ENGAGE ME

The authors Naslund and Giustini, in their article entitled Towards School Library 2.0: An Introduction to Social Software Tools or Teacher Librarians, touch upon the main facets of information technology as a necessary current in school life. They provide a comprehensive range of software resources that can assist in tailoring one’s teaching to include many online resources for collaboration and production. I have perused the sites noted in the bibliography and believe that such exposure has given me a glimpse of what I can begin to accomplish using the right tools at the right time.

According to Harris (2005):“School Library 2.0 is about creating a participatory, user-centered environment rich in technology that is focused on interactivity and collaboration. This transformation must be based on one primary goal-student success” (Naslund and Giustini, p.56).

The online tutorial found entitled Learning 2.0 can be found at http://plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com/ and includes many tools and sites worth exploring- that have been reviewed in previous articles; Blogger, Flickr, Odeo (podcasting), YouTube, PB wiki, Bloglines (RSS reader). This would prove to be a good launch site for me as a T-L learner (Naslund and Giustini, p.56).

Having access to edublog lists as well may prove useful in making contact and building up curriculum. The authors suggest a website that reaches out to T-L’s and includes sections of children and adolescent literature; librarian and associations (Naslund and Giustini, p. 57): http://aliceyucht.pbwiki.com/EduBiblioBlogList .

‘Engage Me’ is a theme that has permeated most articles in that the Digital Natives, iGen, or M Generation are moving the dynamics of learning into a new world arena. The YouTube clip entitled A Vision of K-12 Students Today states facts about work, teaching and the future: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8 (Naslund and Giunni, p. 59) that could provide a start point discussion of what to do ‘in our school’.

“Wikis are a way to track ideas and evaluate information technologies from critical perspectives” (Naslund and Giustini, p.60). To this end, an interesting approach: Wikijunior books that provide platforms for students to produce non-fiction material, up to age 12 at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/wikijunior . The authors further propose a valuable combination of tools specifically for T-L’s where lessons and materials are shared at a Teacher Librarian wiki: http://teacherlibrarianwiki.pbwiki.com/ and http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com/ . Classification of information by students is an important skill to apply and can be facilitated by Furl which is a bookmarking site where students can highlight and organize excerpts from sources at http://www.furl.net/ (Naslund and Giustini, p.61).

Social Networking Sites (SNSs), in particular Facebook, specifically an Information Literacy Interest Group (ILIG) of the Canadian Library Association connects T-L’s and purports that LibraryThing at http://www.librarything.com/ can link up to OPAC library systems as an innovative, clearly visually appealing means of book cataloguing and access (e.g. book cover, reviews, summary, links to similar books) that may prove quite useful for staff and students, according to the authors.

Microblogging (e.g. Twitter and Tumblr) may prove more efficicient in responding to messages form colleagues and students instead of blogging (naslund and Giustini, p.62).

Voicethread is an ‘online media album’ where students can present and respond form around the world (e.g. Science Fair project). I find this site quite promising with lots of potential as a presentation / interactive platform at http://voicethread.com/#home (Naslund and Giustini, p.64).

One of the most impressive sites from Animoto allows educators to input audio and video into projects http://animoto.com/business/education while GoogleDocs and Zoho provide possibilities for collaborative authoring, according to Valenza, 2007 (Naslund and Giustini, p.64). Other recommended sources are http://www.slideshare.net/ for PowerPoint slides, http://www.teachertube/ for videos and Bubbleshare, Picasa or Flickr for photos, according to Shwarzwalder, 2007 (Naslund and Giustini, p.63).

“Managing information in the digital era means engaging in experimentation: shaping, creating and integrating textual, visual, special and aural elements for the purposes of meaning-making” (Naslund and Giustini, p.64).

‘Emerging cognitive landscapes’ with open source software opens doors to diverging possibilities (Naslund and Giustini, p.65).

On a final note from Alan November (2007): “The workers of tomorrow will manage their own productivity and seek structure collaborations from around the world” (Naslund and Gisutini, p.65). T-L’s can play a vital role in providing the tools needed to shape the workers.


Bibliography:

Naslund, J., Giusini, D. (2008). Towards School Library 2.0: An Introduction to Social Software Tools or Teacher Librarians. School Libraries Worldwide, Volume 14, Number 2, July, 2008 (pp. 55-67) IASL

Learning 2.0 (2009) http://plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com/

Edublog (2009) http://aliceyucht.pbwiki.com/EduBiblioBlogList

YouTube (2009) A Vision of K-12 Students Today http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8

Wikijunior (2009) http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/wikijunior

TeacherLibrarian (2009) http://teacherlibrarianwiki.pbwiki.com/
Wikispaces (2009) http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com/

Furl (2009) http://www.furl.net/

LibraryThing (2009) http://www.librarything.com/

VoiceThread (2009) http://voicethread.com/#home

Animato (2009) http://animoto.com/business/education