Janice’s Adventures in Web 2.0

Wow-not being that involved in my job with the copyright side of projects I was not familiar with Creative Commons so it was very illuminating watching the two videos. I have never noticed the CC logo on any of the websites that I visit.

I think that our students need to be taught about copyright and how it works and it is our job to help them interpret the world of Creative Commons licenses as part of that process. I think it is great that people are sharing their creative efforts with others. Students still need to know that they must give credit to their sources and cite them, whether they are online or, in the rare instance, in print,  but it is nice that they do not always have to contact those sources for permission to use those photos, etc. in their own creative efforts. 

I will definitely now be attuned as I begin to use digital images, video clips, etc. in my teaching to what the copyright/cc restrictions, if any, there are to those digital items that I plan to use. It is also nice to know that there are many resources out in the OER commons that I can look at to enhance my teaching, without having to reinvent the wheel myself. I plan to be sure to help our faculty become more aware of the OER commons and other sources they can go to online to find lesson plans, etc., though more and more teachers are using such sources already on a regular basis.

I have not shared much  of my own content yet on the web, though there is online my workshop that I gave several years ago about Hebrew Children’s Books at the Association of Jewish Libraries convention. I still receive requests periodically from people for my bibliographies and handouts from that workshop, as seen by them on the web, so I know that people are using those types of resources online.

I decided to read about Zionism on Wikipedia and it directed me to “Zionism as Racism“, a U.N. Resolution from 1975, declaring that Zionism is racism. Well, politics is not my forte but I did find it interesting to read through the discussion and some of the editing of this article to see how articles on Wikipedia evolve. I was not able to find easily any info on who wrote the original article. Without knowing the background on the author of an article how can you possibly know its validity or objectivity? The discussion on the article was interesting and lots of controversy and bias was evident in those discussions. It was interesting that the article was edited over 500 times. (but then when I looked at another article on Judy Blume I saw that that also had over 500 edits) So, I learned that these articles are not static, but are continually being read and edited by people, which is interesting. Not being an expert on this subject, I was not able to determine whether the article was valid but it did seem to be objective. I noticed that there were no references given, which made me question its validity a bit. A link to the revocation of this resolution gives one more info. I like that you can link from article to article to get even more background on a topic, but it is a long process. I do question the validity of such political articles on controversial topics and do think that they cannot help but contain the bias of the author. Should we allow our students to use Wikipedia as a source for research projects? I do not know what the current stance is on the validity of Wikipedia articles and need to check that out again.

I also found it interesting that when I tried to search for Judy Blume on Wikipedia the way we tell students to look up people by last name, first name I could not find the article at all! They did not link me to the article. I had to go in under Judy Blume or just plain Blume to get to it. I think they need to do better referencing so that searchers can be more successful!

On to the world of Wikis. After exploring some of the educational wiki project links provided I can begin to see how wikis can be a great teaching tool. I can also see that in Thing 8 we have just begun to scratch the surface about the myriad of ways to use wikis for educational purposes.

I was happy to see that high schools are teaching about the Holocaust in their AP World History classes. The Holocaust Wiki Project was very interesting. I thought that the teacher provided some good links to get the students going on their project. I thought it was very neat that the students had to create “branching stories” about families in the Holocaust. As Stacy Brown said in her blog post, it reminded me of the “choose your own adventure” books that we have in our library. It was interesting to see the different interpretations of what the students thought was entailed in the assignment. I thought that for this wiki project students would definitely need to explore the history of the  before they could write about their Holocaust family. I felt that the learning outcome was good-instead of just learning the historical facts it personalized history, and hopefully, helped the students to realize what a horrendous event the Holocaust was. I was surprised when I heard that these were AP high school students since some of the projects did not seem very high level. I felt that the project could have been improved by having the students edit their projects more, especially for grammar and spelling, since it was going out on the web in a wiki for all the world to read.  Some of the projects really needed more editing, such as capitalizing “Jews”, and correcting spelling mistakes. I like the concept that students can collaborate on a project online-it has always been hard to get students together outside of school to do “group projects” so being able to work together via the internet is great!

