The Online Essay Project

McMullen, Shaun

Harrington K., O'Neill P., & Reynolds, L. (2011). Using wikis and blogs to support writing development: The online evolving essay project. In Little, S. (Ed), Staff-Student Partnerships in Higher Education. New York: Continuum Books.

Summary: Lynn Reynolds was a student at London Metropolitan University when she sought help from the writing centre in order to improve her academic writing skills. She was inspired by the collaborative experience she found there, but also found that she could not always access resources when she needed it. She decided to experiment with using blogs and wikis in order to bring that collaborative environment to a space that was accessible around the clock. What she and others found was that their own writing skills were enriched when staff and students collaborated online.

Evaluation: This article is interesting in that it demonstrates that online collaboration is something that can help even with something as technical as academic writing. It also demonstrates the power of something collaborative that originated with the students and was helped along by staff, rather than the other way around.

Information literacy modules as an integral component of a K-12 teacher preparation program: a librarian/faculty partnership

Frederick, Lauren

Davis, H.M. (2002). Information literacy modules as an integral component of a K-12 teacher preparation program: a librarian/faculty partnership. Journal of Library Administration, 37.

Summary:

This article discusses Rio Salado College’s K-12 teacher preparation program and how they use a series of required information literary modules in order to educate their students. The advantage to this approach is that the information literacy skills incorporated as part of the learning for students preparing to become K-12 teachers . This lesson evolved into six required modules incorporated into the six core classes of the teacher preparation program. With the modules included in the required courses, “students received their information literacy skills training as an integral part of their course content, rather than as a separate ‘library’ piece. It would then become a skill set that they, in turn, could impart to their students.

The six modules are:

 1. An Introduction to Information Literacy, Online Catalogs and E-Books

 2. Features of Electronic Databases

 3. Electronic Newspaper Databases

 4. ERIC and AP Photo Archive

 5. Searching and Evaluating Web Sites

 6. Copyright and Plagiarism

The faculty and the librarian collaborated heavily in constructing each of these modules to create assignments that related to the course content of the K-12 teacher preparation program.

Evaluation:

This article provided some good ideas as to how to incorporate 21st century learning into a teacher prep program, and I thought htat the modules they went on to teach were very helpful, especially when learning how to best conduct research. In each case, the students were required to proceed through online instruction, which taught the information literacy concepts and then the specifics behind each process or database, and then to perform structured searches, which were designed to mesh with content covered in the particular course in which the module appeared.

Closing the 12 - 13 Gap Together: School and College Librarians Supporting 21st Century Learners.

Frederick, Lauren

Oakleaf, M., & Owen, P. L. (2010). Closing the 12 - 13 Gap Together: School and College Librarians Supporting 21st Century Learners. Teacher Librarian, 37(4), 52-58.

Summary: 

This article is a syllabus study, that demonstrates what sutdents need to know and do to be successful during their first semester in college, and how to close the gap between Freshman year and their senior year in highschool. The authors have surveyed college faculty about what they expect from students and gathered anecdotal descriptions of student skill deficiencies noted by both teacher-librarians and college librarians. These evidence-based studies provide concrete data that can be used to advocate for increased information literacy instruction on both sides of the 12-13 gap. This study also has implications in the high school context and the evidence can be used to improve 21st century skills instruction at the high school level.

Evaluation:

This article is an interesting take on 21^st century skills, as it actually provides a tutorial for teacher-librarians as to how to evaluate the students at their own schools to find out how to prepare them for the first year of college. Looking at syllabi and Freshman requirements, the step-by-step process described in this article can help both the teacher-librarian and the college library partner improve the critical areas of instruction 21st century learners deserve.

Learning 21st-century skills requires 21st-century teaching

Frederick, Lauren

Rosefsky Saavedra, A. & Opfer, V. (2012). Learning 21st-century skills requires 21st-century teaching. Phi Delta Kappan, 94(2), 8-13.

Summary:

The article discusses the higher-order thinking skills which the authors believe students ought to be learning in the 21st century. The authors offer nine steps to increase students' learning outcomes regarding various thinking skills such as critical thinking, student collaboration, and effective communication. Topics include the use of educational technology, the practice of making curriculum contextually relevant to students' lives, as well as the encouragement of learning transfer in which students can transfer their skills and knowledge to different environments. Students are not developing the skill because they are not being explicitly taught.

