Today is day three of the UM 4T Virtual Con. It’s an amazing combination of sessions from across the country, with participants from across the country as well! Sadly, general registration is closed, but you’re welcome to join us for these sessions on Wednesday, featuring School of Information folks! GO BLUE and join us!

(Following this list of Wednesday sessions is a list of the archived sessions from Monday.)

Wednesday, 2:45 – 3:45pm
Empowering Teachers With More Pluggable Educational Technology
Session Type: Lecture
Dr. Charles Severance, University of Michigan School of Information
Tech Plan Strand: Learning: Engage and Empower
Session Description:
Teachers are often greatly limited in the educational technology they can use in their classes because it becomes increasingly complex to use on the web software from many different vendors. Students must get a separate account for each new system, teachers need to jump between systems to assess and grade student work and transfer grades between the different systems. Thorough the IMS Global Learning Consortium (www.imsglobal.org), the marketplace is developing standards that will allow course rosters and roles to be moved from one system to another and for graded to be moved between systems without rewiring hand-copying of data between systems. The new standard is called ‘IMS Learning Tools Interoperability’. For example if your school uses Moodle and you would like to use www.chemvantage.org for Chemistry homework, you can simply ‘plug’ ChemVantage into Moodle and the rest is handled automatically. This presentation will introduce IMS Learning Tools Interoperability at a very high level and show some demonstrations of it working with Sakai, Moodle, and Blackboard.

http://www.dr-chuck.com/

Twitter: @drchuck
Moderated by Kristin Fontichairo
Session URL (link opens 20 minutes prior to session)

Wednesday, 2:45-3:45pm
Storybird for Classes
Session Type: Workshop
Presenter: Kara Fribley, UofM School of Information, Master’s Degree Candidate 2012, Library Information Services
Co Presenter: Natalie Mulder, UofM School of Information, Master’s Degree Candidate 2012, Library Information Services
Tech Plan Strand(s): Learning: Engage and Empower
Session Description:
Storybird is a website that allows online books to be created for free, with artwork provided for users. It supports use by classroom teachers for one or multiple classes or subjects. This session will teach participants how to use this Web 2.0 tool for classroom purposes. It will instruct participants how to create and administer classes in Storybird, how to use the “discussion” feature of Storybird, how Storybird works from the student perspective, and how to create online books using this website. Finally, the option of viewing the book online or ordering a physical book created by the students for the classroom will be discussed.
Session URL (link opens 20 minutes prior to session)

Wednesday, 4:00-5:00pm EST

Amping Up Student Learning With Learning Management Systems
Session Type: Lecture
Presenter: Stephanie Teasley, Research Professor, University of Michigan School of Information
Co-Presenter: Kristin Fontichiaro, Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Michigan School of InformationTech Plan Strand: Learning: Engage and Empower
Session Description: Teachers, administrators, and school districts are adopting learning management systems (LMS) like Moodle, Sakai/CTools, Blackboard, and Edmodo at unprecedented rates. Whether you’re an enthusiastic adopter or reluctantly following a district directive, how can you use these virtual classrooms to improve learning, not just store information? This session focuses on holistic thinking about learning management systems and strategies for how they can be used to improve students’ interaction with content, with instructors, and with one another. We’ll also touch on legal issues of student privacy, parental access, and what’s OK to use in a password-protected system. The concepts discussed can be applied to a variety of learning management systems rather than focusing on any particular LMS.
Moderated by Kristin Fontichairo
Session URL: (link opens 20 minutes prior to session)

Wednesday, 7:45-8:45pm EST
Ten Things That You Can Do At School With a Kindle (Beyond Buying Books From Amazon)
Session Type: Workshop
Presenter: Kristin Fontichiaro, Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Michigan
Tech Plan Strand: Learning: Engage and Empower
Session Description:
2011 may be remembered as the year ebooks went viral. If you’re considering bringing ereaders like Amazon’s Kindle into your classroom or library, there are many ways you can use the devices beyond reading purchased titles. In this workshop, we’ll look at ten Kindle tools and strategies you and your students can use to support struggling learners, preview new reads, read Web content, hear text read aloud, and more. Although most of the tools we’ll examine are Kindle-specific, some are applicable for other ereader brands.

http://blog.schoollibrarymedia.com/index.php/about/

Twitter: @activelearning
Session URL (link opens up 20 minutes prior to session)

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MONDAY ARCHIVES

Interested in some quick PD that you can browse over the summer? Here are yesterday’s Webinars for the 4TVirtualCon. More are being recorded as we speak! Sadly, general conference registration exceeded the limit, but here’s your chance to see what you missed! We here at the School of Information are particularly tickled about Addie Matteson and Emily Thompson’s session on Twitter, as they are both SI alums!

