Top 5 Blog Posts of 2015

   As I reflect on 2015, it was a great year of learning, growth and new opportunities.  Thank you to all of my colleagues who took time to collaborate with me, shared ideas and helped me to grow this past year.

Here is a summary of the top 5 most viewed blog posts from the Golden Eagle Library Book Blog:

Value Added Hashtags 367 page views

Telenovellas Hangout 350 page views

Diving into Makerspaces with Both Feet 339 page views

Edcamping Out 266 page views

Maker Challenges 246 page views


Looking forward to another year of growth and learning in 2016!

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Email me: bjohnson3@sdale.org
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Edcamping Out!

      A couple weekends ago, I attended my first ever Edcamp.  It was held at a local high school both in the cafeteria and a handful of classrooms.  Compared to a traditional conference, there are quite a few things that were different.  In an Edcamp, much of the formality of a typical conference is eliminated.  Sessions are set up on the spot and are free flowing so that if you attend a presentation you are welcome to switch to a different one even right in the middle of a session.  

      Literally 20 minutes before the sessions begin, there are white board markers left out so that participants can write up on the window what topic the session will be about.  Presenters also often act more as facilitators.  The preparation can be as simple as asking the first question, (What issues are you running into with Project Based Learning in your building?), leading a discussion, all the way up to more structured presentations with slides and preparation.  

    I found that in the opening, there was a greater emphasis on networking at the conference as compared toa traditional conference.  From the start, we were asked to write our Twitter handle on our nametag.  Doing this gave me some additional Twitter follows and helped to developed a connected vibe for the presentations.

    As an Edcamp newbie, I found that the conference was structured to help first timers to acclimate to the different expectations.  After some meet and greet time, we met with all the other attendees to discuss how to participate in an Edcamp.  They reviewed with us the free flowing expectations in a large group setting letting us know it was the norm to change sessions at will. 

     After participating in some sessions, I decided to throw my hat in the ring and facilitate a Edcamp session.  My session topic was the concept of "App Slamming Research."  I shared for about 10 minutes about the Google A Week trivia contest I run at my school and how I had added a Google Earth element to it for the Google A Week championships I hold each spring between the winners of the contest throughout the year.  For my session, I tried to have a hybrid approach featuring a little more than a question to get things started, without going so far as a full blown presentation.  

     As I had heard, there was complete turnover in the participants.  At the start, there were about 8 participants, and by the middle of the session, all 8 of the original participants had been replaced by 8 new ones.  

     One thing I learned from this opportunity is to have other introduce themselves at the start. This can help to guide the discussion and customize it for the audience.I also learned from this opportunity is how important it is to have some follow up questions ready.  Next time, I hope to have some on hand-this                                                                                     will help the discussion to keep moving! 

     Attending this Edcamp got me thinking about what an event like this would look like on my campus. My school has a number of very tech savvy teachers would I think would be willing to participate.

     But what if teachers and students collaborated to show off their technology skills and facilitate sessions together? (Thanks to Stony Evans for modeling this idea) Attending this event also got me thinking about ways this event might need to be structured differently for students to experience success in it. Would students need more structure/training about how/when to leave a presentation as compared to professional educators?

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Monopolizing the Library

     As a junior high media specialist, I have tremendous respect for my elementary colleagues and the great work they do.  I have found that many "elementary" ideas also are effective with my junior high school students.  One of these is creating a yearly theme in the Media Center.

     This year, I selected Monopoly as the theme.  In support of the theme, I utilized several components of the game for displays and library procedures.  I use a Google form to document student free flow visits.  To encourage students to follow this procedure, I made a sign that borrowed the themed of the "do not pass go, do not collect $200."  Instead it reads Sign in on the Computer, Now Go Enjoy your Library."


     I also created large Monopoly styled signs above different sections such as Fiction Place, Non
Fiction Avenue and Biography Boulevard.  Having these large signs above the sections has helped my students to more easily find the materials they are looking for.

     Another way I have utilized the Monopoly theme is to develop a display based on Chance Cards.  Similar to the way those cards play in the game, students are taking a small risk by checking out a book that is wrapped up and has a brief phrase hinting about the theme of the book.  Students have the opportunity to check out one of these books and write a short review.  If they do so, they can earn a small chocolate treat as a reward and their reviews are posted on the display.

     I selected titles from the library that have yet to be checked out.  This display has been a great way to encourage students to read from different genres they might not otherwise select.  Another benefit has been that it has increased our circulation and interest in these titles.








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Maker Challenges

   I am developing a Maker Space in the Library this year.  I will also be co-leading a Maker Club with another teacher that will be held on alternating Fridays.  My administration has encouraged me to seek out ways to tie Maker activities to the curriculum.

   To build up interest in the Maker Space, I held a Maker Challenge last Friday in the Library during both of our lunch periods.  Since the toys for the new Star Wars Movie came out on that day, I selected  a Star Wars related challenge.  Participants were to pick a Star Wars character or ship to construct. For the challenge, I borrowed my children's Lego bricks and printed off several images of Star Wars ships and characters.

