Building the G.A.N.G.

     Last month, Stony Evans, the Media Specialist at Lakeside High School in Hot Springs, Arkansas and I presented about our Lakeside Squared Google Hangout program at the Arkansas Association of Instructional Media Conference.  We also promoted our new Google + community the Google Arkansas Networking Group. (G.A.N.G.) at the conference and added about a dozen new members.

     This past Wednesday, I held our first G.A.N.G. Hangout with two of my elementary library colleagues at Young and Shaw Elementary schools in Springdale.  In celebration of School Library Month, about 20, 8th and 9th grade students from Lakeside Junior High School where I am the media specialist, met to share picture books through a Google Hangout with first grade students at the two schools.

    The event was a huge hit.  Several students read stories ranging from Dr. Seuss' The Return of the Cat in the Hat, to We're Going on a Bear Hunt, Henny Penny and Silly Sally.  The Lakeside students read with confidence and enthusiasm, adjusting their volume and pitch for the different voices in the stories.  The also managed the technology well so that each story's pictures could easily be seen by the first graders through the web cam.

    There was a high level of engagement in all three groups evidenced by the smiles, laughter and applause at the end of the storytime.  One elementary student also gleefully commented, "hey, I know that story!" Even the day after the event, Lakeside students came back to view pictures and video clips from the Virtual Storytime.  After the pictures/videos were shared, the student readers were applauded by their peers.

    There were some slight issues with volume and locating each other at the start of the Hangout, but overall it went well.  We are already in discussion about holiding our next Virtual Story time.  In honor of Poetry Month, we are looking into holding a Poetry Slam.  This type of event will promote more interactivity and two way communication between the different classes that partcipate.

    It is just a matter of setting up the time and date!

   If you are interested in having your student participate, in this Hangout Community, click here to sign up and join the Google Arkansas Networking Group (G.A.N.G.) today!

@Brian_librarian
@GoldenEagleLMC

AAIM Reflection(s)

    It is hard to know where to begin the discussion of the highlights from this year's Arkansas Association of Instructional Media conference:

   There was connecting with friends old and new at meals and in between sessions.

   There was getting to meet and talk writing with author/hero Jordan Sonnenblick.  I am excited to read his upcoming novels which will be released in 2016 and 2017.

    There was the 4 mile run I got to take Monday morning up to the top of Hot Springs Mountain as the sun was peaking around the hills.  The view was breathtaking-a great way to start the day at a tremendous conference!

   There was getting to see practical do-it yourself projects and makerspace ideas in action from Tonia McMillan.  She had the projects ready for us to try out at each table!  Leaving that session I feel much more prepared to launch Lakeside's makerspace next fall.

   There was getting to co lead a session with Stony Evans, the Media Specialist at Lakeside Hot Springs High School about our Lakeside Squared Hangout program.  We were able to share about the power of connecting students through Google Hangouts across geographical boundaries through this ongoing program.

   One of the key questions that emerged from our session was: "what if?".  As in, what if we connected the musical programs at our two schools over Hangouts to broaden the audience for their music?  What if we used Hangouts to broaden our students appreciation of literature and banned books by holding a virtual readout?  What if we collaborated to share our enjoyment of Divergent by holding a virtual meeting of our book clubs about that novel?  What if there were no limit to the educational possibilities of Google Hangouts for our students?

   I look forward to the future possibilities of ongoing Lakeside Squared Hangouts as plans for events with our foriegn language classses around next fall's Day of the Dead take shape.  Stony and I are also discussing plans to hold Hangouts on Air.  Hangouts on Air allow users to record Hangouts to share with other classes/schools that were not participants at the time of the original Hangout.  Using the Hangouts on Air platform will help to overcome the challenges of matching our school's bell schedules and will help Hangouts reach more of our students.

   During the session, we also promoted our new Google + community the Google Arkansas Networking Group. (G.A.N.G.)  It is our hope that through this G+ community we will be able to expand the Lakeside Squared Google Hangouts concept to include more schools and students throughout our state and the world.  The response at the session was very positive as we have already added about a dozen members to the G.A.N.G.

   Even since the session, I have been contacted by some elementary librarians who are interested in trying Google Hangouts.  Tomorrow, we are meeting for our first practice Hangout.  In the coming weeks, we will be holding literacy Hangouts where junior high students at Lakeside will read picture books to their elementary peers.  I cannot wait to see the learning opportunities that will unfold as we continue to build this community!

   Join the Google Arkansas Networking Group (G.A.N.G) today!

   Stay tuned!

@brian_librarian

Coding Opportunities-the Sky is the Limit!

      This is the second in a series of entries about the Emints conference I recently returned from and the possibilities the conference presented.

     Overall, the Emints conference was great, but there was no topic I was more interested in learning about than coding.  At the conference, I attended 2 session on this topic.  In the past, I have held a Student Digital Diner using the Hour of Code, and am currently working on designing a session for Digital Learning Day (March 13) as a follow up to the first session on coding.  The two sessions I attended at this conference were perfect stepping stones for building a coding program at Lakeside.

