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LIBR 233 Assignments, Summer, 2008
Note: All assignments are due to the professor by aug. 10, 2008. However, you should construct your own deadlines which you commit to and email those to the professor at: reader.david@gmail.com
Note: During the summer, 2008, your instructor will be finishing a major new book that reinvents the school library from a Microsoft model to a Google model. The shift will be from a command control idea to a client side organization. Since this is a radical shift in thinking, this class will consider both models: the best of the current model, and the possibilities of the new model. We will do this every class period. You will be furnished copies of this book as it develops and is presented for the first time at the IASL conference in Berkeley, CA in Augusst.
Prelude: If what you read below is confusing, just start reading as many book chapters, professional articles, looking at web sites, examining documents. In other words, start building content first and then the structure of the product will be clarified as we meet in class and discuss the projects over the web. Time spent fretting is unproductive. The more professional ideas you can encounter, the better your repertoire will be as you begin to manage an actual library media center. Another good tip for this class is that you are not in competition with each other so do offer the best of what you find with others, and take their suggestions for good stuff. Think of this class as a collaborative. In fact, you can do the entire project with one or several partners if you tend to work better that way. You are not reinventing the wheel. Take what you can from others who have already done the footwork. However, make your project a quality information source, not a garbage can.
Connecting. Enroll yourself in this course by going to Blackboardat http://tigris.sjsu.edu. Instructions are on the greensheet. Please create a profile in Blackboard. Go to Tools > Homepage. We are hoping to become acquainted with one another despite meeting on Elluminate. Provide some information about yourself. If possible, upload a photo so that we all know something of each other.
Connecting, part 2. As also noted on the Greensheet, please make sure that your own computing system meets department minimum requirements:http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/ecommunication/homecomputing.htm You will be participating in weekly sessions on Elluminate. A new URL is required for reaching each week’s session. The list of URLs will be emailed to students and posted under Announcements on Blackboard. Please visit the Elluminate website to familiarize yourself with the technology. There are a series of tutorials available on their site. You must obtain a microphone and earphones for your computer in order to participate in the weekly sessions. Another place to find the Elluminate sessions is on slisweb. Look under Elluminate at the top.
Your are required to attend each class session for the full ten participation points, but you can get five participation points by listening to the rrcording. This is the procedure for accessing the class recordings:
- Go to the SLIS home page and click on the Elluminate link in the upper left.
- Click on the "Recordings" tab in the upper left.
- Click on the day of the class session you wish to hear, using the calendar at the upper right.
- The list of recordings that were made on that day will appear. Click on LIBR 233 School Media Centers.
- The recording password is the same as the session password: 233.
- Click "Play.
Use the buttons at the lower left to navigate to the parts of the session you wish to hear.
Assignment 1: The Vision Project
Begin building your library media program vision project
Scenario 1: You are interviewing for a new position as a library media teacher at _____ school. The leadership team of the school has asked you to present your vision for their school in a 15 minute presentation. For summer, you will need two versions of this: old and new.
Scenario 2: You are the library media teacher at _____ school but are disturbed by the antiquated practices that are part of the "traditional" program. In your conversations with the principal, you express the desire to change the entire nature of the library media program. Interested, the principal asks you to prepare a 15 minute presentation for the school leadership team concerning the direction in which you would like to move. Again, two versions, please.
During this course, the entire class will build a knowledge base of the four major programmatic thrusts of a school library media program. This knowledge base will be constructed on a wiki that will allow everyone to contribute ideas from a wide body of professional literature. As a team, the entire class will read widely and summarize the best ideas encountered for the benefit of all. Since no one person can read the vast quantity of literature available about the school library media program, if we pool our efforts, everyone will be the richer in both surface knowledge and deep understanding.
The four program areas of the library media program are:
• The Reading Program
• The Technology Program designed to enhance learning and teaching •The program of Collaboration designed to build quality learning experiences with teachers in an information-rich and technology-rich environment • The Information Literacy Program designed to help every learner know how to learn
In addition to these program elements, they all rest on the
• Organizational and infrastructure elements of the library media center/technology infrastructure
In LIBR 233, we concentrate on the first two of the above elements. In LIBR 250, we concentrate on the last two elements. Together, these two courses assist you in the building of a total library media program linked to student achievement. We will also consider organizational elements
The knowledge base will be constructed by teams of students using wikis at
libr233synthesisfall2007.pbwiki.com
We will use the same wiki for the summer term.
You will be assessed on the quality of your contribution to the knowledge base. Quantity is not the import factor, but quality is. However, one would think that you could find at least ten quality articles to add.
The final product for this Vision Project will be something that is relevant to you at the moment or in the future. This could take the form of:
- A major vision statement concentrating on the first two program elements but also covering the entire four.
