July 12, 2007

A gold mine of sources.  The link for Reference and Librarians alone is enough to keep me busy for hours and hours.  As Andy said,"I don't think I'll ever have to buy another Reference book again." This site definitely gets a major thumbs up!!!

Thanks Jane!

Here are just a few of the sites I know I'll use. 

DK e-encylopedia http://www.dke-encyc.com/home.asp

Electronic Reference Desk http://scholes.alfred.edu/ref_desk/ref.html

Explain: the Ultimate Acronym Glossary http://www.irs.aber.ac.uk/acronyms/

ConvertPlus http://convertplus,com/en/

Dewey Subject Guide http://www.apl.org/libcats/dewey.html  

Bibliographic Citation Format for Elementary Students http://nausetschools.org/research/

July 11, 2007 

Constructivism and the Five E's

Constructivism makes complete sense to me.  I especially liked being reminded that learning is not a linear process.  One of the  chronic  problems with teaching a "library class" is that too often it is is expected that librarians will teach library skills in isolation (linearly, so to speak).  "Here are the kids teach them something".  See ya!  These "library skills" taught are uninteresting and seemingly senseless to most students.  When taught in collaboration with a teacher (research project for example), the skills make sense and in fact are useful.  As the author states we are able to make sense of things when "we use both our prior experience and the first-hand knowledge gained from new explorations".  Using the libary is much more interesting and potentially intriguing when there are real reasons for using the resources.  Consequently it becomes less confusing and more comfortable as a place to use, not just once a week but daily or regularly.  The concept of construtivism not only needs to be taught in the classroom but also used as a basis for working together as colleagues (i.e. this notion "The structure of the learning environment should promote opportunities and events that encourage and support the building of understanding".).  What are we doing to promote continuity as a school community of teachers?  What are our goals?  How do we work as a cohesive collaborative whole to accomplish this?   In my opinion, what we do collaboratively as teachers will make more sense to students, if we take the time to build on (consciously and deliberately) what we do as educators. 

That said, now on to the Five E's.  How could I not love all those Es???  If only I could do all of these things every time I met with my kids?  Engage - I feel as though I have a handle on this. Explore - I know I don't allow enough time for exploring.  I'm always in a panic about time.  It's the once a week phenomenon.   Explain - Here I rush worrying once again about time.  Acccck, I feel a wave of self flagelation coming on.  I do think that I am much better in a small group or one on one setting.  I think I panic more in front of a whole class.  Elaborate - Once again the time crunch inhibits this for me.  If only, if only. . . Evaluate - and finally because I don't believe library should be treated as a class I don't give formal evaluations to the students, other than student observations.  My goal is to be evaluate students more formally through some medium such as a rubric but am still not there yet.  All in all  I thought this article was a helpful reminder of what I need to be up to.

July 9, 2007

Being a digital immigrant has affected me in that I have been hesitant to incorporate much technology into what I do with my students based on the premise that I don't have enought core knowledge to have it work smoothly.  This combined with the fact that we have a limited number of computers has been my major tripper upper.  However, this past year I felt like I had a concious dawning of light, so to speak, after taking a course early in the fall of last year.  That realization was simply that the only way I was to improve or change at all was to jump in and do it no matter the outcome.  Surprisingly, it felt great (over all).  That's not to say that there were not some really uncomfortable and frustrating moments throughout but I really felt like I made some huge gains.  I'm now inspired to do more with everyone in the upcoming year.   Anyway, for me feelin more comfortable as digital immigrant is a lot like trying to get better at learning a language.  The best way to learn quickly is by total immersion.

Sintra Side Street

Burgau ~ Portugal