Digital Citizenship, Digital Footprint & Digital Literacy

This year in the media center we are teaching a class called Digital Media to a small group of seventh graders.  We are teaching them how to make videos and take photos.  The products these students create will be featured on the morning news show, our school's social media outlets and our school yearbook.

We spent the first day getting to know each other and the second day talking about what we wanted to do in the class.  On Friday, we had our first digital literacy lesson.  We talked about what it means to be a digital citizen and our digital footprint.  I hope to create a Google Site that features the products our Digital Media students create.  The first project will be a video about their lives.  Students can share video clips and/or images of things or people meaningful to them.  I want them to think about what message they are sharing online about themselves before we get started.

I used a lesson found on Common Sense Media called Trillion Dollar Footprint to lead our discussion.  If you create a free account, you will be able to access all of the materials.  To help introduce the lesson, I entered my name in the Google search engine and we discussed the search results.  Everything that came up was related to school libraries, reading and technology.  They did not see pictures or posts about my family and friends.  I explained to them that this was intentional.  I respect my kids, friends, family and myself to be selective about how much I share about our personal lives online.

My plan is to embed lessons like this throughout our time together in class to help them understand how the media they create and share ties in with being a good digital citizen.  I recently read this article via Scoop.it, "No Longer a Luxury: Digital Literacy Can't Wait" by Troy Hicks and Kristen Hawley Turner.  Definitely a good read.  I am sharing it with teachers at my school because we are all teachers of digital literacy.  

Jumping in Feet First

Back in June, I had the privilege of attending ISTE in San Antonio, Texas.  What a great experience!!!  I learned so much that I had to unplug for a little while to let all the ideas come together for this school year.

Summer break is over!  Time to dust off my librarian hat and get to work.  First day back I was making videos and presenting to staff.  Jumping in feet first is the best way, sometimes.  

Those of us that attended ISTE were asked to share what we learned with the rest of the school.  Social Studies teacher Tyler Abernathy shared tips for using twitter and blogging.  Please check out his blog post for more information about his presentation.

Here is the list of resources that I shared with my colleagues:

Professor Garfield's X-treme Comics- I attended a session by ISTE's Special Interest Group for Literacy (siglit) where I learned about X-treme Comics, a web based comic generator.  There is a a free and paid version.  Students enjoy reading graphic novels.  I recently read several graphic novels this summer as part of our #bookbootcamp. With this tool, I can see teachers engaging students into writing and creating their own comics.  

Infographics- Teacher librarian Linda Doughtery shared her resources during the Digital Age Media Center Playground hosted by ISTE's Special Interest Group for Media Specialists (sigms).  Linda's presentation and website include so much information and resources for creating infographics.  I
saw my buddy fellow SC media specialist Tamara Cox's infographics included in this resource.  I'm ready to learn how to teach students to create this beautiful visual stories.

Digital Storytelling- ISTE's Special Interest Group for Digital Storytelling (sigds) also had a playground where we were able to play with different apps for each step of the digital storytelling process.  While researching the online resources posted by sigds, I came across Kathy Schrock's page 'Digital Storytelling Meets Common Core.'  I love librarians.  Common Core is all we are talking about this school year, so this will help me out.

Book Trailers- My Language Arts teacher partner in crime mentioned at the end of last school year that she wants her students to create book trailers.  Media specialist Julie Hembree shared resources for creating book trailers with young readers.  I think this will help us at the middle level get started teaching our students how to create engaging book trailers.

Aurasma- Media specialist Elissa Malespina shared resources for using the augmented reality app Aurasma in the classroom.  After seeing examples of Aurasma in action, I'm excited to try this out this year.

Videolicious- Technology education teacher Rob Zdrojewski presented "Students as mobile news reporters using videolicious iOS app." Another tool for using our class set of ipod touches.

Curation Tools- Media specialists Joyce Valenza, Michelle Luhtala, & Shannon Miller presented "Your School Library: Mobile, Flipped & Curated.  I plan to try out some different curation tools this year and create more videos for my teachers and students. 

What technology tools or projects do you plan to pursue this school year?

The Charger Research Model

I completed an online class through PBS Teacherline titled 'Building Critical Thinking Skills for Online Research' last summer.  During the course, I read and learned about various research models in order to develop my own research model for my school.

Going into the project, I knew I wanted to develop a research model that was simple and easy to follow without overwhelming students with a lot of steps. I borrowed and adapted from the following research models: the Big6, New South Wales (NSW), South Carolina's The Simple Four and The Research Cycle Model (RCM).

Click here to view The Charger Research Model for Students.

