What is Web 2.0? Learn it in 5 minutes or less
At Learn it in 5, you'll learn what is Web 2.0, and strategies for using Web 2.0 technology in the digital classroom - all in 5 minutes or less.
Learn it in 5 is a powerful library of how-to videos, produced by technology teachers, for the purpose of helping teachers and students create classroom strategies for today's 21st century's digital classroom. These step-by-step how-to videos walk teachers through Web 2.0 technology, demonstrating how to use Web 2.0 applications like blogs, social networks, podcasts, interactive videos, wikis, slide sharing and much more.
Her staff offers a complete suite of information services to students and faculty members, spread across four teams. One provides content or access to it in all its manifestations; another manages and curates information relevant to the school’s activities; the third creates Web products that support teaching, research, and publication; and the fourth group is dedicated to student and faculty research and course support. Kennedy sees libraries as belonging to a partnership of shared services that support professors and students. “Faculty don’t come just to libraries [for knowledge services],” she points out. “They consult with experts in academic computing, and they participate in teaching teams to improve pedagogy. We’re all part of the same partnership and we have to figure out how to work better together.”
It’s not that we don’t need libraries or librarians,” he continues, “it’s that what we need them for is slightly different. We need them to be guides in this increasingly complex world of information and we need them to convey skills that most kids actually aren’t getting at early ages in their education. I think librarians need to get in front of this mob and call it a parade, to actually help shape it.”
Her staff offers a complete suite of information services to students and faculty members, spread across four teams. One provides content or access to it in all its manifestations; another manages and curates information relevant to the school’s activities; the third creates Web products that support teaching, research, and publication; and the fourth group is dedicated to student and faculty research and course support. Kennedy sees libraries as belonging to a partnership of shared services that support professors and students. “Faculty don’t come just to libraries [for knowledge services],” she points out. “They consult with experts in academic computing, and they participate in teaching teams to improve pedagogy. We’re all part of the same partnership and we have to figure out how to work better together.”
“The digital world of content is going to be overwhelming for librarians for a long time, just because there is so much,” she acknowledges. Therefore, librarians need to teach students not only how to search, but “how to think critically about what they have found…what they are missing… and how to judge their sources.”
But making comparisons between digital and analog libraries on issues of cost or use or preservation is not straightforward. If students want to read a book cover to cover, the printed copy may be deemed superior with respect to “bed, bath and beach,” John Palfrey points out. If they just want to read a few pages for class, or mine the book for scattered references to a single subject, the digital version’s searchability could be more appealing; alternatively, students can request scans of the pages or chapter they want to read as part of a program called “scan and deliver” (in use at the HD and other Harvard libraries) and receive a link to images of the pages via e-mail within four days.
(POD) would allow libraries to change their collection strategies: they could buy and print a physical copy of a book only if a user requested it. When the user was done with the book, it would be shelved. It’s a vision of “doing libraries ‘just in time’ rather than ‘just in case,’” says Palfrey. (At the Harvard Book Store on Massachusetts Avenue, a POD machine dubbed Paige M. Gutenborg is already in use. Find something you like in Google’s database of public-domain books—perhaps one provided by Harvard—and for $8 you can own a copy, printed and bound before your wondering eyes in minutes. Clear Plexiglas allows patrons to watch the process—hot glue, guillotine-like trimming blades, and all—until the book is ejected, like a gumball, from a chute at the bottom.)
We’re rethinking the physical spaces to accommodate more of the type of learning that is expected now, the types of assignments that faculty are making, that have two or three students huddled around a computer working together, talking.”
Libraries are also being used as social spaces,
In terms of research, students are asking each other for information more now than in the past, when they might have asked a librarian.
On the contrary, the whole history of books and communication shows that one medium does not displace another.
it’s not just a service organization. I would even go so far as to call it the nervous system of our corporate body.”
"This defines a new role for librarians as database experts and teachers, while the library becomes a place for learning about sophisticated search for specialized information."
"How do we make information as useful as possible to our community now and over a long period of time?"
