to everything, seriously, I even did a search for 'zwieback' and got results.

Thanks for tweeting these goes to @shannonmiller and @Larryferlazzo!

A New Way to School - Discussion

2010-08-14T19:22:00.000-07:00

Thanks for challenging my thinking, Carl! In writing this reply I run the risk of plagiarizing as I have been reading so many ideas around how education might change in other's blogs or through online presentations. If I do so please forgive me/let me know if an idea was yours originally.

First I need to clarify. By 'senior administration' I mean those administrators we now have as trustees and school board or ministry officials, in other words the hierarchy that is already in place. Every teacher knows that students will live up to our expectations of them. Show them trust and respect and they will respond. When officials block and hamper permissive and informal networked learning they are showing their mistrust of teachers. In effect, telling teachers it's a scary world out there and we don't trust you to safely guide our young people through it. Unfortunately these decisions are often made by those who aren't teachers and are not taking the time to explore the merits of online networked learning for themselves. For them, it's simply easier to block than to put protocols in place and deal with the rare parental complaints.

So how do we 'train' teachers?

One way might be to model good practice. Among others, both Alec Couros (@courosa) and Dean Shareski (@shareski) make good use of social media tools in their pre-service teaching classes. They demonstrate the merits of social media as well as requiring students to participate by using blogs, twitter and other tools.

Another might be to guide teachers through a series of questions or problems based on scenarios using social media tools in the classroom. For example: With the world of knowledge at their fingertips through mobile devices how might you challenge your students to discover their passions while learning to be good communicators, collaborators and contributors? I know that's a mouthful but I hope you get the idea. As a teacher librarian I always pushed teachers who wanted to bring their classes to the library for research by asking them: What skills will your students need to be successful on this assignment? How will we accommodate individual interests or learning styles? How can we encourage students to collaborate? Is there a way to relate this to a more meaningful real world scenario. How can we allow students to demonstrate competency in a variety of ways? Who is working harder on this assignment, you or your students? How can we provide ongoing mentoring and assessment as opposed to waiting until the assignment is in to grade it?

We need to start honouring teachers who say, "I don't know." These are the ones who are willing to learn. If they can say that in teacher training or in the staffroom perhaps it will be easier to say it to their students, "I don't know. How can we find out? What ideas do you have to solve this problem? Let's try..."

Another random thought: I have heard that schools in Japan do not have government mandated universal tests because teachers simply refused to administer them. They still write exams on leaving high school but not at lower grade levels. If this is true it would free teachers up to teach to students' passions and engage them in activities that were meaningful and provided authentic, real world experiences. Oh course getting educators in North America to take such a stand is a whole other issue.

Who else has some ideas?

A New Way to School

2010-08-14T14:54:00.001-07:00

I'm excited about posting today for two reasons. One, I found that through my local library's web site I can access a wide variety of current and archived newspapers using PressDisplay. This service also allows me to post articles I wish to share directly into blogger. You'll see the result below. (This would be a useful feature for classroom blogs where teachers wish to engage students in current news.)

School to try streaming students in Grade 2
BY MISTY HARRIS
The Vancouver Sun
11 Aug 2010

Choosing an area of specialization is one of the biggest decisions of a student’s academic life. Not least when they’re entering Grade 2. A new program at a Calgary area elementary school will soon see children as young as seven placed in classes...read more...

The second reason is that this article follows on the heels of a question Carl Anderson posed in a previous post:

"So, my question is, how do we provide learning environments that are both permissive and instructive, environments that harness the power of informal learning the network provides but also the guidance our traditional system is supposed to give our students? "

This new school is an exciting concept that allows students to take more ownership of their own learning. I see it as a move away from the current lock-step system whose aim is to produce students with a rigidly focused skill set that stifles individuality in the name of producing a uniform workforce.

I think teachers who will thrive in this new kind of environment will have a passion for the subjects they teach and be able to pass that on to their students. They will be experts as well as learners and they will model effective learning for and with their students. They will understand that they don't need to know everything in order to help their students learn.

They will be fearless risk takers who also possess a good dose of common sense. They will understand that evaluation is not grading regurgitation but should assess each student's ability to take knowledge and skills and apply them in new situations, with new problems.

They will be good at collaboration and communication. They will be able to recognize innovation and uniqueness and support those students who are innovators and creators.

So part of the challenge lies in encouraging current teachers to change the way they do business and part in training and attracting new teachers with passion who love the idea of mentoring learners. A little trust and support at the senior administrative level would go a long way as well. I know there are many teachers and schools out there experimenting successfully with new models, let's hope the trend spreads.

The How and the Why of Teamwork

2010-08-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: matthew_hull from morguefile.com

A post on Twitter led me to a great little PDF titled 7 Things You Should Know About Assessing Online Team-Based Learning on the Educause site. While this article is aimed at post-secondary educators there are ideas worth considering at elementary and high school levels. Assigning group work seems to elicit two responses from students:

1. We never have time to meet face-to-face.
2. The marking is never fair because one or two people do all the work.

Perhaps teachers need to consider why it may be important to assign group tasks in the first place and then figure out the logistics of how such assignments could be made to work well. The article provides a number of suggestions. Involving the class in these two first steps might also make a difference in how students buy in to a project. I like the 'best case' scenario described at the beginning of the document because team members took the time to find out what skills each individual had that could be utilized in constructing their product. Do younger students know how to assess their existing skills and apply them to current assignments? How do we teach that? Some ideas might be to:

Brainstorm vocabulary that describes skills: good at writing/spelling, artist, speaker, loves interviewing people, likes keeping things in order.
Identify the tasks needed to complete the
assignment and match them to the skills list.
Have students choose from a list of skills or attributes or write their own. "On this project I would be good at .... recording, drawing, leading a team meeting, finding information".

The article goes on to say that the value of team work may not reside solely in the final product but in the steps leading to its creation. Are there useful tools for using formative assessment techniques on group projects? I like Google Docs for its "revision history" feature that allows students and teachers to see who has contributed, when and how often, and assess the merits of each contribution. The document itself gives a snapshot of the students' organizational abilities. Brainstorming ideas and reflections can take place within the document as well. VoiceThread is another option that allows students to make individual contributions to a group project.

What have you learned from doing group projects with students? I'd love to hear so please leave a comment.

Other useful resources:
Collaborating Rubric - Bloom's Digital Taxonomy
WSD's eToolBox - Formative Assessment
Tom Barrett's Marking Work in Google Docs

The iPad so far, so good.

2010-07-29T17:25:00.000-07:00

It's interesting to hear the response to the iPad from people outside the field of education, as in the CEO of a large financial institution who hasn't touch his computer since he got his hands on an iPad, for work, over a month ago.

Personally I found the switch from laptop to iPad an easy adjustment to make. Yes, it helps to know a few of the tricks and tips but that's true of any computer. You'll see some of those tips listed in previous posts. What I like best about it is the portability, combined with long battery life. I envision students finding it to be a perfect tool as they use it for:

- reference
- multiple elegantly displayed news sources
- a wide range of science and math applications
- many options for reading books and viewing videos
- productivity tools like Dropbox, SoundPaper, Audiotorium, Dragon Dictation, Instapaper
- blogging
- interacting on educational and social networks
- taking notes in classes and meetings using voice recording apps and typing
- sharing resources and collaborating

Perhaps the next generation of students will avoid chronic back problems brought on by lugging pounds/kilos of textbooks around in their backpacks. Teachers may engage students more easily by having them create their own online 'textbooks' of resources including videos and databases. And think of the possibilities for differentiated learning when every student is able to quickly find resources at their own reading levels.

I think the iPad can play a key role in the classroom, a classroom where the teacher works to ignite a passion for learning in students and acts as a guide and mentor in moving them along a learning continuum. One example of a teacher who embraces this kind of classroom environment is Shelly Blake-Plock.

Flipboard: Your personalized, social magazine - iPad44

2010-07-21T06:34:00.000-07:00

Playing with Flipboard, a personalized magazine for the iPad, this morning and it is one impressive app. Be sure to watch the introductory video and you can read more about it here:
Flipboard: Your personalized, social magazine - iPad44

It seems to be an overnight success as I started trying to log in to my Twitter account using Flipboard about 5 a.m. this morning and it took over an hour. Does it need it's own version of Fail Whale?

It was well worth the wait. Tweets with links automatically display the link content, no more clicking on links. You can favorite, retweet or share by email as well as replying to the tweet from within Flipboard. Flipboard displays a good chunk of the tweeted site and there's a button to click should you wish to see the complete page. The 'close' button takes you right back into Flipboard. Very slick!

Doctor Loopy's House of Fun

2010-07-20T19:53:00.000-07:00

A tweet today led me to this Glogster done by Doug Valentine for his school library. He also writes a blog at Doctor Loopy's House of Fun.

And can be found on Twitter @Doctorloopy
I love inspiring librarians who have so much to offer and share!

BlogPress PS

2010-07-19T11:41:00.001-07:00

Interestingly you cannot go back and edit once you have posted from BlogPress.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.

Another iPad app

2010-07-19T11:37:00.001-07:00

This is a trial using BlogPress on the iPad. It's configured to work with Blogger, MSN Live Spaces, WordPress, Movable Type, TypePad, Live Journal, Drupal and Joomla. When using BlogPress it will be helpful to have some HTML coding knowledge.

Part of the team.
Posting images is as simple as downloading them from the web to your iPad and then selecting using the camera icon. You can save the post as a draft or post directly to a blog.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Summer Project

2010-07-19T06:09:00.000-07:00

One of my summer projects is mentoring a pilot group of teachers exploring the potential of the iPad. It's fun to watch the excitement generated by using a mobile device but the bonus will be if they begin to see new ways of accessing information and modelling learning with their students.

In preparation I've been combing my PLN for mobile learning resources and ideas. Here are a few good ones:

Apptivities - learning activities using apps on mobile devices compiled by an ADE Summer Institute group.

Hottest Apps - another ADE Institute list

Digital Storytelling with the iPad

Presenting your Portfolio on the iPad

ISTE: iPad in Education

Learning Continuity - apps by discipline

iPad's Hidden Keyboard Functions video

@bryanhughes has set up a great introductory page with basic information, links to tutorials and guides and a list of 'starter' apps. for the group to use.

A couple of my own favourite free apps are SoundHound (for identifying music) and Open Culture (mobile access to educational audio and video collections) and this list of free reference apps.

