The School Media Center: Technology and Diversity

The American Library Association’s (ALA) publication, Information Power: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs (1998), outlined the mission of the school media program. This mission is to ensure that students and staff are effective users of information and related ideas. Additionally, in 2007, the organization introduced Standards for the 21st Century Learner, the replacement for the Information Power guidelines for media programs. Despite the update, the roles of the school media specialist remain a solid focal point for media specialist serving as instructional consultant, information specialist, teacher, and technological coordinator within school settings. Therefore, media specialists are charged with setting the standards for integrating technology and diversification through the school media program.

In addition to the aforementioned mission of ensuring effective users of information, ALA also emphasizes another key goal involving media programs’ responsibility to emphasize intellectual freedoms and access to various forms of information sources, including technological resources. Media specialists provide learning activities and related resources for students on a daily basis, but must be cognizant that these resources and actives are representative of their school community’s demographic, social and cultural perspectives. The media center activities and resources must also provide diverse experiences for all learners within the school setting with the goals of producing technology literate students and increased student achievement. This is a major challenge for school media specialists and teachers serving schools with a range of socioeconomic, ethnic, and learning needs, including gifted, general, and special education, ESOL, as well as remediation programs.

As school media specialist serve in various roles, the utilization of various strategies and resources is equally important in order to address technology integration and diversity needs in and through the media center. Accordingly, Learning Points & Associates (2007), provided suggestions for relevant 21st century technology integration, including:


Student Learning:

• Social networking technology
• Web-based resources for research
• Online portfolios
• Synthesizing and presenting information through creative graphic presentations
• Use of audio and video files
• E-learning project based collaboration, such as ePals Classroom Exchange
• Virtual Fieldtrips


Teachers/Staff:

• Ongoing professional development
• Curriculum integration of technology to meet state academic standards
• Use to increase parental involvement and communication in schools
• To college, manage, and analyze data for school improvement, teaching and learning


Resources for Technology Integration:

• ePals Global Community – a free K-12 social learning network - http://www.epals.com/join/

• Website for information on technology and learning - http://www.techlearning.com/

• Integrating via video vignettes @ Integrating New Technologies Into the Methods of Education or IN TIME - http://www.intime.uni.edu/

• TimeMe's free and fee based software products time tests, classes, meetings, projects, and presentations - http://www.timeme.com/

• Free blog for kids designed for elementary and middle school teachers and allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community - http://kidblog.org/home.php

• Free online note taker, organizer, spreadsheets, presentation and word application tools - https://www.zoho.com/


Resources for Diversity in Media Services:

• A website of bilingual translation of common media center phrases/signage - https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/projects/bilingualsign/main.html

• An introduction to the resources on the Web concerning multicultural education and diversity - http://library.csustan.edu/lboyer/multicultural/main.htm

• Article on strategies for reaching out to diverse populations - www.sedl.org/connections/resources/rb/rb5-diverse.pdf

• Information Literacy and Differentiation - http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Information_Literacy_in_the_K12_Classroom/Chapter
• Research and best practices for technology integration - http://www.pbs.org/teachers/librarymedia/tech-integration/

• This National Education Association online toolkit introduces the multiple facets of diversity - http://www.nea.org/tools/diversity-toolkit.html


References:

American Association of School Librarians and Association. 1998.Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning. Chicago: American Library Association and Washington, DC: Association for Educational Communications and Technology.

Learning Point Associates. (2007). Understanding No Child Left Behind: Technology integration. Retrieved from http://www.learningpt.org/pdfs/qkey3.pdf

Crabby Fried Chicken: A Digital Story

Crabby Fried Chicken

Imagine you are trying to teach your 7^th grade students about myths and fables. You have students copy notes from the interactiveboard and read through a couple of myths and fables. Then you have them make a venn diagram comparing/contrasting myths/fables, and even make them write their own myth or fable. However, when the students go to share their stories, you find out several things:

1) They didn’t incorporate the elements of a myth that they were supposed to

2) Their writing doesn’t make much sense

3) Your students are bored.

You're then left wondering how much your students actually retained from the lesson. In case you haven't figured it out yet, this is a true story. Even when students read stories aloud, I’ve found that their thoughts tend to be very scattered. Yet when pictures are involved (such as in digital storytelling), students are able to see their thought pattern and are forced to make what they have written make sense to others in a visual context. Therefore, I decided to create a sample digital story for students to use as a guide for creating their own myth or fable (which you can view here...)

My Encounter with Digital Stories

After using digital storytelling, I can honestly say that it is a way for students to teach themselves about the content of a unit and allows them to have a personal sense of achievement (as well as a final product that is much harder to destroy than posterboard).

Why not make the unit more meaningful and memorable by having students create presentations that include sound, written words, and pictures? Such presentations can not only integrate everything they have learned about the unit, but will entertain the class. Not to mention it will fulfill those pesky standards of integrating technology in the classroom, participating in group interaction, and mastering different styles of writing.

