#somestudentswewillmissmorethanothers
#parentsarepeopletoo
#theonlythingbetterthanasnowday
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Bits and BytesInformation for Teachers from your sBHS librarians |
We're almost done! With summer just around the corner, we thought it would be nice to pause and reflect on the past year. To put you in flip-flop and beach mode, let's hashtag some of the finer moments in our profession that only we can fully appreciate: #somestudentswewillmissmorethanothers #parentsarepeopletoo #theonlythingbetterthanasnowday Have a great summer!
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The first week of May is "Screen-Free Week," previously known as TV Turn-Off Week or more recently as Digital Detox Week. Whatever the name, the week represents an opportunity (or more aptly, a plea!) for students and families to tear themselves away from phones, tablets, and digital entertainment, and experience life "unplugged" for a while.
The library is offering some "cleansing" activities (still love the "detox" analogy) as antidotes to digital gluttony. Students can celebrate Star Wars on May 4th ("May the Fourth Be With You" -- get it?) with a trivia contest and Yoda headgear, make a gift or card for Mother's Day, check out some old school games and gadgets (we dusted off an old Smith-Corona), or stretch out and read in our comfy new Reading Zone area. The idea is to encourage students and families to play, read, daydream, think, create, discover, and explore, instead of just devouring digital content. Be sure to drop in for some screen-free time. No matter your subject, there are online tools to help you find non-fiction articles related to your units of study and that can be used easily by teachers and students.
Newsela is a great tool that provides access to many great news articles and text sets with their free version. Teachers will need to register, but it gives you access to articles that promote non-fiction literacy by using current events. You can search by topic (war and peace, science, kids, money, law, health, arts and sports). They also provide text sets about popular topics such as Campaign 2016, life online, overcoming obstacles, and constitutional issues. These are great resources for many of the units you are teaching – both content and themes. Newsela allows you do print the articles or share them via social media. A lot of teachers are sharing articles via Twitter, and this allows you do share via Twitter, email, Facebook, etc. Colorful photographs accompany the articles for visual impact. Most articles feature a generic writing prompt, and some have multiple-choice quizzes you could assign as practice or complete together. Some ways you could use Newsela include sharing with students for current events in your curriculum, flipped classroom assignments, warm-ups, remediation practice, and extension and enrichment. Honors English classes could also use the articles for their Big Question artifacts. Social media – taking the learning outside the classroom In the digital age, connecting with students and parents is just a click away. With so many options though, it can be overwhelming. In the library, we are actively trying to reach more students via Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter in order to support and enrich learning, as well as to make digital resources easily accessible. Our student survey earlier this year showed that most students are using Twitter and Instagram. Teachers can tap into this medium to maximize learning. Always set up a school account instead of blending personal and professional posts. Teachers don’t need to follow students; hashtags and comments allow students to interact on the teacher’s feed. Here are some ideas for both connecting with students and using these social media tools for academic assignments, dialogue, and enrichment. The suggestions focus on Instagram, but they would work with most social media platforms. 1. Virtual bulletin board. Showcase student work, particularly visual work that you are displaying in the classroom anyway. If parents are following your account, this is great PR. 2. Have students create posts as if they were a famous person in your discipline. What would William Shakespeare’s feed look like? Churchill’s? Roosevelt’s? This would work well on the real app or as a computer generated or paper and marker assignment. 3. Have students post as if they were a character in a work of fiction. Challenge students to find pictures or memes that they believe Scout or Daisy or Macbeth would post on their Instagram feeds. A short comment can explain their rationale. 4. Ask questions and solicit answers. Ex. “Hey kids, I see red and orange leaves on the trees in my yard. Why?” 5. Create virtual galleries. Discussing a specific technique in art, photography, or poetry? Looking at maps? Math graphs? Post examples over the course of the unit for students to see and get reinforcement. 6. Record and post steps in science experiments. 7. Post and have students post pictures that would make great story, journal or free-response prompts. 8. Have students share pictures of your discipline “in the real world.” Find a sign with the incorrect use of pronouns and possessives. Post road and driving signs. Or nutrition information. Snap a picture of a vocabulary word used in print. 9. Share field trip finds. Parents and students can share their photos with you and add them to your account. Highlight the best teaching and learning moments for students and parents to revisit. 