For Socials teachers:

Seadragon - high resolution imagery

Louvre - art works, museum tour

France 24 - International news

HistoryMaps - historical maps

And for the 'Wow' factor, these two videos that demonstrate master artists using the iPad:

Finger Painting on the Apple iPad

lang lang playing Flight of the Bumblebee

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain (For more quotations on risk-taking check out the Awesome Sardine)

Photo credit: Lesley Edwards

Saying good-bye. Saying hello.

2010-07-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

The end of the school year always brings changes and new adventures. This year is a particularly significant one for me. Yesterday I handed back the keys to the library I had managed for the past 12 1/2 years. But while I will enjoy the pension checks rolling in I'm not quite ready to call myself retired.

I haven't finished learning and exploring, sharing and collaborating. While I'm not about to take up hang gliding or learn a foreign language I find the world of social media in education intriguing. My intention is to continue writing here as I learn new things or have worthwhile information to pass on. The summer may see a bit of a hiatus. I'm not sure if the focus of the blog will change a little, or expand to include new adventures. Hands up if you really want to hear about my upcoming trip to South Korea.

I have been blessed and overwhelmed by the number of greetings, good wishes and celebrations that helped me see out my final month of working for the school district. Everyone should have that experience! Thank you all.

I wish you a restorative, adventurous summer. I'll be back.
Let me know if you need a consultant. :)

Photo used under a creative commons license from bryanh
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bryanh/4736644811/sizes/z/in/set-72157624240068977/

A figment of your imagination?

2010-06-23T06:40:00.000-07:00

I love conversations that make me want to shout, "Hey, hold on just a minute!" My colleague Bryan Hughes (@bryanhughes) and I were discussing three blog posts we had read recently that pushed the way we think about district Pro-D delivery and the future of education in general:

Will Richardson - Yeah, You've got problems. So solve them.

Carl Anderson - The Real Disruptive Innovation

David Warlick - Zero Tolerance

Bryan agreed with Carl's thoughts and commented, "I provided little that the network couldn't - that speaks to my deficiencies, but also to the institutional barriers that our schools reinforce".

Wait a minute! I think these perceived institutional barriers are largely a figment of our imaginations, or perhaps a security blanket that keeps us from getting out there on the edge and changing our teaching practices. Do principals or school board administrators actually tell their teachers how to present lessons? Not in my experience. Teachers usually have a good deal more autonomy than they ever exercise. I do know of an instance where one innovative teacher was told by department colleagues that she could not use social media tools in her classroom because THEY weren't comfortable with that. Come on, seriously? I think they felt threatened and had no right to tell her how to teach.

What could you really do if you cast off your imaginary fetters and took the advice of those three sage educators whose posts I have linked to above. What obstacles lie in your way? Are they real or imagined?

Photo credit: kevinrosseel from morguefile.com

iPonder #2

2010-05-29T11:40:00.000-07:00

I've had the use of an iPad for several weeks now and wrote a post earlier on my initial impressions. I took it along to a conference I attended. It was certainly all I needed and my back will be eternally grateful that I wasn't toting my full computer bag.

A couple of tricks I've learned:

To copy a URL tap and hold in the address bar. This will bring up the keyboard. Ignore it and simply tap and hold again until the magnifying circle comes up. When you release your finger a pop-up will allow you to "select all". Choosing "select all" gives you the option to copy and then paste elsewhere.
When typing in most apps, to end a sentence just tap the space bar twice. A period will be inserted and the next word you type will automatically start with a capital letter.

The magazine reading experience is delightful with all the imbedded media and colours that pop off the page. Even the ads engaged me. Wired Reader is impressive. The current issue has a video trailer for the new Toy Story 3 movie imbedded on the cover. There are several ways to navigate the articles. Some pages have Touch buttons to move through a series of items. For longer articles you simply swipe up to reveal successive pages. I learned how Cheetos are made, fascinating, and I love the photo of quality control testers wearing hairnets, beard nets and earphone protection.

Navigating is as simple as tapping anywhere on the page to return to the cover or pull up an index menu. A slider along the bottom of the screen lets you advance or page back and shows you your progress.

One of the 'pay for' apps I'm trying out:

Audiotorium Take notes and record voice. There are 7 font choices and a range of font sizes which would be useful for younger students or vision impaired users. Notes can be arranged into three basic categories: my notes, work notes or school notes and you can add your own additional categories. Using the plus sign icon in the category menu lets you add subjects within categories, for instance adding 'English" under the School Notes category. To start taking notes, select a category and subject first, then hit the + sign located in the top right. Notes are saved automatically and stored chronologically.

If you are recording an interview or lecture you can drop bookmarks into the recording so that you

quickly return to those spots when replaying. You can also send your notes to yourself and others via email.

Here's what the developer has to say.

A Question

2010-05-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

How would you define your role as a teacher? Go ahead, jot down 5 things. Does the list include things like:

supporting students in learning to become good collaborators?
guiding students in the multiple ways to express themselves creatively and share their creations?
providing students with the tools to become good problem solvers, and I mean real-life challenges not the problems that start with, "If a train traveling x mph reaches it's destination..." ?
teaching students how to find and evaluate resources to advance their learning?
providing opportunities for students to analyze data to solve problems or create new entities?
developing a passion for learning in your students?

If you made a list of the activities you have your students engage in daily would those activities reflect your goals as a teacher? Would they reflect the any of the items in the list above? Look around your classroom. How many of the displays represent student work that was unique, creative, demonstrated collaboration or showed a student's passion for their work? And were those displays created by you or your students?

Now take a look at the work in your students' notebooks. Are they filled with plans, questions, ideas, resources or how-to ideas created by the student? Would that notebook be the hold-in-your-hand kind or is it virtual?

Now ask yourself this. When you pick up that next pile of marking do you want to be confronted with 25 pieces of regurgitated information or 25 creative and unique pieces of student work?

Looking for ideas: View Gary Stager's presentation "Ten Things to do with a Laptop".
Read Tom Whitby's post "Hunter, Gatherer, Teacher?"
Problem Based Learning Bookmarks

Image used under a creative commons license from HydrogenPops
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hp15/3513808712/sizes/m/

Ask a Student

2010-05-19T07:06:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: jdurham from morguefile.com

Recently I was asked to give a presentation to a group of faculty and staff at one of our local universities. They were interested in seeing a snapshot of teens and their use of technology. So I talked to students in my school and asked them some questions along the lines of:

How do you learn best?
What resources do you find most useful?
What is the teacher's role in education?
How do you think students should demonstrate their learning?
What role does technology play in your learning?

This is what they told me:

They like to find out things for themselves and they know that's how they really learn something.

They have discovered that YouTube is a gold mine of how-to video on almost any topic.

They love getting comments on their work from people other than their teacher. It expands their thinking.

They want their teachers to ignite a passion for learning, to guide them along the path of learning. It's the teachers role to get students excited about their subject matter, to make them want to learn about it.

They want their teachers to point them in the direction of good resources.

They want their teachers to be there as a fall back when they don't understand a concept.

They see the value in collaborating to produce more creative solutions to problems.

They love problem solving.

They need time to think.

They see technology as a way to better organize their learning and to express themselves more creatively.

I also talked to teachers who had let their students use technology to complete a project. They overwhelming reported that when technology was part of the picture the students were more engaged. But, more importantly it was "not the usual suspects" who turned in the most creative work. The students were excited about what they had created and had brought their friends to the classroom to see what they had done.

These comments came from projects where students were asked to respond to a problem by collecting or creating images, music or brief quotations and to include their own written or oral responses. The tools they used were ones like Animoto, movie making, Posterous, and Wordle.

What did I take away from this?

If I'm going to ask students questions in class, it needs to be more than just a way to find out who regurgitates information the best or used as a means of moving MY presentation forward. One student commented that the good questions required thought and that they often came up with a good answer long after the class was finished. If these questions were happening online students would be able to join the conversation when they were ready.

If I want students to be good problem solvers I need to think like an employer. Wouldn't I want my employees to know where to find reliable information and then collaborate in building useful resources for the work place? My job is to engage students in activities that teach them how to problem solve; think critically; find, assess and use resources; collaborate; create and express themselves effectively. (See Tony Wagner's book"The Global Achievement Gap" where he discusses the New World of Work and the Seven Survival Skills.)

If I want to really engage my students I need to listen to what they say works for them.

I need to show them my passion for my subject area.

Two of my student interviews were recorded and may be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhbV0GTve6k

This student is commenting on her experience as a Students Live Olympic Games 2010 Reporter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikPOoUZi7NM

Facebook Follies #2

2010-05-18T14:04:00.000-07:00

It seems by following the steps laid out in a link from my previous post that my Facebook account privacy is relatively secure. I hope. Reclaim Privacy has a bookmarklet that will test your settings once you have logged into your Facebook account. Here's the reading it took on my account:

The ratings on the left will change depending on how secure your settings are. The Reclaim Privacy site also links to current articles around the Facebook controversy.

If you are a school teacher you might want to read Will Richardson's post on some common sense ideas around teaching kids about Facebook: Teach. Facebook. Now It's a good post to pass on to other administrators, teachers and parents.

Facebook Follies

2010-05-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

The concerns over Facebook and Zuckerberg's take on handling other people's privacy is growing. Here is a list of resources that might be helpful as you try to figure out where you stand.

Facebook Privacy Settings: How to fix your profile in 2 minutes. (video)

A graphic illustration of what the new changes in Facebook mean to your privacy.

How to delete your Facebook account.

Facebook Removes User Profile Rights and Choices.

Danah Boyd's Rant: "Facebook and "radical transparency".

How to Quit Facebook Without Actually Quitting Facebook.

And if you decide that you're totally fed up you can join the 2072 (and growing) Committed Facebook Quitters on May 31st.

Image used under a creative commons license by: ndrwfgg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ndrwfgg/142788062/sizes/m/

May Musings

2010-05-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

I like a thin book because it will steady a table, a leather volume because it will strop a razor, and a heavy book because it can be thrown at a cat.

-Mark Twain

I can particularly identify with the last one on his list. Our cat wants to be up with the dawn chorus and then happily sleeps away the rest of the day. At least it gives me an extra hour or so that I might otherwise have slept away to check my traplines (twitter, reader, mail) and blog.

Some of the gems I came across this week:

If your looking for ideas Tom Barrett's Interesting Ways collection can accessed here.

Shelly Terrell has blogged What Does Your Hashtag Use Say About You? 16 Resources with some ideas for branding yourself on Twitter using hashtags.

The Science Fiction Writers of America group has announced winners of the 2010 Nebula Awards. Paolo Bacigalupi has taken the prize for best novel (The Windup Girl) and his latest Ship Breaker (YA) is getting great reviews. And Booklist Online has the Top 10 SF/Fantasy for Youth: 2010.