I also looked at the Kubler Reading Wiki to see the activities a teacher had set up to help Grade 4 students with their study of Natalie Babbitt’s book, Tuck Everlasting. I thought this was a great way to introduce children to using a wiki. I was amazed at how detailed these students were able to be when they did their jobs on the wiki, whether it was being character cartographer, creative connector, etc.  I liked the way the teacher switched the roles for each child with each chapter, and how each reading role had an illustration to help illustrate the activity. I wonder, though, if this was a bit too much to do for the book. But, not being a classroom teacher, perhaps not. It seemed like it would get a bit tedious after a while, having write so much detail for each chapter. I did like the “Creative Connector”, which encouraged the students to go beyond the content of each chapter, and think about how they could connect events in a chapter to their lives or to other parts of the book. Compared to the Holocaust wiki, the teacher or someone did go back and edit the children’s work for spelling, etc. All of the activities were written, as opposed to using other media as well such as podcasts, slide shows, drawing, etc. I think a bit more variety would have made the tasks more interesting.

I found Mr. Lindsay’s Room 15 Wiki ok but not great. There were some good features such as news and events, homework, students’ blogs, etc. I found that there was just too much information at times, such as the links to Delicious, etc. and I did not think it was always as user friendly as it could be. I was trying to read the student’s book reviews and I never could locate that spot. I think having a classroom Wiki is a great idea for every classroom teacher, especially Middle School, but it needs to be well organized and designed.

The Grade 5 Turn Homeward, Hannalee Wiki from Woodward Academy was a good example of an amazing exploration of a Civil War era historical novel. It was a good example of what can be done when two fifth grade teachers collaborate with their Technology instructor to create a project. Well done, Shelley! It was well organized, easy to use, and what was especially neat was the variety of activities done by the students using different modalities via powerpoint, slideshows with actual photos and children’s drawings, audio clips, etc. This would probably be a daunting effort without the help of the school’s tech person.  I was amazed at how much history they were able to learn in conjunction with the book, including a field trip to a mill. I would love to see a project like that at my school!

My initial thoughts on how I can use wikis personally? I think it would be great to have a wiki, either per grade level or through the media center where kids can post their thoughts on books they have read-did they read a great book- what was it about? Why they would recommend it, etc.  They could write a short blurb to share book recommendations with their classmates. My only thought is- should there be an adult reading their posts first-what if they are reading a book in Gr. 4 that is really more appropriate for Gr. 9 due to sexual or other more mature content?  Would we monitor contributions? Should we monitor contributions? I think other schools do have wikis for children’s book reviews and I would love to see what others are doing with this.

Discovering the world of blogs and developing an RSS Feed reading habit has been an interesting new experience. I am still exploring blogs and websites trying to find ones that really resonate for me. This week I read many interesting thoughts from a variety of educators, media specialists, etc. It is all a bit overwhelming but I am starting to get the hang of “reading” my new RSS feed postings. I will definitely be eliminating a few in the weeks to come that are not especially interesting to me.

One posting that I found especially interesting this week was at Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk blog, and was actually a summary of a posting by Penelope Trunk on her blog. The posting is called, “Hardass View of Reading.”  Penelope says, as quoted by Doug Johnson,

…If I tell people I’m a blogger, they say, “I don’t have time to read blogs.”

Here’s what I am going to start saying to those people: Only losers say they don’t have time to read blogs. Because everyone has the same 24 hours in the day. So it’s not that you somehow are more busy than everyone else – no one is actually too busy for anything – the issue is that reading blogs is not high enough on your priority list to read them.

So the real response, when I say, “I’m a blogger,” should be “I stay away from blogs so I can shield myself from alternative opinions to mainstream media.” …

and she offers (and explicates) three ways to “a grip on your reading pile”:

• Stop talking about information overload. That term is for weaklings.
• Stop talking about good and bad media. Just because you don’t read it doesn’t make it bad.
• Stop talking about time like you need to save it. You just need to use it better.

Follow the link from Doug Johnson to Penelope to get further details on this. My reaction to reading blogs is similar-how do you find the time? Penelope’s comment is, find the time-it’s important to expand your horizons by reading other people’s blogs and other helpful websites. Penelope goes on to say that the “best employees in today’s workplace are information synthesizers.” She talks about being able to process information online quickly. That is what we need to think about as we are teaching our students-how to make them efficient finders of information online, able to sort through and process that information once they find it!

