B.+++Information+Landscape

You might be a 21st Century Librarian in New Hanover County if...

 * ==Compentency== || ==Examples== || ==Ideas== || ==Other Comments== ||
 * You know that searching various areas of the Web requires a variety of search tools. You are the information expert in your building. You are the search expert in your building. You share an ever growing and shifting array of search tools that reach into blogs and wikis and Twitter and images and media and scholarly content. || At Mary C. Williams the 5th graders are learning about Colonial America through the use of a webquest. As I find online resources and interactive websites the 5th grade teachers post them on the 5th grade social studies site. Students can then can work on their webquest during library time and lab time. Some sites are information only sites, while others contain games (Jamestown Online Adventure) or photos that the students can pan and scan 360 degrees to have a virtual field trip. Some sites tell stories about the time period and other sites play short clips of reinactments.

At Myrtle Grove I create lesson specific pathfinders for students which often contain blogs, wikis or other social networking sites (that aren't blocked) along with a variety of search tools. We also work hard to teach students how search engines work and how to take advantage of their advanced search features. These skills apply to all disciplines and are reinforced in cross curricular activities. - JLaGarde

Fifth graders at Blair use a Webquest for their study of the United States. Having a webquest and pathfinders help our younger students get the information they need without getting bogged down in the search process.

At Sunset Park, I have been working with the staff to not only provide research portals but also group them by the needs of the curriculum. I have added many already searched topic lists and created a share file for the grades so they have easy access to searches, links, and downloads by grade level and then topic. It is ongoing, and staff can add to it as well. What is great, is that the students can easily find them as well as we are contstantly adding search engines and portals to their Novell login which makes it easy for them to just jump in and find what they need. || ﻿ In the past I have used the Scholastic Thanksgiving Webquest for 5th grade @ Rachel Freeman. Reading this post reminded me of this great site to use again. I have each class divided into 4 groups to find information on the Mayflower, Pilgrims, Wampanoags, and the feast. They will then share their information with each other. ||  || I use //Credible Sources Count!// with the 5th graders at Winter Park prior to their big research project in the Spring. - J.Moore || ﻿ I would love to see students at Myrtle Grove using social bookmarking sites like Diigo or information collection tools like Evernote to conduct research - but we're not there *yet!* -- JLaGarde ||  ||
 * You open your students to evolving strategies for collecting and evaluating information. You teach about tags,and hashtags, and feeds, and real-time searches and sources, as well as the traditional database approaches you learned way back in library school. || Acadia University has some great online tutorials about the research process. []
 * You organize the Web for learners. You have the skills to create a blog or website or wiki or portal of some other type to pull together resources to meet the specific information needs of your learning community. || At Forest Hills Global Elementary, I have created a one-stop shop for web links that I have demonstrated during library time. This is my "Awesome Sites" page located within the library webpage. Students and parents know they can find links to sites, blogs and calendars to learn about what is going on here in school and locally.

For my 4th grade researchers at Wrightsboro, I have created an online Webquest or Sampler (using Filamentality.com). The purpose of this activity is to introduce students to online research and the research paper writing process. Students choose a specific animal to research, and then use the links provided in my Sampler to answer each specific question stated. The websites are carefully chosen each year to interest the students and take them to the most current and accurate websites for online animal research. You can see the 4th Grade Research Sampler through my website: []

At Sunset Park, our CRT and I work together to add, archive and update the links that the students get to via their Novell login. Depending on the current curriculm, their login will already be filled with quick links to the topics they need. We then archive what is not needed, and add new content. It takes some extra time, but well worth it when kids simply have to click to find what they need - it also helps them stay on task when left alone with the computer.

At Wrightsville Beach Elementary collaborative wikis have been created to meet the learning needs of our students. Topics include: penguins, clouds, shorebirds, and the Iditarod dogsled race. Teachers and students have readily embraced this technology and requests come in weekly to add more topics. || At a recent webpage worksession, JLaGarde shared some great ideas about how to use Glogster within our websites for a MULTITUDE of purposes. I plan to use this resource to create webquests for the students (and teachers) at Winter Park. - J.Moore ||  ||
 * You make sure your learners and teachers can (physically & intellectually) access developmentally and curricularly databases, portals, websites, blogs, videos, and other media. || I think that the Reading List option in Infocentre is a great tool for helping students focus their OPAC searches. At Winter Park, I create reading lists for seasonal topics, popular requests that are generally not shelved together (ie scary books, princess books, etc), thematic units of study, If you liked... (insert popular title), and more. Regardless of how they conduct their search in the OPAC, it is important to teach elementary students how to use the information in the catalog to actually locate the book on the shelf. This is a skill that they will use through highschool and beyond. - J.Moore

Wrightsville Beach Elementary also uses the Reading List option in InfoCentre. In addition to the great ideas mentioned above, we also maintain lists for Teacher assignments. Students can also access Readers Wheel choices by grade level.