If you're looking for stunning images for current events, discussion starters or writing prompts The Telegraph's Earth Picture Galleries has some great photos.

I've started a list of tools to replace Etherpad, all good for real-time collaborative editing. Please leave a comment if you know of a good one I've missed.

Self Education: Five Essential Sites lists sites "with a serious focus on helping people along the journey of self-education" and well as linking to resources for lifelong learners.

The CC licensed photo by me.

Artists & Mentors

2010-05-09T06:49:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: earl53 from morguefile.com

Two things fired up my thinking this week. Steve Hargadon interviewed Seth Godin and and talked about his book Linchpin. Listen to the recording here or if you've read Linchpin, join in the book discussion here. Elizabeth Stark's post The Gender Gap in Tech: Why Mentors Matter from the Huffington Post was cross-posted on The Committed Sardine.

These readings have made me think about the importance of librarians (and teachers) in being innovators, risk takers, leaders, role models and mentors. I give about a dozen workshops each year to rooms full of strangers. As someone who has been an educator for many (many) years I love to see the reaction I get from people who were perhaps expecting a young, possibly male, speaker to lead them in an exploration of technology. I think it's important to be seen by these teachers as a learner and a risk taker. I have never, NEVER, given a workshop where I did not learn something myself. Maybe it came from a participant or maybe because someone asked a question I couldn't answer and felt compelled to find the answer.

What I hope to impart, along with whatever tech is on the agenda for the day, is that everyone can, and should be a learner; everyone can and should share what they've learned and engage in conversations with anyone else who will listen. What better way to teach our students than to model our learning for and with them? One of Seth Godin's messages is that anyone can be a genius some of the time, everyone has a gift to offer if we approach our craft as if it were an art.

One of the things that is keeping us from becoming learners, leaders and mentors is fear. Fear of the technology, fear of the 'ya, buts' we sometimes work with, fear of not delivering the content we deem to be important. Fear goes away when we have company so it's important to learn with others, other librarians, teachers, our PLNs AND our students. When we learn with our students we are often in problem solving mode. We are often at the edges or our comfort zone, taking risks and that's a great place for modelling how to learn, how to problem solve. If we only teach what we know we may very soon find that no one needs the information we know. It's showing how to learn the things we don't know that is the real commodity.

Mystery Winners

2010-05-01T20:18:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: ninoandonis from morguefile.com

The Mystery Writers of America have announced the Edgar Award Winners. (Winners in red.)

Best Young Adult

Reality Check by Peter Abrahams (HarperCollins Children's Books - HarperTeen)
If the Witness Lied by Caroline B. Cooney (Random House Children's Books - Delacorte Press)
The Morgue and Me by John C. Ford (Penguin Young Readers Group - Viking Children's Books)
Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone by Dene Low (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Books)
Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell (Random House Children's Books - Delacorte Press)

Best Juvenile

The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity by Mac Barnett (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
The Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of Rocamadour by Michael D. Beil (Random House Children's Books - Alfred A. Knopf)
Closed for the Season by Mary Downing Hahn (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Books)
Creepy Crawly Crime by Aaron Reynolds (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers)
The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline by Nancy Springer (Penguin Young Readers Group - Philomel Books)

Finds This Week - April 29/10

2010-04-30T19:49:00.000-07:00

For History teachers, the award winning French Revolution site with essays, 250 images, text documents, songs, maps, a timeline and a glossary.

If you're an English teacher, you'll really want to subscribe to Sharon Elin's Delicious bookmarks. She consistently tags quality sites.

Tech Training Wheels offers a one-stop shop for tutorials about many applications using step-by-step videos and screencasts to guide users at all levels.

Booklist features the Year's Best Crime Novels: 2010

Interactive Science activities and lesson plans from JST Virtual Science Center.

Library display ideas from the ECYA Blog.

The Royal Shakespeare Company presents Such Tweet Sorrow - Romeo and Juliet 140 characters at a time through the eyes of six of the cast.

And finally one of the best parts of my day. A six minute walk at lunch from my library desk, this view is bound to refresh me.

Earth Day 2010

2010-04-19T11:19:00.000-07:00

This coming Thursday is Earth Day. A few suggestions for making this day worthwhile:

Go paperless. Hand out no paper. Accept no paper from your students. TeachPaperless is making a great offer to help teachers craft paperless lessons. Click on over to his blog to take advantage of this offer or sign the pledge. If you are serious about going paperless, Shelly's blog is a gold mine.

There is lots of information to be found online offering tips about recycling and reducing that may not be practical at your local level. Have students find out how to recycle in their own community. Interview someone from local government to see what's being done. I was surprised to see that there are a number of items now being recycled locally that weren't on the list a year ago. Have your students make updated lists of what can be recycled locally and how to do it. Ask students to make an online recycling guide for their own family. Have them do a garbage survey to ascertain what might be recycled or reused.

Edutopia features a challenge and some resources.

Elementary teachers will find ideas and resources at Ecokids and PlanetPals.

Do an image search for any projects using Creative Commons Search. Make sure to uncheck the For Commercial Purposes box.

Image used under a Creative Commons licence from marc kjerland

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marckjerland/4185404793/sizes/s/

Tip of the Week

2010-04-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

A library can be likened to a living organism, it grows and changes. I have been looking for an easy and economical way to label the library's shelves and recently sent out a request for suggestions to my local librarian's group. Someone suggested I use magnetic sheets.

They are easy to use. Simply create a document with the labels you need using a good clean font in at least size 24. For mine I used Arial size 24 and was able to get 24 label headings on one sheet using two columns which works out to about 50 cents a strip. The next step was to print out the sheet on an inkjet printer. If you have a colour printer so much the better. Use manual feed as the sheet is just a little too thick to go through the regular feed. Then slice into strips using a paper cutter and apply to your shelves. Note: these have to be metal shelves!

The ones I purchased were white and came in a package of five however I see from doing a quick Internet search that there are coloured sheets available. The beauty in using them is that they can be moved easily when you use shelves for displays or special collections that change. Small pictures or clip art could be added. Craft stores supply magnetic tape that can simply be written on with a felt pen.

So, thanks to Lillian at West Van Secondary for the wonderful solution!

iPonder

2010-04-14T15:18:00.000-07:00

I have been asked to assess the iPad and reflect on its usefulness as a tool for students and teachers. I liked @cogdog 's rational assessment on the CogDogBlog and I agree that it's way too early to see what the iPad can really do. I took it on a book buying trip today and loved that I was able to quickly check the school library's online catalogue. Sure beats lugging in the big binder of library holdings and flipping through the pages. The only downside, spending 15 minutes of my limited shopping time showing the book store clerks how it worked. :)

Apps:
Any student taking Chemistry will love The Elements, an ebook of the original book by Theodore Gray.
It offers rotating graphics, a link to the pertinent page on WolframAlpha and a fact page. They even included the song by Tom Lehrer. Note: this is one of the 'pay for' apps that I thought was worth a look. I generally go with the free stuff.

There are news apps in a variety of flavors for current events classes. I've been sampling The New York Times, USA Today, NPR and The Globe & Mail. The iPad is especially good for viewing any videos attached to news articles. The Thomson Reuters Galleries offer stunning photographs and videos. Fluent News gathers stories from a range of sources, letting you browse by Top News or section, search and save.

The iPad app for Dictionary.com is useful for hearing how a word is pronounced. In addition to the definition it offers word origins, a thesaurus and Word of the Day.

What appeals to me the most is that students can have just in time learning at their fingertips, a quick place to learn or access basic information on a topic. I'm happy with what I've seen so far and look forward to the many more apps that will be released. Yes, I'm unhappy that I can't edit Google Docs only Google Spreadsheets and I'm frustrated that iWorks is not yet available in Canada but I can wait. There are lots of other ways to be productive like Evernote, Dragon Dictation and iTalk Lite. So far, on balance I am liking what I see.

I'm Busy

2010-04-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

Posting here has slowed to a crawl.
I've been busy...

... playing with the new iPad. Educators have begun posting a variety of opinions on using the iPad. One blog I will be watching closely is Ed Tech Solutions. The iPad appears to be a device with no age restrictions: Virginia's New iPad features a 100 year-old and A 2.5 year-old has a first encounter with an iPad. I've been bookmarking other resources/opinions here. There is a Diigo Group for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch Users. Subscribe to the feed for that group to get the latest.

... prepping for a presentation I'm giving in May to one of the local universities. They have asked me to talk about today's student and what faculty can expect. It's a golden opportunity for me to present on what I love best: social media and its applications in education. I'll be uploading the presentation to slideshare when it's ready.

I feel that momentum is gathering. A colleague told me last week that she feels she can no longer teach the way she done for the past 12 years. Although she is the kind of teacher I'd want my own child to have she says she is noticing that students are becoming more and more disengaged. It will be interesting to watch her transformation. Thanks to the generosity of the network there is an abundance of inspiration and exemplars, support and advice available online.

(Image: Bee, a Creative Commons Attribution, ShareAlike image from _PaulS_'s photostream)

Time for Play

2010-04-02T07:11:00.000-07:00

Saw this fun app on the Techno Constructivist blog where Carl Anderson is using it to promote Social Networking in Schools. It's a cute idea for capturing the reader's attention and focusing in on short specific points. One draw back in setting up a string of these players on a blog is that they all load and play at the same time. To hear them clearly, click on each of the six posts separately. When you're creating your own, just refresh the page each time you want to create a new one. There's no back button.

˙spɹɐʍʞɔɐq puɐ uʍopǝpısdn pןɹoʍ ɹnoʎ uɹnʇ. Flip.text lets you send messages to Facebook or Twitter and also seems to work in other places like blogs and chat windows. Just type in your text and copy/paste.

Yesterday was a stellar day for some really original April Fool's Day jokes. I was almost late for work as I watched the Twitter stream take-over by Will Richardson's fans. Google had everything from a name change to a vowel outage and a new translator tool. For more foolish fun see my delicious bookmarks.

Odds and Ends

2010-03-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

(Image: Odds n' Ends, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from 27596487@N07's photostream)

In the Best Find of the Day category: Flickr Attributor Bookmarklet. This will be a huge timesaver. I've used it here.

From Lee Kolbert: an ingenious way to display your PLN using Google Maps.

For the Shakespeare fans: The Shakespeare Standard - "a news, feature, and blog hub for Shakespeare-related news on the web."

Commenting: Beyond Blogs

2010-03-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

Image under a creative commons licence from timlewisnm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gozalewis/4151707061/sizes/m/

The New York Times article "10 Ways to Promote Writing for an Authentic Audience" discusses their Student Opinion feature and offers general tips and notes before suggesting ways to promote writing with students. Based on the Times suggestions here are a few ways to extend that authentic experience beyond the classroom in your own communities.

