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How do you authentically teach research?

12 Feb

How are you teaching students to research? When students research in our library, I started noticing a disconnect between personal vs. academic research. By restricting them to academic sources have we stifled their natural curiosity? Is it the linear path we have imposed on them in the past? I have no idea…but I’m constantly thinking about it and looking for more ideas!

 
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Right now I’ve been informally interviewing students on the processes they use when researching. Additionally, I’ve been informally interviewing myself on how I research. Here’s some things I’ve noticed:

  • Curation -  When I’m researching-whether academic or not-I typically pull together a ton of information. I’m constantly shifting it and curating it in to different topics/subjects and leaving my organization open for future use. When I speak with students, they’re focus is usually temporary. They are task oriented and rarely even have the option to curate their research for later. Additionally, students tend to have a more focused view of their research. They struggle to see how it fits in to the big picture.
  • Scaffolding Works – Seriously. Currently, we use digital notecards (on Powerpoint) with students to help them paraphrase. It’s fantastic! They have the opportunity to organize the cards, color code them, and give them themes right there on the cards. Often times I wonder however if we could start this scaffolding earlier in the research process. I’m not sure how though, still working. I think this is one reason Pinterest is so successful! If you’re looking for ways to organize your mantle, you can easily browse through a variety of photos and articles to find what works for you and immediately organize it.

These are my current observations and I’m interested to learn of others experiences. Do you use any strategies to move students from a linear approach to research to a more asynchronous approach?

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Top Five Skills for Searching Databases (in my opinion…)

7 Sep

1. Control-F (or Command-F) to find key terms on page

2. Boolean Searching vs. Google Searching

3. How to filter

4. Document/Record URL to return to your article later

5. Where to find citations

What are your top five tips for mining the databases?

photo credit: alarch via photo pin cc

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Collaboration Bingo!

7 Sep

After sharing Sharwal’s post on ICT Bingo, I’ve been thinking about some different ways to incorporate this in to our library. Common Core is in it’s initial stages at our school and I’ve been trying to think about ways to show staff different ways we could work with them. So, I recreated the bingo game for our library! We’re hoping to have a celebration for the staff who get five in a row.

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App Review: Inspiration

7 Sep

I started teaching just about when Inspiration became a hit. Every class I had encouraged us to use it with students and demonstrate for the class.  Of course, once I graduated and started teaching I never worked in a school that had Inspiration and everyone had failed to mention how expensive it was. Eh..

Today’s Inspiration!

So, now Inspiration has an app for the iPad. It’s WONDERFUL. For those of you not familiar with Inspiration, it’s a mindmapping/brainstorm tool.  You can use it for a variety of purposes, but the really helpful thing about the iPad app is that you can do it yourself. I imagine a group of students would really benefit from working on an outline using this app. I personally use it when I’m reading to take notes.

Key features:

  • Templates-for a student who does not know where to start, a template is helpful. I’ll be honest that I haven’t used them myself and that they seem a little too specific. It would be nice if a teacher could create a template and share it with the students to use that is related to their coursework.
  • Outline to bubble format and back-There is great fluidity between these two views. You can easily switch views and your information transfers. For students it’s helpful because they can visually describe a paper, topic, process, etc. and it automatically sets it up in outline form.
  • The free one is good, but of course the paid one is better.  These types of tools work best when used regularly.

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An iPad Only Summer

7 Sep
This summer I decided to see if I could spend the summer only using my iPad. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to force me to rethink ways I have been using technology. However, it forced me to learn the ins and outs of every day apps.  Now my iPad is my main computing device.  Just like with any new technology, I needed to changed some ways I did things.

Top Things I Learned

Typing-I must admit, it was tough at first. The first couple times I typed an email on the iPad, I definitely cringed. Typing on the digital keyboard is clumsy, but forgiving. You just have to accept this. If you’re really struggling consider purchasing a bluetooth keyboard.

Switching between apps-I’m a multi-tasker. There’s two tricks I use constantly: Trick 1. Click the bottom button twice to pull up a list of recent documents. Trick 2. Use four fingers to swipe the screen from left to right and switch between apps.

PDF Annotation-I’ll post more of an app review later, but simply put-this is the tool I use the most! Used with a scanner, you can organize just about anything this way. Take notes directly on the document, share it, highlight it, upload it to Dropbox, and more.

News and Magazines-I love Flipboard, Pulse, and Twitter apps to organize my news. It’s a great way to stay connected and curate news according to what matters most to you. Not to mention the efficient design.

Google Everything!-I have everything backed up, networked, shared, blah blah blah on Google. I’m a huge fan of Google docs for collaboration. The app I’m using for this is G-Whizz and Open Office. Open to better suggestions though…

My Conclusion: The best part of this experiment was getting rid of all my paper (most of it…)! I pretty much live in a paperless house and office and I’m more organized for it. Everything is indexed, searchable, and easily accessible.

