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Podcasting on Collaboration

Hello everyone!

Well, I am posting my first podcast, perhaps after this endeavor I will continue to make them, I'm sure I could find many uses for this type of technology. Enjoy by clicking the title. It will take you to where my podcast is hosted! Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

Collaboration is Key

Collaboration with Librarians

As a Librarian, one of the top jobs is to collaborate with teachers. This is also one of the most daunting tasks because many teachers don’t understand collaboration, or don’t believe in it. Often times, collaboration is thought to be the teacher telling the librarian what they want to teach, and the librarian designing and teaching the lesson. It is a rest time for the teacher, but that is not true collaboration. Let us investigate what true collaboration looks like, as well as the advantages and obstacles it brings.

In Shayne Russell’s article, Teachers and Librarians: Collaborative Relationships, he defines collaboration as a shared vision based on shared goals, and with a climate of trust and respect. Russell further states that each partner fulfills a carefully defined role with comprehensive planning, a requirement, that extends over a period of time (2002). Along with this definition, it is important to become aware of what each, the teacher and librarian, brings to the table (Russell, 2002).

The teacher is the one with the knowledge of his or her students, their strengths, weaknesses, attitudes, and interests, as well as what needs to be taught. The librarian is the one with extensive knowledge and skills for finding information and incorporating that into the lesson (Russell, 2002). As well, the librarian should bring the technology skills to the table, often times the library might have more technology available for use than the average classroom, and the librarian is the one trained in using all of those technologies. Overall, the librarian is there to help promote information literacy (Russell, 2002).

So, we now know what they each bring, let’s look at the actual collaboration. Saint Paul Public Schools has a lot of great information regarding the components of collaboration. Their information is mostly taken from DuFour’s article, ‘Collaboration lite’ puts student achievement on a starvation diet. Both DuFour’s article and Saint Paul’s website make a distinction between working together and ‘True Collaboration.’ Working together, or ‘Collaboration Lite’, is defined as cooperation on routine issues where the teacher participation is low-risk, short-term, and focused on efficiency for tasks and activities, and ‘True Collaboration’ is categorized by substantive conversations and work that revolves around the needs of the students and instruction practices (Components of collaboration, 2010). To look more closely at the differences between these two forms of collaboration we need to notice that ‘true collaboration’ involves honest talk, risk-taking, reflection, assessment, and results in higher achievement amongst the students (DuFour, 2003 and Components of collaboration, 2010). It is clear to see there is much good that comes from collaboration, but let us look at both the advantages, and the obstacles that make it difficult.

Russell states, in Teachers and Librarians: Collaborative Relationships, that some of the advantages of collaboration are more effective use of both resources and time, integration of educational technologies, and a reduced student/teacher ratio (2002). The disadvantages are the administrative factors, meaning if they support collaboration between teachers and librarians, because their viewpoint has a lot to do with how the staff view collaboration. Also, the administration needs to clearly and specifically define what true collaboration looks like. Another obstacle is time, if the administration doesn’t support collaboration and schedule time for it, it makes it very difficult for the staff to actually do it. As well, if the Librarian has a set schedule, and no flexible scheduling, then that too shortens the time available for planning. Lastly, the attitude of the teachers plays a large part in collaboration. It is important to sell yourself, and your skills, with the teachers, to show them what you can do to help them in order to hook them into working with you in a collaborative way, after all, research backs this up.

As a new librarian, or a seasoned librarian, you can’t expect collaboration to come easily, or without effort. It takes work to create an environment of true collaboration amongst your staff, but you can do it, just keep working towards your goal. It’s okay to start lite and then work your way to true collaboration.

Here is a video of a Teacher's viewpoint on collaboration with her Librarian.

Here is a PowerPoint to view based on the above information.

Collaboration

View more presentations from farmerdaughter.

References

DuFour, Rick. (2003). ‘Collaboration lite’ puts student achievement on a starvation diet. Journal
of Staff Development, 24(3). Retrieved from http://www.nsdc.org/news/jsd/dufour244.cfm.

Russell, S. (2002). Teachers and librarians: Collaborative relationships. Teacher Librarian, 29(5), 35. Retrieved from http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-2/librarians.html

Saint Paul Public Schools. (June 2010). Components of collaboration. Retrieved from
http://ell.spps.org/Components_of_Collaboration.html.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Video courtesy of YouTube

My adventure with Jing!

Hello everyone!

Well, I'm in a summer technology course online at UHCL and I thought I would post the video I made using Jing. It was a little confusing to get started, and it took a whole lot of takes to get it right, but in the end I got it finished. Anywho, I wanted to share it with you so that you could begin to think of all the ways you could use it yourself. Since there is such a big push towards integrating technology, and most of us have websites that our students access, you could use this free application to make "How-to" videos for your students to follow. I know I have already thought of ways I could use it in my teaching. Enjoy!

Thing Twenty-Three: Done, Done, Done!

Hello fellow bloggers!!! I'm done! Can you believe we actually made it through all twenty-three things? There were many things that I liked, like the mashups, podcasts and vidcasts, and discovering Doug Valentine's cool book talks. Overall, I learned that I'm not a big fan of RSS feeds, Tags, or the Google Reader, but perhaps as I journey down the road I will become more interested in those tools. I hope you have all enjoyed this journey as much as I have, and that you have learned as much as I have. I have a much better sense of what all there is out there to use in my classroom and library, when that day comes, that is free and exciting! Adios, for now!

Thing Twenty-Two: Ning, it's not Bing

Hello fellow bloggers! Well, sadly I discovered that Ning will be focusing their efforts on their paying customers, and will no longer be offering it as a free service. Boo hoo...the Ning that most interested me was the Texas School Librarian Ning I especially liked watching the animated book talks that the students did with Doug Valentine. I investigated the "Crazy Talk" software that I believe he must have used to make the pictures animated and look like they are talking. I'm fascinated by this and desperately want the software for myself. In my Tuesday night class one of my classmates was talking about this and how she was side-tracked trying to figure out how he made these hand-drawn pictures animated like they are talking, and where do I find myself...doing the same thing, ha. As a teacher or librarian, you could use it to connect with other people in your profession, but unless you want to pay for it, you won't be able to make your own Ning network.

Thing Twenty-One: Podcasts and Vidcasts

This is a digital story I made for writing with art in the classroom. So many times students say, "I don't know what to write about!" With something like this you will hopefully inspire them with pictures. They can create a story that goes with what they see in the picture, or perhaps the mood of the picture will inspire them. Whatever it is, hoepfully by having a visual their little brains will start thinking of things to write about. I find photostory to be an easy tool to use for the classroom, and in the classroom. It is fairly easy for students to pick up this skill and as long as you do your research in advance, for pictures and information, and write your script before you begin to record, the actual making of a vidcast is pretty simple. As a mac user I was sad to see that there is not a downloadable photostory for us. We do have imovie, but the process is a little different. You will most likely have this question as some of your students will want to work on this at home, but might only have a mac, sadly you will have to tell them that it is not available...boo hoo. You might want to work a little bit in advance to come up with some direction sheets for both photostory and imovie, especially if your campus, in SBISD, has the new mac notebooks. I'm looking forward to watching the vidcasts you produced! Happy blogging! P.S. Here is something I created in a summer school course on Art in Education, this one has the voice over as well as pictures.