- An actual presentation for a real or imaginary school leadership team
- A publishable article for an audience other than school library media teachers
In all cases, both the wiki and the final product are to become part of your electronic portfolio as required for graduation for the School of Library and Information Science, San Jose State University. Follow the guidelines from the school to create your project in the form that will be ready for that portfolio.
Readings for this databank will come from national standards and vision documents, the textbooks, and a wide range of professional books and articles. A pathfinder wiki entitled
should be used to list and share the best of what you are reading for the benefit of everyone. It is the bibliography. The synthesis wiki is the summary of what you have read.
This means that for your ten articles or more, you will list the citation and a brief note about it on the pathfinder wiki and then your longer synthesis will appear on the synthesis wiki. Why? Becaue the pathfinder wiki stays around, the synthesis wiki gets erased over time.
One great source for professional articles is: "Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning: Full-Text Research Articles from School Library Media Quarterly" see also on the AASL web site. This is now a periodical titled: School Library Media Online.
Current professional books are reviewed by the instructor for the periodical Teacher Librarian. At: http://www.teacherlibrarian.com/ . The reviews on this site are supplemented with reviews on a wiki at: http://professionalreviews.pbwiki.com/
Assignment 2: The Diital Learning Commons
Create a The Digital School Library (DSL)/ Digital Learning Commons
During the summer, we will be doing a major experimental construction of a client side digital school library. We will be collaboratively building three sample school libraries: elementary, middle, and senior high school using the blog software Wordpress.com This will draw ideas from Joyce Valenza's home page and other home pages as we discover site. In addition, each of you will construct your own iGoogle page. And, you will construct a fictitious/sample student iGoogle page. If you wish to create your own school library blog, you may do so by harvesting from the collaborative ones and adding your own content as you wish. You are not required to do the latter actual school site.
For the first few weeks of the class, there will be major experimentation with Wordpress and iGoogle to get you up on the technology so that we can all add to the content. You should start to explore Joyce Valenza's site asap to beging learning how she and her students create this site. It is a messy place, as Joyce describes it, but it works.
Older stuff we put on the digital school library - all of this is up for grabs as we begin to design a learning commons digital library
The main web page/title screen
Teacher Tools: A button for teachers (containing two major sections: READING and ENHANCING LEARNING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY.
Student Section:Many school library media centers have websites that serve themselves, teachers, and students. You might think of such a website as a digital school library. Some schools have a school website and the library is one of the clicks off the website. In this class, you should create the DSL with the school as a click off it. For example, it might be titled "The Lincoln Digital School Library." This semester, you should construct four pieces if you do not already have them in operation:
There should be three parts to the student part of the page:
- Tools - links to tools that help a student be successful in their classes and in the school. For example, word processors, graphics packages, tutorials on how to write a term paper, tips on using the digital camera to link pictures into a web page, In other words, link learners to the actual tools and/or helps for using them to succeed. Even information literacy tip sheets might be here.
- Resources for personal space, collaborative space or outer space: This is the section linking learners to online databases and various search engines - the place where they will search for information they want. The section may link them to specific databases such as Electric Library or InfoTrac or SIRS; links to encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc. Hopefully meta-search engines to search multiple databases might be included. This section also contains the link to the school library catalog and other library catalogs. It also links to various search engines such as Yahoo, Google, and Dog Pile among others. There might also be links to a section listing the 15,000 best websites for middle schoolers. A good meta search engine to look at is http://google.scholar.com. This specialized Internet search tool is designed to help teachers and students efficiently locate Internet content that can be used for educational purposes.
- Push technology section - this is the area where administrators, teachers, library media teachers, and parents are trying to get to the learner with announcements, links to classroom web pages/assignments, advertisements (such as good books to read), etc. There might be a "web site or book of the day" or connections to the living yearbook of the school (the latest pictures of the football game or other school event) . This section would be a place each student could add resources for their personal space so they keep up to date on what they need to be doing.
Another area of push technology is the listing of student assignment and collaborative units currently being done in the LMC These are the collaborative units you are doing with teachers including any of the following features: At least one button that links students in a particular class to useful resources for that class including carefully selected Internet sites and any clicks to electronic resources in the school library collection; A section of general helps for kids in school such as school term paper guides, helps in citing materials; links to online dictionaries and encyclopedias, useful tutorials, etc.; A section that leads kids to Internet sites or school databases that help them personally such as information about sexual harassment, where to go for various kinds of help, what to do in case of emergency, local organizations that can be helpful. The page might contain lists of good books to read (perhaps recommended by the students themselves) and certainly a few you recommend, movie reviews (done by the kids), links to sports, etc. This part of the website is required of every student in the class. You will receive a major grade reduction without this section.
The objective here is not quantity, but quality.
You will be organized into groups by type of school (elementary, middle, high school). Use these groups and your connections on Blackboard to help each other build your websites. Help each other find school library web sites that are already good and incorporate the best of those ideas in your own site.