Things I wish I could do on the iPad: Use Zotero to organize citations and have the options of a powerful word processor. Really, that’s it.

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Simple apps for simple solutions

11 May

There’s a ton of apps out there. They can do everything from scan your arm to create professional style movies. Here’s a list of apps that are EASY and do SIMPLE things for use in your classroom.

iBrainstorm – Use this to replace the old school post-it note assignments. Students can connect to the screen and add thoughts and drawings on a shared “corkboard”.

T-chart – It’s just that. An interactive t-chart. Great for showing the pros and cons of any topic.

Mitosis – Quick, easy demonstration of mitosis. Must have for all biology teachers.

Inspiration – “Back in the day” when I was getting my bachelor’s degree Inspiration was da bomb. We were granted free trials and training. Then I got a job and realized that no school could afford it. It’s a great program and now it’s available for free on your iPad. What a deal!

ScreenChomp – Screen shots and screen recording. View my ScreenChomp here! Still hoping for an embed code some day!

High School Science Apps

24 Apr
Here’s a short list of my top choices for high school science apps. Some of the more pricey ones I have not tested yet, but will update the site when we get the funding. I’ve listed them here though because of their wonderful reviews.
  • The Elements: A Visual Exploration – comprehensive catalog of all elements including interactive periodic table, dynamic pictures, and more. $13.99
  • Buffers $1.99 – Design buffers for pH control. Good for AP chemistry
  • Monster Anatomy 3D – $18.99 for each body region
  • Skeletal 3D $0.99
  • GeneIndexHD $1.99 Information about specific genes from a variety of sources.
  • 3D cell (free) interactive cell and cell stain exploration. Some adds that link to outside links to buy cell stains.
  • Mitosis (free, iPhone app) Very well done. Includes thorough descriptions of each phase with audio reading options. User has to move the cell parts through the phases to move on.
  • Touch Physics HD $2.99 game involving Newton’s laws. Only tested out free version for iPhone
  • Vernier Video Physics $2.99 – have not tested this yet. Does a physics video analysis. Video a moving object and it analyzes it. Comments state it does not mirror for teacher to display.
  • Pocket Heart $6.99 Have not tested, gets very positive reviews.
  • Wonders of Geology $12.99 Have not tested, award winning app. Shows photos and diagrams describing geologic sites.
  • Star Walk $4.99 – Award winning app, have not tested. Labels all starts, constellations, and satellites you point your iPad at.
  • Wolfram Alpha ($2.99 ) One of the best for college readiness. All inclusive search engine with a math and science focus. First stop for technical information
  • Weather Channel (free) up to date weather and interactive radar
  • Science360 (free) Interesting science news app. Uses visual bookmarking to display results.
  • Particle Zoo (free) Awesome app for students to learn particle physics. Incorporates cartoon versions of all particles, interactives, and summary charts.
  • NASA Visualization Explorer (free) Direct connection to NASA’s research spacecraft. Dynamic images and explanations.

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Google Play-You’re blowing my mind

7 Mar

First of all…is it for real?

This Google Play thing is seriously amazing. I’ve dreamed about it, plotted about it, and now it’s true?

So, what’s the big deal? Here’s the video from Google floating around the net:

It’s basically cloud computing at it’s finest. Sync your music, movies, files, and more. I can’t wait to get rid of my huge, noisy, fragile hard drives… Yes! From what I can see so far you can upload files you already own (for how much, I don’t know). Other things will be available for fees, such as videos, music, books, and albums. I’m sure there’s more details to come!

So, how will this affect the libraries?

After reading LibraryThing’s blog post Ebook economy: Are libraries screwed?  I’ve really changed my view on how these movements are affecting libraries. What more can we offer? Google is often our most loved and hated counterpart. It’s so engrained in our patrons brains and they offer so much information for free. How can we compete? I think we’ve got to fight back by showing patrons the difference in material. Do you want information that’s close or right on? It depends on your research. Moving our libraries into the learning hub model we will support these patrons by helping them make educated decisions on information seeking strategies. We can provide scaffolding for help patrons understand transliteracy and cloud computing. How are you planning on helping patrons transition to “the cloud”?

 

photo credit: Espen Faugstad via photopin cc

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iPads in the Library: Week One

6 Mar

So, back in October we received a grant for our Roving Reference Librarian project. Our idea was that since so many students are using our databases and online tools that we could use the iPad “rove” around the library and help them without taking over their computers. We know as well as you do that truly no one likes someone leaning over their shoulder. We also are planning on using them to display our Gale eBook collections when they’re relevant to their research. Over the next year we’ll be implementing a unit to teach seniors on using online note-taking tools and organizational methods too. Students are struggling with the concept of Cloud storage and I think anything we can do help them out, the better!

