Library at BINcA

This week I chose to imagine a series of library lessons attached to units I know BINcA teachers are doing in each grade. I am hoping the teachers will let me “butt in” to their units at different points to make sure all students have experience using archives for research and citing sources appropriately. I referred to AASL standards for each lesson and also tied each one to the standards for that subject – science, ELA, history etc. To me this made more sense than creating stand-alone library lessons. I wanted these lessons to be in the context of their larger unit but also “speak” to one another as the students accumulate a series of research tools.

As a district (and as an easily distracted teacher) we are trying to focus on the students and teachers using fewer tools well, rather than many tools. We are trying to make good use of the Google Suite and several tools in the Clever backpack:

 For this Tech Promotion assignment I focused on archives and presentation tools for students and differentiation tools for students and teachers. I wanted the students to focus on tools they will be able to use in college and beyond.

Archives:

Google Images/Flickr – students are going to use Google to look for pictures so we might as well make sure they are doing so in an ethical way

Boston Globe Archive – we want students to be informed about their local community and learn how to differentiate between an evaluated resource and just a random opinion someone finds online. I’m bringing newspapers back, baby!

Library of Congress Archive – filled with images and lesson plans for using those images. Organized by both collection and topic.

Gale databases – according to the Office of Instructional Technology, these databases are underutilized. I sat down with an 11th grade English teacher and in 15 minutes convinced her to switch her lesson plan from Google searching to Gale. Of course it helped that I offered to come in and help teach it!

EasyBib – this is not an archive but I found it connected to many of the archives including Gale. I hope that by using this tool throughout the library research lessons, students will become familiar and be able to use it when they go to college as well.

Presentation tools:

Google slides + record – it really helps our students stay organized when all their work is kept in folders they can access with all utilities and when they use tech tools that work well together. The slides let students show their work and the new record feature lets them record their voice narrating any slideshow and then make a video that is easy to share. These tools can be used simply or in a sophisticated way based on the user.

Canva – this powerful graphic design tool is now in the Clever backpack which means BPS students can have access to more premium features and work together on projects. As someone who found Photoshop overwhelming to the point of giving up every time I tried the app, I am able to use and tinker with projects on Canva. The kids like it and are building up their skills. Now that it is so easily accessed, I think our students will be real experts by senior year.

Differentiation tools:

Diffit – this is a powerful AI tool teachers can use to create materials for students at different levels in the same class. Teachers can just give it a prompt and the tool will find a reading at whatever reading level the teacher wants or the teacher can copy a reading passage into the tool and it can adapt the passage to a different reading level. It creates vocab lists, multiple choice and open ended questions and all sorts of student activity sheets. The website says it can do 80% of the teacher’s work for them and, based on my experience using it to create pre and post assessments for each of these lessons, I would say that’s accurate. It’s pretty amazing.

Read&Write for Google Chrome – this is another tool that the Office of Instructional Technology says is being underused and I hope to change that in my school. It is an extension that has all sorts of tools to overlay onto websites. It can highlight text, define words, read aloud, translate word by word or paragraph by paragraph. I want to normalize all students setting up the tools that work best for them. This is not just for English Language Learners or students with IEPs but it is extremely helpful for many of those students.