Iteach: Considerations And Possibilites For Using Ipods And Ipads In Classrooms-Steve Best

Microsoft’s Mouse Mischief: Transforming Inexpensive Computer Mice Into Invaluable Assessment Tools By Kevin Hankinson

Moodle Mayhem – Be The Moodle Administrator! – Miguel Guhlin

Technology Awareness And Use–Sara Lukaszewicz

If You Tweet It, They Will Come:using Twitter To Form A Professional Network–Emily Thompson and Addie Matteson

Flip To A More Reflective Practice–Renee Pesheck

Manythings.org For Esl And Efl Students

Cell Phones: The No Excuse Tool–James Kapptie

The Joy Of Trial And Error With 6th Graders–Catina Haugen

Social Networking By Using Edmodo To Engage In Literacy Learning–Liz Kolb

Multiple Uses Of Engrade–Dana Mccarius

Second Life For Professional Development–Jessica Brogley

photo © 2005 Jeffrey | more info (via: Wylio)

Strangely enough, I’ve had a conversation about elementary libraries and report cards a few times in the past few months. In each case, someone says that other librarians in their district are opposed to report cards. The number of students they see, the juggling of responsibilities, and the gut sense that “librarians don’t assess” can give all of us pause.

It occurs to me that report cards are the ultimate in summative assessment. They are the nearly-engraved-in-stone, fixed snapshot of where a student is at a single moment in time. Can the student do anything to change his or her grade? The general consensus on report cards is that we never go back. We only look forward, telling students, “Try harder in the next quarter or marking period.”

As we begin to assemble the “Nudging” column on summative assessment (SA), it occurs to me that we should be broadening the scope of our SA conversation to include what is included on report cards for “library class.”

What skills do you measure? In what grades do you measure them? How often during the school year? What paperwork do you keep? Do you measure their skills? process? synthesis? dispositions?

I’d love to know more from the field about this aspect of summative assessment — or about any other — via the form below.

Thanks in advance!

Kristin

Big news in education today. First, Joel Klein is resigning as chancellor of the New York City Public Schools and heading for NewsCorp. Meanwhile, Hearst chair Cathie Black, whose kids go to boarding school and who never attended public school herself, adn who has no experience in education, is taking over as chancellor.

Which is curious, of course, since print publishing is in its own state of flux these days.

But the big news that impacts school librarians is the official reveal of the National Educational Technology Plan. We’re pretty proud at Michigan that two of our faculty members, Dan Atkins and Barry Fishman, as well as one of our esteemed alums, John Seely Brown, were involved in creating the Plan.

Here’s how T.H.E. Journal reported it.

And Education Week’s take.

And here it is on the US Department of Education (USDOE) site:

National Education Technology Plan 2010 | U.S. Department of Education via kwout

The goal is LEARNING POWERED BY TECHNOLOGY. Not cutting out learning to make room for tech time. Not learning how to click and use technology. But how to use technology, Universal Design for Learning, and other strategies to propel students forward. How to engage more in formative than summative assesment. To employ best practices about teaching for learning. This is huge, folks. I haven’t read this since the draft several months ago, but there is some really bold thinking here — thinking that runs counter to much of the USDOE publicly advocates elsewhere. You won’t find much on standardized tests in this document. It’s so refreshing. I can’t wait to dig into this version.

Time to roll up our sleeves. There are some pretty amazing ideas in this document about the role of technology to link teachers to teachers.

Consider making this your November goal: as you peruse the document, look for ways in which you can leverage your work and your role to help administration and teachers move forward in meaningful ed tech work.

Then write a one-page proposal of how you’ll work with teachers and administrators to help move in this direction. You might propose a study club, a recommended reading list, offer to annotate and review the document for your principal, offer to lead a PLC or professional development session, offer to “take” a teacher’s students so he/she can read the document (side benefit: you get the students and can develop skills with them), etc.

Be proactive. Take the lead.

And keep us posted … we’d love to know what you’re up to!