School Libraries Lead Critical Thinking

[Heidi Baker]

How are you advancing information technology literacy? Do you have any cool stories about how you jump-started the new year with technology? How are you demonstrating that the library is the center for supporting student achievement?

[Connie Masson]

St. Vrain's Educational Technology group utilized unused 07-08 non-instructional funds to enable a 08-09 Middle School Smart Cart Project. This project was a collaborative effort between Information Technology Services and Learning Services.

Each middle school library receives a cart after participating in district level training with one teacher from their school. Their assigment was to come to training with a sample student learning activity to utilize the technology and give back to their school through a train-the-trainer approach.

The carts included a Bretford Mobile Lecturn, Dell or Apple laptop, Epson projector, document camera, sound system and Promethean slate.

We advanced information technology literacy opportunities, jump-started the new year with a new technology offering at the middle school level, and demonstrated that the library is the center for supporting student achievement through this collaborative training.

[Toni Weller]

I'm a brand new librarian at Falcon Bluffs Middle School. We have students creating their own announcements using podcasting techniques, complete with video that they shoot on our own donated Channel 4 News studio set. We are developing the ability to do "live feeds" from within our school! I wish I could take the credit for this, but it was put in place by the previous librarian, Becky White and currently our wonderful digital media teacher, Tom Burns. They are great and I look forward to learning more and doing more with technology literacy in the future.

[Heidi Baker]

Check out more ideas at http://casl.wordpress.com/

[Connie Masson]

With bond and mill levy's coming up for a vote in our district, I've put together a plan, submitted it to the ITS Director and am sharing that plan with principals, HR, the teacher's union and the Deputy Superintendent of Learning Services. So far we are gaining support for our direction.

This plan is based on best practice nation-wide and state-wide. I am working with the teacher librarians to make sure the plan meets their needs, we've documented the current state and trends in our district. We are gaining support for the effort.

If the funding options pass, we are ready to implement this plan.

A key issues still remaining is seeing the actual mill levy document to find out how much of the actual proposed dollars made it into the levy in support of this effort directly.

[Jennifer Hubbard]

Several teachers at the Telluride Middle School have been using wikis to build vocabulary and encourage better homework habits. Students post and define required vocabulary words for social studies and language arts. Student must add at least one new word and definition, and update an existing one. Students who get to the wiki first have the easiest time. Students who wait until the last minute to get vocab. homework done often don't get a chance to post new words or update or refine older definitions. Students race to the library to be the first to get homework done, and often ask for librarian help defining and refining words. It's been a great opportunity to introduce students to a variety of print and online reference sources!

Love Web 2.0!

[Nancy White]

I am just wrapping up a class I led for 65 teachers in our district modeled after California State Library Association's 23 Things. We have teachers really jazzed about using blogs, wikis, podcasts, digital storytelling tools such as VoiceThread, and other great Web 2.0 tools to inspire students and help provide a learning environment that allows for more critical thinking. Our class is called Academy District 20/20 Things. Take a look at some of the great reflection our teachers have done - their blogs are all linked here. Several librarians joined in with the teachers, creating great opportunities for collaboration!