Movie Maker In the Classroom

Digital Storytelling can be used to perform a variety of actions in the classroom. Below are just a few ideas, although I’m sure you can come up with a plethora of your own.

• Present a biography or autobiography
• Perform a booktalk or book review
• Create a fictional story
• Create a documentary of a historical or contemporary event
• Demonstrate ho w to do something (i.e. – a math problem, a writing tutorial, etc.)
• Stage a debate
• Create a public service announcement or advertisement
• Showcase a portfolio

Getting Started

The book suggests using lots of fancy equipment (i.e. – photoediting software, sound recording software, microphone stand, microphone, and scanner). These items are nice to have, but are not at all necessary. To create a digital story, you really only need a computer (preferably a laptop since most come with a built in microphone), and windows movie maker or imovie (where you can record both audio and video), or powerpoint (where you can take images and record audio over them). If you plan on inserting images and recording audio, you need to find copyright friendly images (either taken personally on a digital camera or borrowed from a copyright friendly website such as those listed below).

In fact, most schools have laptop carts available for check out (though if they don’t, the school may have to bite the bullet on purchasing microphones). Once, you have checked out the laptops, make sure the proper programs are downloaded (or find out the protocol for getting them added), and experiment with recording audio/video and using specific program features before turning students loose. There are tons of tutorials on the web for using moviemaker which can help as well!

Movie Maker Resource Kit

Check out the following website: http://edtech.kennesaw.edu/nisa/moviemaker.htm to find out how to use MovieMaker (there are multiple tutorials), follow copyright laws, burn/share movies, and get ideas digital storytelling for the classroom. Also find out about extra equipment you can use with MovieMaker including FlipCameras and free software (file conversion, video editing, image editing, etc.).

Copyright Friendly Images and Music

Copyright Tutorial for Students

http://www.cyberbee.com/cb_copyright.swf

This is a wonderful interactive website on copyright made just for students. It features a group of students asking common copyright questions generated by students.

FreePlay Music

http://www.freeplaymusic.com/

Free AudioClips

http://www.freeaudioclips.com/

Pics4learning

http://www.pics4learning.com/

Publishing Your Digital Story

Once a digital story is created, the question becomes how is it to be stored and shared? Well, there are lots of places you can publish your work. The media center website is a great place to showcase student work! Also, check out these websites for sharing as well!

VoiceThread

http://voicethread.com/

Using this interactive website, you can upload your digital story and take comments on it from other viewers.

KidBlog

http://kidblog.org/home.php

This is a kidfriendly blog where photos, podcasts, movies, digital stories, images, (and pretty much anything else you can think of) can be shared using a educationally secure network.

TeacherTube and Youtube

I won’t actually give the links because I’m going to assume we all know how to access these links. Be very careful about posting student work to these websites as we all know the risks of sharing too much student information.

ThinkQuest

http://www.thinkquest.org/en/

This is an educationally friendly website where students create their own “ThinkQuest” website. It pretty much goes a step further than just sharing one digital story. However, if you have a class and there are multiple stories to share, I would suggest creating a website to showcase them with other classes and schools from around the world!

Copyright-Fair Use

            As teachers, we are constantly trying to find creative ideas to incorporate into our lessons and classrooms, but many times we are in violation of copyright laws.  I do not think that educators violate these laws intentionally; but many do it without knowing they are doing anything wrong.

             What are copyright laws?  Copyright laws are in place to grant and protect the rights of the original work.  It gives the authors the rights to reproduce, distribute, perform and display their work. However, educators may use copyright materials under Fair Use. Fair Use allows limited copying of copyrighted materials without the author’s permission. These materials must be used in certain conditions, such as teaching.

              There is a lot of gray area when looking and thinking about Fair Use in the classroom. The myths discussed in The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education are those that need to be addressed and discussed with teachers to assure that we as educators are following the guidelines.

One of the myths that I found interesting was “EDUCATORS CAN RELY ON “RULES OF THUMB” FOR FAIR USE GUIDANCE”. I have always learned that there are certain guidelines for using material, and as long as you followed those guidelines, you were ok. It took me a while to understand why this was a myth, and I think I figured it out......this is why I think this is a myth.

              There are guidelines for usage of materials, such as percentage of songs or videos, and number of words or number of pages from literary works. However, this is not enough. There are other factors that you must consider BEFORE you follow the “rules of thumb” guidelines.

The 4 factors that need to be considered when deciding whether or not the use of a material is fair:

 1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes

2. The nature of the copyrighted work

3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

            Basically what this means is that before you use any material, you need to make sure that you are using it for educational purposes and that it has value to what your students are learning. (In my opinion, this is the gray area. I think that we as educators can twist and turn just about anything and deem it educational!) If you select a material and feel like it has an educational place in your classroom, then there are guidelines for what is acceptable for you to use according to Fair Use. I created a newsletter for one of my previous classes about Fair Use and Copyright. I created it to use as a training tool for teachers. If you would like more information about Fair Use and a list of websites, check out my newsletter at the link below.

http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/72558622?access_key=key-13b3x1wr9yogyph70hnz

The Media Specialist: A Teacher’s best Friend

Blake Turner

Technology is here and it is here to stay.  It has become an integral part of the educational system.  Grades are kept on databases, streaming video is used in lessons, and student scheduling is performed, all on electronic formats; class projects have moved from the age-old piece of poster board and the realm of dioramas to the electronic arena.  I would imagine that most educators would be hard pressed to imagine a school day going by without utilizing a piece of technology in some fashion or another. 

