My+Gems

From June 28th:

1. "What I Learned Recently in NYC Classrooms" from Tech and Learning. June 24th, 2010. This article is a report done by the author about what he has observed in northern Manhattan schools. Among the various things he found were that students that were technologically inclined were tasked with being in charge of it and that while the technology added to most lessons, it did not function properly all the time.

2. "2 North Carolina Counties Roll Out Online Gaming for Mastery of State Standards" from THE Journal online. June 22nd, 2010. This article is about 2 North Carolina school districts which are using online gaming from Archipelago Learning throughout their classrooms to help students master their state standards. The hope is that these tests will help increase scores on North Carolina's end of grade standardized tests which are given to grades 3 through 8.

3. "The Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use Publishes Cyber-Secure Schools in a Web 2.0 World" from MultiMedia and Internet @ Schools. June 15th, 2010. This is an ebook that focuses on three issues that are facing schools right now: creating change in technology adoption, effective Internet use management and Web 2.0 in schools-legal issues. It offers schools templates for district use policies and regulations as well as a student agreement that will allow for district wide effective technology use.

4. "Academic fraud’ filtering hopes to crack down on plagiarism" from eschoolnews.org. June 24th, 2010. A new program from OpenDNS aims to filter and eventually eliminate any websites that would help students plagiarize works. Administrators, teachers and parents can submit sites to the system and once added, the site is blocked on all school district computers. This hopes to eliminate websites that offer term papers for a fee as well as sites where term papers are posted for free download.

5. "Montgomery County program encourages girls' interest in technology" from The Philadelphia Inquirer online. June 24th, 2010. This article is about a summer camp that introduces girls entering 4th to 8th grade to various technologies including robotics, digital photography, programming, gaming and web design. I think that it's great to have a program just for girls as technology is usually a male-centric field. I hope that more programs such as this one pop up across the country.

For June 21st:

1. "Educate not Eliminate" from Tech and Learning. May 31st, 2010. This is an article about educators learning about different technological terms and the network that you work on. I think that every district should have some sort of in-service education about the way that the Internet network works just so that everyone has a basic idea of how it operates and how to troubleshoot some things on their own.

2. "eVision Delivers Broadcast and Video on Demand to Classrooms" from THE Journal online. June 18th, 2010. eVision is a new technology made by RM Education that streams various video content to classrooms. I feel that this could be a huge benefit to a library media center as classes could meet in the library to view various video content in a larger setting in high definition. RM Education also makes an audio service that provides sound clips from famous moments in the past.

3. "Califone International Launches Assistive Listening System for Differentiated Learning" from MultiMedia and Internet @ Schools. June 10th, 2010. This article has information about a new listening system for students that have trouble hearing in larger spaces, such as auditoriums or cafeterias. It also has translation support for non-English speaking students. This type of technology could be a great help to classrooms with a high amount of English as a Second Language students as well as hearing

4. "Zooming in on the Common Standard for Reading in Kindergarten" from EducationNews.org. June 16th, 2010. This article takes a look at the aspects of literacy instruction and how its definition has changed because of the new common standards agreed upon by almost all of the states in our nation. The main change is the importance of meeting the standards at ages 4, 5 and 6. While most of these standards have been agreed upon by most of the states, including New York, it isn't clear how many states will adopt these standards.

5. "Wisconsin agency aims to transform education’s core." from eschoolnews.org. June 10th, 2010. This is a very interesting article which is about a regional Wisconsin agency's new strategy in getting their students ready for the 21st century. Some of their ideas include phasing out print textbooks and using digital resources, and shifting from teacher led instruction to a mix of face to face instruction and online learning. It's a very interesting and unique way to try to advance educational standards to connect with a new generation of learners.

For June 14th:

1. "What's Hot for Summer" from the Good Comics for Kids blog on School Library Journal online. June 7th 2010. The short blog posting has a link to the hottest graphic novels for this upcoming summer which is broken down into age group. Each list has a short preview of the graphic novel listed as well as the on sale date since some of these graphic novels are not yet available.

2. "The Ultimate in Summarizing" from the School Library Monthly Blog. June 9th 2010. This blog post is written by an elementary SLMS and her experience with teaching first graders the skill of summarizing. She liked her lesson, but, she felt as though maybe something was missing from it. One of her colleagues suggested using a Lego stop motion video that explains the movie Stars Wars in three minutes as a way to spice up the lesson a little bit and to get the kids excited about this topic. There is a link to the video in the blog post.

3. "The Ten Teaching No No's of Teaching With a Projector or Interactive White Board" from Tech and Learning. May 25th, 2010. This blog post has the ten things you do not want to do while instructing a class using a projector or an interactive white board. The ten things listed are all helpful tools and reminders to keep in the back of your mind when you are using this equipment.

