Apps for the Inquiry Process

Our school just unrolled the first phase of our 1:1 iPad program tonight.  In preparation of this big event, I spent some time this summer looking into how I could support and guide students through the research process using apps.

It was tougher than I expected to build a list like this....  

Apps come and go.
Opinions vary.
And upgrades can leave a favorite app on the bottom of the heap.

But it was also a lot of fun to read through suggestions, try new apps, and build a chart that includes all phases of the research process.  You are welcome to take it, use it, and share it:

At my school, we follow Kath Murdoch's Inquiry Cycle so I have grouped the apps according to the steps of that model.  But I think they can easily be adapted to other models. 

My simple hope in sharing this is that I get you thinking about which apps you use with students during the research process.

And let's keep the conversation going...

Because apps come and go
Technology evolves.
But the need to be able to locate, evaluate, and use information will continue.

What would you add to the list?

Myth #10 - All Librarians are Created Equally

Note: Like so many, my 2012 ended in reflection over the events during my first semester at a new school and 2013 began with a review of my Library Action Plan.  As I pondered how to ensure my next steps take the library program in the direction I truly want to be leading, those thoughts collided with a blogpost that I had been chewing on for several weeks.  Thus, I busted….

 Myth #10: All Librarians are Created Equally

At one point in my last district, there were only three certified librarians, each working at a different school.   

• One of us was a secondary English teacher and a master of literacy.
• Another had a background in science and was the tech guru of us three.
• The third started teaching in elementary grades and had a passion for the research process.

We were all very different, yet we shared a very common purpose in our work with students.  Mind you, we all three tackled tasks in all areas of librarianship, with some roles coming more naturally to one or another of us.  We often laughed about our differences, and joked what a team we could make if we all three worked on the same campus. 

Three different backgrounds, three different focuses, but one passion.  

As fellow librarians, we have so much to teach and learn from each other.  

Are you learning from your colleagues?  Or do you see those differences as a threat to your comfort zone?

All Librarians are NOT Created Equally  

As individuals, we bring our unique strengths, weaknesses, and personal interests to the circ desk and build a library program uniquely ours.  We collaborate, teach lessons, build collections, implement programs... make our mark... create a reputation.  And when we move on, due to choice or age or budget cut backs, we leave a particular gap, as unique as our individual fingerprints. 

As I reviewed my mission statement and goals at this mid-point in the year, I was struck by a question that refocused my work and made my vision crystal clear:  

What will be my legacy?

I began to ponder:  At former schools, what was I known for?  What do past students and coworkers remember about my work?  What mark did I leave? And most importantly, was it what I was trying to accomplish?

Teresa Schauer is known for her passion for book trailers...

Mr. Schu is breathing life back into Newbery classics…

Joanna Fountain made her mark through cataloging and subject headings…

Toni Buzzeo has authored books to help us teach library and information skills…

The librarian I replaced this year was a gifted storyteller.  He frequently incorporated music and singing in his lessons, and it is what everybody misses about him.

Another librarian I knew called herself a “Rehab Librarian” for her ability to rejuvenate aging libraries... ruthlessly weeding badly outdated collections, rearranging shelving and furniture, and creating a fresh, inviting environment before moving on to another “old” library.

What are your strengths? Which weaknesses are you going to commit to strengthening this year?

Where do your specialties lie? Who do you know with a different specialty you can learn from?

What kind of librarian are you? What legacy will YOU leave behind?

Infotopia - My type of search engine!

INFOTOPIA

I was at  a the Region One Service Center  recently when Dr. Michael Bell and his wife Carole Bell came to give a talk on their joint project, Infotopia.  Two retired librarians who have done a wealth of research to produce a great search engine.  If you aren't familiar with Infotopia, take a look!  The URL for this site is: http://www.infotopia.info

Are there other great search engines you know about?  Tell us about them!

Myth #7: Library Skills Take 15 Minutes to Master

When school resumes each year, one common request I receive is for an overview of the resources in the library.... "Maybe for the first or last 15 minutes of class."  These requests are not asking for a library orientation, rather a crash course in subscription databases.

