The Incredibly True Blog of a Part-Time Librarian

http://ajjuliani.com/can-honest-conversation-phones-classroom/ No Cell Phones Allowed!  As educators, we've all internally (or maybe even externally) rolled our eyes at how addicted students seem to be with their phones.  Perhaps we need to be more open-minded about smart devices in schools.  While smartphones can often be a distraction, they can also be used effectively in the classroom.  I've begun to allow and even encourage the use of personal smart devices in my classes.  I am very clear with students that I do allow them to use their phones, but only for educational purposes.  Personal smart devices have become more frequently used in my classroom for several reasons, the most essential being that educators have to encourage students to develop 21st century digital literacies, and this is difficult without the digital part.  While I would love to teach in a 1-1 environment (meaning each student has a laptop or tablet issued by the school), t...

To boldly go where no educator has gone before. Image from Know Your Meme Teacher-librarians have always been the vanguard of teaching Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills, helping colleagues to integrate new technologies into classrooms and guiding our students toward becoming digitally literate citizens.  The wonderful teacher-librarians I've worked with (shout out to Joanne and Katherine!) were always so generous with their time and effort to help those of us lacking a technological skillset.  Because I lacked confidence with my technological prowess, when I became interested in using infographics as a way to demonstrate students' knowledge rather than the traditional research paper or poster presentation, they helped me to create lessons on the skills needed to create infographics, including researching, citing, summarizing and using infographic websites that allows one to design an original infographic. Working with my school's teacher-librari...

The assignments and discussions in this course have already been an invaluable resource for me; I've gained some valuable technology skills that I can use in my classroom/library, and I've gained some valuable insight reading the discussion posts and blog posts of my co-learners in this class. Fellow educators in this class have made important points in blogposts and discussion board comments that I didn't previously consider regarding technology and digital literacy, including concerns about student privacy and the dangers of being "too connected."   Image from https://ncccelearning.com/learning-modules/using-blogs-to-support-your-instruction/ Thanks to the tutorial on using Feedly , I'll be able to continue to follow education blogs of interest.  When I first began reading education blogs, I used Google Reader; when that service was discontinued I began to use Flipboard to keep up with favourite news sites and blogs. While l really like Flipboar...