4. "Education Trends: More Mobile, More Distance Learning, More LMS Usage" from THE Journal. June 10th, 2010. This article reports about a study done by the SIIA, the Software & Information Industry Association, about trends regarding education technology as related to 5 topics: K-12 learning management systems, post-secondary learning management systems, online learning, mobile computing, and the state of education in the face of increasing budget cuts at the state level.

5. "23 Things Staff Development" from LM_NET. June 10th, 2010. I found this in my inbox from LM_NET. This is a Wiki designed by two library media specialist's to help their fellow library media specialist's in their district with Web 2.0 technology. This staff development program is constantly changing and updating due to new technology and curriculum modifications. It's split up into 8 weeks with a different topic each week. I think it's pretty cool and especially helpful to media specialists who haven't had experience with Web 2.0 technology or are hesitant to use it.

For June 7th:

1. "School Librarian Creates Web Lesson on Oil Spill" from School Library Journal online, originally published in School Library Journal's Extra Helping. May 24th, 2010. A School Library Media Specialist in Missouri created a "LibGuide", a website with news links, Delicious bookmarks, a RSS feed, databases and a Google map with focus on the spill area when asked by a fellow teacher to help with a mini-unit incorporating the oil spill into lessons on environmental disasters. This is another example of how a SLMS's collaboration on a lesson can open up new resources to students and also to fellow teachers allowing everyone to take something away from the lesson.

2. "Primary Sources, Kindergarten and Amazing Questions" from School Library Monthly Blog. May 18th, 2010. This article describes in detail a lesson with collaboration between the SLMS and Kindergarten teachers on how to "deepen the kinds of work that are happening in our elementary school libraries." Using many different sources for inspiration, including AASL's Standards for the 21st Century Learner and articles from various magazines and websites, the collaborating teachers came up with an interesting and engaging 3 day Kindergarten lesson.

3. "Top 10 Sites for Creating Timelines" from Tech & Learning. June 3rd, 2010. This is a short blog post with links to the author's top 10 web sites that educators can use to create timelines. I also think that these sites could be used by students to create timelines as well as I think that timelines are still a great way for visual learners to express their understanding of a topic and it also allows them to be a little creative too.

4. "The Media Center: Weeding, From Alphabet Books to Zip Drives" from MultiMedia and Internet @ Schools. May 1st, 2010. Deciding what to keep and what to get rid of is a constantly nagging and changing topic for School Library Media Specialists. This article goes into detail about how to go about it and tips on how to make sure that you don't feel regret for weeding materials that you may have a personal connection to, but, isn't used in your SLMS.

5. "Common Core Standards Set New Nationwide Bar for Student Assessment" from THE Journal. June 3rd, 2010. A new set of nationwide standards have been developed for Math and English and there is already a divide among educators on whether or not they really help students. 48 out of the 50 states participated in creating the standards, Texas and Alaska declined to come, and the of the standards is to "establish a shared set of clear educational goals that states can voluntarily adopt." These standards would replace the existing state standards if the state's education department decides to adopt them.

For May 31st:

1. [|"Educators, Authors Weigh in on Texas's Controversial New Standards"] from School Library Journal online, originally published in School Library Journal's Extra Helping. May 25th, 2010. The Texas Board of Education has passed reform to its' social studies standards and curriculum. Some of the new topics include questioning the separation of church and state and if the United Nations undermines the United States' power in world affairs. While on the surface this may not seem to matter to anyone outside of Texas, it may have a huge impact on social studies curriculum nationwide because most textbook publishers tailor their books to Texas's standards. The reason why: they buy the most out of any state in the country.

2. [|"Web Sites on Literacy for 21st Century Learning"] from School Library Monthly online, published in School Library Monthly Volume XXVI, Number 9/May 2010. This article contains various links to help educators teach their students about Information Literacy, Media Literacy and Information and Communication Technologies literacy. Exploring these web-sites gives an idea of what students should be taught and be able to comprehend in the digital age.

3. [|" 'Social' LMS Comes to iPad"] from THE Journal May 24th, 2010. This short article displays another way that a SLMS can be accessed by students away from school. I think that this article also displays the huge role that library media centers play in today's educational environment because cutting edge technology companies are developing software exclusively for use with SLMS. It bodes well for the future.

4. "Teacher librarians vanishing" from Australian Teacher Magazine online April 29th, 2010. I honestly chose this article just for the headline which is pretty misleading. Really the article is about the Australian Federal Government launching an investigation about whether or not teacher librarians, what SLMS's are called in Australia are relevant in schools. The article has quotes from many current teacher librarians which state that there are a lack of qualified professionals in the country which has led to the shortage. I guess if the job market doesn't get better around here, there is always Australia!

5. "Reading by 3rd Grade is Make-or-Break Benchmark" from ASCD Inservice online May 25th, 2010. This short blog post has startling information about the lack of literacy in young children and how a particular study has demonstrated that 3rd is the make or break point for being able to read.