My favorite model was the NSW model because, along with sharing what the students were doing at each step, it also listed what the teacher should be looking for in the student work at each step. Since I also wanted to share this model with teachers, I borrowed heavily from the NSW model.

Click here to view the The Charger Research Model for Teachers.

So far, I've shared the model with all of our teachers and our seventh grade students. Before sharing with the seventh graders, I decided to add the list of links and tools they would use at each step of the research process. We are a 1:1 computing school and I wanted to make sure to demonstrate how our library resources, technology and other tools all come together during the research process.

Sharing the model with students also helped me update the homepage of the school library website. I wanted students to be able to click on the resources they would need for reading and research when they arrived on the school library homepage, instead of hunting for them in the sidebar. I find I am always creating stuff on the library website and going back and making it simpler. I have a love/hate relationship with the library website.

Now that I've gotten my feet wet with seventh grade, I am looking forward to sharing this with our sixth graders next school year to help set the stage for research. Starting off with our seventh graders helped me refine & tweak what I originally created in the summer. Please feel free to borrow, copy and share :)

Broadcasting live from our school studio!

I am really proud of our school news show.  I started out without a clue, but things have turned out nicely after four years of winging it.  I thought I'd share a little bit of how we run our live school news show in hopes of helping out anyone else that finds themselves in the same situation I was in a few years ago (new to working in a school environment without any prior video or technology experience and knowing zilch about putting together a news show.  Yea, that was me :)).

Our school news crew is made up of seventh and eighth grade students.  At the start of the school year, students interested in becoming part of the school news team pick up an application and teacher recommendation form.  I schedule interviews with the technology crew applicants and auditions for anchor applicants.  Once the students are selected, I create a rotation schedule for the anchors and technology crew members.  I rotate my anchors every 6-8 weeks.  I usually rotate my technology crew members by semester.  The exiting news crew members trains the incoming news crew members.  Once a news crew member completes his/her turn on the news show, I may call on them to fill in whenever another crew member is absent.

The nice thing about having seventh grade students on the news team is that I ask them to start the news show the first week of school during their eighth grade year.  These same students also train the new students that join the team that school year.  The students run the news show and I'm there to make sure everyone stays on track and nothing too crazy happens.  So far, I've been really pleased with how responsible and professional our students are about the news program.

Here are the roles and tasks for the news crew member:

News anchors: These two students write the weather announcement and national/world news announcement each morning.  I proofread their announcements before we go live on air.

Teleprompter technician: This student transcribes all of our announcements onto PowerPoint slides that the news anchors will read from.

Video technician: This student creates the visuals that will accompany the announcements.  He/She will also be responsible for transitioning between the our news anchors, special guests and visuals (videos and images).
Sound technician: This student controls the mics and sound board.  I usually place a second year news show team member in this role.  Each year I usually have at least one student that does not stop showing up for the news show and he/she has also taken the initiative to learn all three technician roles.  Having this student on the team really helps because I'm confident that things will go well with the news show even when I am away.

Equipment & tools:

• Desktop computer to create & display visuals
• Small TV monitor to see what we are displaying to our audience
• Sound board
• Video mixer to transition between our desktop and video cameras
• Two video cameras
• wireless microphones and hand held microphones
• Two laptops (one for the teleprompter tech & one for the news anchors)
• TV set
• Google Docs
• Gmail 
• Thumbdrive- we use one very important & precious thumbdrive to hold our videos, pictures & music for the news show.

When I first started working on the news show, I trolled the web for ideas.  The Daring Librarian Gwyneth Jones has a wiki with lots of information.  Check it out!

Google docs has been a great tool because I can easily create, update and share information with the news team.  The news team accesses a Google doc for the script where I collect announcements sent via email to me from our school staff.  I also use our school newsletter to collect news.  The news anchors update the script each morning with the weather report & news piece.  The teleprompter tech creates a Powerpoint from the script all the while everyone is able to edit/view without having to print out a new script.  I also use a Google Form to collect song requests from our school community (I stole this idea from the Daring Librarian :)). My video technician checks a separate Google doc titled 'BMS Music Sheet' to learn what song to play each day.

We play music and videos each day on the news show.  I use the thumbdrive to hold the songs and videos for each week.  We play a booktrailer each Thursday.  I may use a booktrailer from Youtube or a student  may submit a video he/she created.  I play Animoto videos that I create to advertise different events in our school.  (With an educator account in Animoto, I'm able to download my Animoto video as an .mp4 file.)  Sometimes I give the news crew a flip camera and a question to ask their fellow classmates to create "Word on the Street" videos.  I only have five minutes (maybe seven minutes if I push the envelope) of air time, so I can't get too crazy.

If you run a school news show, I would love to hear about what you do!