Responding, evolving and still laughing!
FYI: this blog post has lots of memes to keep us laughing during stressful times!
I have decided to be very upfront and honest when answering this week’s assignment questions as I want to think about strategies that will help the staff in our current situation. I’m not quite ready to dream about what I could be doing ICT-wise in a non-COVID situation.
- How can we, as educators and Teacher-Librarians share what we’ve learned with our wider communities of practices?
- How can we best respond to the needs of our staff, in their wide spectrum of abilities and experiences, with the most appropriate and useful professional development?
- What tools and strategies are best implemented to meet the professional development of staff?
- How can we evolve and adapt this practice to be more responsive to the personalized needs of the educators, staff, admin, parents, and other members of our educational community?
Winnipeg schools are now moving to Code Orange which means that parents have the option of in school learning or remote learning but that schools need to maintain a distance two metres between individuals. I will be teaching grade 6 as of Monday in a classroom and the library is being re-purposed as a grade 7 classroom. In order to continue to support the staff and students with ICT as a teacher-librarian, I’m going to need to get COVID creative!!
When answering these questions, I think it’s best to frame it
terms of timelines and to think about short, medium to long term goals. I need
to also qualify my answer: our school division follows a very top-down model in
terms of ICT. The division identifies which platforms to be used and this
becomes the teacher-librarian’s priority.
Short term goal: Continue help teachers put out small fires that arise. For example: the most common small fire is… “Mme, my password doesn’t work.” I reset the password for the student and help him or her navigate changing the password to something he or she will remember. There are many other small fires that arise in a day, but I won’t go into tedious detail as they are probably common in other schools.
Medium term goal: The school division has identified two platforms for distance learning and therefore, this has become my priority (whether I want to spend my time on this or not). I am not trying to sell these products, but I am being honest with what is occupying my thoughts, time and what is now a “must do” as defined by my admin.
I was given two “must do” tasks: First, get teachers comfortable with Edsby and Teams (and how to use it effectively as a teaching tool). Second, get all 370 students logged on and ready to do remote learning. No biggie.
Edsby and Teams are the software of choice for my school division. This is relatively new for teachers as it wasn’t used extensively last year. Although this may not be that new and exciting, I have found that an effective way of teaching something new to teachers is to circulate between classrooms to judge comfort level and amount of support needed and answer questions as they arise. This is ongoing as questions continue to pop up as a teacher or student tries something new.
Long term goal: Since I’ll be back in
the classroom starting Monday, I’ve decided my new group of grade 6 students
will be my library guinea pigs, I mean ambassadors.
Firstly, they’re going to be my guinea pigs as we try the following newly purchased databases for the division:
·
Britannica
·
Criterion
·
National Film
Board
·
Teaching Books
·
Tumble Book Teen Book Cloud
·
Overdrive
·
CBC Curio
·
WorldBook – Suite of databases:
Includes EAL, French and Spanish databases
Secondly, we’re going to make videos, Piktocharts,
Animoto presentations and Powerpoints all about the above databases and how to
use them in the classroom and for distance learning. I smell an Inquiry project
coming up!!
Bibliography
Canada, N. (2020). National
Film Board of Canada. Retrieved 23 October 2020, from https://www.nfb.ca/
2014-2017,
C. (2020). Curio.ca - Sharpen Your Mind. Retrieved 23 October 2020, from https://curio.ca/en/
Edsby. (2020). Retrieved 23 October 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsby
Encyclopedia Britannica. (2020). Retrieved 23
October 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/
Search and borrow
from OverDrive's huge catalogue of eBooks, audiobooks and videos. (2020).
Retrieved 23 October 2020, from https://www.overdrive.com/
TBC: Read Watch Learn. (2020).
Retrieved 23 October 2020, from https://www.teenbookcloud.com/autologin.aspx?U=tumble2020&P=A3b5c6
The Criterion
Collection. (2020). Retrieved 23 October 2020, from https://www.criterion.com/
World Book. (2020). Retrieved 23 October 2020,
from https://worldbookonline.com/
Jennifer,
ReplyDeletePlease stay well as you move into this new stage. My heart is with you; my sister is a teacher in Winnipeg. I wonder if you are familiar with this Facebook group. You probably are, but if not, it might be helpful to you.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/580968055840166/
We are also using Microsoft teams, and after last year, we are making sure that all of our students are connected and able to operate a few basic functions. It is so much easier to troubleshoot face to face than it is online. We are hoping that we don't have to go back to online, but time will tell. I believe that there are tutorials online for Microsoft teams and I know that last year, our district was able to offer an online in-services which was provided by Microsoft which teachers found to be helpful.
I truly appreciate that you have thought in terms of short, mid, and long term goals. This feels really practical, and filled with common sense.
Best of Luck,
Alison
This is a thoughtful, reflective and well-organized post. I appreciate the way you catered your post to your current and changing circumstances. I also appreciate the way that you have identified short, medium and long term goals. An excellent approach. I also appreciate the mindset you are taking with a change to your schedule. What a wonderful opportunity to get some valuable resources from your guinea pigs...ehm…. students.
ReplyDeleteSending you positivity in this changing time!
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of circulating to check comfort levels and understanding when teachers and students have learned something new. Often when we are using new tech in our classes unknown issues pop up so it is always comforting to have someone around who knows how to troubleshoot things especially at the beginning.
Hahaha thank you for The Rock reference!!!!
ReplyDeleteI love how you are rolling with the punches and using your time with your students to create useful lessons and instructions for other students and teachers! I think that this is such an amazing practice. Your students become the tech squad and teachers themselves as they learn and grow by playing with new technologies and then sharing that new information with others. Every teacher should be doing this! What a great inquiry!