10. Share recommendations. You can share and students can also share recommendations that pertain to your class: readings, magazine articles, online articles, store, ad, movie, museums, games, apps, etc. 11. Character counts. There are lots of quotes, images, and links that pertain to each content area. Post a quote by a famous writer, athlete, coach, businessman, politician or student to highlight the character pillars that we wish to see in ourselves and in our students. Here’s one to get you started: Great Sports Quotes @ SportsMotto 12. Share humor in your field by posting cartoons, jokes, and memes. For additional ideas, check out this link: http://blog.leeandlow.com/2015/03/09/10-ways-to-use-instagram-in-the-classroom/ Finally, after a long and dreary winter we are looking forward to the jump into spring. Whether you are traveling to a sunny locale or sitting out spring break with a "staycation," there is plenty of time to relax and READ. We just happen to have a load of new books in the library, so drop by to take a look and check one out for your vacation reading pleasure. Young adult fiction is enjoying a surge in popularity among adults these days, with around 55 percent of books marketed to teens being purchased by adults. The secret of their success may lie in keeping with the formula of quick reads coupled with engaging and innovative stories by a rash of new YA authors. Take a look at some of the newest to grace our shelves: Think back to the beginning of the school year (seems like only yesterday!) Remember that awesome e-resources demo we did for you in August? Okay, maybe it doesn't seem like only yesterday. We want to refresh your memory about a feature we showed you called MackinVia. This is the portal to the variety of digital and electronic books and databases offered by LCPS, as well as the e-books we've invested in at our library this year. We've just recently promoted use of MackinVia for reference to Pre-AP World History and World Languages classes. Many useful features are provided to student researchers, including the ability to save favorite e-book titles, record and save notes and highlights, bookmark pages, check out and download e-books for offline reading, and create citations for works cited pages. All of these are saved in a handy virtual "backpack" that users can access from any computer or tablet. Some fiction titles and audiobooks are included, but the majority of the e-books we've purchased are reference and nonfiction titles for student research and projects. (And if you have titles to request for future purchase, we'd love your suggestions.)
One excellent feature for teachers is the ability to create a list of e-books and databases for your students to use for a lesson, project, or webquest, utilizing the "groups" feature of MackinVia. Analogous to a playlist, the group of books is curated and saved by your librarians upon request, and is available to your class upon login. All students and teachers have MackinVia and backpack accounts, accessed by using the SBHS network login credentials (example: username=mwilburn, password=SBHS network password). A link to MackinVia can be found on our library web page and on the online catalog. A multitude of smartphones, tablets, and devices are supported, and there's also a nifty MackinVia Reader app, free and available from the Apple iTunes store or Google Play. Let us know if you'd like more information. Take a look at the help guide and video tutorials, too. In this week's post we're putting the spotlight on a new service launched by the Loudoun County Public Library. It's called Hoopla (for some reason) and I suppose part of the "hoopla" is because it's FREE. Library users can instantly stream and download movies, TV shows, music, and audiobooks FREE, 24/7, and view or listen using smartphones, tablets, computers, or Apple TV. Select from "hundreds of thousands" of digital titles and borrow up to 10 titles at a time. Streaming is instant over WiFi, 3G, and 4G, plus digital content can be temporarily downloaded using a FREE mobile app for playing offline. Loan periods are 72 hours for most movies and TV shows, 7 days for music albums, and 3 weeks for audiobooks. You can return titles early to free up space in your account for new downloads, or let titles expire at the end of the loan period. That means no late fees! All you need to use this FREE service is your LCPL library card. Learn more at the library's site.
Speaking of library cards, a special Educator card is offered to all teachers working in Loudoun County; the card is renewable year to year, and grants special privileges including a 50-item borrowing limit, an 8-week loan period, plus no fines for overdues (this does not include items in Hoopla, which is an independent service.) Run over to the Ashburn Library to sign up! In addition to Hoopla, plenty of other digital content is available through services such as OverDrive for ebooks and Zinio for over 100 popular magazines. Check them out! Happy New Year! It's hard to believe it's 2015, especially when we consider that many of the students we teach weren't even born in this century! As usual, we are seeing LOADS of online motivational articles and apps to re-make ourselves in the new year, plus tools to keep us on track. We can resolve to trim down, get fit, save money, fight clutter, be kinder, be smarter, save the world, etc. Personal improvement is exhausting!