Evaluation:

This article is a great resource to fully appreciate the benefits of 21^st century learning and teaching. It states that despite the challenges, we can educate students differently. Learning scientists have taught us nine lessons relative to teaching 21st-century skills. All of the lessons are about how students learn 21stcentury skills and how education can address their needs. Many of the lessons — especially transfer, metacognition, teamwork, technology, and creativity — are also 21st-century skills in themselves. The article emphasizes that if we believe 21st-century skills are the key to solving economic, civic, and global challenges and to engaging effectively in those spheres, then we must act upon the belief that using those skills to overhaul

our education systems is possible.

What Should Children Read?

Ringwood, Jessica

Mosle, Sara. (2012, November 25). What should children read? The New York Times, pp. 5, The Week in Review Section.

Summary: This article discusses the current debate happening in schools because of the upcoming integration of The Common Core Standards.  David Coleman, one of the architects of Common Core, argues that too much fiction is incorporated into English classrooms.  Teachers are expected to increasingly teach nonfiction because that is the kind of writing that students will be expected to interpret in college and the workplace.  According to Common Core, by their senior year in high school, 70% of the reading students do should be nonfiction.

Evaluation: The author does a good job of addressing opposition to Cole’s argument by bringing up these arguments: What’s wrong with fiction?  Does it require as much intelligence to interpret as nonfiction?  Mosle seems to agree with Cole’s argument but she argues that the task will be difficult for teachers until there is easier access to more quality nonfiction materials.  The best part of the article for teachers and librarians is that she gives some nonfiction suggestions that should be on every shelf that kids have access to.

Increasing Literacy in the High School Library

Ringwood, Jessica

Long, Deborah. (2007). Increasing literacy in the high school library. Teacher Librarian: 35(1), 13-17.

Summary: This article outlines the problems teachers face in teaching information literacy.  Many teachers at the high school level are not trained to teach reading skills, so they do not cover it, fear it or ignore them.  When the teachers struggle with this, a natural partnership to help them should be working with the school’s librarian.  This article promotes the use of “reciprocal teaching”.  Their method involved collaboration with Social Studies, English, Media Center, Business tech and Literacy coach.  They created a template on their website for students to use similar to how a KBC could function.

Evaluation: Unfortunately the methods endorsed by reciprocal teaching are not explained or explored in this article, so it requires more research by any librarian interested in learning about it.  What was nice about the article is it posed an example of how multiple disciplines could work together on a common project.  So it gives future librarians an idea of what kinds of projects they can be a part of.  They emphasized and embraced collaboration, but not co-teaching (all teachers in the room working equally and not switching off responsibilities) as we have been asked to view it in Library 250.

All the Way to the End Zone

Ringwood, Jessica

Snethen, T., & Cornelius, A. (2010). All the way to the end zone. Teacher Librarian: 38(1), 20-23.

Summary: In this experiment teacher librarians used Microsoft Excel to chart and document what information literacy skills students were exposed to by attending workshops with their teachers in the school library.  It sounds like a tedious task, but the final spreadsheet showed the librarians who was not coming to the library and then they set out to address those populations (AP and Special Ed classes).  They changed their strategies and reported on the results of their efforts to assess what students learned – a couple of times they mentioned using The Big Think strategies.

Evaluation: I felt the most important thing for teacher librarians to learn from this article is that the authors argued that collaborating with classroom teachers and constantly inviting teachers back into the library with their classes for more projects is the only way to promote information literacy skills with success.  They argued that one visit is not enough, and if we really think about it,  that is generally the case for lots of things because learning is gradual.  The other thing I think is worthwhile for new librarians to think about is to run a similar excel sheet so they have some data to look at at the end of a semester – otherwise how will they know how they impact the community?  I just wish in California we had the funding for more help to do this.  At this Kansas high school they had 1500 students, two teacher librarians and two library professionals.  At my current high school we have 2500 students and one librarian.  Not an easy task for one.