Library at BINcA

This week we had a ton of new (to me) tools suggested and we spent some time catagorizing those tools. As I think about my role as the (new) librarian in our (new) library, I want to make sure I focus on what will be of use. Right now, I am thinking about three catagories of tech tools: those that will be of use for our staff, those that will be of use for our students and those that will be of use to me both personally and professionally. We have a Tech Team to help teachers implement technology in their classrooms and we have Tech Literacy classes for 9th graders to give students the tools they need for success. What can I bring to the conversation?

Last semester, I took a course on Teaching Research and spent a great deal of time learning more about databases and developing lessons on research tools and the ethical use of information. This work led me to collaborate with both English teachers and Science teachers, helping students conduct reasearch using the Gale databases. This is a new area for our school and we are just at the beginning of developing research projects with an understanding of these resources. I also made plans to collaborate with the Tech Literacy teachers to introduce students to research and the ethical use of information. I’m excited to try out the lesson plans I developed.

Thinking about our schoolwide focus on improving literacy, however, I have been on the lookout for a tool that can help teachers differentiate the content in their classes. As a high school for English Language Learners, many of our classes have students at all different English Learner Development levels. Teachers often have to pitch their lessons “low” in order to make sure every student can understand the material. This comes up most frequently in English, but also in History classes. I had a sense that AI should have some answers here but I was just at the beginning of learning about large language learning tools and I wasn’t sure.

A teacher had recently come to me asking for help to find lower level readings about the Monroe Doctrine because she was struggling to introduce the topic in class. Through the Marshall Memo last week, I learned about Diffit, a website that uses AI to create “just right instructional materials”. The interface of Diffit made it very easy for me to try it out using the prompt “Monroe Doctrine” and in 30 seconds I was able to come up with a reading passage, vocabulary words and questions (multiple choice, short answer and open ended) to share with the teacher. She was delighted, not only at what I had produced but at how easy it was for her to use the site and then edit what was produced. She said it saved her hours of work.

One thing that really impressed me was how easy it was to see the sources of the materials produced. Click a button and you can see that the material came from Wikipedia, another encyclopedia and NPR. You can easily delete sentences that don’t fit the assignment and add vocabulary words based on your students. The website says it’s goal is to do 80% of the work preparing content and, based on my limited experience, that’s about right. Teachers have to read it over and tweak it for their classroom but the website makes it very easy to adapt the same reading for 2 or 3 different reading levels. This allows teachers to differentiate the readings but not necessarily the questions or writing prompts.

Amazing tech tools are not free, however, so I have a whole other learning experience in front of me: how to convince the school to spend $1300 precious budget dollars on a site license? Luckily, we have the funds and I am working with the administration and a few teachers who have signed up for the two month free trial to make a pitch to the Instructional Leadership Team. I am confident that we will bring this tool to the community and I am enjoying the crash course in advocacy, budget, testing for usefulness etc.