I selected Alan Levine's blog "CogDogBlog" because of Alan's writing and rants on different kinds of technology, their accessibility, and how they are used for educational purposes.
This article describes the use of "Pineapple Charts" - publicly displayed schedules that encourage teachers to invite and visit each other's classrooms to learn from each other.
Designing systems for successful change in schools
"The tradition of school is so deeply ingrained and as many educators have been successful in the traditional model it can be hard to imagine doing it differently."
"Use this protocol and note catcher to guide a learning walk at a school site - a series of quick classroom visits where you set the purpose and focus."
Functionality is critical, but so is user-friendliness. “If your goal is a high adoption rate within the organization, make sure you’re choosing the most approachable, most intuitive system possible,”
“economic and rational benefits for the organization and the individual,”
familiarity with and interest in digital technology varies widely” among employees, your training efforts should reflect those differences, says Bonnet. Some employees might prefer an online training session; others might need a bit more handholding and support in the form of a personal coach
As soon as reasonably possible, try to “institutionalize” the new technology and “show employees that you are transitioning from the old way of working to the new one,”
part of the routine of the way the place works,”
“Rewarding the behavior you want to see is much more effective than penalizing the behavior you don’t want to see,” says Mankins. You’ll need to know “which employees are adopting the technology and which kind of rewards means the most to them.”
Win hearts and minds by emphasizing how the new technology benefits the organization and makes employees’ lives easier
Encourage adoption by rewarding employees in ways that are most meaningful to them
Build the new technology into the routines and rhythms of the workday as soon as possibl
Pick a technology that’s more complicated than it needs to be; for a swift adoption, select a system that’s approachable and intuitive
Overlook the importance of getting your most influential employees on board early in the process; they will help you bring around others
Leap to punish employees who don’t use the technology; penalties should be a last resort if incentives and rewards aren’t working
This may be harder for less "tech-y" participants to implement
How big is the problem? How much money, efficiency, productivity, etc. is in play here? Does it make sense for your organization to implement new technology, or is there a better alternative?
What’s the timeframe? Are you under a deadline to get something done, or do you have enough time to adequately test and prepare the right solution?
From there, publicize a target timeframe for the tech rollout, and be transparent about it. If there are setbacks, explain what happened and why. Keep employees engaged and up-to-date on what’s happening. Ultimately, this engagement will help you get to the finish line with your goals for this new technology solution. Because if people aren’t positively motivated, even the best new tools won’t be helpful.
Finally, it’s important to understand how long an implementation cycle can take. Because of the nature of today’s consumer-led technologies, this is often a process that can take more than a year or longer.
Or the wrong technology implemented correctly.
For example, you can have the right technology implemented poorly.
From your perspective, you’re bringing improvement—saving employees time, allowing them to be more flexible, improving productivity, improving sales and profits, etc.
But from employees’ and departments’ point of view, you’re rocking the boat, telling them to change how they’ve always been doing things, give up precious tools, learn and carry around new devices and the like.
I wanted an easy way to keep track of the essentials—when they were last shod, when they got their fall shots, when they had their last dewormer or fecal test.
access that paperwork from anywhere
The software is infinitely customizable, allowing users to record pretty much anything: work, turn-out, drugs and medications, competition schedules and results.
A great article about doing internet research with elementary school students.
eaching research skills in third grade -- just at the time where my students' reading skills are such that they can feel successful and just at the time when they have mounds and mounds of natural curiosity. In the
Third grade seems to be the most common grade to start some authentic research skills. I know 2nd grade teachers that start with an animal project in a limited way to get students thinking about how to look at information.
Your parents said you can have any pet you want. What will you need to keep the pet?")
SweetSearch search engine, which weeds out the junk they usually find on Google or Bing and which highlights their keywords and pulls text from the website into the list of search results.
Good search engine to use with elementary students
My older students will be using EasyBib to organize their links and their notes. While my third graders will not be doing true citation yet, I will be teaching citation to my seventh graders and requiring all of their projects to be accompanied by a bibliography, which they will create in EasyBib.
