Initiating an in-House Library Digital Publishing Program

[Deborah McCallum]

The Library is a dynamic and ever-changing place in the school. It is a Welcoming place of opportunity for students and teachers, with endless possibilities for Collaboration, experimentation, sharing, and learning.

Inspired by the SAMR and Technology Integration Matrix, the Publishing initiative is one where We hope to inspire and motivate students to Publish the wonderful work that they are already doing in their classrooms. It will provide many new opportunities for, but not limited to, collaboration, differentiation, sharing, creating, and consolidation of learning. Work stations will be set up with iPads, netbooks, laptops, and other devices that students may have.

This program will meet criteria from:

Board Improvement Plans
School Improvement Plans
School Effectiveness Frameworks
Essential Practices
Digital Citizenship & BYOD policies and Procedures
Curriculum Expectations
Community, Culture & Caring
FNMI knowledge and FNMI-friendly strategies can be infused
Students can come down to Publish their work!

This certainly is not an exhaustive list, but these are some of the suggestions of what students will be able to do:

Publish short Stories on iBooks
Blog your reflections instead of journal writing OR re-blog your journal writing
Create a ‘Fakebook’ page for a character in a book you are reading
Publish poetry into an eBook
Classroom Newsletters & website updating
When a class finishes for example, art work, send a student down with all of the pieces, and we can take pictures of them all and put them into a dynamic presentation
‘Explain Everything’ where students can explain what they are doing in math to teach another group of kids, or show to their parents.
Publish work anonymously to your website/blog
Take pictures of your work in class at various stages, then come back later with those pictures to put them into a slideshow presentation that demonstrates a continuum of learning
Record your findings of an experiment
Create oral or written ‘Book Reviews’ to share with others
Drama Presentations turned into iMovies and even use of Greenscreen
Create infographics, or other visual representations of data from your findings in math
Record music you have made
Discover new ways to demonstrate your knowledge from your readings to replace traditional Book Reports
The benefits of Student Publishing can include:

Safe ways to publish student work
Motivation for students to get their work done knowing that they can work on it using technology
Feelings of Pride and accomplishment for seeing a Published piece of work
Something to share with parents
Opportunities for students to teach other students
Knowledge consolidation
Creativity and Imagination
Differentiation
Collaboration and support from other people in the school
Gives student work new purposes
Ideas can be shared and transferred into different classrooms with students teaching other students about new tools they learn about
Inspiring others to do new things with their work
Inspiring new types of learning
Feedback that Teachers can use for summative assessment and evaluation:
Assessment OF learning
Reinforces the learning process
Ability to share work ‘anonymously’ with other classrooms and students. Peer feedback from others.
Meeting different needs of students to provide motivation or enrichment to some, but not mandatory for those students who may be overwhelmed or be experiencing processing difficulties with the myriad of visuals and text, for example.

I look forward to implementing this with my partner this year,


Please feel free to share some of your ideas based on what you have done or would love to do in your own classroom or Library!

Deborah McCallum

© Deborah McCallum and Big Ideas in Education, 2012-2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Deborah McCallum and Big Ideas in Education with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.