April 20 – May 8 at the Library

The last three weeks have flown by at the Mira Costa Library. Ms. Cabrera’s and Mr. Wheeler’s English students and Mr. Knutson’s U.S. History students spent several days in the library working on research projects which began with lessons on how to find and evaluate research sources and how to do citations. Mr. Carlson’s music students worked on their new blogs and we talked about writing good blog comments. And, Sra. Rossell and Sra. Hernandez’s Spanish 2 students worked on projects using VoiceThread to practice their new vocabulary related to travel. Working in teams of two, the students all chose a country for a hypothetical trip and shared something about the country, how they would get there, where they would stay, what they would eat, and sites they would visit. In the process, they also learned about a new tool for finding and sharing copyright-friendly images, voice recording, and creating avatars. Here is an example, sharing a trip to Cuba:

Here are three more great examples:

Denmark

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Library Club Activities

The Library Club was also very busy. We sponsored a very successful YA (Young Adult) author panel on April 22. Read about it in this blog posting.

SWVBC Meeting  SWVBC Meeting

The club also participated in one of our “Somewhat Virtual Book Club” Google Hangouts on Air discussions on May 6. The topic this month was “bring your own graphic novel.” All the participants brought and shared a favorite graphic novel or other book. Mira Costa had excellent representation at this get together, both from our club members and from Ms. Wiseman and her English students.

The club has also been working with me on selecting some new books for the library based on the student survey we recently conducted. Our order has been placed, and we will be receiving approximately 80 new books based on student input!

Outside the Library

Outside Mira Costa, I had the honor of co-anchoring the TL News Night on April 20 and of co-presenting a session with Pam Oehlman for the CUE Beach Cities/Los Angeles Affiliates Workshop on May 2. The topic for Pam’s and my session was the AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning. We shared ways to use some of the sites selected by the AASL Best Websites Committee to enhance student learning. Although the slides don’t really stand alone, I am sharing them here, and encourage you to contact me to fill you in with more information about them.

Nov. 3 – 14 at the MCHS Library

As always, we had lots of classes and lessons in the library during the last two weeks.

Mr. Brown’s Blogging Project

blogging

I am delighted that Mr. Brown is having all of his English students (grades 10 and 12) start individual blogs, and the five classes came to the library for two days to get them started. Blogging is a wonderful tool that allows students to practice writing skills and find their writing voices, reflect on and share about personal interests, build a positive digital footprint, and learn about and practice all the aspects of digital citizenship. Along with discussing what a blog is and the benefits of blogging, I taught lessons in different aspects of digital citizenship they will need to be aware of as they blog, and I helped them set their blogs up using Google’s blogging software. Here are some of the short films we watched as part of our class discussions on their first day in the library:


This film launched a discussion about what digital citizenship is, and how it doesn’t mean just being cautious online and staying safe; it also offers wonderful opportunities for making global connections.

We watched this film and talked about building a positive digital footprint:

We watched this film, and talked about protecting privacy and being careful about what you post in blogs and any other form of online communication to protect your own privacy and that of your friends and relatives from potential predators and to avoid sharing anything you would be less than proud of later:

We also talked about how online communication lacks tone of voice and body language clues present in the live world, meaning students need to take extra care to avoid accidentally insulting someone in their posts or their comments. We watched this film as a reminder to avoid engaging in any behavior that could be construed as bullying another person:

On the second day in the library, I showed the students how to set up their blogs and what to include in their first posting. You can see the directions I shared with them for reference here.

We also watched this film about Plagiarism, Copyright, Public Domain, Fair Use, and Creative Commons, all important concepts for students to understand for blogging as well as all their writing and other creations on and offline:

Along with the film, we viewed and discussed the court case related to the famous Obama Hope poster, as an example of fair use/copyright disputes. I shared that justifying Fair Use in published works like blogs can be very difficult, and that we are very fortunate to have many options for finding copyright-friendly images and other material to include in the students’ blogs. I demonstrated how to find Creative Commons-licensed images using the Flickr.com and Google Image Advanced Search options. You can see screencasts of the techniques I demoed for both of these sites on the directions page.

I was very excited to launch this project for Mr. Brown’s students, and look forward to working with them on it throughout the year. As the next step, once they write their first posts, they will then read their classmates’ postings and practice writing good comments. As we discussed, one of the big benefits of blogging is the ability to engage in conversations both with classmates and even globally with the commenting feature.

Other Lessons and Class Visits

I provided introductions to research project lessons for Ms. Parks AP Art History class and Ms. Mullen’s 12th Grade English class, worked with Adam Geczi’s World History classes on identifying the bibliographic information for citations and using EasyBib.com to assist with saving and formatting the citations, and introduced a new blog post assignment about La Llorona for Sra. Rossell’s AP Spanish Literature class. The library also hosted class visits for Ms. Bledsoe and Mr. Oystrick’s science classes, and I consulted with Ms. Nielsen on a project for her AP Chemistry students.

