What can we learn from a survey on “Children’s Media Use in America 2013”?

The Zero to Eight: Children’s Media Use in America 2013 was the second in a series of surveys conducted by Common Sense Media. The surveys were designed to document the media environments and behaviors of children up to 8 years ol. “By replicating methods used two years previously, they were able to see what changes, if any, had occurred. You can visit their research page to download the full report.

The amazing growth of mobile media will keep all those in the education field on their toes. I work in a secondary school and we need to take into account the expertise and skill levels of students as they come to us from the primary schools. We all need to look at what we want students to learn and use the best possible means available to assist that.

The infographic below  helps to understand the way the trends are heading. The infographic below breaks down and creates a useful visualisation of some of the important data obtained. Although it is from the US, I think that data obtained here in Australia would be very similar, especially going on some of the results of “straw polls” and talking with our students.

What does this mean for me as a teacher librarian?

I believe that the role of the teacher librarian will focus on teaching students how search properly through the vast amount information available and  then to evaluate the value of that information.

There is another role that libraries, and their staff, are starting to take on, that of being part of the makerspaces movement. Young people have been using library resources as consumers for a long time. Information is growing exponentially, especially as anyone now has access to digital tools for creation and publication. It is becoming important for students to learn how this information production works and how to become a part of this information society.

The library can support the students to become producers. In the past students produced written pieces of work to explain what they garnered from their research. Today in the digital age we can add many more options  and students can create digital artifacts such videos, websites, blogs and e-learning objects. The library can have a role in this as well by assisting students in the production process of these digital artifacts. This could be helping with the choice of the medium e.g.  paper or 3D artifacts, audio, video or web. The library could also assist by providing space, such as recording or editing spaces, and equipment such as cameras, microphones and editing software.  

Much of this fits in neatly with project-based learning. There many teachers who are starting to prefer the PBL approach in schools. PBL is “an instructional approach built upon authentic learning activities that engage student interest and motivation. These activities are designed to answer a question or solve a problem and generally reflect the types of learning and work people do in the everyday world outside the classroom.” taken from PBL Online. This type of learning is right up my alley!

Useful sites (weekly)

  by  CanadianAEh 

•  Tim Wynne-Jones Home Page Author’s official website  

• What Happens When an Ebook Gets Updated? | Digital Book World  

• Elastic Theme Editor | Change the way you think about WordPress themes 

• Can EBooks Help Bridge Achievement Gaps?| The Committed Sardine  

• Dymvue: Libraries gave us power *  

• The Future of Mobile Tagging in Marketing, Branding & Communications Interesting piece on ReadWriteWeb of PSFK’s Future of Mobile Tagging report  

• Learning with ‘e’s: I have it within me… Doug Belshaw, education, Engaging learning, music, NASA moon landings, purpos/ed, school, science, Technology  

• Super library arrives as hundreds of others face closure | Books | The Guardian   

• Why libraries must be saved: Tony Parsons, Kate Mosse, Julia Donaldson and Carol Ann Duffy back campaign – mirror.co.uk  

• The World’s Most Blocked Websites OpenDNS, one of the most popular DNS services on the Internet, is frequently used by parents and organizations to block websites that they think are inappropriate for children or may hamper productivity at the workplace. OpenDNS, which claims to handle DNS requests for 1% of Internet users worldwide, has released a report detailing a list of top 10 websites that are most frequently blocked by home users and business users.  

• Children who use the library are twice as likely to be above average readers | National Literacy Trust  

• National Literacy Trust research reveals widening gender gap in boys’ and girls’ attitudes towards reading and writing | National Literacy Trust Children, Reading Champions, Reading Connects, Reading The Game, Schools & teaching, Words for Work, Young People

• National Literacy Trust The National Literacy Trust is an independent charity that transforms lives through literacy. Initiatives encourage literacy across the board, through reading and writing initiatives, including talking to your baby, sharing picture books together and reading for pleasure as a adult.

• Challenges, change and trends 2011 

• Welcome to M86VuSafe.com A free website that lets educators search for relevant video content from YouTube and other sources, add video clips from these sources to an online library, and then share these clips with their students—without the inappropriate ads, comments, or outside links that might accompany them.  

• How-and why-to teach innovation in our schools | 21st Century Education | eSchoolNews.com Reading and thinking about: How—and why—to teach innovation in our schools Currently, we are encouraged to chasse testable competency in academic core skills. It is quite different thing to try to educate future innovators.  

• Yodio – Add voice to photos A free audio recording site. You do not need to register your phone with the site to create ateacher account for the students to record into. Could be used to create digital storybooks for one example 

• iPads in Education – Exploring the use of iPads and Tablet computers in education. “Tablet computing and personal electronic devices such as iPads promise to have a dramatic impact on education. This Ning network was created to explore new and innovative ways iPads and other portable devices could be used in schools and colleges.” 

• Three Trends That Will Shape the Future of Curriculum | MindShift Outlines three digital media and learning trends gaining traction: interest-based learning, web 2.0 skills, digital delivery. 

• Home | The Official James Patterson Website Home page for crime writer James Patterson  

• Terry Pratchett – UK Website : Homepage Updated Terry Pratchett website from his uk publishers  

• Chris Ryan Adventures The official site for the SAS hero turned author.  