Well, sure, I can do that.  Just like you can teach me World History in 15 minutes...  Explain calculus in 15 minutes...  Give me an overview of plant DNA in 15 minutes...  Unless your students are already proficient library users, familiar with when and how to use subscription databases, it will be a wasted 15 minutes.

I do my best to accomodate any and all teacher requests - even the 15 minute overview.  But, naturally, I do a little educating along the way.  I begin by asking questions... what is the teacher's objectives and goals?  Which resources would they like spotlighted?  With which resources are students already familiar?  Are students currently doing research?  About what?  If not, when will they begin their next project?  The best time to introducing resources is when the learning will be applied.

I much prefer to introduce one resource at a time when they are relevant to instruction.  Then provide time for students to use them, practice, ask questions, make mistakes, and get comfortable.

My goal is to communicate that a more effective approach is a frequent 15 minutes (or full class period) several times throughout the year, introducing individual resources that apply to and enhance what is currently being taught in the classroom.  It takes collaboration to make library resources an integral part of the classroom curriculum, not something you find some spare time to do.


Think of the last inservice you sat through where information you might need "someday" was thrown at you (i.e. staff handbook).  Do you remember where to find that information?  Do you even remember what was covered?  Probably not.  But if you ever have had an on-the-job injury or a possible situation involving harassment, I bet you can quote page numbers and paragraphs in the handbook.


Please, if you want to use library resources, give them the time that is due.  You can't even read a newspaper in 15 minutes.

Libraries 2020

The world of information is changing...

Libraries 2020: Imagining the library of the (not too distant) future

Are YOU - students, parents, teachers, administrators, librarians - changing too?  

Is YOUR perception of a librarian's role changing?

Myth #3 - With Everything Becoming Available Electronically, We Will No Longer Need Librarians

There have been many articles and blog posts lately debating the future of libraries. It is hard to imagine a school without one of these learning centers (where else would faculty meetings, testing, and baby showers take place?), but this post focuses on busting the myth that librarians will become obsolete.

With the threat of Kindles, Nooks, and Google taking over the world of research and reading, do students need to be taught Information Literacy skills, or are they doing fine without librarians? I believe that as our access to information grows, the need for teachers of Information Literacy will only become more crucial.

In searching for data to back up my claim, I read three articles that highlight the good, the bad, and the ugly in the world of librarians and research:

THE GOOD

In the March/April 2012 issue of Knowledge Quest, published by the American Association of School Librarians, three teachers shared their co-teaching project at Prosper High school. The librarian (Stacy Cameron), the English teacher (Adria Butcher), and the instructional technology coach (Christine Haight) collaborated and co-taught a multimedia project in which student created their own public-service announcements that included evidence of ethos, pathos, and logos, contained correctly selected and cited copyright-friendly music and images, and used a variety of technology for the final product. After the initial collaboration meeting, Stacy and Christine created web pages together, with the links and tools students would need. 

This  article brilliantly outlines the power of co-teaching. Each teacher focused on her area of expertise while supporting the others, modeling for the students what a group project should look like. With three experts in the room, students were charged with taking responsibility for their learning, seeking out the support they needed for their personal areas of weakness.  By bringing in the technology coordinator to instruct students at the beginning, much of the chaos that comes with technology productions was avoided.  And throughout the project, Adria was able to focus on teaching the elements of english, rather than simultaneously become a resource and technology expert, to ensure all students learned the targeted objectives.  


This is the ideal of teacher-librarian collaboration.  Who would not want this type of instruction and learning for their students? 

THE BAD  

Moving from the ideal to the reality, at too many school libraries, is the article What Happens When Media Positions Are Cut? from the May/June 2011 issue of Library Media Connection. In her article, Mary Alice Anderson notes that librarians are often cut when budgets are tight, and then itemizes the cost to students when Certified Librarians are cut.