Older students will use EasyBib to do citations, but 3rd grade will not.
The SweetSearch Tutorial: Not only is SweetSearch an amazing search tool for kids, but they have some great resources here for helping digest what research is and how to approach it. Copyright Confusion Wiki: A one-stop shop for all things copyright and fair use. How to Do Research Another take on the research process from the Kentucky Virtual Library. Diigo for Educators A robust social bookmarking tool through which students can bookmark sites, highlight right on the site, share bookmarks with their peers and take notes on webpages. Teachers can create student accounts without needing emails. SweetSearch A kid-friendly search engine. EasyBib A robust online citation and organizing tool. Flickr Find copyright-free images with Creative Commons licenses. Search Creative Commons Find Creative Commons content on popular sites.Filed Under
The ultimate goal is to make information literacy an integral part of the academic curriculum, thus helping students to succeed not only during their years in college but also for their lifelong career choices.
discussion about librarian-faculty collaboration for developing information literacy skills among the students are considered briefly.
ACRL further describes information literacy as abilities to: a. Determine the extent of information needed b. Access the needed information effectively and efficiently c. Evaluate information and its sources critically d. Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base e. Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose f. Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally.
That solution has two fundamental underpinnings: the first is that information literacy is an issue for every college and university; and the second is that librarians should occupy a position in attempts to define and achieve campus-wide information literacy.
While it is legitimate to use some of the information available on the web, students need to learn how to evaluate that information.
A study conducted by two researchers at the Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom found that 75% of the students surveyed used Google as their first port of call when locating information, with the university library catalogue used by only 10%.
In general, faculty members involved in the process were willing to collaborate with librarians who served as consultants, as instructors, and as team players in designing, teaching and implementing course assignmen
One particular model which has proven to be effective is course integrated instruction. With this model, librarians and teaching faculty co-design a course, and make sure that information literacy is incorporated in the course.
They not only sought to build short-term programmatic partnerships but more importantly, formal long-term working relationships with campus units, groups, departments and administrators.
“Integrating Literacy into the Liberal Arts College Curriculum.
launched a campaign to recruit faculty as partners in the process
took advantage of the liaison system already in place
Symposiums were organized for faculty and librarians to focus on assessment and science disciplines.
offered a workshop
More and more course-related or integrated instruction sessions have come to play a bigger role in making students more information literate.
Changing fee structures, student experience and access to digitized information on the internet, librarians have had to rethink their approach to teaching IL skills
McGuinness (2007) argues that librarians tend to act in a reactive manner to the needs of academics, rather than proactively to promote IL skills.
eads to ad hoc, short-term solutions designed only to address one or two issues.
dds that librarians should align their own goals of incorporating IL skills into the curriculum with the goals of academics and institutions to influence the power structures within institutions and help shape educational content.
highlights both the ambiguity around how IL should be taught, and the important role faculty awareness of IL and integration of library staff plays in integrating IL
unpack the “culture clash” between librarians and academics
cGuinness (2006) found that academics expected students to “learn by doing” through collaborative projects with peers and dissertation reports with occasional support from staff, without a clear sense of how students would develop critical and analytical IL skills
aculty also tended to believe that a student’s ability to gain IL skills were driven by the student’s own motivation, interests and innate abilities, rather than the quality and format of the available instructional opportunities
Multiple literacies, including digital, visual, textual, and technological, have now joined information literacy as crucial skills for this century”
These collaborative efforts have enabled librarians to encourage and support faculty in establishing learning priorities which will ensure that students be equipped with the competencies to become effective lifelong learners.
Only by establishing a successful partnership between librarians and faculty, can the goal of mastery of information literacy by students be accomplished.
The goal of librarian-faculty collaboration in integrating information literacy into the curriculum is to enable students to learn the skills and competencies needed for success during their life time
To make sure that everyone is able to become an educated, skilled, and information-literate person, librarians and faculty at institutions of higher education throughout the world will need to work together as partners to provide the education