Libraries are reinventing themselves as content becomes more accessible online and their role becomes less about housing tomes and more about connecting learners and constructing knowledge.
Libraries are reinventing themselves as content becomes more accessible online and their role becomes less about housing tomes and more about connecting learners and constructing knowledge
Printed books still play a critical role in supporting learners, but digital technologies offer additional pathways to learning and content acquisition. Students and teachers no longer need a library simply for access. Instead, they require a place that encourages participatory learning and allows for co-construction of understanding from a variety of sources.
the space does include paper books and physical artifacts, as well as flexible furniture and an open environment, digital content encourages students to explore, play, and delve deeper into subjects they may not otherwise experience
a flexible space with moveable chairs, desks, and even bookshelves. Small rooms can be opened up to allow for group projects, and the circulation desk as well as the sides of the stacks are writeable with dry-erase markers to encourage the collaboration and sharing that the previous space had discouraged.
the role of the coffeehouse in the birth of the Enlightenment -- it provided "a space where people would get together from different backgrounds, different fields of expertise, and share."
interact with the content, the technology, the space, and each other in order to gain context and increase their knowledge.
Students and teachers no longer need a library simply for access. Instead, they require a place that encourages participatory learning and allows for co-construction of understanding from a variety of sources.
“I think the definition of writing is shifting,” Boardman said. “I don’t think writing happens with just words anymore.”
In his classes, Boardman teaches students how to express their ideas and how to tell stories —and he encourages them to use video, music, recorded voices and whatever other media will best allow them to communicate effectively. He is part of a vanguard of educators, technologists, intellectuals and writers who are reimagining the very meaning of writing and reading.
The keys to understanding this new perspective on writing and reading lie in notions of collaboration and being social. More specifically, it’s believing that collaboration and increased socialization around activities like reading and writing is a good idea.
“We find when writing moves online, the connections between ideas and people are much more apparent than they are in the context of a printed book,”
transmedia work
The MIT Media Lab tagged collaboration as one of the key literacies of the 21st century, and it’s now so much a part of the digital learning conversation as to be nearly rote. In his new book, “Where Good Ideas Come From,” Stephen Johnson argues that ideas get better the more they’re exposed to outside influences.
Laura Flemming is an elementary school library media specialist in River Edge, N.J. About three years ago, she came across a hybrid book—half digital, half traditional—called “Skeleton Creek” by Patrick Carmen.
“The 6th graders were running down to library class, banging down the door to get in, which you don’t often see,” Flemming said.
It is not only the act of writing that is changing. It’s reading, too. Stein points to a 10-year-old he met in London recently. The boy reads for a bit, goes to Google when he wants to learn more about a particular topic, chats online with his friend who are reading the same book, and then goes back to reading.
“We tell our kids we want them to know what it’s like to walk in the shoes of the main character,” Flemming said. “I’ve had more than one child tell me that before they read ‘Inanimate Alice,’ they didn’t know what that felt like.”
Stein says it’s better to take advantage of new technologies to push the culture in the direction you want it to go. Stein is fully aware of the political and cultural implications of his vision of the future of reading and writing, which shifts the emphasis away from the individual and onto the community. It’s asking people to understand that authored works are part of a larger flow of ideas and information.
"Textbook makers, bookstore owners and college student surveys all say millennials still strongly prefer print for pleasure and learning, a bias that surprises reading experts given the same group's proclivity to consume most other content digitally. A University of Washington pilot study of digital textbooks found that a quarter of students still bought print versions of e-textbooks that they were given for free."
"This paper explains the key role that school librarians and libraries should play in state- and districtwide efforts to transition to digital learning, or the effective use of technology to improve teaching and learning. The report calls for district and school leaders, policymakers, and boards of education to support, encourage, and fund the evolving role of librarians and libraries as facilitators of content creation, personalized learning, and professional development."
