Personal Interests and Issues in Educational Technology

I am in my second year as a teacher-librarian at École Lac des Bois.  The school is a 4 year old single track French immersion elementary school in Prince George BC. I am realizing that I want to continue to develop our school library into a Learning Commons.  Last year I started on the first steps by reorganizing library space and developing a library webpage (École Lac des Bois).  This year the school webpage is being improved by a supportive technology-savvy teacher.  We both think there are many opportunities to expand information sharing in our school both for students and staff using this web page.  For the staff, this could be good location to share online professional resources which are harder to find for French immersion elementary students, and I could curate.   For students the web page could encourage them to share digital classroom projects with other students in the school and beyond.  For example I am teaching a grade 6/7 class on inquiry research projects.  The students will be creating a Prezi to showcase their learning on a personal research question on extreme environments.  This project is supported by my Professional Learning Network[1] (PLN) focused on teaching with an inquiry learning approach.  The students would increase their learning about digital literacy if they work was published online.  I think publishing would help students become part of the global community (Kist 2013).  I also think that by publishing student work other teachers would be interested in trying similar types of projects for similar literacy goals.  I would like to explore how we can safely and legally develop a Learning Commons to share student work.  Fortunately I have support from a teacher-librarian PLN[2] that is exploring how students can share and create online within current provincial legislation.

I also think technology provides great opportunities to provide French immersion students practice in speaking and listening to oral language. Another area that I would like to explore is technology that could be used to provide the students opportunities to record and listen to French, for example digital storytelling (Robin 2008).  Currently I am working with a grade 1 teacher, we are teaching her students to run the video cameras to record fellow student’s presentations at the beginning and end of the year.  This gives the teacher a record of the student’s oral skills, and the students work hard on practicing their oral language skills before they are recorded.  Videotaping can be used at all grade levels but I think there are other digital opportunities for students to use for practicing French oral language skills, that would allow more students to use them at once, and/or provide more immediate feedback.

In the future I also see an opportunity to collaborate with teachers to create a safe collaborative online learning environment (Schoolwires 2013).  All students in our school system have access to an email account.  I think students in grade 6 and 7 should be taught netiquette and learn how to use the internet safely for collaborative learning.  I would like to learn more about what social sites could be used collaboratively for education in an elementary school setting, for example blogging, creating group projects, etc.  Potentially our school web page could provide the links to a virtual learning commons.

Possible topics and Keywords:

Library commons:
Library commons
virtual learning commons
digital learning commons
technology tools
online learning

open educational resources

oral language:

digital scholar
digital literacy
open educational resources
voice recording
digital storytelling
educational uses of digital storytelling
engaged learning
multimedia
multimodality
Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge
imovie
 
collaborative online learning:
collaborative environments
cloud computing
technology integration
student virtual spaces

virtual classroom

social media in education
social learning / social learning environments
e-learning
electronic classrooms
social networking
 

Resources:

Banawzewski, T. 2002.  Digital storytelling finds its place in the classroom.  Multimedia Schools Jan/Feb 2002.  Retrieved Jan. 12, 2014 from http://hdhstory.net/school/lit/Digital%20Storytelling%20Finds%20Its%20Place%20in%20the%20Classroom.pdf

École Lac des Bois Library website.  January 2014. http://www.ldb.sd57.bc.ca/index.php?id=6867

Kist, W. 2013. The Global School: Connecting classrooms and students around the world.  Solution Tree Press.   USA.

Koechlin, C. E. Rosenfeld and D. Loertscher.  2010. Building a Learning Commons, a guide for school administrators and learning leadership teams.  Hi Willow Research & Publishing. Salt Lake City, Utah.

Mr. G Online. July 22, Edtech cheat sheet: understanding new trends in educational technology.  Retrieved Jan 8,2014 from http://mgleeson.edublogs.org/files/2012/07/20120721-074913.jpg

Nevin, Roger.  March 2010. Improving learning, engaging students and changing the collaborative culture of a school through the learning commons.  Retrieved Jan 11, 2014 from http://tmcanada.pbworks.com/f/Paper_For_Edmonton+Rogeszr.pdf

Robin, B.R. 2008.  Digital Storytelling: A powerful technology tool for the 21^st century classroom.  Theory into practice 47:220-228.  Retrieved Jan 12, 2014 from http://digitalstorytellingclass.pbworks.com/f/Digital+Storytelling+A+Powerful.pdf

Schoolwires.  2013.  Creating a safe social learning environment to improve student success.  republished in Internet at school. nov/dec 2013.  vol 20 (5) p 8-13.

University of Houston.  2013. Educational uses of digital storytelling.  Retrieved Jan 12, 2012 from http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/archive/index.html .

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[1] SD57 TL Learning Team Grant “ Challenging the culture of research”

[2] SD57 TL Learning Team Grant on Digital Literacy