• Less research takes place in the school.  Teachers become frustrated by the growing burden of finding resources alone
• Staff development provided by the librarian is cut or may not occur, leaving teachers without the knowledge to share online resources
• Collaboration occurs by e-mail only 
• Library hours are reduced
• Collection development suffers with less time for librarians to read reviews, seek suggestions, weed, browse, and perform collection analysis. This results in duplicates or holes in the collection.
• Para-professionals, who may lack the necessary content knowledge to do so effectively, are left to locate resources and fill requests
• Loss and theft of resources increases, costing precious dollars
• Priorities shift... MARC records may or may not be accurate, making it difficult to locate materials
• Websites and databases fall into disrepair, with dead links or unused subscriptions
• Advocacy diminishes.  "How do you spread the word when you are spread thin?
• And worst of all, as one librarian said, "We have lost students and teachers seeing us as partners."

Ann and I have faced each of the consequences above as we moved from being responsible for one library then four libraries then six and now we each face the task of overseeing eight libraries for the upcoming school year.  Yet, as the article concludes, librarians continue to make the best of their situations. In our district, we continue to work to build relationships and strive to fill all requests, but it is not the same.

THE UGLY

So what is the long-term effect of cutting librarians? What happens when students in grades K-12 are not being taught information literacy?  Students enter college without the skills they need to be successful. Professors must teach skills that were once introduced in elementary school.

In her 2004 article for College Teaching, It's the Information Age, So Where's the Information? Why Our Students Can't Find It and What We Can Do to Help, Jill D. Jenson addresses students' inability to distinguish between types of materials for research.  Unlike the differences between print journals versus print magazines, which can be seen and felt, distinguishing between online resources is difficult for students because one computer screen looks much like the next. Students lack the experiential background in a real library with real, print materials to make the jump from traditional research to electronic research without instruction. 


Students rate themselves computer literate, but they are unaware of how much they do not know.  Current teaching objectives need to include what students must learn to simply begin their research. Jenson explains that "Whereas students could previously get by with learning terms such as "periodical," "journal," "index," "bibliography," "citation," "card catalog," "Library of Congress Subject Headings," and "call number," they now must learn a whole new language in addition to that previously required: "Boolean operator," "meta search," "general database," "specialized database," "text image," "verbatim image," "full-text image," "access date," "marked list," "search wizard"the list certainly could go on."




I am happy to note that part of Ms. Jensen's suggested solution included collaboration with a librarian as well as taking students to the physical library building.  As someone who sends high school graduates off to college, I feel it is my role to teach many of these terms and skills. Teaching freshmen or graduate students these skills so late in their education robs them of learning opportunities along the way. Information literacy includes skills a life-long learner needs to sate their appetite for knowledge.

What does the future hold for librarians?  I wish I could predict.  With so much more for students to learn, who is going to teach it, if not a librarian?  

What do you think?

Works Cited

Anderson, Mary A. "What Happens When Media Positions Are Cut?" Library Media Connection 29.6 (2011): 16-19. Print.

Cameron, Stacy, Adria Butcher, and Christine Haight. "In Their Own Words." Knowledge Quest 40.4 (2012): 28-33. Print.

Jenson, Jill D. "It's the Information Age, so Where's the Information? Why Our Students Can't Find It and What We Can Do to Help." College Teaching 52.3 (2004): 107-12. Web.

Personal Learning Progress

I recently posted about a birdwalk I took through new technology tools.  While I haven't mastered everything I mentioned, I have begun scooping with enthusiasm.  Scoop.it! is a handy way to collect and organize news and blog articles I find on the web and either want to read again or share.

I'm sort of all over the map right now with my scooping, like a kid making a sundae at Baskin-Robbins...

I see in my future separate Scoop.it! pages for my book-related scoops to keep them separate from my technology finds which could be separated from my advocacy scoops which can be separate from humor scoops... You get the idea.  

What a great classroom tool!  Teachers can create Scoop.it pages for students, rather than printing articles or sharing cumbersome links.  And we can create additional pages for different grade levels and contents when we collaborate.

I look forward to using Scoop.it! for teaching students evaluation of resources and relevancy of online information.  Students can create Scoop.it! pages that relate to a subject they are studying.  Research articles can be curated in one easy place to revisit and reread.  Critical thinking is involved in selecting the right scoops. 

So many ideas... I need to get back to my scooping...