   The session was a hit!  About fifteen students in each lunch attend as well as two teachers.  The teachers and students created Darth Vader as well as a Tie Fighter, an AT-ST Walker, an Imperial Star Destroyer, two AT-AT Walkers, and a Speeder bike.

     I handed out prizes for the best ship in each lunch as well as best character created.  Into the next week, several teachers and students have stopped by the library inquiring about when the next Maker Challenge will be held.

     Another part of the success of the first Challenge was that our broadcast teacher used it as an opportunity to train one of his students in video production.  The student attended the second session of the Maker Challenge, and turned his footage into a video about the Maker Challenge.  This video gave the library Maker Space some great publicity and appeared on the all school broadcast announcements the following week.



       I look forward to holding another Maker Challenge next month.  Some buzz has been created about the Makerspace, the challenge now is to build on that and connect it with some curricular projects!

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Diving into Maker Spaces with Both Feet

    With the opening of the new school year, I took the plunge into the world of maker spaces.  My school has a tradition of making our first back to school meeting a fun one.  Last year, we held a zombie scavenger hunt around the building with GPSs.  This past June when I met with the administration for my yearly evaluation, I proposed opening a maker space in my library workroom.  During that meeting, they encouraged me to pursue the maker space and also to consider how maker concepts could be incorporated into the curriculum and within our academic teams.

     With this challenge as a backdrop, I worked with a colleague to set up a two hour professional development session for my teachers where they would learn what the maker movement is and understand the possibilities it holds.   My assistant principal and I then surveyed our options and made plans for how we could empower teachers to create their first maker projects.

     Although my interior decorating skills are negligible, I had the idea the night before to layout maker "center pieces" on all of the tables where staff were seated.  This proved to be an effective way to show my colleagues the broad range of materials and possibilities that fit under the maker umbrella.
   
     One of the session goals was to have our academic teams create a project that was related to a goal their team had, their team name (which they were selecting at the first part of the session), or a part of the vision for their team.  Since some of the teams had not met together before, we had to plan in some extra time in the session so that they could get to know one another and collaborate towards this goal.  This ended up being one of the best part of the session and helped to set our teams up to succeed in creating some pretty impressive maker projects in a short period of time.

    After a short review of several of the sessions' maker project options which included duct tape projects, Legos, action figures, crafts, green screen and stop action video productions, our teachers got to work.  As in most maker projects, time was the enemy.  Nonetheless, the projects developed by the staff were impressive!  There were several videos including a stop action, and  a green screen production, as well as a presentation where an Ironman doll was repurposed as an poster advertisement for the goals of one academic team.  Our session concluded with a chance for each team to present their projects and tie in the goals and vision of their teams.

    There were several takeaways from this two hour session.  First,  as one teacher new to our staff comment that this was " the most fun" he had ever had at an opening staff meeting.  Having fun was also a catalyst for doing the work of teaming and clarified each team's vision and goals for the year.   My teachers also saw the "can do" spirit of the maker movement first hand and now see its possibilities for their students. As one teacher put it, maker projects are "so practical, (we) can do them in my classroom." (with the supplies on hand) In terms of what I would do different, I would seek to make more direct connections with teachers' content.  I had a few maker projects on hand to show teachers and briefly referred to how they might fit in with different content disciplines, but I wish there had been more time in the session to flesh this out.
   
    The challenges from here are to build on the momentum of this session as the school year begins.   Several teachers have already donated materials and connected me with community resources to obtain supplies for our maker space.  I hope to be able to blog more in the future about how I have worked with teachers and students this year to incorporate maker projects directly into their curriculum and their lives.

Is School Hard Enough?

    My wife is currently in graduate school to become an instructional facilitator.  As she has pursued her studies, we have had great conversations about instructional technology.  I have also come across several "hey honey, you really need to read this" texts from her coursework.  One of the most intriguing is a book called Mindset by Carol Dweck.

    If you are not familiar with Mindset, it is a fascinating work about how we mentally frame what we are capable of accomplishing.  Typically, people either fall into one of two categories: fixed mindset-i.e. my abilities are fixed and my life challenges can profoundly limit my capabilities, or a growth mindset: my abilities are not fixed and the sky is the limit for what I might do with those abilities.
I recently saw the growth mindset at work in this year's Google A Week Championships, or G.A.W.Cha (Gotcha).

     Two years ago I attended the Google Conference in Conway, Arkansas.  One of the ideas that was shared there was a Google A Week contest.  Since returning from that conference, I have held a Google A Week Contest for my students.In this contest, a question is posted in the library each week and on the school wide video broadcast for students to develop their research skills.  Often these questions come from current events and require students to research a question using Google, locate the correct answer and the web address where it came from, and turn in the fruits of their research on a piece of paper.    Each Friday right before I go home for the weekend, I sort through student answers and randomly select one of the students who submitted a correct response to win a chocolate bar.