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

On-line learning and Classroom Innovation

After the first 3 terms this year I reflected back on how some teachers are doing some really engaging things in the classroom with their students. Many others are not really taking up the challenges and part if this can be down to just how determined you are to make the technology work. There have been many times this year when simple things have been made harder due to infrastructure glitches and shortcomings. Next term we will still need to encourage colleagues to persevere, citing reasons for the hard work it may take to set things up.

Two interesting videos, worth a look are below:

As part of Education Week in the US  Harvard University Professor Chris Dede discusses the potential for online learning to drive innovation in the classroom.

–And also one from the president and chief executive officer of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning talks at NECC ’09 about the drive to improve virtual learning in K-12 schools.

Useful Links (weekly)

Perspectives

• educational-origami – Starter Sheets Variety of handouts on tools, these starter sheets are resources for the classroom teacher. The intention of each sheet is to introduce a tool, technology or activity that could be easily adapted for use in the classroom. Each sheet is created to a template design and should have the following features: * must be two pages * must have pictures that illustrate process and outcomes * process must be straight forward * must be simple to read and understand * must have clear benefits for the teacher in the classroom, the exemplar should be easy to adapt to a variety of classroom settings * must have an alternative – web based or application * must be linked to Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy and Sensory learning styles using VARK 

• iRubric: Home of free rubric tools: RCampus.com This online rubric maker has lots of premade rubrics by a variety of content areas and grade levels. While I wouldn’t use them as is, they can be a good place to start as you develop rubrics for a specific project.

• Clay Shirky: How Twitter can make history | Video on TED.com Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly) re:The news from Iran. The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. A good overall presentation on how web 2.0 technology is revolutionizing the media landscape

• TheBrain – Mind Mapping Software, Brainstorming, GTD and Visual KM Software Mind Mapping Software. Simply type in your ideas. Drag and drop files and web pages. Any idea can be linked to anything else. Using your digital Brain is like cruising through a Web of your thinking. See new relationships. Discover connections. Go from the big picture of everything to a specific detail in seconds.  

• Diigo in Writing Class « What Else? 1DR Class collaboration 

• Welcome | Wordnik An ongoing project devoted to discovering all the words and everything about them. Wordnik wants to be a place for all the words, and everything known about them

• Wired for Books: poems, stories, plays, essays, lectures, and interviews for children and adults 

• Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free | Open Culture Download free MP3’s of great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Authors include Twain, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Asimov, HG Wells, Jules Verne, etc. Also see link to free audio and video downloads of university/college lectures on many different topics

• Modern Art 4 Kids tInteresting blog on all things art for students

• TAGmirror: An Educator’s Overview of Diigo [Geeky, Diigo] 

• The Philosophical Significance of Twitter: Consciousness Outfolding | techPresident In the larger picture, the most intriguing thing about Twitter is not how it is different from other online communication mechanisms, but how it is the same: one more technological innovation enabling the outfolding of consciousness – the collective turning-outward of human thought. 

• Wired Campus: Religion 101, in 140 Characters – Chronicle.com Stephen Prothero is helping world religions make their way onto Twitter this summer, one 140-character tweet at a time. The Boston University professor of religion is treating his account, sprothero, like a microcourse, posting several tweets on each of what he identifies as the eight major world religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Yoruba tradition, which Mr. Prothero calls the “neglected world religion” from West Africa

• Simon & Schuster Launches Teen Networking Site – 6/17/2009 12:40:00 PM – Publishers Weekly Offers those who join up a subcription to some of their ebooks

• The Book Seer A very easy to use book suggestions website – enter the title and author of a book you enjoyed, and it will suggest similar books 

• June 4 Webinar: “Engaging the Digital Generation: Insights from Kids, Teachers, and Parents” | Edutopia This page offers the useful links talked about in the webinar  

• Digital Youth Network: Empowering Youth Through Media “Digital Youth Network gives students tools to be engaged, articulate, critical and collaborative. Facilitate the ability to become creators – designers, builders & innovators”

• The Digital Generation Project | Edutopia Keep track of the way digital learning is influencing the future of education.Today’s students are born into a media-rich, networked world of infinite possibilities. Their digital lifestyle is about more than just cool gadgets; it’s about engagement, self-directed learning, creativity, and empowerment. The Digital Generation Project tells their stories so that educators and parents can understand how kids learn, communicate, and socialize in very different ways than any previous generation. 

• SparkleBox – 1000s FREE printable Early Years and KS1 resources – phonics, posters, labels, signs, activities and more! The site offers a great many printables, posters, banners for classroom use Force unit it science 

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Digital citizenship and the choices we make

I am an advocate of using technologies in the classroom. Recently in a discussion about the classroom use of Web2.0 technologies and social media, someone said to me “but what happens if a student does the wrong thing and goes to an inappropriate (porn) site? How can you justify these technologies when this might happen?” My answer was that students can and do make mistakes. In fact we all do! I do not see this as a reason for banning, blocking or heavily filtering digital media or in fact trying to build a barrier between the classroom and the rest of the world!

Uploaded to Flickr by maquack