We've seen some pretty cool reading incentive challenges on a number of sites recently. Here's an article from Bustle with ideas for "12 Reading Challenges for 2015 That'll Make Sure You Conquer Plenty of Books in the New Year." There's a challenge for reading around the world (and trace your literary journey on a Google map,) reading classics, reading from your to-be-read pile, reading chunky books ("I like big books and I cannot lie,") and perhaps the most ambitious, the 365 Days of YA challenge. That one'll keep you healthy (you know, a book a day keeps the doctor away, right?) We're also launching a reading challenge in our library for the new year. We want students (teachers, too!) to sign a pledge to read as many books as they can before spring break. They can record themselves accepting the "Resolve to Read" pledge (no ice buckets, please) and then they nominate a friend to take the challenge. We will keep a tote board of number of books read. If we meet our goals school-wide, then a staff member has to kiss a pig, surrender a prized possession, or suffer some other form of humiliation (hmmm, Billy Rice's golden tresses just popped into my view.) Help us meet our goals! Stay warm this winter, and Resolve to Read 2015. Have you seen the world's biggest iPad mounted in the library? Here's a picture: Never fear, it's just our bulletin board pretending to be an iPad (an analog iPad, maybe). We are highlighting mobile apps intended to help students become better students. These apps offer utilities and tools for organization, note-taking, studying, learning a new language, and even defeating procrastination. Do you happen to know any students who might benefit? Have them try out one of these free apps. Most are available on iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.You might just discover a new one for your own personal use.
Apps for web-clipping and note-taking: Pocket keeps articles and clips from the web all in one handy place, while Mindmash offers graphic note-taking on a "canvas for ideas" as students brainstorm. For study skills and test prep, Study Blue is a great app students may use to quickly create their own flash cards (no more lost note-cards!) SATUp: the name says it all! For the kid who never keeps track of assignments, lead him to the MyHomework app so he'll have no excuses. More apps for organization and time management include Wunderlist (save those to-do lists), Studious, and 30/30, designed for the procrastinator in all of us: set up a project task list, then set the app's timer to chunk time doing dreaded tasks into 30-minute blocks, followed by a 30-minute reward (rest or fun). Other cool apps include Duolingo for learning a new language, Fooducate for healthy eating and fitness, plus Mint for personal finance and budgeting. The award for most novel app goes to MathAlarm! How many times do you hit snooze every morning? Set your alarm using this app, and you can't silence the alarm until a math problem is solved correctly. That'll wake you up! (Or run your phone's battery down, if you're math-challenged like me.) Pictured above are the results of a survey we conducted in the fall of entering freshmen, in an effort to get a snapshot of their technology habits. Not surprisingly, 96% of those surveyed have Internet access, AND 96% carry a cell phone. It was interesting to note a few differences between freshmen and upperclassmen (surveyed separately), with more upperclassmen than freshmen using their phones to access the Internet. We also noticed a shift in social media use compared with last year's results: Twitter use among freshmen is increasing, but is still not as high as use by older students. Instagram use is on the rise, and is actually higher among freshman than among upperclassmen! If you'd like to leverage the seductive allure of social media and the power of the 140-character tweet in your own classroom, see "50 Ways to Use Twitter in The Classroom." Imagine that, 50!
The online tool we used to create our cool "Freshman Portrait" infographic is Easel.ly, which is one among several we found for creating visual representations of data. These tools are fairly easy to use, most are FREE, and all offer ways to promote digital and visual literacy with students. Drag and drop features plus a nice assortment of pre-made templates offer easy ways for students to create flashy and professional-looking projects representing data. An infographic is applicable in most subject areas and can be used by students (or teachers) to display cause and effect, a timeline or chronology of events, similarity and differences, and attributes or characteristics. The easiest to use is probably Piktochart, but others include Infogr.am and of course, Easel.ly, the one we used for our freshman pic. There are at least 46 more! Read "46 Tools to Make Infographics in the Classroom." |
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