Debating. Local newspapers often have articles that are controversial in nature and students are seldom asked for their opinions in 'adult' matters. This doesn't mean that students are incapable of generating unique solutions to community problems. Have students debate issues in class and then write letters to the editor. Every teacher has a wealth of untapped creative energy sitting in their classrooms every day. Put it to work!
Responding. Use letters to the editor to have students determine sound arguments and bias. Have them write their own response letters.
Survey. Have students conduct surveys using an online polling tool like Google Forms, to ascertain how their community feels about local issues. Write comments or letters using the statistics and suggestions gathered. ( Google Forms is one of the options in Google Docs.)
Creative Writing. Have students write poems, stories or create art work in response to local issues. Submit these to the local paper.
Reviews. Ever see student reviews of current children's movies, musical events or books? Why not get your students to submit their own.
In this time of dropping enrolment and threatened school closures why not have your students write ads, essays or letters promoting their school? What do students see as the pressing issues in education? What are their solutions? Why do they think their school is the best?

Commenting on each other's blogs is an effective way for students to begin writing for an authentic audience. I've written previously on commenting here and here. I think commenting is a great first step towards more fully involving oneself in a wider community.

How-to Resources and a Quick Display Idea

2010-03-25T21:23:00.000-07:00

Richard Byrne (@rmbyrne) has posted about a list of animated research tutorials from Acadia University. These include tips on doing a research project, avoiding plagiarism and search techniques. Worth a look.

Jeff Utecht (@jutecht) describes how he uses students as tech mentors for staff. His group of Gr. 4 & 5 students are doing some remarkable work. This might spark some ideas for putting those library helpers to work.

How to create a quick display. Displays that really pop often have large, interesting lettering. This week I created a display of Buried Treasures focusing on pirate themed & hidden treasure books. First I downloaded a couple of free fonts from Fontspace, one to create the letters and one to create a border. I chose Treasure Map Deadhand for the letters and Flood for the border images. To create the border just choose the images in any order you want. Setting the page at landscape will give you longer strips when you cut them out.

This is one of those rare times you'll get to use font size 600! Choosing 'outline effect' let's you use coloured paper to create letters of different colours. Print and cut out the letters.

Tips for laying out your words nicely: Lay the letters out on a table and count all letters and spaces between the words. Divide by two to determine the centre point and then staple the letters to the bulletin board working from the middle out. A piece of string attached with some pushpins makes a good guide for keeping letters straight and is easily removed when you're done.

I poached a couple of masks from the English department, added some eye patches and was done.

Global Collaboration

2010-03-24T06:51:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have watched Silvia Tolisano's k12 Online presentation "Around the World with Skype", she has just launched the Around the World in 80 Schools Ning. For anyone wanting to connect globally, to engage students outside the walls of their classroom this is a wonderful introduction.

A ning is an online community where people can share information and media, form spontaneous discussion groups and ask questions of those with similar interests. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced practitioner you'll find value in a ning community.

Two other nings of interest to educators are:
The Future of Education
Classroom 2.0

Cross-posted on LAN: Learning is Social.

Of Blogs and Bytes

2010-03-21T14:38:00.000-07:00

The New York Public Library has started a blog: Stuff for the Teen Age. It evolved from their Books for the Teenage list. Last year's 100 best titles are listed here.

Today I downloaded Kindle for Mac and am trying out my first digital book: The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein. A colleague at work is reading it and wanted someone to debate with. I'm not very far into the book but already I question whether using test scores is a valid way to determine one's ability to function well in today's world.

The author's criticism of our generation of wired kids surprises me. In my experience, not that many teachers have integrated the Internet into their way of teaching to be making any significant difference to the way kids are being taught. Those that have, the trailblazers, are doing an outstanding job of challenging students and giving them valuable skills. So can we really begin attaching blame to the use of the Internet?

My other question is how do we decide what knowledge a student needs to function well. In a world where information is free and readily accessible aren't skills more important? Sure everyone needs some basic knowledge, a starting point, but how do we quantify that? It brings to mind the Chinese proverb about giving a hungry man a fish.

Lots of questions, few answers. I think our discussion will be an interesting one. Care to chime in?

Image used under a CC licence from David Reece
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spursfan_ace/1536883321/sizes/m/

Blog Club

2010-03-20T14:44:00.000-07:00

Time constraints are often the chief factor in hindering the uptake of new tools and technologies. This may be especially true when it comes to encouraging people to read a variety of blogs. We all read blog posts but perhaps only a few really resonate with us. I've been tossing around the idea of a blog club. Club members could be in the same school, district or any other geographical configuration. Here's how it might work:

Each person agrees to read a given number of blogs each week. Start small with 1 - 5. When they come across a gem they could share it with the rest of the group. Sharing options could include anything from email to Google Docs, Twitter and Posterous but a simple way would be to use the reader share function in Google Reader. Other feed aggregators may have something similar.

Here's a sample that was shared in my reader. Notice the options to star, share, share with a note, email, and add tags. These options appear at the bottom of all reader items. Tagging is a quick way to let the others know what the post is about.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Another option is to share using a bookmarklet placed in your browser's bookmark toolbar. The Official Google Reader Blog explains how to do that here. This is handy when you are browsing outside your reader and come across a great article.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

I talked about using Twitter and Posterous in a previous post. It may be helpful to use a group hashtag if you're using Twitter to make the posts easier to find. With Posterous you simply email the URL for any page to your Posterous account. Setting up a group account is easy. All members would then email using post@[the name of your posterous page].posterous.com. Here's the example from our group page.

This way of sharing the load gives participants a taste of many blogs without the burden of handling a large number of feeds in a reader.

Things I Learned This Week

2010-03-20T08:07:00.000-07:00

Tag first. My track record for tagging posts is dismal so I am going to try to tag first. This may help me focus my posts a little better if I write down at the beginning what they are going to be about.
Twitter tricks. If you have an Evernote account you can send your tweets directly to to Evernote. There's a good explanation with video here. In a nutshell you simply add @myEN to any tweet. Or you can direct message a note to @myEN with a private reminder of something. You can even add a thumbnail photo from Twitpic.
Portable Apps save aggravation. A common problem for my staff is that our district uses Deep Freeze to reset the desktop image on staff PCs every night. So, each time a teacher wants to use a tool like delicious or skype they have to download, again and again. With portable apps you access a browser through a flashdrive and all your settings are saved on the flashdrive. A plug in and go solution.
Posterous used in conjunction with Twitter is a great way to push information out to readers. My district's Learning Innovation Leadership Team (a fancy name for a group of volunteers interested in technology) is using our posterous account to flag articles of interest. That account is linked to Twitter so when something new is added it gets Tweeted out through @LAN44.

All this learning thanks to my PLN on Twitter and my own techie guru @bryanhughes.

Image used under a CC licence from dkuropatwa

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dkuropatwa/3746834143/sizes/m/

Ideas to Go: maps

2010-03-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

This post from illustrator Christoph Niemann caught my eye: Abstract City. I sent him an email asking him how he generated his maps and he replied in less than 5 minutes. I love that! He used Adobe Illustrator. It got me thinking about the many ways students could use Google Maps or draw their own in original, playful ways.

There are many traditional ways to use maps in their original state. I have posted about ways to use maps in different subject area classes before and of course there's Google Lit Trips and Google Earth for Educators: 50 exciting ideas for the classroom.

Shambles has a page of links to Google Earth and Google Maps activities.
Vincent Sherpinsky has produced a How-To Slideshare which serves as a good introduction.

Now, about those more inventive ways. Niemann's maps should give you some ideas. Here are a few more:

How would you express a metaphor or create a pun using a map?
Take a map to art class. What shapes can students see within the map? A la my feeble attempt above in which I saw a heron.
In Science, plot the digestive process, a life cycle or chemical reaction using a map.
In Math, draw out equations or formulas.

I know there are some wonderfully creative people who read this blog. How would you use maps in original ways across the curriculum?

Image used under a CC licence by Manitoba Historical Maps

http://www.flickr.com/photos/manitobamaps/2089812938/sizes/l/#cc_license

Gleanings for March 16/10

2010-03-16T18:33:00.000-07:00

I have tried DocsPal and love it. The big advantage I see is that it converts the file and pops a link right onto the page, no need to use your email address unless you want to. It was extremely fast as well.
Other gems today include:

TEDxASB - Scott McLeod presenter - This would be a good discussion starter for those looking to move their staffs forward in the ways they instruct students to meet the demands of today's workplace. (Video 16:25 min.)
Teaching History with Technology - A wealth of resources from lesson plans to podcasts.
A Vision of 21st Century Teachers - showcases what some teachers are doing to integrate technology into their classrooms. (Video 4:34 min.)
Sur La Lune Introduction to Fairytales and Folklore - "Here is an assortment of questions, essays, guides, links, and even a short story that will hopefully enlighten and inspire, or at least help you along the way." This comprehensive site is one I've used for years. In addition to the clickable links, entering the title of a fairytale directs you to picture books, novels, short stories, non-fiction, poetry, music and more related that that title.
For English teachers: To Kill a Mockingbird Meets the 21st Century. Teacher Megan Palevich shows how to you take a classic book and make it relevant to kids today by including facebook, twitter, and im into the project. Note: students do not have to have accounts to do these activities.
The Avalon Project - Good resource for primary source documents throughout history.

And lastly, two gadgets I would love to add to my kitbag.

ThumbTacks (TM) - a mini microphone for the iPod.
Point 2 View USB Camera - use instead of a screen-mounted web cam or make small things appear much larger, like family photos. Cool!

What Washed up on the Beach Today

2010-03-15T18:50:00.000-07:00

Back in the swing of things today and lots of interesting things came my way:

DocsPal a free online converter. I'll be testing this out against Zamzar. With many kids switching to Office 7 at home the need for conversion is paramount. I have a section in their agenda books explaining how to save as doc instead of docx but they forget. I've also posted instructions on the school library wiki. This works for Excel and Powerpoint as well.
Leanne Windsor @librareanne has put together a set of Netvibe pages to help parents learn about the importance of reading to children. Reading Matters.
Learning Continuity with iPod Touches - a searchable database of iTunes apps that are useful for learning.
Jen Wagner has put together a great wiki of Wordle resources, ideas and alternatives. More Than Wordles.
Richard Byrne shares his collaborative ideas around using a flip camera. Many Ways to use Flip Video Cameras in the Classroom.
Terry Freedman's The Amazing Web2.0 Projects Book free for download.
How to Teach Commenting Skills from the Educational Blogging Wiki. If you or a staff member are just getting in to blogging with students I have another resource with tips, tricks and suggestions: Mrs. Edwards' Sandbox.