Another interesting website that I discovered from my blog reading was from the School Library Journal blog- Joyce Valenza had a link to Judy O’Connell’s “Hey Jude Blog” to a posting about a great website called NeoK12. NeoK12 is a listing of free educational videos from all over the internet on a variety of subjects, from science to history, etc. This will be a good resource to share with the teachers at my school. The only downside I saw to the videos after viewing one of them is that not all of those videos seem to have an age rating yet, which means teachers will need to view the videos and make that decision for themselves. It sounds like many are short youtube videos that might be good lead ins for teachers for lessons. It is worth checking out NeoK12 since all of the lessons and videos have been screened by K-12 teachers. : So, here’s the link to the actual NeoK12 website.

I have been reading postings about technology in education, about new Jewish books and other children’s books coming out, media centers and technology and, for my own enjoyment, the latest New York Times Book Reviews. All in all, the world of RSS reading is opening new windows for me and it should be interesting to continue reading my RSS Feed in the weeks to come as I progress through this class.

I am sure that every week will bring new revelations in this Web 2.0 course. RSS Feeds-amazing! I can certainly see how one can spend hours going from one blog to another, and one link to another. (for those of us who have no life outside of the computer)

One of the blog articles that caught my eye was Doug Johnson’s “Whither Libraries? Why do schools need libraries in the age of the internet?” “The Essential Question” The role of the school library has changed so much since the age of the internet and internet research has become the way of the world. I found the responses to Doug Johnson’s question quite intriguing and thought-provoking.

Here is a sampling of a few of the comments from people that were worth considering-many of these ideas are things that we media specialists are doing-we just need to get the good word out to the faculty and staff where we work. The students in my school can use computers in the Media Center as well as in the Computer labs.

-”Students need places to hang out and/or work that are not classrooms.” (Kenn Gorman) THOUGHT-let’s make the Media Center a place where students can come to collaborate on projects on and off the computer.

“My middle school media center is a buss of activity, a place where print and non-print sources are used in research, where projects increasingly integrate web 2.0 collaborative tools and other technology, where students hone information literacy skills. This would not be happening if there was no library media specialist making sure this happened and no library. Perhaps we should change the name of libraries to library lab. I think it would be a better describe of what takes place in a good 21st century library.” (Beverly Rannow) THOUGHT:  I would love to get more middle school students at my school back in the Media Center and not just have them in the computer lab and in their middle school spaces upstairs in our Middle School.

-”We need librarians to teach students how to be critical users of information.” (David Warlick 5/13/09) THOUGHT:  I touched on this in another blog post-sure-our kids can access the internet-but can they do it effectively to retrieve accurate, useful information? That is our job and in my school also the job of the computer instructor-to teach them how to do that!

-”My library is not a passive depository of space. It is the heart of our campus, and I am a teacher librarian technologist (from a high school media specialist)” (Jeanne Swedo 5/13/09) THOUGHT: The library is not just the storage place for books-let’s make it a place students come to for a variety of reasons-to work together on projects on the computer, read a book, etc. Our media center needs to work on this concept for sure.

-”A big issue is that our fellow teachers do not always know the best methods or sources for information retrieval. We need to work with them so they see all of the possibilities and can transfer that to the assignments they require of students. ” (L.Hardin 5/14/09) THOUGHT: We need to sell our services to our faculty.

“At the same time, I think “the library” can take many forms. Books on a cart, the OPAC available everywhere in the building and at home, the librarian teaming with teachers to prepare, teach, and evaluate a project … there are so many more ways to interact. The library is NOT just a room but a service. It should be anywhere and everywhere to support students and staff. “(L..Hardin 5/14/09) THOUGHT: Media Specialists need to think outside the box. The media specialist is a service provider, not just the purchaser of books. I know we have gotten that concept somewhat in place in our school-now we just have to get all of our faculty to pull on our knowledge and expertise.

“What about working to instill a love of reading in students? Sure the reference section is outdated – any reference book is probably outdated before it hits the bookstore shelves – but fiction isn’t going anywhere, is it? (e.g. Kindle, audio books). Despite the encroachment of technology on reading for pleasure – there is nothing like finishing a good book. “(Brian Brown 5/15/09) THOUGHT: This is one of my goals. I know we are working with a generation of digital natives but that does not mean that we have to give up on the concept of reading books for pleasure. I think there is still a place for the reading of fiction in our current technological society!

The list goes on and on but I need to move to our next skill, so connect to Doug Johnson’s blog for further thoughts on this subject!

The world of blogs is mindboggling! This was my first experience with blogging and my first reactions were-what a great way to learn more about things from others’ thoughts and experiences and, how in the world do you find time to write a blog, read and comment on other blogs, as well as keep up with email, professional responsibilities, family responsibilities, etc.

