The Reform Symposium

This electric conference was an outstanding example of a what can be accomplished with the help of one's Personal Learning Network. The entire conference took place via Elluminate sessions which have been archived. Podcasts are being made available as well.

My favorite was the keynote by Shelly Blake-Plock. He gave many examples of practical and everyday uses of online tools such as Twitter, wikis, blogs, and more. How his classroom was converted to function as a 21st century classroom is amazing!

Two others that I enjoyed and recommend are Richard Byrne's Back-Channeling in the Classroom and Joe Bower's Abolishing and Replacing Grading.

The links for the archived Elluminate sessions are found on the ABOUT tab, MEET THE PRESENTERS. Each presenter has a separate page with information and a description of their presentation with links to their website, Twitter handle, and the archived Elluminate session.

A Google doc, Links-Reform Symposium 2010 , was collectively created to gather links discussed by the presenters or shared in the chat by the participants into one great resource.

Back to School Special

TL Virtual Cafe's Transformative Conversations for the 2010-2011 school year have begun. The first webinar has already occurred, but don't worry, the Elluminate session will be archived as well as the text chat, slides used during the presentations, and other resources will be available on the TL Virtual Cafe wiki.

The first webinar, Back to School Special: Making You and Your Library Indispensable, was presented by three different teacher librarians. Keisa Williams talked about what she does in her elementary school, Gwyneth Jones discussed her middle school program, and Shannon McClintock Miller shared what happens in her secondary program. Lots of great ideas were presented as well as discussed in the text chat.

Plan on attending next month's October 4th webinar with Doug Johnson presenting on the Changes in the Physical Library.

Newspaper for Twitter

Paper.li is a site that creates a daily newspaper for links shared on Twitter by user/s, list, or #tag.

Now I don't have to feel like I'm missing anything when I'm not logged into Twitter. I created my own Twitter newspaper and I receive an email with the link to today's paper. Paper.li collects the links, photos, and videos, then categorizes the information into subjects. Just a few are shown on the front page for each subject with the option of viewing all.

Look at mine for an example. Here are some others that I also like: #tlchat Daily (teacher librarian chat); #edchat Daily; and #edtech Daily.

Hiatus OVER

It's been awhile!!!

I've been using Twitter, attending webinars, and reading, not sharing or writing.

My plan is to restart the blog and make sure that the post are short and to the point.

Fighting the Filter

I'm not a member of ISTE, however, I am a member of the ISTE-SIGMS, a support group for school librarians and others "who are working to promote the use of instructional technologies to enhance student learning." (Find out more about ISTE-SIGMS below.)

The first activity of 2010 was a webinar, "Fighting the Filter" presented by Buffy Hamilton, The Unquiet Librarian. Ms. Hamilton's presentation included 13 different strategies to remove the "roadblock of fear," ways to challenge and change filtering policies.

1. Establish a conversation with the decision makers in control. Gather your documentation in support of access to web-based information and send it to those decision makers and cc your principal.
2. Ensure that filtering policies and procedures are in writing. Volunteer to serve on any filtering policy committee.
3. Collect examples of effective instructional practice to include with documentation when arguing for the use of a specific resource or tool.
4. Develop a plan for the use of that resource and how it will be implemented.
5. Develop a plan for addressing the potential challenges.
6. Advocate for intellectual freedom and equity of access to information.
7. Become transparent - show why/how the resource makes a difference.
8. Advocate for the digital citizenship which 21st century students will need.
9. Remind decision makers that students need guided instruction to learn how to use the resource effectively.
10. Enable students to voice their needs to decision makers.
11. Collect qualitative and quantitative data to support your story of the effective use of the resource.
12. Tie your argument to performance standards, i.e. AASL, NET-S, and district/building goals.
13. Let students learn how to be their own filter.

KEEPING TRYING AND BE PERSISTENT!

In addition to Ms. Hamilton's presentation there was a back channel also happening. Much conversation and sharing took place with Ms. Hamilton and among the attendees. A great suggestion that one attendee voiced was changing AcceptableUsePolicy to ResponsibleUsePolicy.

Ms. Hamilton has gathered various resources including the slides used in her presentation at ISTE-SIGMS Filtering Issues Webinar LibGuides. She also shared bookmarks from her Delicious account here.

If you are not a member of ISTE-SIGMS go to the ISTE Community ning and sign up and then participate in the discussion in the Media Specialists SIG group. See the sigms home's schedule of upcoming activities.

Filters
sigms
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