Properly Modeling Digital Literacy & Technology Tools with Students

Posted on December 23, 2018 by Barbara Paciotti

Modeling is the second step in the AASL-recommended lesson sequence, so it’s importance is evident. But I wonder if most educators realize how we present lessons is as important as the content, especially when using technology.

Students do as we do (model), not as we say. We can’t expect them to build digital literacy and technology competence unless we properly model it. Here are some practices I use when sharing tech with students, along with a lesson that integrates technology in order to enhance a student product and increase student engagement.

PROPERLY MODELING SLIDE PRESENTATIONS

I believe it’s crucial for educators to model technology correctly when delivering a lesson. If we read text off a slide during presentations, we aren’t modeling or presenting the material properly. In fact, we’re actually interfering with the students’ reading of the text instead of creating an image of a concept in their mind.

I learned the best way to do slide presentations from Lee Hilyer, University of Houston librarian, in a webinar** sponsored by the Texas Library Association. His 3 simple rules are:

Say the words – create a script of what you want to say
Show the pictures – use relevant images that fill the slide
Text is for take-away – minimize slide text and expand on the topic with a handout

So how does one put that into action? Here’s what I do:

I create a script for each slide using the “Notes” feature of the slide application, then later I print them out as prompts to use during the presentation.
I limit text on slides and use visual representations that cement concepts into students’ minds. I also try to keep a presentation under a dozen slides because students won’t pay attention nor remember more than that.
My take-away is the student activity sheet, which is also their daily grade for the library visit.

Hilyer also recommends standing to the left of the screen so students use their natural left-to-right reading pattern to see us first, then the slide. To facilitate that, I use a remote control to advance slides; it also allows me to move around, as needed. (Having two remotes allows students to use one during their own presentations.)

I know many educators think that providing text on a slide allows students to take notes during the presentation, but brain research shows that is not the best way for students to learn. Learning happens much better when we pair our speaking with highly engaging visuals and provide students a guided notetaking sheet or graphic organizer on which to record their understanding. Give students a short time after the presentation to compare notes so they all have the pertinent information.

Download a PDF of my notes summary for Lee Hilyer’s webinar

As we present improved lessons, students will intuit the most engaging way to create their own slide presentations. Students see so many slideshows in their other classes, that it’s easy to ‘tune out’ in the larger library classroom, so I limit how many slideshows I use for my Library Lessons. Students do occasionally enjoy a short, auto-timed & narrated slide show—perhaps it’s more like a video—so I sometimes do that for variety. But if I can find a better way to instruct than slideshows, I do so.

PROPERLY MODELING ONLINE TECH TOOLS

I believe it’s crucial for school librarians to uphold the rules we expect students to follow regarding the use of online services. It’s important that digital & technology lessons for under-age-13 students use in-house applications, or if we use onlne services, we use those provided by the state or district for students. Only use public or commercial services that do not need to have students create accounts, which for under-age students is illegal.

Keep in mind that some technology projects require the use of multiple apps to accomplish them, like creating screencasts with one tool or videos with a different tool, and needing a YouTube account to which we can upload them. We may need to create a school account for our under-13 students, and share the login & password with them so they aren’t obliged to create illegal accounts. Careful evaluation of tools and the grade levels with which to use them with is how we model good digital citizenship for students and for our teachers.

INTRODUCING A NEW TECH TOOL

School Librarians are often the most tech-savvy person in the building, so we frequently are the person initiating use of a new tech tool. To decide with whom I’ll present a new tool, I ask myself 2 questions:

“What subject or curriculum standard will this tool best support?”
“Who is my most accommodating teacher of this Subject?”

Once I’ve answered these questions, I use my Library Lesson Planner to create a lesson and show it to the teacher during their planning period. They are often, coincidentally, looking for something to “refresh” the lesson, unit, or activity, and greet my well-prepared tech lesson suggestion with enthusiasm. I offer to show them how to use the tool before the visit and they’re usually eager to try it out, so they can help students during the lesson and when they aren’t in the library.

During the lesson I’ll use animated slides to introduce the digital literacy concept, the type and purpose of the technology tool, and its form of audience interaction. The best way to teach technology is to demonstrate how to use it, so I close the slides and open the online service.

I have students take a handout from a stack on the table which has tool images to help students follow the demonstration. Students use the rest of the period for a daily grade activity that guides them into features the teacher wants them to use for the assignment.

Once students are introduced to a service, they often ask other teachers to give them assignments using it. The teachers come to me for help, and I’m able to expand student use of the service through short integration lessons during library visits with those other Subjects.