"It's something to consider as we continue to look for ways to share our knowledge in what is increasingly a classroom-centered ecosystem with classroom-accessed digital resources. It's also a kind of power shift … not a loss of power, but a different kind of power. There's something about being in the teacher's own classroom that puts you right where the learning is without the learning being disrupted by moving to a lab or library. And that's powerful."
"The significant increases in the usage, frequency and access to digital media in the classroom over the past several years, along with the research showing that integrating multimedia and technology into instruction can boost student achievement, is driving our strategy to produce the most effective media for learning,"
The Library 2.011 Worldwide Virtual Conference, November 2 – 4, 2011, is a unique chance to participate in a global conversation on the current and future state of libraries. Subject strands include the changing roles of libraries and librarians, the increasing impact of digital media and the e-book revolution, open educational resources, digital literacy, shifts from information consumption to production (Web 2.0), multimedia and gaming spaces, libraries as community centers, the growth of individualized and self-paced learning, the library as the center of new learning models, understanding users in the digital age, assessing service delivery, and defining leadership and information professional careers in a networked and changing world.
Librarians feel compelled to acquire eContent from only one distributor because it is too confusing – for them, for students, for teachers, for business managers - to purchase eContent from a variety of distributors, thus materials selection is driven by who they buy from, not what a
igns with the curriculum. This is a classic example of the tail wagging the dog.
It is our job to develop our collections, aligning them with our school/district’s curriculum – not to buy ready-made packages from vendors. It is our job to create, instructional materials, and to determine how to best assess our students’ learning. This requires granular knowledge of our patron base, our curricula, and our collections. You can't fake this. It takes a long time to build that knowledge base. If we relinquish these responsibilities to commercial interests, we literally sell out our own profession.
eContent requires meticulous, patron-aware (rather than traditional) cataloging. It is virtually (no pun intended) impossible to “display” eContent. There is no way to physically put it in the hands of students, if students are using their own technology. This is not happening for a few reasons:
Since vendors and library management systems have made it possible to import MARC records, librarians, as a whole, have been falling out of the cataloging practice.
Cataloging is time consuming, and tedious work.
Cataloging, as we learned it, doesn’t work for our students. We have to reinvent it. For example, at New Canaan High School, we add the project name as a subject heading to each title in the eCollection that supports it.
In BYOD programs, library programs should be undergoing significant instructional transformations that evolve as students’ facility with mobile technology increases. The ratio of print to digital content should be contingent upon students’ ability to access eContent. Developing a system to calculate this would help school librarians make sound decisions about format choices."
Feed readers
are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they
make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet
easy. Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can
automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a
day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for
anyone.
Imagine
never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources
again. Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of
marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the
thoughts of writers that you trust, respect and enjoy.
Feed readers can
quickly and easily support blogging in the classroom, allowing teachers to
provide students with ready access to age-appropriate sites of interest that are
connected to the curriculum. By collecting sites in advance and organizing
them with a feed reader, teachers can make accessing information manageable for
their students.
Here are several
examples of feed readers in action:
Used specifically as
a part of one classroom project, this feed list contains information related to
global warming that students can use as a starting point for individual
research.
While there are literally dozens of different feed reader
programs to choose from (Bloglines andGoogle Reader are two
biggies), Pageflakes is a favorite of
many educators because it has a visual layout that is easy to read and
interesting to look at. It is also free and web-based. That
means that users can check accounts from any computer with an Internet
connection. Finally, Pageflakes makes it quick and easy to add new
websites to a growing feed list—and to get rid of any websites that users are no
longer interested in.
What's even
better: Pageflakes has been developinga teacher version of their tooljust for us that includes an online grade tracker,
a task list and a built in writing tutor. As Pageflakes works to perfect
its teacher product, this might become one of the first kid-friendly feed
readers on the market. Teacher Pageflakes users can actually blog and create a
discussion forum directly in their feed reader---making an all-in-one digital
home for students.
For more
information about the teacher version of Pageflakes, check out this
review:
Cathy Oxley on 20 Jan 13Resources to support schools in implementing project-based learning.