Blog writing is certainly interesting-I found the various blogs I read by students and teachers enlightening. It definitely gives people a chance to write about things that interest them, share those ideas with others, and learn from other peoples’ comments.

Blog reading is different from reading a novel. I find reading a novel allows me to retreat to another world and just relax. I would hate to see this next generation give up reading fiction-I think there is still a place today for reading both on the internet and in the world of books offline.  

I found reading from the list of education-related blogs both interesting and thoughtprovoking as an educator, but very different from the world of fiction.  What is interesting is the give and take-the blog posts and other’s comments. This is different from reading a novel in hardcopy on your own and then having to wait to share your thoughts on it with others. You still have to think about what you are reading whether it is a blog, a textbook, a novel-that does not change.

I see blogging as similar to journal writing or letter writing. You are sharing your personal thoughts about things, but you are doing it online in a forum where others can read your thoughts and respond. What is neat is that you can find blogs that resonate with your interests and learn from other people’s thoughts and ideas.

Commenting definitely adds another dimension to blogging since others add more depth to the originator’s blog post with their comments. I can see how blogging can facilitate learning by students reading blogs, and responding. It is also a way for students to interact with others from all over the world, which is something that I would love to see happen more in the U.S. Traditionally our students have been very insular here in the U.S. and not really in tune with world events or people that are different from them. Through the internet and blogs we have opened the whole world to our students and the possibilities are endless!

I found that  MarkBlech’s Edutech posting “Is this SSR,  2.0″ hit home. As a librarian/media specialist I am always wondering in this age of the internet, will our children be reading books twenty years from now? Mark admitted that he, as an adult, hardly ever reads a book, due to time constraints.  Mark’s classroom activity was to do sustained silent reading in class with 3rd graders by having them read blogs some of the time, since he struggles to get all of his students turned on to reading books. Children are reading a lot, but they are reading textmessages, websites, doing Instantmessaging, etc. What is the future of reading novels? I wonder about this. I agree with him that it is a great idea to expose children to blogs by kids, etc. I wonder though, if children take their interest in blogs home and explore on their own what is the content on some of the blogs out there for adults? What is out there and what can children access? I think SSR in the classroom is still a good idea, and that children should perhaps have a mix, sometimes reading on the computer, and sometimes still reading print media. This blog post gave me a lot of food for thought.

Another blog that I found especially interesting was Chris Betcher’s Betchablog posting on “The Myth of the Digital Native.” (from Feb.2007) Chris maintains that just because our students were born into the world of technology from day one does not necessarily mean that they, as “digital natives” are the experts of technology that we assume they are. He also proposes that “those of us who grew up in the primitive pre-Google world” can still be very technologically savvy and can teach our “digital natives” how to use technology more effectively. I too have noticed that many of our students instantly go to Google to search for information but do not necessarily know how to search Google well to get effective results, and how to sort through the results/hits once they get them. Chris mentions that most kids are great at sending textmessages, using Facebook or Myspace, downloading music, but do they all know how to get past the basics of graphic design, choose websites for research that are truly authoritative, search Google well, etc.? He states that “being young does tend to make one more at ease with technology and less afraid of the digital world” but he is not sure that the terms “digital native” and “digital immigrant” necessarily still apply now that us “immigrants” are becoming adept in the world of technology as well. I loved his conclusion, that “Perhaps we need a greater meeting of the minds. Instead of thinking in terms of us and them – natives and immigrants – maybe we need to value the qualities that both parties bring to the table – combining the fearless sense of exploration of our natives with the wisdom and experience of our immigrants – and work harder on teaching and learning from each other, regardless of age, so that we all live happily ever after in this shared digital land of ours.”

Another blog posting that really resonated for me was Wandering Ink: How to Prevent another Leonardo Davinci    . I think that even with all of the technology we have available today to help make learning for our students more meaningful, our educational system still has a long way to go towards bringing out the creativity in our students. Some schools are doing a better job of this than others. This is enumerated very effectively in Kris Bradburn’s blog post. When I hear from my son in college how traditionally and boringly so many of his classes are still taught and I see in the elementary schools how much is still taught traditionally this blog also gave me a lot of food for thought. In many schools we still squash our students creativity- we need to think out of the box to nurture creativity and thinking skills in our students. I think we are definitely heading in that direction at my school.