Building Up Ideas

Last week, I mused about having students create a Student Research Aide service. I think, barring divine intervention/inspiration, that is what I'm sticking with.

Musing today, I decided it would be helpful to do some preliminary planning, and to break the project down into steps.

The Research Wiki

I have used Wikis for various projects in the past; I had a class wiki when I was in the classroom, and loved seeing what students uploaded throughout the semester. The first part of the process would be to create a wiki, to create usernames/passwords for student media assistants, and to create separate pages for each task.

Tasks on the Wiki

The first page on the wiki would be a sign-up page, which links to a Google form. Students needing research help would have to submit name, subject/class, and research topic. Once that is established, student media assistants (SMA's) would divvy up the results to provide their research services.

Educating the SMA's

Before the SMA's can provide research assistance, they would have to undergo a sort-of "reliable-resource training." In this training, SMA's would learn essential criteria for cite-able (I think I just made up a word) websites, which are tenable in research. Probably, I'll use Kathy Schrock's rules for website evaluation as a guiding document in creating that lesson. Students will also have to be functionally familiar with our e-book collection, resources available in NCWiseOwl, and how to use our Discovery Education subscription to ensure that student-patrons receive the best help possible.

Providing the Research Service

SMA's would compile a variety of sources, based on the needs of the assignment. For example, I presented in a history class last week where the teacher requires that at least three of the students' possible six sources be print. For that particular assignment, SMA's would be required to find at least three print sources first, and then focus on web sources. Results would be posted in the wiki for future reference, including links and print-resource lists.

I'm toying with the idea of having students essentially create individualized mini-pathfinders. It's a start, right? I have more ideas to hash out, so here is just a few pieces of the overall work in progress.

Technology Projects

Working in a 1:1 school, finding the right technology project is strangely daunting.

I was not expecting to feel so very flustered at the prospect of finding a technology-related project. As a 1:1 school, I have joked (earnestly, so maybe it wasn't really joking) to many people that chromebooks are my life. Now in our third week of school, we have transitioned from the frantic "MUST-GET-CHROMEBOOKS-IN-THE-HANDS-OF-EVERY-STUDENT" stage to fielding emails from teachers and students desperately needing us to fix beginning-of-the-year glitches. Getting technology into our students' hands is not a problem.

However, this school year, we don't even have the funds in our school budget to replace our defunct laminator, so anything that requires spending school money (outside of our county-wide chromebook grant) is perhaps a bit out of reach.

Just Friday, I had a few teachers e-mail me with the following problems:
1. Students don't have chromebooks, because they have broken one in the past and are afraid to get a new one lest they break it and have to pay for it.
2. Students have chromebooks, but the batteries die two-thirds of the way through the day, and they have nothing to work with during fourth period. Charging is difficult, because students a.) forgot their chargers or b.) it is difficult to charge in classrooms and still stay within fire code.
3. Students have no idea how to handle online research. I can speak to them as a class, but students don't think of the library as a place to get information on what's online; they think, "Why traipse all the way down to the library if I can just Google Ancient Rome?"

Here were the solutions I came up with. I feel like only one of them actually serves as a viable project option.
1. Allow students the option of "day use--" meaning they can check out a chromebook for the day, but can't take it home.
2. Investigate creating charging stations in the library, throughout the commons, and perhaps even in the cafeteria.
3. Using a wiki and Google forms, create a "research aide service," run, managed, and maintained by student media assistants (we have at least three in every class period). The purpose of this research aide service would be for students to find internet sources on their research topic, submit those sources (through a Google form), and have them evaluated for validity by student media assistants, who then post the tenable websites on the wiki, arranged by Dewey number/subject. Student media assistants would also suggest print items from our collection to supplement the online research students are doing.