To keep Digital Literacy concepts fresh in students’ minds, I print out and laminate chosen slides from lessons as educational signage and display them near library computers. I use clear, acrylic, letter-sized sign holders, wall-mounted and free-standing, so I can change signs to highlight particular elements I’m presenting. The signs are reminders which activate and reinforce terminology, concepts and processes, and legal and ethical responsibilities. Teachers like them, too, and they had me mount some on the walls in their computer labs.

A TECHNOLOGY-ENHANCED PROJECT

Sometimes a project can be done without technology, but technology makes the project more authentic and meaningful. Such is the case with the Dream Vacation Project. This is a true multidisciplinary project with ELA, Math, and Social Studies that is an authentic and meaningful use of online resources and apps.

- The initial library visit is with Social Studies classes to Investigate a country. I present a problem-solving model and our online subscription services, and students browse maps and information on geography, climate, main cities, and natural wonders so they can decide which country they want to choose for their “dream vacation.”
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- A few days later Math classes visit to Plan the Dream Vacation and I introduce an online Resource Link List for the project. There are links to travel service providers where I show them how to find the cost of air flights, hotels, and ground transportation.
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  There are also links to tourist & travel bureaus which give popular tourist destinations and prices for tours. Students have a certain dollar amount they can spend on their trip, so my Resource List provides currency conversion websites so they can calculate and keep track of trip costs.
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- The following week English Language Arts classes visit the library for the Create phase of the problem-solving model. I remind students about Academic Honesty and citing text and images, then show them how to Create a Webpage to present their project in one of two ways:
  - as a travel agent promoting a Dream Vacation for clients, or
  - as a tourist who is sharing experiences from their Dream Vacation.
  Teachers distribute a checklist of product requirements and an assessment rubric, which I also have on the project’s online Resource List.
- At the end of the project I load Student Webpages to our school website. During ELA classes students use computer spines or the library to view their class’s site and, with a rubric, they Evaluate the Dream Vacations.

Using multiple technology tools makes this project more authentic, more exciting, and more successful for students, especially since they receive credit in three different subjects for one product. I incorporate several Information Literacy components into the project, and I can adapt it to other grade-level Social Studies classes by having the vacationer visit destinations in our state or across the U.S.

**Acknowledgments to Lee Hilyer of University of Houston for permission to use information from his TLA Webinar.

Create Customized School Library Orientations for Each Grade Level

Posted on August 26, 2018 by Barbara Paciotti

We all give a School Library Orientation to our lowest-grade-level, new-to-the-school students so they can learn about their “new” school library, but how many of us have one for our returning students?

A library orientation customized for each grade level is a powerful way to connect with students and teachers at the beginning of the school year. I discovered very quickly that the effort I expend on higher-grade-level orientations generates multiple benefits throughout the rest of the school year.

ADVANTAGES OF CUSTOMIZED ORIENTATIONS

Rekindle interest in the library – The first library visit influences a student’s attitude toward subsequent visits during the remainder of the school year. Since so many schools now have a high level of student transience—mine is 34%—we also need to introduce the school library to a lot of brand new higher-grade-level students.
Highlight new reading choices – New grade level = new subject content + increased maturity. Customized orientations can align with the new grade’s curricula and the changed interests of students, especially topics or formats they may not have noticed before.
Establish silent sustained reading to the end of the period – The beginning of the school year is usually free of any benchmarks, testing, etc., so teachers are more willing to give us a whole class period for our orientation. In my case, ELA teachers want students to check out a fiction book, and because my library orientations focus on reading and narrative literature, students have time to become immersed in their book.
Stimulate teachers to consider more library lessons – My ELA teachers appreciate that I structure my orientations to support their curriculum, so they allow me to give a Library Lesson at the start of each new unit of study. I also have unique orientations for Social Studies, for Science, for World Language, and for Art classes, which has encouraged those teachers to plan other Library Lessons throughout the school year.
Use the same orientations every school year – With so many demands on a school librarian at the start of school, not having to create first-visit lessons is a time-saver and alleviates stress.

WHAT TO DO; WHAT TO AVOID

The key to a successful “returnee” orientation is to give students a stimulating, interactive, hands-on activity that is completely different from their previous grade‘s orientation. It should also revive prior knowledge and give a new perspective on the library and its resources.

Don’t bore returning students with rules and procedures they already know. Summarize information on a Library Bookmark to be picked up at checkout. Give top grade level students a Library Brochure with resources for larger projects and planning their future. These two library info tools save time to allow for longer, more complex activities with higher-grade students, yet guarantee any new students learn our library expectations and can ask us specific questions later on for clarification.

