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.

Generation Linked

Ringwood, Jessica

Cook, M., & Cassidy, C. (2011). Generation linked. Teacher Librarian: 38(5), 27-30.

Summary: This article enforces the benefits of collaboration between classroom teachers and school librarians by describing one such project undertaken by a media specialist and a language arts teacher at a middle school in New Jersey.  The teachers aligned their research project to state standards and incorporated the use of both the Livebinder technology and SCAN, an online interactive discussion tool.

Evaluation: I wanted to read about a successful example of collaboration and learn about some of the specific online tools they used in the hopes that I could incorporate these tools into one of the Transformation projects.  I was surprised that the co-teachers in this project had such high success rates: more students turned in their work and more students scored higher on the essay they had to write.  I also noticed that the way collaborating and co-teaching is described in the article is not exactly what we are asked to aim for in our class lesson plans.  Finally, I would be interested in reading about future collaboration experiments that the same pair of instructors works on together.  I am curious to learn about what they discover over time.

Bootstrapping: a possible instructional support for learners

Campbell, Margaret

Carey, S. (2011). Précis of the origin of concepts. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34, 113-167. doi:10.1017/S0140525X10000919

Carey, S. (2009). The origin of concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Summary

Carey writes that learning "requires adjusting expectations, representations, and actions to data" (p. 120) - basically hypothesis testing, but if a learner is not able to state a hypothesis to test, Carey proposes the use of "Quinian bootstrapping" as a learning process. The sections of the article explain in detail different ways that bootstrapping can be used to support learning. Model-building has been shown to be particularly effective for inspiring innovation, and in this article, Carey discusses how modeling unknown processes with variables known to a learner, no matter what domain they are from, can help learners to build understandings of material that are outside of their conceptual framework.

Evaluation

This article is dense and complicated, and I am sure the book is also; however, when I read slowly, underlined, and outlined the sections specifically about learners in a bootstrapping curriculum, I was able to get some solid instructional ideas for science and other subjects. Carey has many critics and these theories seem very fragile because they don't seem to be supported by large study data. But there are some unusual ideas in this article, and with the failure of so many instructional methods, especially in math and science, I am delighted when someone makes innovative recommendations.

Costa, Annie

Hart, M. (2006, April). Extending the classroom through the school library. Teacher Librarian, 33(4), 70. Retrieved from http://libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=22066140&site=ehost-live

Summary: The article is about how classroom teacher and teacher librarian at Holy Rosary School in Tacoma, Washington, learned the benefit of partnership in providing education instruction after one year of initiating a school library program. “Teachers were eager to collaborate. They spend more time in the planning process and more time in the process of teaching information literacy skills and technology skills.”

Evaluation:  It looks like classroom teachers see the value of collaborating with a teacher librarian.  They recognize the benefit of co-teaching with a teacher-librarian and having a school library program.  A school library program “enables teachers to extend the classroom experience to the next level, so that students learn advanced research skills, technology skills, and public speaking skills.” 

Pinterest in the Classroom

Mackey, Allison


http://pinterest.com/

Summary: Pinterest is an easy to use, visual way of assembling and sharing information. Users create "boards" and "pin" images and links to the board. Boards can be collaborative among many users. Users can browse boards of people they are following to find fun and useful links and information. Teachers and other professionals in education can use Pinterest to share teaching-related materials with each other, or make collaborative boards to help each other keep up with the latest teaching trends. Boards can also be created for students to use collaboratively.

Evaluation: Pinterest is very aesthetically pleasing and is another great tool for collaboration online. Because of its visual nature, it can work especially well in creating colorful and imaginative boards for units on art or for younger children. It's also a great networking tool for connecting with like-minded educators and helping each other keep up with what's going on in education today, as well as tools and resources for the classroom.

Examples of Pinterest boards for teachers:
Fun and Free for the Classroom
Eighth Grade Free Resources
Ed Tech (Education & Technology)

Deep learning: interesting challenges to some cognitive theories

Campbell, Margaret

Ohlsson, S. (2011). Deep learning: How the mind overrides experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Summary

The review of this book called the information in it "breathtaking in scope and intellectual range." The review also says that the book is not mainstream, because it focuses on learning mechanisms that transcend prior knowledge and previous experience, instead of the typical learning theory approach that looks at using prior knowledge and past experience as guiding mechanisms for future action. Ohlsson's theory is that producing new insights, adapting, and belief changes involve revisions of prior knowledge instead of building upon it. The book is divided into sections that discuss those three cognitive changes: creativity, adaptation, and conversion.

Evaluation

The part of the review that attracted me to wanting to read this book, is where Ohlsson argues that the way our knowledge network is structure by prior knowledge and previous experience determines the way that we will initially define problems, and that the space of solutions that we will search is limited by our prior knowledge and previous experience. Our prior knowledge and previous experience will create an exploration space that is unlikely to produce satisfactory results, because an optimal solution usually does not appear in the first space that is explored. He calls it a general principle of unhelpful prior knowledge. He calls creativity an "accumulation of multiple insights" instead of a mysterious ability (p. 141). This leads to the observation that model-based reasoning often accompanies insights and innovation because it abstracts constraints from multiple sources in order to solve problems.

In addition, Ohlsson's theories delve into the idea of "deliberative" practice popularized by Malcolm Gladwell's discussion of the ten years of deliberative practice necessary to become an expert at anything. I also found Ohlsson's discussion of our ability to believe in or ascribe to competing theories without knowing it fascinating... and that by bringing competing theories to light and forcing recognition of their incompatibilities with multiple strategies, we are able to experience a conversion of thought...cognitive conflict alone is not enough to have us restructure our thinking.

There are many practical recommendations for teaching. One is that learners, especially in the sciences, would profit from well-timed and sequenced creative model-building over long periods of time

Why Superman Can Wait

Why Superman Can Wait: Cognitive Self-Transformation in the Delay of Gratification Paradigm

Wentworth, Michael

Karniol, R., Galili, L., Shtilerman, D., Naim, R., Stern, K., Manjoch, H., & Silverman, R. (2011). Why Superman Can Wait: Cognitive Self-Transformation in the Delay of Gratification Paradigm. Journal Of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 40(2), 307-317. doi:10.1080/15374416.2011.546040

Summary: This article examines the ability for preschool children to delay the temptation of being rewarded with treats by taking on the roll of Superhero A (Superman) who showcases the ability to be patient by waiting with casual ease and Superhero B (Dash) who showcases reactionary tendencies by being impatient.  The study begins with a history of the, "delay of gratification paradigm," by highlighting research by Walter Mischel (psychologist) and his collaborators over the years, Moore, Ebbesen, Zeiss, Yates, Baker, Metcalfe, Shoda, Peake & Rodriguez.  The general findings are that children who were exposed to and preformed self-regulating strategies, like Superhero A, during these experiments have the tendency to achieve higher academic success including SAT scores, have stronger social skills and emotional stability while also engaging civic responsibility with more frequency.

Evaluation:  The interesting aspect to this article is the 40 years of research that has been going on and the tracking taking place of students that participated in early experiments to discover the outcome of the initial experiments.  Another aspect that is also interesting is the pre-exam used, the Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) created by J.C. Raven in the 1930s has been used in over 1000 studies that can be used in data analysis, which richly supports the research done in this experiment.  It may not come as a surprise that children, students, who are encouraged to take on the character of a superhero that is well respected for their honor and known to be patient assists the child in being patient.  However it is information that helps reinforce teachers to use techniques that encourage respect, honor and patience when engaging overactive children.