SWVBC – We Were Liars Discussion

Our Library Club again served as the moderators for our monthly Somewhat Virtual Book Club (#SWVC on Twitter) discussion on November 5. This month’s book was We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. I am very proud of our group of students who moderated, and they received kudos from the librarians in the other participating schools. Here’s our recording of the Google Hangout:

Our next SWVBC discussion will be on December 3 at 3 PM Pacific Time. We will be discussing Butter by Erin Jade Lange, a riveting contemporary realistic fiction book about a morbidly obese, outcast teenager who suddenly becomes popular when he creates a website advertising his plans to commit suicide. All Costa students are invited to join us for the discussion in the library lunchroom. Please come by the library to borrow a copy of the book and get more information about the discussion event. For a preview of Butter, please watch this engaging book trailer by Cathy Jo Nelson, the librarian at Dorman High School in South Carolina, one of our SWVBC school libraries:

Dorman High School will be hosting and moderating the December 3 book discussion.

Geeks – Planning Costa’s Hour of Code Participation

Our Geeks club, which offers tech support to Mira Costa students and parents, met this week and learned about the upcoming Hour of Code international event December 8 – 14. from Jeanne Reed, a technology consultant at the MBUSD District Office. The club enthusiastically agreed to work as facilitators and promoters for this event in partnership with the Girls Only Coding Club. Mr. Braskin, computer teacher and advisor of the Girls Only Coding Club, and I will serve as advisors for Mira Costa’s participation in the Hour of Code week. All of the schools in our district will also be participating. Stand by for more information about this event very soon.

Oct. 20 – 31 at the Mira Costa Library

Here are some highlights of the last two weeks at the Mira Costa Library:

Lessons Taught

Webquest

Laura Clarke’s 9th Grade English classes visited for a research project supporting their study of Mythology. We based the unit on a webquest I had developed a while ago and customized for her class. Each student researched a different god and prepared a slideshow to share with class members. As they did so, I provided lessons which included plagiarism avoidance, respect for copyright, using databases, evaluating websites, using EasyBib to create bibliographic citations and take good notes, and using the Google Slides Research Tool to find and credit copyright-friendly images. In addition, we had the students practice using Google Classroom.

And, probably the most fun portion of the unit, we had the students each create Twitter accounts for their gods and practice using this social media tool in the role of their gods dealing with today’s world. You will start to see their tweets over the next week at these Twitter hashtags: #ccmyths2, #ccmyths3, and #ccmyths4. (If you don’t have a Twitter account, just go to search.twitter.com, and enter a search for each of those hashtags in turn.) I am a strong supporter of the educational value of Twitter and tweet frequently, both on behalf of the library and, very actively with my own account. This Twitter activity proved a learning experience for Ms. Clarke and me. For example, we found that tweets from new accounts can take several days to become searchable; so if you search for those hashtags, the tweets won’t show up right away. We found that some of the students had challenges establishing their accounts if they didn’t have a cell phone to receive an activation text. The good news is that I believe it is valuable for students to see that teachers are learners also, and don’t always get everything right. And, Ms. Clarke and I have valuable experience for tweaking this activity in the future.

Adam Geczi’s World History classes visited for another research lesson and work session. This time we focused on learning to use our EBSCO eBook Academic Collection and Academic Search Premier to find both ebooks and academic journals. They also learned how to use EasyBib to record bibliographic citations and take notes.

Shawn Chen’s 9th Grade English students visited for lessons and research time for their project researching topics related to their study of Oedipus. I helped them learn to find quality sources, record their sources and notes in EasyBib, and how to find and credit images using the Research Tools feature in Google Slides.

Glen Marx’s 12th Grade Government students visited for a lesson research skills, plagiarism avoidance, finding and evaluating quality sources, recording citations and notes in EasyBib, parenthetical citations, and more. You can see the slideshow I used here.

Anita Rossell’s AP Spanish Literature class visited for another session to work on their blogging project. This time, Sra. Rossell and I had them post about domestic violence. Here is the assignment we crafted for them, along with links to their postings.

In addition to these class visits for lessons, a number of other classes visited to continue research projects, take advantage of the computers, and select books.

SLJ Summit

While the library was taken over on Friday, October 24 for district hearing tests, I headed to St. Paul, Minnesota for School Library Journal’s fabulous Leadership Summit. Please read about it in this posting I devoted to that event.

Committee Work

As the new chair of the school Curriculum Committee, I attended a meeting of Ed Council on October 21, and participated in that body’s work setting goals and priorities for the Curriculum Committee, as well as the other two new standing committees for Calendar and for School Safety and Culture.

On October 28, I attended a meeting of the interdisciplinary group led by William Brown planning complimentary units related to water. I have volunteered to post group work on the library website, and began a resource list here.

I am delighted to be serving on the District Technology Committee again this year, and enjoyed attending the committee’s first meeting on October 22. I look forward to contributing to this group’s work.

Chess Table

I am thrilled with the library’s new chess table, made for us by Vaughn Rossi and Shane Taugner. See information and photos here.

Halloween

Halloween is one of my favorite days in the library. I love seeing students both work and hang out in their costumes. This year, we also had a Halloween story contest leading up to Halloween, an idea developed by our Library Club. The club members wrote the starting sentences for four different scary stories. Then, students had the opportunity to contribute the next sentence to the story of their choice. We ended up with four entertaining narratives! One participant will be selected by random drawing for a gift certificate prize. Participants had a lot of fun writing their contributions. Here are some photos from Halloween and the story writing contest:


Created with flickr slideshow.