A "Research Help Center" by and for Middle School Students

Skip back to June when I wrote the first (and second) blog posts.
One of my summer goals: Make the Blanchard Library website:
more user-friendly, more interactive,  more focused on student created content.

Well, I have a PLAN!

I got to to thinking about how I learn new skills; I might read (or watch) an overview, but then I generally just jump in and rely on online help to bail me out if I get stuck.

Maybe school should work that way too: Let students explore on their own but provide help files (or videos) for students to access When and IF they need it.

AND then I also remembered one reason I wanted to move up to Middle School was because the students are old enough to be independent and capable producers of information.

SO Why not  have the students create an online RESEARCH HELP CENTER where they (and their peers) can find answers to their Frequently Asked Questions AND get practice producing and authentically publishing information?

Over the course of a school year, I teach 30 sections of a 10-session “Research Class”. The class is not graded and is not taken by every student.  All students do, however, complete graded research projects each year in their core classes. (the subject teachers often, but not always, collaborate with me on these).

IF the research class students TEACH the other students the skills they’ve learned, it’s a win-win situation: The research class kids LEARN the skills better than they might otherwise, and ALL students have access to the topics we cover in the research classes.

I started the Research Help Center. (take a look and let me know what you think; it’s a work in progress!) The only page right now is “Cite Sources” which is populated by screencasts that I recorded. (these can be switched to student created content later)

My short term goal: Have this Fall’s 8th grade research classes populate the  “Find Information” section of the Research Help Center.  Their goal will be to share tips and tricks that help other middle school students master the Curriculum Benchmarks: Find, evaluate and select appropriate sources to answer questions using various relevant resources, including databases, and the online catalog”

Students in the grade 6 research classes will judge whether or not each contribution is “Worthy of the World”.  Only those that pass muster of this peer panel will actually be published.

If this goes at all smoothly, we will add other sections later. Possible topics include: “Successful Note-taking”, “Organizing Information”, “Curation”, “Collaboration tips”, “Publishing tools”, “Evaluating Information”..

For more information, see: the project overview -

or the write-up with WPS curriculum standards.

or (best yet) take a look at the project the way the students will access it.

TedEd makes it Simple to flip a lesson!

Thanks in part to a summer class, "Teaching and Learning with Online Tools" taught by Stephanie Gosselin at Westford Academy, I have experimented with some really cool tools this summer.

One of the most awesome is "Find and Flip" from TEDEd.
This user friendly tool walks you through the process of finding a curriculum related YouTube video and then creating associated online quizzes, discussions, and follow-up activities for your students. When you are done, you have a 'flipped lesson'!
 
Once you are happy with your lesson, make it public so that other teachers in the TEDEd community can copy and modify it for their own classrooms.

An exemplar lesson and great introduction to the process is 5 Historical Misconceptions.

I used TEDEd's Find and Flip tool to create a lesson on Notetaking

(target audience: Middle School students in my "research classes")

Here is a short overview of how it TEDEd Find and Flip works

Google Apps for Education? Yes!

I’ve been touting the advantages of Google Docs* since I first used it in the spring of 2008. The main attraction back then was that I could easily collaborate with my graduate school classmates. We were sick of dealing with wikis where accidentally deleting someone else’s work or getting locked out of the page you needed to edit were common occurrences. Google Docs allowed us to all edit the same document at the same time. We could see what others were adding, pretty much as they added it. And, like a wiki, there was a history feature to keep track of who added what and when, and allow us to easily revert to an older version. We also liked the comments feature which allowed up to ask questions of each other or leave notes to ourselves. Perhaps best of all was that because of its web-based storage, we could get to the document from any computer (at home, school or library), no downloads required.

The features in 2008 were very limited and the only elements were  ‘documents’ and ‘spreadsheets’. I used Microsoft Office (or Apple iWork) when I needed sophisticated formatting, and I used other tools such as Voicethread for presentations.

The product has become much more robust and extensive over the 5+ years that I have been using it. Even features such as WordArt and slideshow animations that were sometimes handy NOT to have (if you work with kids you’ll understand why) are now included. As are lots of choices for templates, fonts, clipart etc.  I hardly ever find a reason to use Office or iWork.

The user community is HUGE (425 million in June 2012); bugs or glitches are reported quickly and generally resolved promptly. The product is still free, still runs in the browser without download, but now also works on phones, tablets and other mobile devices and (with free app) will store local copies of all your files so you can continue to edit without Internet access. (It will synch with the web-based version the next time you are connected).

I have gotten so acclimated to the Google Apps/Drive environment that Microsoft Office is starting to feel clunky. I forget to enable features such as ‘track history’ and ‘autosave’ because in Google Apps, they are always on.  I get frustrated that different versions of the Microsoft Office are not compatible with each other (even within my library) and that upgrades cost money (which we don’t have).  I hate that the students (and staff) have to re-initialize the software whenever they sit at a computer they haven’t used before and the process of saving to the active directory (which is only accessible within the school environment anyway) is not intuitive and mistakes are common (files end up on the local disk instead).