Okay, that’s all big picture stuff. This week we’ve really just set them up and experimented with different apps to see what will be good for the students. They were set up by our tech department and work a little differently than a personal iPad. For example, we cannot connect them to our computers. All iPads are synced with one central computer in the IT department. The IT department also has developed a Self Service sort of “app portal” if you will. Apps purchased for the district can be accessed here. We use our personal Apple accounts. We purchased iTunes cards to use with apps we want to purchase for the library, but haven’t figured out how to use those later. Anyways, there’s a few of the logistics for districts brainstorming how to wrap their mind around apps, iPads, and personal Apple IDs.

So, here’s a shortlist of library apps I think are helpful! (in no particular order)

Notetaking Apps

* Penultimate: Records writing, has multiple pages, easy to index.

* Sundry Notes: Another good tool for recording notes. Not quite as versatile as Penultimate.

* Evernote: Of course, a must have. Not only does it sync with everything else, it works with PDFs, allows collaborative notebooks and more! I’m a little bugged by the fact that you cannot annotate PDFs, but eh. You can’t have it all!

* Skitch: I’ve reviewed this before on my blog. This is a great app for annotating pictures or diagrams! For science or math I see this as a must have for students.

* Dragon: Use this to record lectures or conversations and have it immediately converted to text. Works much better than SIRI at translating the speaker.

For Learning

* iTunes U: Tons of lectures and courses from high quality sources.

* Wikihood: This is the coolest. It finds where you are and shows Wikipedia articles that are sourced to nearby spots.

* Wolfram Alpha: The best math based search engine. I’m looking to develop a unit on this for our junior/senior level math students when they come in. So many uses…

* Gale Database App: This app far exceeds Gale’s segmented website. It’s so easy to navigate and find information. I can’t wait to start using this with classes! As long as your library/district/state subscribed to Gale, you should have access.

* Smithsonian: This app tricked me. It’s to watch their programs, but you have to be on at the time of the current program. In other words, it’s not On Demand.

Collaboration Tools

* Wunderlist: Collaborative list making app. Great for organizing projects.

* Idea Sketch: I love the functionality of this app! It’s a brainstorming/mapping tool. Unlike most of these tools, you can export the map as a beautiful JPEG. Love it!

* Skype: I’m sure you’re familiar with it :)

Fellow librarians: What have you used to connect with your students? How are you using iPads in the library?

photo credit: Ownipics via photopin cc

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The Future of Classroom Displays?

6 Mar

Alrighty, as I mentioned in a post before we are a pilot program for replacing the projector/SMART board combo with an interactive TV. In the long run, it’s cheaper and we’re seeing if it’s worth it.

Our response is… YES!!!

Do you ever use a piece of technology that fits so well into what you’re already doing you can’t believe you lived without it before? That’s how I feel about this TV. How have I ever presented to a class with my back to them? Since the world of educational bloggers seem to love top (insert number), I present to you my top four reasons you should replace your projector/SMART board with an interactive TV.

Reason One.

MONEY! Projectors are expensive to keep up. They cost about $500 dollars a year (at least) to maintain. Between cleaning them and buying bulbs, you’re losing quite a bit of money yearly. This was news to me. Upfront the TV costs about $1000 more than a projector/SMART board combo, but will more than make up for the difference in cost over the next couple years.

Reason Two.

DISPLAY! Ever been sitting in a lecture and the lecturer blabbers away about a picture you can’t see? The projector screen works by reflecting light. Depending on the light in the room, that may be just the projector’s output or also the light from outside. Most classrooms have windows. Windows =sun=faint pictures.

Reason Three.

COMPATIBILITY! TVs have been around the block a few times. They have been modified for maximum connections, visibility, and compatibility. Connect an iPad? No problem. Connect a computer? Sure! Watch cable? Even better. We have a USB cord and fire wire. Unfortunately, as of now, the PC is more compatible with the TV. We’ve got sound, video, and interactivity all in one little box!

Ahh…finally. Reason Four.

It’s cool. Seriously, a huge interactive display is just cool. Students have already been talking about the TV and incorporating it into their projects. In one week, it’s been the display for 2 Skype readalouds, the background for many Spanish newscasts, and an arena for a HUGE game of Angry Birds with the counselors. We’ve had more visitors in the library just to see it than anything else we have. If you have a SMART board, you know how it’s sometimes not so smart? We have not had any of the typical problems using the SMART software on our TVs which is a huge relief :)

In conclusion.

Before I end this post, I feel like I should include this disclaimer. We’re lucky to be in a school that can test out new ideas like this. However, I know not all schools have this luxury. In the past at this time of year I know I was struggling to get paper to make copies for student worksheets and scrounging around for paperclips. I hope that by publishing these posts I can help provide some schools with new ideas after we’ve tested them out so they can make informed decisions.
photo credit: x-ray delta one via photopin cc

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