I can't even imagine how I got along before the days of RSS feeds and Twitter. The gleanings from just one day are priceless.

Happy Birthday Blog

2010-03-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe three years have gone by since I first started the WebFooted Booklady blog. My first posts were notable for their brevity: Into the Deep End. So what has this experience taught me?

Together we're better. Posts where I've collaborated with others or written about team projects tend to be my most read. One example is Technology in Biology Class which I wrote with suggestions from an exemplary science teacher.
When I help someone else, I learn. A number of posts have been the result of answering a question from Twitter that required more than a 140 character response. I love the challenge of finding answers. Often helping one person provides resources for helping others. That's why my delicious account is stuffed with over 6600 bookmarks and growing. It's my online library.
If you have an Internet connection there is no reason to be alone. My PLN has grown through this blog and through twitter and I have so many wonderful educators to share with and call on for help. Thanks to all of you!
Blogging works better when it's just one of the tools you use. It's handy to have a suite of tools: a wiki, social bookmarking, twitter, youtube, image storage for example. Pick tools that are specific to your needs and use them in conjunction with one another.

Spring Break is drawing to a close and tomorrow I will be back at work and looking forward to more learning, sharing and blogging.

Image used under a Creative Commons licence from soapylovedeb

http://www.flickr.com/photos/soapylove/3267707664/sizes/m/

Packrati.us = Twitter Delicious

2010-03-09T07:11:00.000-08:00

Packrati.us = Twitter Delicious

This is a tool I learned about from Silvia Tolisano's (@langwitches) delicious feed. In the words of this service, "We follow your twitter feed, and whenever one of your tweets contains URLs, we add them to your delicious.com bookmarks. Optionally, bookmark URLs in @replies to you. We'll even add a delicious tag identifying the sender if you like."

I'm going to give this a try. Often I wonder if a link I want to post into twitter is one I've already bookmarked in delicious. It's just another way to keep me organized in my online world.

TeachPaperless: Go Paperless for Earth Day!

2010-03-08T19:08:00.000-08:00

TeachPaperless: Go Paperless for Earth Day!

Teacher, Shelly Blake-Plock has challenged educators to go paperless on Earth Day in April. He's created a form for people to take the pledge that you can access on his blog. I played devil's advocate suggesting to some students that they go paperless on Earth Day by neither accepting nor handing in any paper. We already have a day of silence to bring attention to those children throughout the world who are unable to speak for themselves. This is an idea along those lines. It will be interesting to see if they run with it.

I hope they do as it will give them cause to consider how they might conduct business without paper. I'm thinking of offering a lunch time session on ways to accomplish this. I will encourage them to hand in assignments by using apps like Google Docs, Zoho.

There are many advantages to going paperless other than saving trees. The aspect of online collaboration between students and the ability for teachers to conduct effective formative assessment are two good reasons.

Why Blog

2010-03-08T07:15:00.000-08:00

Why Blog

There are a few boggers whose posts I will read no matter how little time I have in my day. Miguel Guhlin is one of them. His post yesterday titled "Why Blog" is a great example of what I find so intriguing about his writing. He writes lucidly and goes deep into the subject. He makes me think. He makes me want to write.

Whether you blog yourself, or are encouraging students to blog I would recommend his post.

Trouble

2010-03-06T10:31:00.000-08:00

UPDATE Mar. 8th - I'm happy to say the issue has been resolved. Don't know what the cause was but it's working again as of last night. Now to get on with the really important stuff, enjoying my Spring Break holiday.

I haven't posted this week as something very strange has happened. About three days ago it seems that I was being blocked by Blogspot when using my laptop at home. I, and several people much wiser than me, have been unable to figure out why. This morning I'm accessing the site through a proxy server.

Here's the situation:

I get a 403 forbidden, access denied by access control list message when I try to go to any blogspot site
I can access blogspot sites using my husband's computer at home *** NOT ANY MORE, he's blocked too.
I can access blogspot from my same computer at work, just not at home
I tried cleared the cache and cookies

So for some mysterious reason Blogger does not allow me to access any blogspot sites on my laptop at home. Anybody out there have a similar problem? Anyone have a fix-it for me?

Thanks for the comment re Telus and Google. I tried to comment back but it would not work. Will try to contact Telus and see if they can help.

Overdues – Gee, you want me to go all the way to my locker? | Wanderings...

2010-02-25T20:16:00.000-08:00

Overdues – Gee, you want me to go all the way to my locker? | Wanderings...

An idea for retrieving overdues that's bound to work better than most.

Beyond Blocking: Embracing the Social Web

2010-02-25T09:24:00.000-08:00

Beyond Blocking: Embracing the Social Web

If you are looking for ideas to embrace rather than block social media in your school or district this presentation is an excellent starting place.

Where is it all Headed?

2010-02-23T10:59:00.000-08:00

This week two videos came to my attention. Video #1 was posted on the Committed Sardine blog by Lee Crockett who draws attention to the need for schools to teach information literacy skills, learning to deal with information.

Video #2 was shared in Google Reader by David Truss (@datruss) and is an impassioned plea from a young man who sees the need for a change in the way we define education and how it is delivered: An Open Letter to Educators.

I'll be passing both along to any educator who will listen. This isn't new information, just another couple of timely pieces to help in the battle for change. In my perfect world tech departments would be staffed by people whose job it would be to facilitate the needs of educators, to support good pedagogy. Teachers would be able to demonstrate at any given time how they are using social media to engage, challenge and empower students. Teachers would be able to demonstrate what they themselves are learning and how they are modeling/sharing that learning with their students. Librarians would be revered for their ability to see the bigger picture and assist teachers and students in planning open-ended, critical thinking activities that enable students to acquire solid information literacy skills. In my perfect world.

So where are we headed? How long will it take? What are we doing to support and advance the necessary changes to our current education system?

Vancouver 2010

2010-02-20T19:13:00.000-08:00

My mind has been far from blogging these past weeks. With the Olympic Cauldron burning brightly in Vancouver there seems to be little else vying for my attention. The tidal wave of Canadian patriotism that has hit Vancouver is palpable. If you ever get the chance to attend an Olympic event in your own country don't miss it.

I wonder though if it is possible to capture all that energy and enthusiasm and bend it to other endeavours. Imagine stirring your class or community to such a degree that they would all throw their support and skills into bringing something to fruition. There are many lessons to be taken away from watching the elite athletes of the world perform. Stories about determination, goal setting, triumph against crushing odds, love, support and following a dream.

What will you learn? How will you inspire your students and colleagues?

Photo used under a creative commons licence by buzz.bishop
http://www.flickr.com/photos/buzzbishop/3121819368/sizes/m/
Inukshuk at English Bay, the symbol of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games

Flickr and the School Library

2010-02-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking of ways in which school librarians can use Flickr to promote library programs or advocate for their libraries. Flickr Groups offers some possibilities.

Flickr returned 652 group results when I searched for "school library" under the Groups tab, click on the screen shot for a larger view. Some libraries have created Groups in Flickr around themes such as School Library Displays. These can be a rich source of ideas.

One group is sharing photos to use on their school website while others share photos from library events and conferences. There's even a group showing how students study in the library.

Given that a picture is a powerful way to convey an idea here are some suggestions:
- promote new resources by snapping pictures of new books OR advocate for more resources by showing how empty the shelves are
- create excitement around upcoming events with photos of posters, an author's titles, mystery objects or 'guess who?' photos
- document changes or renovations to the library
- promote programs with timeline photos as students progress through stages and acquire new skills, take photos of student projects. For example, Gr. 1s signing out their first books > Gr. 3s reading to Gr. 1s > Gr. 1s reading to their parents during an open house night
- document events: poetry readings, author visits, character costume days - search flickr for ideas others have captured with an image
- photograph staff learning on ProD days held in the library
- promote groups that help the library, parent or student volunteers
- promote genres in your fiction collection
- thank parent groups for donations by showing how they are being used
- demonstrate how well your library space is used before and after school and during the lunch hour
- illustrate the wide variety of learning that takes place: individual studying, group projects, computer use, demonstrations, readings, presentations, club activities

What else can you do with the photos you take?
- post up around the school, in the staff room
- display on open house or parent-teacher interview nights by projecting as a looping slideshow
- add to school newsletters and to your school and library websites
- add to school district promotional materials
- attach to an email when you want to advocate for or promote your library
- send to your local paper

How have you used Flickr or other social image sharing tools?

A Great Elementary School Library Site

2010-02-05T16:40:00.000-08:00

I'm turning the tables on this one and asking for your input. I'd like to know what you think makes for a great elementary school library website. I have a few ideas, things like:
- a welcome page with staff names, FAQs, contact information, hours
- great visuals showing the library as an active and evolving community
- a how-to page with instructions on writing a bibliography, creating a brochure etc.
- a youtube player with book trailers, author interviews
- a page showing how the librarian collaborates with teachers
- a library events showcase
- suggestions for great reads
- student feedback forms such as requests for new materials, questions.
- links to online databases, recommended sites for assignments, author sites, etc.

What else would you include? How would you showcase your library to your teachers and students and the world? What web2.0 tools would you use? I'm planning a future post on this subject so please leave your ideas or links to any great elementary school library websites you know of, even your own! Thanks!

Photo used under a Creative Commons license by PlayfulLibrarian
http://www.flickr.com/photos/playfullibrarian/3247796657/sizes/m/

Pass It On

2010-01-31T16:47:00.000-08:00

There are often times when you might want to create a list of URLs to post on a site or share during a workshop. I've played with a few but never found one that entirely met my needs until today when I discovered Sqworl.

With Sqworl you are able to add a bookmarklet to your browser (I use Firefox). When you find a site you'd like to add to a list, you just click on the icon. A pop-up window allowing you to add to a list, create a new list and annotate your entry. It provides you with a URL for your list and you can log-in anytime to edit. Note: In the demo on their site the instructor is copying and pasting URLs. You won't need to do this if you add the bookmarklet to your bookmark toolbar.

Some suggestions for use:

Ask students to compare and contrast the information found on several sites. Good for website evaluation, detecting bias or point-of-view, choosing the right site for a given assignment.
Post several sites and ask students to form an opinion based on the information.
Ask students to vote on options presented: which place to visit on a field trip, which novel to read aloud in class.
Post links to opposing reviews after students have read a novel. Ask if they agree, disagree.
Ask students to visit the posted sites and write annotations, comments, summaries, citations.
Ask students to compile a list of questions based on sites listed.
Ask students to rank sites posted.
Prepare a list as a series of tutorials or steps in a process. Or ask the students to do the same.