Last year, I tried a website-evaluation lesson using QR codes: student media assistants had to choose a Dewey section (in which they were specifically interested), find and vet ten websites on that subject, and post them to a Google site with a corresponding QR code over that Dewey section on the shelves. Here was the problem: in my naive utopian vision, students would be coming to the library armed with their smartphones, leaving with piles of books and tons of bookmarked links for their senior project essays or their World History research papers. That, however, didn't really happen. If, when the library specifically works with a class, the teacher and I could require students (or at least strongly suggest) to take advantage of this service, I might be able to impact a greater audience. In doing so, student media assistants would be leaving my class as tech-savvy reference-librarians-in-training, and students in other classes will have learned that the library is a helpful place when it comes to research, not a daunting one.

Hopefully, anyway.

Interview With the Librarian*

I interviewed Donna Edrington, the lead librarian for Rockingham County Schools. Donna has been one of my unofficial mentors over the past year, always quick with an answer to practical newbie-librarian questions. She is a veteran elementary school librarian, and had a great deal of insight on the influx of technology in school libraries over the past few years.

Wants vs. Needs: How to Tell the Difference
Aligning with what I see most often in my library, Mrs. Edrington explained that patrons want the whiz-bang fancy stuff, the newest and the shiniest of technology (regardless of cost, usefulness, etc.). Students want things like tablets that broadcast movies to their televisions with a swipe of the finger, or laptops that convert into tablets with smooth flicks of the wrist. Teachers want miracle software that stores all of their tests and alleviates the pressure of grading. What patrons (students and teachers) need is good, thorough, user-friendly software for things like class/grade/assignment organization, devices that have the ability to maintain CIPA standards both in and outside of school, and devices/programs that enhance instruction (methods for gamifying learning, supplemental material for individual subjects, digital ways to enhance student creativity, etc.).
More than anything, the recurring theme of the need to be 1:1 surfaced. My school is 1:1, which is something I often take for granted. When I was a classroom teacher, I was constantly finding nifty free programs and web content that I wanted to use, and it was a huge struggle to find the right days (and a sufficient amount of computers) to be able to put those lessons into action. Being 1:1 completely eliminates all of the extra frustration for teachers and students; instead of reserving days in a computer lab full of 5-year-old (or older) machines, students simply pull out their own devices and proceed with the lesson. Rockingham County's elementary schools are equipped with Nook tablets for students, but unlike the middle and high schools, Mrs. Edrington's school currently has one device for every three students. According to Mrs. Edrington, the Nooks are extremely popular with both students and teachers, as they combine learning games with digital books to get students excited about learning.

Finding and Buying the Right Technology
Rockingham County Schools has a very strong district-wide technology department. As has been Mrs. Edrington's experience (and mine), it's very helpful to be able to identify technology needs and present them to our tech department, who then have the adequate network knowledge/research time to find something that suits our specific needs. Mrs. Edrington also has a system for technology "shopping" that she compared to the selection process for any other materials in the library; it's easy to think of books in terms of starred reviews, and going through the same process for purchasing technology is only logical. She also mentioned that she especially looks for programs and devices with user-friendly help menus and a reputation for good customer service.

Lessons Learned
Mrs. Edrington related one story that added an additional factor to my point of view on technology "shopping;" I asked for success stories and stories of purchased technology that went unused, and that's where digital cameras were brought up. A principal had suggested the purchase of digital cameras/flip cameras, thinking that teachers were not filming/photographing the good things going on in their classrooms due to lack of AV equipment. A pile of cameras were purchased, and largely went unused. I surmised (though Mrs. Edrington didn't say as much) that the cameras went unused simply because teachers had no interest in filming/photographing their classes, and that lack of equipment had nothing to do with it. Even so (and I don't know how long ago this occurred), smartphones and tablets have largely rendered flipcams and even small digital cameras more or less obsolete; I can't help but wonder if anticipating "the next big thing" shouldn't play a role in technology purchasing as well. Predicting the future can be somewhat tricky business.

 *I am currently reading Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire. While Mrs. Edrington is significantly more pleasant than any of the novel's protagonists, I couldn't resist a silly literary reference.