     This is the second year in a row that we have hosted the Google A Week Championship (or G.A.W. Cha-Gotcha) in the library near the end of the school year.  There is an open invitation for any of the Google A Week Contest winners to come in at lunch and compete against the other winners to be the overall Google Champion at Lakeside.  Last year, I selected about 5 pretty challenging questions and about 10 students participated.

     This spring, I heard about a way to combine multiple Google Apps for Education from my colleague Brooke Higgins.  She mentioned learning about this on a technology podcast that I never did locate that had a presenter from Australia. (Sorry, Brooke :) )   I decided to try out this Multiple Google App approach for this year's Google A Week Championships.

     To accomplish this, I created a series of questions where students had to identify a landmark or location on Google Earth and then conduct further research with the Google Search engine to find the answers. I hooked up a laptop with Google Earth on it to each of the 7 screens in the library and gave the students a Chromebook with which to complete further research and submit their answers.

     This opportunity was better attended then last year as we had 13 participants.  With some help from my assistant, about 30 students were recruited to watch the Championships during both lunches.

     In a word, this year's Google A Week Championships were fascinating to watch.  They were fascinating because of the diversty of student participants.  There were students whose schedules are filled with advanced courses, average students, as well as ESOL learners and one student from the self contained special education classroom.

    Another point of fascination was the way students worked to answer the questions.  It was silent and they were all completely focused.  In fact, they were so focused, that when the bell rang for the end of lunch, no one moved!  Finally, after about 10 minutes, I told the student partcipants that they would have 5 more minutes and then I would write them a pass on to their next class.

    At one point during the contest, one of the spectators got up and asked me if he could join in because as he put it:  "it looks hard."   That's right, it was of interest to him because it looked difficult! So I gave him the opportunity to participate.

     My experiences and the feedback I got from students during G.A.W. Cha this year got me thinking about what changes we may need to make to the types of extension activities we plan for our students.  I am not advocating that as teachers we need to add extensions in the form of supplemental problems, or paragraphs-that is simply not very motivating.

     What if instead we planned more activities that were both very challenging, and motivating at the same time?  Admittedly, the questions in this year's G.A.W. Cha were hard; and maybe too difficult. (the highest overall student score was 7/10)  But inspite of that, not one student complained that it was too hard or made excuses and no one gave up.  As I mentioned before, a spectator actually asked to join up for that very reason-it looked like a difficult task, so they were motivated to try.

     The level of difficulty did not stop the students in the Championships from getting into such a flow with the activity that when the bell rang, they did not want to leave!  Instead it inspired them.
   
     What if we started with this question for developing extension/enrichment activities:  how can I inspire my students to want to learn/do more with their learning through this activity/experience?  I believe that would go a long way to fostering a growth mindset in our students, give them more, deep learning experiences with our curriculum and push their desire to become lifelong learners to the next level.

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Book Review: Death Coming Up the Hill

Admittedly, I was intrigued by the premise of Death Coming Up the Hill before I picked it up.  After all, it is a novel in verse-haiku actually, that has the exact number of syllables of the United States’ casualties from the Vietnam War in 1968.  

I was also skeptical about whether the author could tell a full story operating within the constraints of haiku poetry.  The answer is emphatically yes: instead of limiting the power of the story, writing in such a format, Death Coming  Up the Hill’s sparse prose packs true emotional power.  

Death Coming Up the Hill tells the story of Ashe, a 17 year old junior who sees his senior classmates being drafted into the Vietnam conflict.  His history teacher opens up the bitter realities of the war to him through class discussions that ultimately help him to better understand the conflicts in his own life. This novel contrasts the Vietnam War with the ongoing battles between Ashe’s parents at home.  Their conflict stems from the family’s beginnings. Ashe’s parents had him out of wedlock during his father’s senior season of football at the University of Arizona.  His birth builds resentment in his father who believes Ashe’s birth cost him a shot at a promising football career in the NFL.  

Ashe’s parents have decided to stay together only because of their mutual love for him. Their resentment for one another is only exacerbated by her mother’s decidedly anti war stance.  Her father is a staunch supporter of the war, while her mother fills her time with antiwar rallies and protests.  

Much like the guerilla conflict across the globe in Vietnam, Ashe’s home life is full of landmines, ambushes, grenades and other wartime hazards that explode as his parents’ relationship continues to disintegrate.  When Ashe’s mother becomes pregnant with an anti war protestor’s child, it ends any possibility of a peaceful resolution to their conflict.      

Divided into chapters by the weeks of 1968, with the number of casualties each week matching the number of syllables in the chapter, Death Coming Up the Hill is a stark, poignant tale that accurately captures the tension and despair of the Vietnam period and its impact on one family.    

Death Coming up the Hill is a good fit for middle grades and above.  The subject matter is intense, but this easy to read novel in verse will resonate with reluctant readers and those interested in historical fiction and the Vietnam War time period.  

(Cover used with the permission of the author) 

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