It seems that most schools do not necessarily suffer from a lack of technology, but rather a competence in its use and support.  As many of us have experienced, receiving a new piece of equipment can be a blessing and a curse.  The excitement of having a new tool to use in the education of our students is obvious; however, sometimes the daunting task of learning how to use the new piece of wonder technology is paralyzing.   Teachers have barely enough time to teach, plan, and grade; facing the task of learning a new electronic format can be a bit hard  It seems although there is more and more technology entering schools, the irony prevails that there is little training that accompanies it.

I have also noticed that technology specialist at schools have little time to give lessons on using technology; in fact I have observed that quite a bit of their time is employed with hardware issues and attending to basic computer issues.

It struck me that these observances offer an excellent opportunity for the astute media specialist.  In essence, a motivated media specialist could help solve the issue of technology training and address the issue of the plethora of trivial issues that the resident technology specialist deals with, thus, freeing him or her to help with more instruction based assistance.

As we all know, it is our job as media specialists to make the breadth of the services that we offer and the wonderful resource that a media center represents apparent to all of our peers.  Becoming a learning leader in the arena of technology assistance is one such way to make our positive impacts on education felt. 

            The first step to providing any form of meaningful assistance or education is to find out the level of knowledge from the intended audience.  This can be easily accomplished be sending out e-mails that request feedback.  These can be done in simple response e-mails that request areas of interest or needs from the staff.  An excellent resource for tailored response style survey e-mails is doodle.com; check it out and you will be amazed!

As great as e-mails are, do not be afraid to hit the rubber to the road and go drop in on a few teachers and meet with them face to face with them.  Of course, make sure that it is convenient for them, but I have found that often times the plethora of e-mails that teachers receive on a daily basis induces many to delete them… importance be damned... without much consideration.  I can understand this myself.  It is amazing what meeting personally with an individual can do towards opening future lines of communication.  You will also open a chance to address some timely needs that the teacher may be facing with his or her classes.

The next step is for the media specialist to come up with some in-service seminars and or training modules to help faculty members in their technological challenges.  Remember, that quite a bit of training can be provided to teachers in the forms of interactive PowerPoints.  In fact, many of the questions that plague technology specialist like: how do you scan a document, turn a document into a PDF, access school calendars, utilize grading software, etc. can be addressed in simple how to documents that can be sent to teachers through a school efficiently.

I also feel that in person seminars should be sweetened with the promise of in service or PLU hours.  In fact, I would imagine that any type of training in technology could be tied to just about any school’s school wide improvement plan.  These seminars could also be tied to technology standards that most states have, thus bridging the impact on student achievement divide that media specialist are often challenge to overcome.

School TV News- Cougar Cub News

           I knew that my school was not savvy when it came to School TV News, but after looking at Pleasant Grove Elementary and The Tiger News, I am a bit embarrassed, but realize what potential our newscast can have.

Our newscast is “The Cougar Cub Morning News”. It is taped throughout the week and broadcasted on Friday morning. Each week two 5^th graders are picked to be the anchors of the news. The broadcast follows the same format each week. It includes the pledge, our mission statement for the school and county, lunch menu, weather, students with birthdays for the week and any other important news for the week. If there are any special events happening in the classroom, these events are spotlighted too.

Our media specialist is in charge of the program. She does all the filming and editing. We do not have an elaborate set, or props. There is a small room off of the media center that is used for filming. It consists of a table with a tablecloth with our school name, an American flag and a few fake trees in the background.

The only problems that the media specialist has encountered had to do with technology. She used an old camcorder to record the news and then would edit on an old Mac computer. Within the last year, she has purchased a flip camera and now produces the news on a newer PC in the library. Another problem that she has is getting additional news stories from the classrooms. She encourages teachers to let her know if they are doing something in their classroom, but there are some weeks when there is nothing extra to share on the broadcast.

Honestly, our school news is B-O-R-I-N-G. I have been at the school for 9 years, and the format has not changed at all in the time that I have been there.  Same music and script, the only thing different is the 5^th graders each year. The problem is addressing the problem. Does our media specialist know that the program is dull or does she think it is great? Or does she do it because she has to and does not care how it turns out? There are people in the building who are willing and would love to help with the broadcast, but bringing up the subject has been difficult.

I think that sometimes people think that elementary students are not capable of producing a newscast, but Pleasant Grove Elementary proves that theory wrong! Our media specialist is nearing retirement; maybe our next media specialist can revive and revamp our Cougar Cub News!