     The first presentation was a 2 hour session which incorporated Agent Sheets to teach more advanced coding techniques compared to Scratch and the Hour of Code.  During the session, we were given instruction to actually create a working version of the 80's classic video game Frogger.  We also reviewed the computation thinking patterns which are reinforced through game design. The session had computers around the room with Agent Sheets downloaded on to them for use to use to create our games.

     After some initial instruction on the terminology of Agent Sheets and the basics, participants were split up into small groups to craft our own version of Frogger.  This setup was ideal, and allowing us to learn from each other, and get further support from several of the presenters as needed.  Over the course of the next hour, I worked with 2 colleagues from Missouri to create a working replica of Frogger complete with moving trucks, logs and tunnels!  Besides being fun, Agent Sheets was fairly easy to learn and appears to be something that my 21st century learners at Lakeside could easily take to for the purpose of creating working games!  I left this session inspired with a "can do" approach to coding and creating games that I look forward to sharing with my students!

     The second session I attended on coding focused more on the curricular applications and theory of game design.  It was a perfect compliment to the "nuts and bolts" approach of the first coding session I attended. We delved more deeply into crafting the story of the game by writing out the agents or characters and actions of the game.  This was done by identifying the nouns (agents) and verbs (actions) of the characters.  We also got to brainstorm and gallery walk to room to add post it notes of our best ideas for the applications of game design to the  various curricular areas represented by the teachers in the room.  The presenters also gave us a chance to vote on which ideas were the best, and gave prizes to the ideas that garnered the most votes.

     I also signed up to have my students at Lakeside participate in the Scalable Game Design program through the University of Colorado. (http://www.agentsheets.com/) Through the program, my students will have access to Agent Sheets for free which will allow them to build their own games and share their handiwork through the program's arcade section.  I cannot wait to work with my students and teachers to employ the easy to use and powerful gaming design platform. Truly the sky is the limit for what students can create with Agent Sheets!

Follow Brian Johnson on Twitter @GoldenEagleLMC and @brian_librarian

Emints Presentation Opportunity

    I just returned from the Emints National Conference over the weekend in Columbia, Missouri.  Over the next few weeks, I hope to post about the many wonderful learning opportunties the conference presented and the possibilities they opened up for the future of Lakeside Junior High and the LJHS Library.

    The conference was one of firsts.  It was the first time I had been to the Emints National Conference, and also the first time I had the chance to copresent with my colleagues at such an event.  I collaborated with Chrystal Lieutard, one of our ESOL teachers, and Evelyn Villarreal, one of our math teachers on the topic of Using Graphics to Tell a Story: Visual Literacy Techniques for the presentation.  This was also my first experience with using a back channel for participants to communicate with us.  I used Today's Meet and checked it on my Ipad throughout the session. It provided us with some good feedback about the session in the early part of the presentation, although it was not used as frequently as the session went along.  I would like to use it with greater effect in future presentations.

    One of our goals of the session was to give the participants lots of opportunities to see and experience technologies and strategies which support the goal of improved visual literacy instruction. We opened the session with a Padlet asking teachers to post the first thing that came to mind when they thought of visual literacy.  The session also included a review of current research on visual literacy including the differences in decoding and encoding skills among elementary and secondary learners-younger students tend to look at a visual section by section while older learners tend to interpret images as a whole.  My colleagues and I shared a variety of strategies and apps to support visual literacy including Piclits, Szoter, and Easel.ly.

    One of the best parts of the presentation was the work samples my colleagues brought with them which were on display on tables and around the room.  Ms. Lieutard brought along some of her visuals she uses to build vocabulary with ELLs. For the activity, students add "the first word that comes to mind" to each image as a means to develop context for their comprehension of terms such as the Great Depression.   Mrs. Villarreal brought along several anchor charts and shared a great activity related to piecing togeher the Pythagorean Theorem. (To view these and other visual literacy activies and apps, visit the website I constructed for the session: https://sites.google.com/a/sdale.org/visual-literacy-resources/)

    We also had a number of truly amazing visual literacy ideas shared with us from other teachers in our building.   Among them were Justin Hart's amazing diction chart which was constructed out of paint chips. For this activity, more bland vocabulary words such as nice, good, happy and sad were featured on lighter colors.  As students improved their diction, darker paint chips were added with more descriptive vocabulary. For example, underneath sad, you would find paint chips labeled with terms such as forlorn and distraught.
    Another tremendous example of encoding was a slide show Shane Carey sent along that his ninth graders had created showing examples of how atomic theory has changed over the centuries constructed out of M & M candies.  For the assignment, students had to learn about the different ideas about what an atom looked like, construct a model of it using M&Ms, take pictures using their Chromebook cameras, construct a Google Slide presentation and share them with their classmates.