Google Apps handles collaboration MUCH better than our current setup with Microsoft Word. Not only does Google Apps allow multiple people to edit the same document at the same time, but it also has features such as chat and comments to help collaborators communicate with each other AND it always keeps track of who added what and when. This last feature is very important in middle school.  Last year (prior to Google apps implementation) I asked students to save their files into my “Collaborate” folder so that other students could view them. Unfortunately, this also meant that other students could edit them... and some did. Although this provided a good opportunity to discuss “Digital Citizenship”, the problem persisted because there was no way to see WHO added the comments. In a Google Apps environment, only users logged into our school’s custom domain will be able to edit shared files and all editors will be able to see who added what. (administrators will also be able to view the activity of individual students).

Google Apps includes products beyond what is in the Microsoft Office package. There are tools for creating blogs, websites, slideshows, videos, calendars, mail, etc. Google documents are also seamlessly integrated into the third party applications that we use, such as Noodle Tools.  

I often use Google “Sites” to organize information from many different aspects of my life and it has really changed the way I run my ‘classroom’. I have been describing it as an incredibly easy way to create websites, but the Google description: “Shared workspaces for classes, faculties and clubs” is perhaps even more apt. It is definitely worthy of its own blog post. (coming soon?)

So, YES!  I am happy that our school is jumping on the “Google Apps for Education” bandwagon this year... and it is not just because I (a librarian) like the company’s Vision:

“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

If you need more convincing, check out:  Benefits of Google Apps for Education

If you are a Technology Administrator, take a look at the new Change Management Guide

This Blog post is part of a summer class assignment in which we (the students) need to demonstrate at least some proficiency with certain aspects of Google Drive/Doc/Apps.

Here are my examples:

Document - Online newsletter article about the Massachusetts Children’s Book Award

Audience - primarily parents

Form - Google Expertise Survey (note: feel free to fill it out. This is not the actual copy I will use)

Audience - BMS staff and students

Presentation - Introduction to Google Apps

Audience - BMS staff and students

Collaborative Presentation - Flipped Classroom

Audience - teachers

Drawing 1 -  Blanchard Library Door Sign

Drawing 2 - Book Return Sign

Audience: students

*A note on names: Recently, “Google Docs” was rebranded as “Google Drive”. “Google Apps” is basically the same thing, but includes a whole bunch of other Google applications and (importantly for K-12 education) hands control of the environment to local administrators who can customize the product to suit their community’s needs.

Trajectory of Learning

I did not attend the ALA conference in Chicago, and was not one of the lucky ones who heard Mark Edwards, Superintendent of Mooresville Managed School District in North Carolina speak - BUT my friend and mentor Judi Paradis WAS there and graciously shared her notes and thoughts in a blog post “Loving Kids, Having Fun, Using Digital Resources” My favorite quote: “Students track their own learning, and from a young age have an awareness and a responsibility for their trajectory of learning. “

What a powerful goal for all of us! “awareness and responsibility for our own trajectory of learning”

But how do we teach it? and are today’s kids too complacent or unmotivated?

I was in my hammock musing over this, when I realized that the group of young adults gathered at the rope swing across the lake, were effectively demonstrating the concept in action.

The Rope Swing: A demonstration of Personalized Learning in Action:

“students” take charge of their own “trajectory of learning”:

• The more adventurous climb up the wood slats nailed to the trunk and grab a knot high up on the rope. They swing out far above the lake, where the more skillful perform showy flips and twists on the way down.

• Others grab the rope at a midpoint near the base of the tree. Somersaults are out from this starting point, but graceful dives are possible.

• The most cautious grab onto the rope at the bottom of the bank. Sometimes it take a few swings out and back before they find the courage to let go of the rope and drop into the water.

“Collaboration” is very much part of the equation.

• No matter who is on the rope, their friends cheer them on and offer tips and encouragement.
• Multi person games and challenges help create a fun learning atmosphere for all.  

“Differentiated Instruction:”

Although Everyone has the same overall goal:  “improve rope swinging skill”

Each person picks his or her own starting point and personal plan.

Some examples:

• start at the highest rung and execute a full somersault ending in a perfect dive
• climb to a middle rung, swing out, let go, and catch a ball tossed by a friend before hitting the water
• start at the bank, swing out and let go at the apex of the swing

We can apply this philosophy to all kinds of learning!

As Carol Ann Tomlinson says "All big ideas have a kindergarten version and a PhD version"

To take control of our learning trajectory, we need to determine our starting point on the “kindergarten to PHD continuum”  (this will vary depending on the topic) and we need to be aware of our own learning style:

Do we thrive when we have an audience cheering us on? do we do better when we work collaboratively? do we like to observe others first? or jump in and develop our own style?

School librarians have responsibility to find and curate information resources that give  students and teachers a palette of sources to choose from. Some people do best with the simple linearity of a print book. Others benefit from the scaffolding and hyperlinks provided in the online environment. Some may need manipulatives; real or virtual,  to learn kinesthetically. Videos, images, diagrams, maps and charts, practice exercises, games and simulations can all be effective learning tools.

Here is a Prezi I created for my Middle School Students. I hope it will help them develop some strategies for finding information that meets their own unique needs: