Adriana Lugo

CO

Curry School of Education (2012-2014). Retrieved from http://faculty.virginia.edu/coteaching/video_5formats.html

This video demonstrates 5 co-teaching lesson formats and their components. It demonstrates skills used by teachers to communicate with each other. It's a great video to show a positive collaborative lesson to teachers.

Strategies for collaboration

Katy Golden

CO

Kabal, C. (2014). Strategies for successful collaboration. Retrieved from https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/kriscia-cabral/strategies-effective-collaboration/

I really enjoyed this article because it's clear, concise, and written by a teacher about her experiences. She gives strategies about how to collaborate with a variety of specialists, not just media specialists.

This author encourages teachers and other educational professionals to "work smarter, not harder" through collaboration, and gives several strategies for collaborating. She encourages you to start by creating an actual document that serves as a working agreement for the entire year - this would be for a completely cotaught classroom, obviously- that clearly defines roles and responsibilities. While this might not be necessary for a single cotaught experience, it still might help to have clearly defined roles for the media specialist and classroom teacher. She also stresses the necessity to "communicate, communicate, communicate" and to connect with your students and coteachers in many different ways.

I'm excited to have the opportunity to coteach this fall and will definitely be using some of these collaboration strategies as I do!

What if Students Controlled Their Own Learning?

Kira Koop



ET = Educational Theory and Practice
CA = Curriculum Assessment
CO = Collaboration
AND

IL = Information Literacy and 21st Century Skills

Hutton, P. (2014). What if students controlled their own learning? | Peter Hutton | TEDxMelbourne. [Video] YouTube.com: TEDx Talks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMxqEkg3wQ0

This resource touches on elements of all four main sections of the course, but mainly resides within the category ET: Educational Theory and Practice. In this video, Peter Hutton describes the situation at his school, TC (for Take Control) in Australia, where the school experience is created by and for the students. Students sit on the panels for hiring teachers, they have input into the curriculum, and they choose their classes. There is no traditional homework assigned, instead, students are required to create a plan each week for 10 hours of "home learning" - whether that's completing a project begun in class, conducting an experiment at home, or any other idea. The school's default policy for questions or suggestions from students and parents is "yes", unless it costs too much, costs too much time, or interferes with another person's learning.

This is a radical approach to schooling, and it was fascinating to learn about this school's approach to learning. The idea that students are trusted to know what they wish to learn, after demonstrating a set level of literacy and ability, and are able to choose every single course they participate in (from 120 electives!) is wonderful and mind-boggling. I'm having difficulty imagining this strategy in place at the high school that I graduated from, which was a fairly conservative, religiously-based school. The more I think about it, however, the more I like the idea of empowering students in this way. Each child or teenager at this school must have a very defined idea of their own agency and their own power, which turns the current dynamic of authority-submissive in the classroom on its head. 

Finding inspiration in the Common Core: An uncommon opportunity to refine the role of the school library and technology planning committee

Inna Levine

CO-Collaboration Strategies

Cravey, N. (2013). Finding inspiration in the common core: An uncommon opportunity to refine the role of the school library and technology planning committee. Knowledge Quest, 42(1), 18-22. Retrieved from https://dialog.proquest.com/professional/professional/docview/1651857306?accountid=143640

This article talks about the implementation of the Common Core State Standards for all areas of curriculum and motivates school librarians to change their roles in the school to be better “curators of the school library collections, innovators in the use of instructional technology and leaders in curriculum planning. The author explains that by focusing on these aspects, teacher librarians can rebuild (or continue building) a library program that best accommodates the school and focuses on long-term goals. The article was particularly insightful as it provided concrete examples of how teachers librarians and classroom teachers need to work together in the redesigning of the curriculum.

Very helpful starter kit for becoming a "connected educator"

Ramos, Tara

IL

Powerful Learning Practice.  (2015).  Connected educator starter kit.  Retrieved from https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38904447/connected-educator-month-starter-kit-2015.pdf

Summary: This tool kit was designed to accompany the activities surrounding Connected Educators Month in 2015.  It provides an introduction to what a connected educator is and gives about thirty tools and ideas (one for each day os the month) that teachers can engage with to become more connected.  Examples include tips on using Twitter, building your Personal Learning Network, collaborating online, blogging, Wikis and more!  A favorite quote: "To become a connected educator, you must first become a connected learner.”

Evaluation:  I found this kit to be extremely useful as a budding teacher librarian.  It is exactly the introduction I needed to many tools and ideas that I have heard about surrounding 21st century learning and Web 2.0, but that have yet to become instrumental to my practice as an educator.  Just reading through the suggested activities and engaging with several of them, I am seeing a whole new world open to me before my eyes.  I highly recommend this kit to anyone who considers themselves to be at the beginning stages of becoming a 21st century educator.

Are School Librarians Part of Your PBL Dream Team?

Debbie Gibbons

IL

Boss, S. (2013, October 28). Are school librarians part of your PBL dream team?. Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/school-librarians-part-pbl-team-dream-suzie-boss

Summary:

The school librarian has an understanding of information literacy and digital citizenship, and also knows about students’ outside interests through independent reading choices. This combined knowledge makes them a key collaborator in all stages of project-based learning (PBL). In the planning stage, the school librarian can offer the classroom teacher specific feedback on project plans and offer literature connections and digital media resources. Mini lessons on smarter searching and critical thinking prompts to consider accuracy and reliability of sources will help guide student research. Access to Skype or Google Hangout can connect students with experts. The library or learning commons will be a laboratory for connected learning that encourages teamwork and creativity. And at the culmination of a project, the library can be a place to display student work.

Review:

This article was written for the classroom teacher, suggesting ways they could seek support from their school librarian. But as a media center teacher, I found the article an informative list of things I could do to foster project-based learning. It is sometimes difficult to find time to collaborate, but this article inspires me to offer support to the teachers by integrating computer lab and library curriculum with the classroom content.

In School Libraries, Differentiation Through Curation

Karla Morones

IL, CO

Morris, Rebecca. "In School Libraries, Differentiation Through Curation". Harvard Education Publishing Group. N.p., 2016. Web. 2 May 2016.

Summary:

This blog posting covers how important the skill of digital curation is for school librarians to have.  The author would like to see digital curation not only in the hands of school librarians but the students as well. She believes having the students involved in the curation of digital material would lead to differentiation. Morris sees this happening by app smashing, a term coined by educator Greg Kulowiec, where a student would use multiple apps to complete a final task.  Morris suggests that school librarians would make excellent curators because they are enthusiastic and knowledgeable in helping teachers and students evaluate select and use digital tools

Evaluation:

I found this article informative and  a valuable resource.  This is a skill that would serve all librarians well, being able to provide students and teachers with a list of digital resources that could be used for a lesson or a research project would help immensely.  It is important to differentiate learning for students and teachers this would make way for more effective collaboration.

Collaborative Planning

Reece, Madison

CO

Garderen, D. V., Scheuermann, A., Jackson, C., & Hampton, D. (2009). Supporting the collaboration of special educators and general educators to teach students who struggle with mathematics: An overview of the research. Psychology in the Schools, 46(1), 56-78.

Garderen, Scheuermann, Jackson, and Hampton (2009) argue “Collaboration, in theory, between general educators and special educators is grounded in the idea that each educator has a unique knowledge base and expertise that, taken together, can address any gaps the other may have” (p. 57). The authors realize that each educator has differing perspectives and emphases, and this may be a source of contention when trying to collaborate with other educators.

Collaboration requires a dialogue between staff members to continually improve student performances. Educators should work together to plan their curriculums in order to produce greater understanding among their students. Though Garderen et al. (2009) argue collaboration may be frustrating at the beginning of the collaboration process, the outcomes outweigh the differing perspectives educators may have. Due to an immensely diverse range of learning styles, it’s important for educators to collaborate successfully and efficiently. 

Collaborative Planning and Coteaching

Amy Hubschman
CO- Collaboration Strategies

Resource:

Wilson, M. (2012) Boomtown: A wild west adventure in collaborative planning and coteaching. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/aasl/sites/ala.org.aasl/files/content/aaslpubsandjournals/knowledgequest/docs/FREE_BoomTown_MarApr2012.pdf

Summary:

This article from the ALA website discusses some simple and easy ways librarians can encourage and foster a collaborative work environment with classroom educators.  The author reviews simple steps such as making yourself available, presenting ideas in different ways, incorporating technology tools, and simplifying the planning process for the teacher.  The author walks readers through scheduling a collaborative unit by detailing an example of Boom Towns during the California Gold Rush era.  The example is easy to follow and helps visual learners understand the “how-to” collaboration process. 

Evaluation:

This article is great at detailing exactly how to work with classroom teachers in planning a collaborative unit between two educators.  The author shares advice on initializing conversations and promoting the dual educator role throughout the planning and teaching process.