   Overall, my first experience presenting at a national conference was a great one.  It would be great to be back at the Emints National Conference next year. I look forward to the next time I get the privilege to attend and present at a conference again soon!

Follow me on Twitter: @brian_librarian      @GoldenEagleLMC
 

Golden Eagle Monthly Media Report for December 2014-January 2015 is now available!

Check out some of the great things going on @ your Lakeside Library Media Center

@brian_librarian
@GoldeneagleLMC

Student Digital Diner Inagural Session
 
   I lead a series of tech trainings for the teachers in my building called the Digital Diner. The goal of the sessions is to provide teachers with practical experience using technology in a fun way with the goal that through the experience, they will take it back with them to use with their students.

  This past year, I expanded the offerings to include a Student Digital Diner.  These sessions are held in the media center at lunch and students who sign up are allowed to bring their lunch in for the sessions (which they usually are not allowed to do). My assistant and I also end up supplying some type of holiday themed candy treat as a part of the festivities.

  Our first session was last week and focused on how to access the electronic books and audiobookresources available 24/7 on the library website.  Although we are a very technology oriented school, historically our electronic book circulation has been relatively low. Our best month ever had just over 100 ebooks circulated, inspite of our ebook collection growing to more than 400 titles in the last year.  It has been hard to determine whether this is due to a lack of publicity, a lack of available titles, or just that few students knew how to access them.

  I chose to hold this session to make more student aware of the great electronic book resources we have available at Lakeside.  There were more than 20 students who attended the session over the course of both lunch periods.  For many attendees, it was the first time they had attended a lunchtime library event.

   At this edition of the Student Digital Diner, students learned how to add electronic books to computers as well as tablets, phones and iPods.  In hindsight, I wish we would have spent more time focused on how to put electronic books on students' devices.  Specifically so they could have learned about how to put both audiobooks and ebooks on their tablets and phones.  The instruction about how to put them on computers took more time than I anticipated, and I think it would have improved student ownership to have more time to experience putting the ebooks right on to their own devices.

   One of the best things about the session was
the addition of door prizes to the Digital Diner.
At both sessions, we held a drawing, and
gave away some Valentine's Day themed
 candy to students who brought their invitation to the event with them. I would definitely include door prizes in the future.  After all, who does like a good door prize!
 
  I do think that the session did develop a new "colony" of electronic book users at Lakeside that I look forward to growing in the future!  To help continue to build interest in the electronic books at Lakeside, I am sending a follow up survey to the participants to get their feedback about this session as well as their interest in future sessions.  I am also including an opportunity in the survey itself for them to select an electronic book which they would recommend as an addition to our library collection.  I am optimistic about the potential future increases in ebook circulation at Lakeside.  We'll see how it goes-maybe it will be a topic of a future blog post.

@brian_librarian
@goldeneaglelmc

Digital Diner Idea Explosion

   I lead a series of training for my faculty called the Digital Diner.  The sessions are held throughout the year and focus on a different technology application.  Topic get selected based on the conversations I have with teachers throughout the year about their technology interests as well as survey data I collect.  Teachers are invited to attend on their prep hour and earn professional development credit for their participation.  The "diner" element of the trainings is that my wife cooks a home made treat for each session.  There is always a joking question if teachers attend the trainings because the instruction is so good; or if it is because of the food.

   Recently I led a Digital Diner session on screencasting during December with my faculty.  The session had nine teachers attend throughout the day, including three teachers who attended a Diner for the first time.  We used the video capture features of Tech Smith Snagit as our platform for the session.  
  
   During the session, I modeled how the Tech Smith Snag it extension worked and showed them the options to save/post them online through Google Drive or YouTube.  Then teachers were asked to a create a practice screen cast presentation and  share it. We also looked briefly at how to combine presentations with Educannon and add assessment questions throughout their video creations.

   My original goal with the session was to teach the teachers how to create brief screencast presentations which could be used to assist absent students in getting caught up or to faciliate learning. opportunities during snow days.  (This was why the diner treat for this session was snowcones) However, throughout the day, teachers continued to offer great ideas of ways screencasts could help their students that went way beyond helping students to stay caught up.  Among their ideas, were to allow students who master content earlier than their peers to create screencasts of concepts and to have students who serve as tutors in a new peer tutoring program at Lakeside to develop them for the students they are assisting.          

   Another great idea that came out during the day was to use screencasting as a parent involvement piece.  Teachers who create these screen casts and post them online could help our parents to "learn" the content their students are working with in class each day.  This could put parents in a better position to assist, and also to have a clearer picture of what their students are learning.    

   In many ways this was one of the most successful Digital Diners yet.  Several teachers attended the Diner for the first time.  But it was also a great success because of the explosion of possible classroom applications that the attendees generated. I look forward to seeing where my teachers will take the concept of screencasting and how it will benefit our learning community!