A new school year brings excitement but also apprehension. To relieve new-grade-level uncertainty, provide a familiar structure to returning student orientations. Of the four segments for my Library Lessons—direct instruction, modeling/guided practice, independent practice, and sharing/reflecting—I keep 3 of them the same as what students have already experienced:

Direct instruction for returning student orientations is a review of safety procedures for fire drills and code Red—they’re too important to omit—and showing students the bookmark or brochure about library policies & expectations that they’ll receive at checkout.
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Independent practice during any regular book checkout visit includes students browsing the shelves and choosing a fiction book they can enjoy reading. Since this is the reason the teacher brings them to the library for an orientation, I’m diligent to give students plenty of time to fulfill that purpose.
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Sharing/reflecting for any regular book checkout visit is our standard checkout procedure where students read quietly while I invite each table to check out their selections. I encourage students to reflect on their book choice as they begin reading their new book so their book choices improve and their sustained reading time increases.

Such uniformity means I need only customize the modeling/guided practice segment of each grade’s orientation and allow returning students to fully engage in, and enjoy, their new group activity.

TRY DIFFERENT ACTIVITIES UNTIL SUCCESSFUL

We may need to try several orientation activities before discovering those that work best for each particular grade level of students:

In-the-middle grades need reminders about what they learned the previous year, presented in a fun new way.
Our highest grades need to see the library in a new way, a different perspective. They are the perfect “guinea pigs” to try out big changes in organization, materials, facility arrangement or technology.

Even after settling on the perfect lessons, be open to a new activity that might prove more engaging or relevant for a certain grade level. If you are a middle school librarian, the following ideas, which I’ve tried at various times, might work for you.

Seventh graders enjoy interactive game-like tasks that allow them to talk or move around. Library Bingo, Library Jeopardy, Scavenger Hunts, and Breakouts are all activities that refresh their library knowledge while constructively fulfilling their need for socializing. I do a Scavenger Hunt.

My 7g Scavenger Hunt reviews various library locations, features new formats of reading materials students may have overlooked, and introduces books related to grade-specific subject content, like topical Dewey books for their first two Science units and the Special Collection of fiction & non-fiction books to support 7g Social Studies. It does get noisy, but students have a fun review, don’t get bored, and the Hunt sheet is handed in for their daily grade.
(Clipboards for students to write on are invaluable for this activity.)

The key to a successful scavenger hunt is to have the same number tasks as library tables. Each group begins with the same numbered task as their table number, which takes students to different library locations and avoids jostling and overcrowding.

Eighth graders prefer sophisticated tasks that entail analysis and application, and provides guidance but not overt supervision. Speed Dating Fiction, Progressive Dinner of Tasty Reads, Breakouts, Playlists/HyperDocs, and Viewing Book Trailers with QR codes are all popular with this age. Using QR codes to view Book Trailers finally captured my 8^th graders attention; I give details about it in an earlier post.

I briefly show students how easy it is to make a video book-talk using copyright-free pictures and an online video creation tool, then play my 40-second sample. Since the first ELA project is a video book-talk, teachers appreciate my “sneak peak” to get students excited to do their own. Then they use QR codes to watch book trailers which provide an introduction to new reading choices appropriate to 8g maturity and curricula, like our selection of high school State Reading List books and the Special Collections of fiction and non-fiction books that support 8g Social Studies.

PROGRESSIVELY BUILD YOUR ORIENTATION REPERTOIRE

I know you, too, can reap the benefits of customized library orientations. If you are a new librarian or starting at a new school, you can begin as I did: I created an orientation for our lowest-grade-level students—6^th graders—but presented it to all the grades. The next year’s incoming 6g got that same orientation, but I created a new orientation for the next higher grade level and presented it to both 7^th & 8^th graders. Then the third year, the incoming 6g got the original orientation, new 7g students got the second orientation, and I created another new orientation just for our highest grade level 8g students. Other than a couple adjustments for 8g, I give the same 3 orientations every year and it’s always a new experience for each grade level of students. If you have more than three grade levels, just keep going until you have a unique orientation for all the grade levels in your building!

My success with Customized Library Orientations means I never have to convince the English Language Arts teachers to bring their classes to the library at the start of school. In fact, they seek me out to schedule their visits the week before school begins!

Get my 7g Library Orientation or 8g Library Orientation through my NoSweat TPT store, or save with the 678 Orientation bundle.

Looking Backward – No Sweat Library Lessons & Management That Works

Practical Answers to Questions You Didn’t Know to Ask

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