How have you used lists of URLs? I'd love to hear your ideas in a comment!

Two New Search Options

2010-01-29T11:05:00.000-08:00

Two good new search options came my way through RSS today:

From Free Technology for Teachers - Database for Award-Winning Children's Literature. It offers a variety of search options including genre, gender of protagonist, age ranges from baby to 14+, historical period, publication date range, and language. Click the image for a better view of the search options.

From Joyce Valenza's NeverEndingSearch blog - SweetSearch for students. Every web site has been evaluated by their research experts. There is a nice collection of links organized by subject and level in the Web Links section.

Guidelines for Student Comments

2010-01-28T09:45:00.000-08:00

Watching a teacher setting a class loose to comment online prompted me to come up with some resources to guide students in the art of commenting. When little or no direction is given, students post comments full of slang, miss-spellings and humour that may be misunderstood or offensive.

In short, student comments should:

be succinct
stay on topic
extend the conversation
be polite, respectful

Students should remember:

your first comment of someone's blog is like meeting a stranger
using slang may confuse or offend
your comment is a reflection on you, your school, your community

Online Resources:

New York Times - The Learning Network - Lesson Plan

Care to Comment? Considering Internet Discussion Protocol

Give your students commenting practice or post your class blog to invite comments from others

Comments for Kids

Jan Smith's class commenting guidelines

Huzzah

Sue Water's The Edublogger

Set up your blogging rules and guidelines

Kim Cofino's

Student blogging guidelines

I'm adding Silvia Tolisano's Blogging Lesson Plan thanks to a comment left by Alex, below.

If you know of any other useful resources please leave a comment!

trial

2010-01-27T20:57:00.001-08:00

Posted via email from LAN44

Now How Did That Happen?

2010-01-26T18:08:00.000-08:00

Today I was helping one of the French as a second language teachers learn about Posterous. She was wondering how to make the accents show up in her posts so I tried a few things in my Posterous account not remembering that it was linked here to the WFB. Hence the strange posting previous to this one.

I wasn't aware of this until a friend who follows me on Posterous said that there had been 30+ views of the post. To those of you who came looking for a new post only to find one word, I apologize! When I started this blog I used it as a sandbox, experimenting with new tools but haven't done that so much of late.

If you are interested in the key sequences for Macs the instructions are here (thanks @bryanhughes). It appears that you can use these instructions in gmail and here in blogger to get French accents.

Etre, ou ne pas être, c'est là la question.

Test

2010-01-26T14:19:00.001-08:00

Français

Posted via email from Lesley's posterous

Twenty Ten

2010-01-23T08:47:00.000-08:00

The first three weeks have gone by in a blur and I have not blogged or tweeted much. It seems to go that way for me, either I can't write the blog posts fast enough to keep up with ideas or I have no time to sit and write and my mind is blank.

Our school is about to pilot an open wireless program and I have been working with a team to compile suggestions for teachers who are really not all that comfortable with the prospect. We want to offer them some management solutions and ideas for harnessing the power of student mobile devices. When I have the list organized I'll link to it here. In the meantime, do you have any suggestions?

We're getting ready to celebrate the 2010 Olympics here in Vancouver, signing students up to take the Healthy Living Pledge and preparing banners to welcome the torch relay as it passes through our community. For those of you in the area the Vancouver Sun will be publishing a series "Bound for 2010" starting Jan. 26.

Our district's Learning Innovation Leadership Team has been moving ahead offering a variety of ProD sessions to teachers and administrators. In addition to our regular LAN parties (see our K12 Online Presentation) we have begun using Elluminate, free to B.C. Educators. Bryan Hughes (@bryanhughes) hosted our first two sessions giving participants an introduction to Elluminate and its features. A recording of this session is available here. We welcome people from outside the district so if you'd like to participate check out the LAN calendar of events and follow LAN44 on Twitter for updates and links. For more information have a look at the LAN44 blog.

Google Maps Mania: All of Wikipedia on Google Maps

2010-01-11T08:55:00.000-08:00

Google Maps Mania: All of Wikipedia on Google Maps: "The Full Wiki is different because it maps all the locations mentioned in a Wikipedia entry. So, for example, if you look up '1945' in The Full Wiki all the locations mentioned in the entry are mapped. So you can see at a glance all the major events of 1945 directly on a Google Map."

This should be great for Socials teachers or English teachers building context for a piece of literature. Read the full article to learn more.

What is BlogThis! ? - Blogger Help

2010-01-10T17:50:00.000-08:00

What is BlogThis! ? - Blogger Help: "BlogThis! is an easy way to make a blog post without visiting blogger.com. Once you add the BlogThis! link to your browser's toolbar, blogging will be a snap. Or rather, a click. Clicking BlogThis! creates a mini-interface to Blogger prepopulated with a link to the web page you are visiting, as well as any text you have highlighted on that page. Add additional text if you wish and then publish or post from within BlogThis!"

Just discovered Blog This thanks to CCHS Library Learning Commons. Thanks! It will save me so much time in addition to making my blogging more spontaneous. It's a great tool for Blogger users.

More of this and That

2010-01-09T10:46:00.000-08:00

YALSA has announced the 2010 Finalists for the William Cl Morris YA Debut Award which honours first-time authors writing for teens. Learn more about this and the YALSA book trailer contest for teens over at the readergirlz blog. More on book trailers:

@AngelaMaiers just tweeted Movies for Literacy that includes trailers for Early Elementary, Late Elementary and Adolescent readers.
I have more trailers and how-to links in delicious

Seth Godin has written some powerful words about The Future of the Library this week and Joyce Valenza has posted her response: Seth Godin and Mike Eisenberg and me on the Future of the Library. I have posted a link to Joyce's blog in my local teacher librarian's forum along with a few questions. What have you done lately to retool yourself? This is critical! Pass it on to your teacher librarian or if you are a TL show it to your principal and engage them in a conversation about change.

MakeUseOf has released a Guidebook to Internet Searching free to download.

Those Pesky Overdues

2010-01-07T09:15:00.000-08:00

Getting teenagers to return the books they have borrowed can sometimes be a daunting task that can eat away huge chunks of a librarian's time. Here at Seycove we compile weekly overdue lists and send them out to classrooms, but even with an automated system this can take up to a day. We make phone calls to parents, use the callback system to leave automated messages and send letters.

So I thought, why not use technology? Almost every teen carries a cell phone these days. This week I tried an experiment with one particularly recalcitrant individual. I asked him to use the alarm feature on his cell phone and had him set the alarm for 7:45 the next morning with a message to put the overdue book into his backpack. The book was returned the next day!

The Evolution of Books

2009-12-24T08:11:00.000-08:00

This post caught my eye today, Forget E-Books: The Future of the Book Is Far More Interesting. I posted a link to it along with some questions in another blog I write for teachers beginning to blog in my district.

It brings attention to the changes coming for teachers and librarians. I asked readers to consider:

How do you envision teaching in a world with no textbooks? How do you envision your students as consumers of information?
How do you envision your students as producers of information?
What do you envision as the purpose for schools and teachers in 10 years, 20 years?
How might learning to write a blog be considered an essential skill for students to acquire?

How would you answer these questions? I'd love to hear your comments.

Celebrating Together

2009-12-24T07:58:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of giving Sue Waters has created a space using WallWisher. Thanks, Sue! Please add your wishes, traditions and greetings.

Holiday Musings

2009-12-21T08:12:00.000-08:00

As I write I'm listening to the December playlist on readergirlz. I love the concept of choosing songs to suit a particular novel or character and it's an idea that at least on of my English teachers has tried with great success as kids love it too.

My morning dose of humour came from Jeffrey Hill who writes The English blog where he has imbedded the Copenhagen According to Dr. Seuss clip along with the lyrics. His other entertaining offering comes from Abe Books who have opened a Weird Books Room. Worth a browse if you are buying for someone with eccentric tastes or just want to amuse yourself for a few minutes. He finds the best stuff!

@deangroom tweeted about a photo contest happening in Sydney just now. The idea of giving kids open concepts to work with could be adapted in other ways. Some time ago I posted some words in an area of the library where I put books I hope boys will read. The words would hopefully draw them in:

Face Off
Espionage
On the Street
Reckless
Blood & Guts
On the Edge
Murder
Adventure
Mayhem
Over the Top

A few days ago I had one of those kids who has never been a reader, has no idea what he likes and is really hard to match up with a book. As I floundered about questioning him the words on the wall caught my eye and I asked him which ones appealed. When he picked 'on the edge' I knew exactly which books to show him.

Time to dive back into my own pile of books. I am almost finished with Loving Frank, and yes, I am loving it. I've only put it down long enough to look for images of Frank Lloyd Wright's houses and to replenish the chocolate supply. On to Marillier next! I'd love to hear what book gems you've discovered over the winter break, or summer break or whatever season it is in your part of the world.

Winter Break Reading

2009-12-19T19:17:00.000-08:00

Like a hungry guest at the buffet I tend to overload my reading plate when it comes to holiday time. This year I have selected:

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan a fictionalized account of Mamah Cheney's affair with Frank Lloyd Wright

Heart's Blood by Juliet Marillier - Based on the Beauty and Beast legends from a masterful fantasy writer.

Vanishing and other short stories by Deborah Willis

Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner is one of the contenders for Canada Reads.

The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon - Life through Aristotle's eyes.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Gone by Michael Grant for the YA crowd.

The Philosopher and the Wolf by Mark Rowlands

And just so that I don't forget what my real passion is, Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology by Allan Collins and Richard Halverson.

With a fire going and lots of chocolates and eggnog close at hand I might just make it! I'll let you know which ones get my seal of approval.

Got 20 Minutes?

2009-12-19T07:40:00.000-08:00

If you've read much of this blog you'll know that I'm a big fan of the K12 Online conference and have been involved with bringing these presentations to teachers in my own district via LAN parties. It made me smile to hear one seasoned colleague say that these sessions were the best professional development he had experienced in his career. Wow!

I've been viewing as many of this year's offerings as I can and they're as inspiring as ever. The one that stands out for me so far in terms of the way we work with students is Paul Curtis' Building a Web 2.0 Culture. We chose it to show at our first LAN party of the year and Paul generously offered his time to join us in an Elluminate session for some discussion after we viewed his presentation. The chat is archived here. He's part of the New Technology Network whose philosophy is to inspire and engage students to become collaborators, thinkers, innovators and leaders. Whether you're transforming a school or just wanting to improve your practice on Monday morning this presentation will get you thinking.