I direct Winter Park students and teachers to the wealth of resources on NC WiseOwl every opportunity that I get. - J. Moore

At Sunset Park I make sure to share all the new sites and reosurces I get from the Instructional technology meetings, I include icons and links in our Novell places of all the newe sites and resources that tie into the current units of study and actively add to and update existing links on our webpage for both staff, students and parents at home.

At Codington, I use my webpage to list links to appropriate websites for special interests. For example, for Percy Jackson fans I have added a group of links to sites specific to the series and sites on Greek mythology. For my Spanish club students I have added links to sites with great Spanish learning activities for kids. M Hickman

At Carolina Beach our AIG teacher does a community project every year. I have helped her with this project for the last two years. I have taught a lesson to her students on how to use NCWiseowl to access newspaper and magazine articles that will help them with their research. This is so helpful to the students because they are learning how to go beyond Google to find appropriate and useful information for their projects. ||  ||   || - JLaGarde ||   ||   ||
 * Your web presence reflects your personal voice. It includes your advice and your instruction, as well as your links. You make learning an engaging and colorful hybrid experience. || At Myrtle Grove, we strive to make our library's web presence interactive, fun and -above all- a valuable resource for both students and staff. I feel like we still have a ways to go, but this is an area we we work hard on. Our webpage contains video links, polls, wish lists, google maps and other interactive tools that help students access and engage with information.
 * You think of your web presence as a knowledge management tool for your entire school. It includes student-produced instruction and archived (celebrated) student work, handouts,policies, and collaboratively built pathfinders to support learning and research in all learning arenas. (Checkout Pathfinder Swap for examples.) || At Sunset Park, we have created shared folders of students work, SmartBoard Lessons, ActiveBoard Lessons, and Mimio lessons for staff to share with each other. I have also included all our school policies, tutorials for most of the software and and online resources we use, as well as links to video resources for the staff to use in their lessons. ||  ||   ||
 * You help learners put together their own personal information portals and Knowledge Building Centers to support theirresearch and learning, using widgets, embedded media,and personal information portals like iGoogle, PageFlakes and NetVibes and wikis and Google Sites || At Myrtle Grove we are starting to use symbaloo.edu as a personal portal for students. We have teach students who to discern a school appropriate resource from ones that are not and given them a voice in how their resources are organized. Our long term goal is to begin this process in 6th grade and help students build a living cadre of resources that travels with them, and is adapated as they, the resources and their educational needs change throughout middle school. - JLaGarde @ Myrtle Grove ||  ||   ||
 * You intervene in the research process online while respecting young people’s need for privacy. || At Sunset Park, we have a few students who tend to get way off task with online research. We have changed the Novell paths to help with this, and have blocked quite a few sites that have been a distraction to our students. I have also arranged the computers in the Media Center along the walls so that I can still let the students reaserch on their own, but can quickly see if they are off task and step in. ||  ||   ||
 * You work with learners to exploit //push// information technologies like RSS feeds and tags and saved databases and search engine searches relevant to their information needs. || I have started including RSS feeds on all of my research pathfinders for students. My goal is to teach grow our pathfinder program into a collaborative process in which students share resources including those that contain RSS feeds. This way students are constantly keeping up with the latest information. - JLaGarde @ MGMS ||  ||   ||
 * Your own feeds are rich with learning content, evidence of your networking. You embed dynamic widgets (including yourown database widgets) wherever students live, work, and play. ||  ||   ||   ||
 * You integrate dynamic interactive features in your library’s website–Google calendars, RSS feeds, deliciousbookmarks,Flickr photo galleries, online presentations, blogs, surveys, polls, as ways to interact with and teach students. || ﻿At Holly Shelter, my personal webpage has a link to the Hurricane Library Blog. Also, Jennifer Lagarde shared the idea of using Google Docs to create a form for teachers who desire to develop collaborative units with me. This has been an outstanding way to begin planning for units with teachers!

I recently made a Prezi presentation to add to my website at Blair...a very quick easy tool.

Within the Forest Hills blog, students can predict what they think the book fair theme is going to be from four potential choices.

At Forest Hills Global Elementary, we have recently created a blog for the library. We will be using this blog to poll students on their reading preferences and even their predictions for events that are taking place at school. || Winter Park's library website contains a wealth of information. Now that I've learned how to embed interactive content from other sources (Glogster, TeacherTube, Big Huge Labs, Google Maps, etc), I plan to improve my website. Although it will contain much of the same information, I hope the improvement in format will encourage students and teachers to utilize the information on my website more frequently. I also plan to create a page within my website to display student work that has been created using Big Huge Labs, Movie Maker, etc. during library lessons. - J.Moore ||  ||