If you already have a school library web site, transform it into more of a digital library and refine it, add to it, develop it further - note for the instructor where you started and what developments and refinements you have made (a very short essay/log will suffice)
In previous semesters students have used free website-building tools available from a number of providers. While these could be used, it would be best to use the web construction tool used by your technology folks such as Dreamweaver or Adobe GoLive. There is a learning curve on these, but they are accepted within the industry and will have the depth you need to start a real webpage. You will need a place to upload your web site. This could be a free service, a low-cost service, or a school district site. Before constructing your site, you should have decided on a web construction tool and have a place arranged to serve it out. For those who cannot do this, it would be best to partner with another student in the class and help build their digital school library.
Another good help is Anne Clyde's guide to building school library web pages at http://www.iasl-slo.org/creatingweb.html
A good start is to look at web pages constructed by school librarians around the country. Try Peter Milbury's site for linking school library web pages at http://www.school-libraries.net/
The section for teachers is an important part of your web page. Here are a few suggestions:
READING - include the very best ideas that your faculty could use to stimulate reading in their classrooms and with you in the LMC; include descriptions of programs or events you will be using in your school to stimulate reading; include ideas for SSR, reading aloud, building rotating classroom collections, sources of funding for books, great bibliographies of things to read aloud, suggestions to your students, read as a professional teacher about the topic of reading, etc. Be sure to organize the materials in such a way that a teacher would be attracted to use it. Just a bunch of stuff is not likely to be used.
Be sure to use the resources on http://Knowville.org, contribute to those resources, and if at all possible, participate with your school or group in this initiative.
ENHANCEMENT OF LEARNING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY - this section should spotlight the very best ideas for the use of technology to enhance learning in basic tool skills/literacy/content areas. It should spotlight the best ideas from the professional literature; spotlight the best ideas from your own faculty; provide good sources for personal professional development in the use of technology; and any other source of help that a teacher might need. Think of this section as a professional development tool box. It might also contain announcements of opportunities in the district, state, or nation. Remember, less is often more.
Sample Digital Libraries: Hundreds more at: http://school-libraries.net/
Alternative Digital School Library: Many school libraries are beginning to use blogs and wikis in conjunction with or instead of the traditional web page. See http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/links/index.php?title=School_libraries for examples of blogs. Your are encouraged to consider using some of these blog templates as the foundation for your digital school library. The advantage is that once the template is in place, you can "populate" the blog much quicker and easier thus saving a great deal of time.
Assignment 3: Professional Membership
Join a professional association. You should show evidence of membership in either AASL (American Association of School Librarians) and/or CSLA (California School Library Association) or some other association of professionals dealing with school libraries.
Assignment 4: Knowville
Contribute to, and participate in http://knowville.org
Assignment 5: Attendance at Class
Be sure to attend and participate in class. The URLs for each week's class on Elluminate will be posted on Blackboard under Announcements. Attendance is mandatory from the standpoint that activities done in class will add to your grade and there is no makeup for these activities. For attending and participating in a class session you will receive 10 points. If you cannot attend a class then you can retrieve and view the recording. If you view the recording and email to the grad assistant your contribution or reaction to the topics discussed, then you will receive 5 points for that class. If this is not recieved within a week of the class, you will receive a zero for that class participation.
Write a grant (or show that you have already written one, or make major progress in writing one); assist in the writing of a grant; demonstrate that you have already written a grant. One way to fulfil this assignment is to write a grant for the Laura Bush Foundation at http://www.laurabushfoundation.org/foundation.html. Because this foundation is targeting funds only for poverty schools, you might have to adopt a school (but don't do one for a school that is not committed to having a full time library media teacher). Another way is to write a grant for your PTA to fund LMC programs/materials or a grant to a local charitable group. A forum on the discussion board of Blackboad has been set up to facilitate this.
Build and test at least one measure for linking the school library media program to achievement. This can be done in your own school library, or can be planned if you are not currently employed. Add this idea to the wiki and also to the assignment manager. See: http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/lmc_action_research/lmc_action_research?wpid=709840&searchresult=709840
Assignment 8: Pathfinder and Synthesis Wiki Logs
1. Loge everything your read for the class including the textbooks and other readings.. Do this in a Word file.
2. When you find an article or website that you thinkg everyone would benefit from, put the citation and a short annotation on the pathfinder wiki. Add your citation to your reading notes.
3. For important articles, create a citation and a longer synthesis of the important ideas and add this to the synthesis wiki. Add these notes to your reding notes.
4. At the end of class, Submit all your notes to the blackboard assignment manager under the pathfinder wiki assignment.
5. For the synthesis wiki assignment, just tell me how many items you added to the synthesis wiki since the notes for thes will be in the pathfinder slot.
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