In order to keep the presentations straight in my head I started a Google Doc to briefly list the focus of each presentation. Here are a few I will definitely be bringing to the attention of others:

Sylvia Tolisano's Around the World With Skype
Jason Neiffer's Probing the Possibilities of Paperless Pedagogy in which he gives a tour of his own paperless classroom, comments on using Google docs, Wordpress and Moodle.
Julie Lindsay's Learning Confluence: where philosophy meets practice in the 21c addresses why education needs to be globally focussed.
Kelly Hines' Little Kids, Big Possibilities gives a how-to for several tools she uses with her class She has set up some trial accounts for session viewers to play in the sandbox. A great way to dip your toes in.
Andy Crozier and Mike Amante talk about Just a 'touch' of leadership: Using the iPod Touch/iPhone in Administration giving lots of hands-on ideas.
Sarah Sutter's Show and Tell: Exhibit, Reflect, Critique with Blogs is excellent for art teachers but the her ideas transfer to other subject areas as well.

Grab some refreshments or even a colleague or two and pull up a chair for some engaging viewing! Most will take less than 20 minutes of your time to view.

Canada Reads

2009-12-14T11:10:00.000-08:00

Canada Reads 2010 gets underway soon. Visit the CBC website for more information and find out more about the nominees here:

Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
Read more

Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland
Read More

Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott
Read more

The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy
Read more

Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner
Read more

Enter to win the entire collection over at mike's bloggity blog, enter before midnight, Tuesday December 15th. (Residents of Canada only)

Twitter Question

2009-12-10T22:42:00.000-08:00

This request popped up on Twitter tonight. I've posted a few suggestions below.

Scholastic Book Lists:

List 1

List 2

ATN's Read-Alouds Gr. 1

LM_NET Archive

First Grade Read-Alouds

Read*Write*Think

Using Picture Books to Teach Characterization in Writing Workshop

Reader's Workshop Resources

Literature Circles Structure: First Grade (including book sets)

It's List Time Again

2009-12-10T16:55:00.000-08:00

At the local children's bookstore I have developed a bit of a reputation as the one who likes those edgy reads for kids. One of my 'go to' people for great teen book recommendations is Jen who writes Reading Rants: Out of the Ordinary Teen Book Lists! Need to fill out your Reality Bites or Slacker Fiction shelves? This is the place to go.
Jen comes up with Yearly Top Ten Lists as well as maintaining a Jen's Top Ten Books of ALL TIME list. This year's list with reviews can be found here.

Readers over at goodreads have put together a list of Best Books published in 2009. Seems to have been a great year! The list is re-scored every 500 seconds so it's about as up-to-date as you can get changing as new readers add their votes. In Shelfari you can look at their Highest-Rated Books of All Time or the highest rated this week or this month.

And of course there's YALSA's 2009 Teen's Top Ten A quick Google search will bring up any number of other 2009 booklists. One of my fave activities at school is to have the English teachers ask their classes to recommend books. I collect the lists, collate them and then put up displays in the library. Some of the past themes have included:

Don't leave high school without having read ...
Gr. 10's best books this year.
Pageturners
The Book I Most Want for Christmas

Image used under a creative commons licence from
Travelin' Librarian http://www.flickr.com/photos/travelinlibrarian/2133898896/sizes/m/

Advanced Search Options

2009-12-10T10:24:00.000-08:00

Beyond Basics

Often when I’m asked, “How did you find that?” it’s because I went straight for the Advanced Search option. These types of searches are available everywhere from online databases to Twitter. Using Advanced Search options can save you a great deal of time and frustration.

Google’s advanced search lets you include or exclude terms without ever having to use that scary word, Boolean. Mention Boolean searching to students or staff and you’ll often get a ‘can’t spell it, can’t pronounce it, ergo it must be difficult’ kind of reaction.

Twitter Search

Using the Advanced Search options allows you to search for specific words or phrases, to search for tweets from or to a specific person. You can narrow your search to specific places, dates and even by attitude: positive or negative.

Flickr

Flickr’s Advanced Search is the first place I head for finding Creative Commons licenced images. I know there are other ways to do this in Flickr but I prefer the results I get from using the Advanced Search option.

YouTube

Using Advanced Options in YouTube let’s you filter out videos that may not be suitable for minors, include/exclude terms, search by type or show only results that have annotations or closed captions. You can search within categories, by language and date, or by duration: short, medium or long. I was able to filter out all the cartoons videos in a search for a short clip to introduce a class to the topic of bears. The results returned were from FirstScience TV, National Geographic and BBC Worldwide.

Welcome!

2009-12-09T19:40:00.000-08:00

Welcome and thank you to all the new people who have been visiting The WebFooted Booklady today.

I too have been exploring new blogs found via the Edublog Awards and seeing the many ways educators interact and share. It's been a feast for the mind!

Image used under a creative commons licence by

Frederic della Faille

December Pro D

2009-12-07T14:06:00.000-08:00

I've been a bit quiet this past week. No posts here. I've been posting on our brand new NVSD teacher librarian blog. That's what you do when budget cuts are in the air and libraries are once again under fire. We wanted to take a pro-active approach that would showcase what it is we do. In doing so we will also inspire each other by compiling a rich bank of ideas. Please drop by and have a read or leave a comment.

I'm also in full swing with the rest of the team prepping for LAN parties. That's Learning At Night, one of the ways we deliver Pro D opportunities to teachers in our district. (I can't talk about LAN without a nod to Kim Cofino and Jeff Utecht at the Bangkok International School who came up with the idea.) We submitted our own K12 Online presentation this year and it will be up for viewing on Tuesday Dec. 8 - LAN: Learning is Social. We've constructed a supporting wiki that outlines how to launch your own K12 Online LAN party.

At our first event we will be viewing 3 presentations:
- Building a Web 2.0 Culture by Paul Curtis
- Probing the Possibilities of Paperless Pedagogy by Jason Neiffer
- Around the World with Skype by Silvia Tolisano

All three presenters have generously agreed to Skype in for some informal conversation after we have viewed their presentations. As my friend @jansmith says, "The net is generous."

Why not join us?

Paul Curits from the New Tech Network (http://www.newtechnetwork.org/) will be joining us live from Napa, California to discuss his presentation "Building a Web 2.0 Culture."

You can watch the presentation and participate in the conversation via Elluminate, an online learning space. Elluminate is free and easy to use.

Join us at 5pm!

Elluminate link: http://bit.ly/LAN44Dec

For more information contact us on Twitter http://twitter.com/lan44

Or visit our blog http://literacy44.ca/lan

The Edublog Awards 2009

2009-11-29T10:19:00.000-08:00

Taking a little time to think about whom I would nominate for a 2009 Edublog Award is one of the ways I can say thank you to people who have inspired me and informed my practice. It's hard to pick just one when there are so many! It's my hope that a nomination will bring a wider readership to these deserving individuals. I liked the way David Truss has offered honourable mentions in his list of nominees and I only wish I had more time to do the same.

Best individual tweeter - @Alec Couros - He's the one person who gets his own column in my TweetDeck

Best class blog - Huzzah For anyone wanting a detailed road map of how to engage students in blogging this is it. Jan Smith is a master craftsman, generous with her time and expertise.

Best student blog - Eric's Blog This student's thoughtful posts show a talent beyond his years.

Best resource sharing blog - Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne is a wealth of resources in all subject areas from a teacher who takes the time to explain how they work and offer suggestions for their use in the classroom.

Most influential blog post - from TeachPaperless: Top Eleven Things All Teachers Must Know About Technology (or I promised Dean Groom I wouldn't write a top ten list; so this one goes up to eleven.)

Best teacher blog - Kim Cofino's Always Learning This is the one I always take time to read, refer back to often and get the most 'use in my practice tomorrow' ideas from.

Best librarian / library blog - The Unquiet Librarian - Buffy Hamilton is the one that most pushes me to change by modelling what a library/librarian should look like today.

Best educational tech support blog - Sue Waters' The Edublogger Sue is tireless is her efforts to help students and teachers make the best use of blogging tools.

Best educational wiki - WSDs eToolBox Dianne Krause is constantly adding to and refining this wiki on using technology in the classroom.

Me, giving thanks

2009-11-28T07:56:00.000-08:00

My neighbours to the south have just finished celebrating their Thanksgiving and for us here in Canada it's a month gone already but I am in a particularly thankful mood these days. The WebFooted Booklady has been nominated by two fellow educators for an Edublog award. Thanks again to David Truss and Liz B. Davis both extraordinarily thoughtful, creative and generous educators in their own right.

This is very humbling and a great honour. It has also induced a state of writer's block although I am more of a post-when-the-mood-strikes kind of writer than a post-every-day person. :)

Alec Couros (@courosa) re-tweeted recently something that struck a chord, "RT @Kicode Amazes me that strangers find content I produce helpful when I can't get people who know me well 2 even look http://bit.ly/2BLXZf."

In a world where the daily frustrations of working with busy people can be discouraging it's gratifying to know that the work one does reaches people beyond the work place walls.

Design and Redesign

2009-11-28T07:28:00.000-08:00

Twitter is such a rich source of ideas!

Moira Ekdahl, TL consultant for Vancouver School Board has posted some thoughtful reflections on the YSL Virtual Conference focusing on Library Design. This is a 'must read' for anyone in the process of re-structuring their libraries physical space or re-defining the role of the librarian. Seriously, shouldn't we all be looking at redefining our roles?

Two useful tips for people designing library web pages came across my desk this week:

- from @joycevalenza - Color Scheme Designer lets you select the perfect pallette.

- If you work on a Mac go Applications>Utilities>DigitalColor Meter. Mouse over any color on your screen to get RGB as percentages. This comes in handy when you find a colour you like and want to match it exactly.

Or maybe you are redesigning on a smaller scale and just want to do a make over on that old library cart. Take a look at this year's winners of the Pimp my Bookcart contest.

If you work with teachers helping them redesign their classroom practice @NikPeachey has created 10 Tasks to help teachers develop their use of learning technology.

Glogster examples

2009-11-19T23:00:00.000-08:00

Some one on Twitter was asking for some good examples of using Glogster. Here are a few I had bookmarked:

Shakespeare Parodies
Place Value
A Book Review
Canadian History
War propaganda
Poetry project
Novel - I heard the owl call my name

Update: A page of Glogster resources.

Status Quo or Living Your Dream?

2009-11-08T20:06:00.000-08:00

Image used under a creative commons licence from vanhookc

http://www.flickr.com/photos/librariesrock/4064275305/sizes/o/
Click image for a clearer view.

