Creating a web2.0 Library with Pageflakes

Inspired by The Unquiet Library's Pageflakes I spent some time today developing several pages for my high school library. Several weeks ago I staked our claim by setting up accounts on Twitter, Facebook and delicious in addition to the library wiki I set up some time ago. I am so very happy that The Unquiet Library has been generous enough to share their pages. It has given me a starting place that I can learn from and build on. I hope to encourage staff members to start their own pages which can be added as this resource grows.

This YouTube video gives a quick explanation on sharing options for your pages - Pageflakes: how to share your page.

One of my main reasons for taking the library online has been to encourage students to read using as many tools as possible. The Unquiet Library has some great ideas for feeds on their YA Lit 2.0 page. These include author interviews and book trailers from YouTube, author blogs and teen books review blogs.

A Teen Author Blog index can be found on the TeenLib Wiki. At the bottom of the list of authors are links to other lists of teen author blogs. I chose a couple of authors that are popular with our students as well as the fabulous Reading Rants blog.

Check your local public library for blog feeds. Ours is running a summer reading book club that I've added a feed for.

This will be a work in progress as I hope to:
- add pages for socials, science and english classes
- set up pages for specific large research projects
- add a flickr feed for images around a theme.
- create news feeds for events such as elections or the upcoming 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver.

Are you using Pageflakes or an equivalent service like Netvibes? How do you envision it being used to serve a school library community? Please offer your comments!

Image credit to me!

Reflection and Planning

Every June I start my September file. As I tidy up my office I reflect on what was successful this past year and what I would like to focus on in the new school year.

When I still get requests from staff asking about a website I forwarded to them some time ago I know I need to revisit social bookmarking with them. The benefits of learning to use social bookmarking well are numerous. Socials, Science and English teachers in the district are banding together to build strong collections of material resources found online and have created delicious accounts for this purpose. I plan to teach my staff how to use delicious as a search engine to turn up useful sites.

When I read posts from powerhouse educators I know I can adapt their ideas to my situation.

Kim Cofino writes about the monthly coffee and technology sessions for parents held at her school. Our circumstances are different from those in an International School so mornings won't work for us. I plan to approach our Parent Advisory Council about doing a monthly tech evening.

Doug Johnson's post on the practice of "mini" research encapsulates the essence of good practice when it comes to teaching students how to become thoughful researchers. I plan to visit each department in September and start discussions around how to make research and problem solving an integral part of each day's lesson.

I try to use this time to create useful resources to add to the school websiste like some quick tips for using Google Docs. The more I use Google Docs the more I love it. Today I discovered that you can check the spelling of a word, look up synonyms or pull up an encyclopedia article on the word. I also discovered that you can insert bookmarks into a document that work as shortcuts to places within the document. This will be very useful for longer projects that require an index or table of contents.

What interesting projects are you considering for next year? Post a comment and tell us about them.

Image used under a Creative Commons license by Dominic's pics
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dominicspics/3399203747/sizes/m/

Creativity & Problem Solving: what students crave.

Overheard in the library:

Student, looking at a worksheet with questions and answers to fill in from a specific website.
"It's all right here in front of us. What, does he (the teacher) just want us to copy it out? I want a problem I can figure out."

If kids are bored are they learning?
Are they engaged in learning skills that will help them become lifelong learners?

How can we as teachers avoid the problem of bored students?
Here are three suggestions for adding to your repertoire.

Engage in the conversations going on in the Classroom 2.0 Ning. Listen to one of their weekly Classroom 2.0 Live presentations. Ask questions. Join the forum discussions.

Sign up for diigo or delicious and mine the bookmarked sites for ideas. Diigo has groups organized around topics such as Web Tools for Educators, Project Based Learning and Critical Thinking. There are 251 groups (as of today) in the Education category.

Have a look at Andrew Churches Educational Origami wiki, especially the page on Bloom's Digital Taxonomy that shows Loren Anderson's revised taxonomy.


Once upon a time (my mother's generation) teachers were trained at Normal School. According to Wikipedia: The French concept of an "école normale" was to provide a model school with model classrooms to teach model teaching practices to its student teachers.

Has our model changed since then? Have out methods? Our students certainly have!


Photo Credits:
Old School - used under a Creative Commons License by shuichiro

Summer Reading

It's the time of year when school librarians in the northern hemisphere are preparing summer reading lists. Here's a good selection to kick start your list:

Top Ten Summer Reading Lists for Kids and Teens 2009
IPL for Teens: Teenspace - Reading Lists and Clubs
YALSA's lists of award winners
Random House suggestions

I've also been sifting through websites looking for books to recommend for adult summer reading. Some great sites for inspiration have come to light:

Bookclubs.ca
Book Group Buzz - a Booklist Blog
iLibrarian - 10 Websites for Book Lovers

Image used under a Creative Commons License by: stepol
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stepol/2356151133/sizes/m/

My Week as a Learner

B.C. educators, do you know about KnowSchools? This learning environment is "dedicated to school educators to learn and share together online." Weekly sessions are offered on a variety of topics and facilitated by knowledgeable educators using Moodle. This week's moderator was the wonderful Sharon Betts (on Twitter).

In addition to learning about new tools, trends and practices in online environments it gives you the chance to build your own personal learning network (PLN). You'll experiment and learn with like-minded people as you discover great resources.
This service is free to B.C. educators, just sign up and you're in. You must register for each session individually.

I like the self-serve, use at your own pace presentation. At the conclusion of each week the session is left open for a period of weeks (although the moderator is no longer monitoring) so you can continue to experiment and learn. Give it a try!

Finds This Week:

Vocab Grabber is another great tool from Visual Thesaurus. Enter some text and watch as it separates out the vocabulary and shows it in a tag cloud or list. Definitions appear in a separate column.

Looking for ideas or motivation? Read some of the 100 Incredibly Inspiring Blog Posts for Educators on this list.

Own Your Online Profile

I took the plunge today and created accounts for my school with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr. It's important to stake your claim in online environments before someone else does it for you. In this way you control your public image.

My vision is to:
* use these online tools to keep parents and students in the loop
* remind them of important upcoming events.
* create a showcase for families to see when they wondering where to enroll their students
* share our projects and successes
* create a conversation with the community, both locally and at large

How do you envision using social media to enhance learning in your environment?

Taking the RSS plunge

Yesterday we had a pro d. event in our district and taught 60+ educators how to set up an RSS feed. Today in my own reader I have come across two posts with 'best blogs for educators' articles. Serendipitous!

Cable in the Classroom has a pdf of suggestions. Click on Bookmark This! to download the list of suggested blogs.

Online University Reviews has a list of 100 Most Interesting and Innovative Blogs for Educators.

I've added them both to the wiki page of suggested blogs.

Happy reading!