Spending some time following twitter links on Saturday morning allowed me to look in on the AASL 2009 conference virtually. Seeing what those impassioned, creative and forward thinking librarians were up to got me thinking. What is holding us back from creating the libraries of our dreams, libraries that are work spaces for students libraries where the librarian acts as guide and mentor and students gather to research and create collaboratively or on their own? Are we constrained by the systems we work within or are those restrictions self-imposed?

There are so many free ways to create libraries that are innovative. I wish I had been able to attend Buffy Hamilton’s session. I got so many great ideas from viewing her slide deck I can only imagine how rich her session was. The presentation was entitled Not Just Another Brick in the Wall? Engaging 21^st Century Learning Through Participatory School Librarianship. I took a page of notes as I viewed the slides. Tomorrow I will begin to investigate great people for teens to follow on Twitter, holding a lunch hour session to advertise the many mobile reading opportunities, and establishing a teen advisory committee to find out what the students would like to see in their library.

To learn more about participatory librarianship check out Buffy's Delicious bookmarks. I found the bookmarked article We Live in Shakespearean Times particularly inspiring. Also her wiki

AASL2009 Participatory Librarianship. I think you'll be impressed.

As I watched the tweets go by I began to collect some memorable quotes. I can't cite the speaker as often attributions weren't given. It's 140 characters after all. To see them for yourself do a Twitter Search for #aasl2009 or go to TwapperKeeper.

We've upped our standards, so up yours.
Loertscher wants librarians to be the elephant in the room that cannot be ignored.
Being an advocate isn't enough. Be an activist.
I say you have TIME, you're just not using it well. (Aim that one at the next person who doesn't have time for collaborative planning with you!)
Make the library a learning centre not a stuff centre.
School librarian: resource specialist, information literacy teacher, collaboration gatekeeper
Mash content, literacy and 21st century skills together or you will go nowhere.

You can't be burnt out if you have never been fired up.

So that's it, my report from a conference I wasn't able to attend. Thanks Twitter!

Twitter Lists

2009-11-05T19:25:00.000-08:00

It had to happen. Hasn’t everyone blogged about Twitter lists in the past week?

The jury is still out for me as to how useful I will find them. I made one list of my own and selected 4 others to follow. So far I haven’t ever clicked on the feeds to see what’s happening on them.

I worried as I made the list that I might inadvertently leave someone off and offend them. Compiling the list was onerous but now that it’s done I find it easy to add new people in as I come across them.

I have used lists created by others to find new and interesting people to follow.

I’m thinking it might be useful to be able to send a message to ONLY the people on your list. That way you could ask questions or share information with people on specific lists while not boring or irritating the other folks who follow you.

Somehow I have managed to end up on 40 other people’s lists. Highly flattering in a way. See the list below. Just for the record, I might be considered bookish although it’s not a term I consider in an attractive light. I have passed on a few useful links. I’m definitely not an ESL teacher or translator but as a teacher librarian can recognize a useful ESL related site when I see on. I’m not a publisher, unless you count publishing a blog post. The same can be said for being a writer.

Twitter lists I’m tickled, amused or perplexed to find myself listed on:

- bookish people

- quality linkers

- esl stars

- publishing

- rockstar librarians

- translator –esl teacher

- writing writers

So what’s your take on twitter lists. Useful? Waste of time? Undecided?

Am I missing something blindingly obvious that’s worth a mention?

Please comment!

Look at that, a post with not one hyperlink! Tsk. Tsk.

Comment Moderation

2009-11-04T06:49:00.000-08:00

When I started the WebFooted Booklady blog over two and a half years ago I wanted to be as open as possible. Consequently I did not enable comment moderation nor did I require those who wished to comment to jump through the screen captcha hoop.

Today I see that a spammer has been seeding the blog with advertising comments. I have removed those comments and turned on the moderation feature. This is unfortunate as I feel it stifles the flow of conversation.

To those of you who have asked questions and added value or support through your comments, thank you. I appreciate your interaction and the conversations you engage in here.

Last links for October 2009

2009-10-31T08:47:00.000-07:00

Image: Japanese Persimmons used under a creative commons licence from Big Grey Mare
http://www.flickr.com/photos/biggreymare/3128606422/sizes/m/
Chosen in honor of the black squirrel who is distracting me as I watch him trying to help himself to the persimmons in the backyard.

It's been a great week and I have loads to share. In the interests of brevity I have posted a few here today but you can check out the rest on delicious. Over there. On the sidebar where it says My Bookmarks.

Once in a while I come across a slide set that I really wish I had come up with myself. Such is the case with Donna Saxby's classy Prezi on Delicious. (@librarydonna)

It's that time of the school year when we welcome student teachers into our classrooms. Cybraryman1 has compiled a useful page of links for student teachers.

The Twitterverse has been all agog over the release of Lists to everyone this week. I've made some useful connections by checking out education or school librarian related lists and created one of my own: teacher librarians. My name has been added to a few and a couple have left me scratching my head. How did I end up on a list of publishers? Really, this blog doesn't count.

Here are a couple of useful list-related sites:
How-To: Use Twitter Lists by Demo Girl
Listorious: The Directory of Awesome Lists on Twitter

The Unquiet Librarian has written an interesting post on Advocating with more Dimension to your Monthly Reports.

I am User Generated blog has an interesting comment on plagiarism.

My favourite podcast/slideshare of the week from Dean Shareski When You're Not the Smartest Person in the Room. Pass it on to someone who doesn't understand the value of educational networking. Click on his name above to see his really cool/creepy twitter avatar. (This may be time-limited so if it's gone when you get there don't blame me, please!)

I started a Google Doc after asking this question on Twitter: What one book do you think every teacher should read. I'm looking for titles that make you think or make you change your practice or open your eyes to a whole new way of seeing the world. If you have a suggestion please add it to the list, it's open to everyone. Take a look, there are some cool titles there.

And finally a great student lesson plan from David Truss: Halloween Scavenger Hunt on Ning he created it for a class doing a philanthropy project. Great model!

Drop Everything and Read

2009-10-26T09:13:00.001-07:00

Please join me and thousands of teachers, students, government and members of the public across Canada as we celebrate National School Library Day and Drop Everything and Read for 20 minutes this morning.

Collaborative Conferencing

2009-10-25T16:59:00.000-07:00

Image used under a Creative Commons License from ChrisL_AK on flickr.

I am more and more loving the idea of the collaborative conference. On Saturday I attended a day-long session with Steve Hargadon on ~~Social~~ Educational Networking. (Steve has officially renamed it). His session model was inspiring. Here’s why:

- He posted an agenda on a wiki page and then proceeded to rewrite it based on the interests and needs of the group that came out during the introduction to the day.
- During introductions he mined the group for talents or knowledge that individuals were willing to share.
- He reassessed throughout the day to determine that individual needs and expectations were being met.
- The feeling of spontaneity and serendipity was exciting. He connected our session with another in California by Skype during the lunch break and the two groups shared what they had learned that day. He brought in three other educators using Skype to talk briefly about their experiences with networking.
- He ensured that the interests of both beginners and more seasoned practitioners were met through the use of breakout sessions.
- He ended the day with an energized speed-geeking session where participants shared useful tools or ideas.
- He developed a real sense of community amongst participants who left with a desire to reconnect with each other and extend conversations beyond the session.
- We didn’t ‘sit and git’ but rather shared our strengths, asked questions and had deep conversations.

I came away with a clear sense of how I might restructure the training sessions I do. I also wonder how this might be effectively used in the classroom.

Do we have the courage to step away from the front of the class and allow students to create learning clusters that better meet their needs? Clusters that change as the students' needs change. Would this help to build a sense of trust and a culture of learning in the classroom? I think it's worth a try.

Student Bloggers Read for Life

2009-10-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

One of the Grad Transitions teachers came to me a few weeks ago with an idea. She wanted students to read books that were contemporary and might give them some insight into the world they are about to enter as adults. The topics could encompass almost anything and we got them started by putting out a display of titles that included themes such as finance, travel, living with disability, the environment, life lessons, memoirs.

A sample of titles:

How To Live Successfully on Your Own
An Inconvenient Truth
Me to We
The Last Lecture
In a Sunburned Country

Then we set up a blog using Edublogs and the students were all given author rights. I love working with Gr. 12s because they know the ropes. Consequently we did not need to spend a lot of time teaching them how to write journal responses. They had done this many times throughout their high school careers.

They were intrigued by the idea that people other than just their teacher would be reading their posts. We offered extra credit for those who got their parents to post a comment. Nothing beats the excitement in the room as they considered what they would write and who might be reading their words.

We talked to them about the importance of tagging. Most had never heard of the concept. We explained how we would be following them using RSS feeds for both posts and comments. They will be required to post at least once per chapter and to comment on other's posts but we are hoping that they will be motivated enough that they will post because they are excited, informed and entertained by what they are reading.

Please stop by if you have a moment and offer your comments, insights and support.
Reading for Life

Short Stories – Offering Choice Online

2009-10-18T16:40:00.000-07:00

I was inspired to put together this list of resources after reading Buffy J. Hamilton's Unquiet Library post from Oct. 16, 2009
Short Stories + iPods + Happy Readers. Her excellent post is chock full of ideas and resources. At the next English Department meeting I'll spend a few minutes introducing teachers to these:

Bartleby.com – a search for “short stories” turned up 183 results

Google Book Search has a short stories category (382 results)

Short Stories
Nine genres, listed with number of pages, age ranking, study questions, guides and activities, rating, dictionary feature for pronunciation and meaning, and how to contact the author. Notice the tab for children’s stories.

Classic Reader Search by author.

American Literature
Lists 20 Great American Short Stories on the home page. Use the menu tabs to access an alphabetical list by title or author as well as a children’s section.

Classic Short Stories
Search by author or title.

A Few Project Ideas to Get You Started:

Book Trailers using iMovie or PowerPoint

Cartoons using online cartooning tools such as Toondo

Read, Write Think’s list of project ideas.

The English Companion Ning post and replies.

This Week's Smorgasbord of Links

2009-10-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

Some good resources that caught my eye this week. Dig in - Enjoy!

Five Tips for Teachers New to Blogging on Gail Desler’s BlogWalker.

Why Twitter? What can Twitter do for my library & my community? How would you use some of these ideas for your school library?

Twurdy: a search engine that uses colour coding to rank sites by readability.

From The Answer Sheet an article – Willingham: Student “Learning Styles: Theory is Bunk

Image used under a creative commons licence by Heather
http://www.flickr.com/photos/heather/2480071221/sizes/m/