Bibliotech

What High School Juniors Want to Know

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 10:51:00 -0800

Cross-posted from the New Canaan High School Library blog.

As juniors continue working on the first of the two major research papers they will complete this year, we provide feedback as they reach the following checkpoints:

Research questions
Works cited lists
Thesis statements

This research paper, which is assigned in English, uses The Great Gatsby's examination of social class, equity, and The American Dream as a launchpad for research. Students choose their own topics for research. We classified our juniors' research questions into 11 broad categories:

Civil/Equal rights/Discrimination/Social justice
Cultural messaging
Education
Family
Law enforcement/Military/National security
Mental/Physical Health/Wellness
Politics
Prosperity/Business
Science
Social pathology
Technology

The chart below shows how many students gravitated to each topic.

As one reviews the above classifications, it is surprisingly easy to let ones' personal viewpoints influence expectations about the subcategories that could nest under each parent classification. Go ahead. Give it a try.
... pause

Our juniors are independent thinkers who are grappling with current issues in their own way. They are bringing their experiences, interests, and ideas to their understanding of, and predictions about the world they will inhabit as adults.

We compiled all 138 research questions we have seen so far into word clouds, which are images composed of research questions in which the size of each word indicates its frequency of use.

This deep dive into our junior's curiosity provides us with ideal collection development information. We are building a research pathfinder to help our learners access seminal work on their topics in a variety of formats.

articles
books
radio or podcasts
video

and also ideas and people that/who are getting a lot of traction in the media.

The pathfinder is a work in progress. This exercise will guide our next additions and revisions. For example, our book recommendations need to be reorganized. We have the right books, but our classifications do not consistently align with students' research questions. For example, we placed books on race relations under civil rights, but student research questions in that category focused on women's rights. Students who chose to examine race did so through the lens of either education, law enforcement, or prosperity.

Student work informs our practice. Co-teaching with our colleagues empowers us to improve our collection, our instruction, and ultimately student achievement. We are very fortunately to teach in such a collaborative learning community. Have a wonderful holiday.

How is Our Collection Being Used?

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Sat, 16 Nov 2019 13:46:00 -0800

Cross-posted from the New Canaan High School Library blog.

As we move into budget season, we reflect on how students use our collection. This year, we noticed a few trends we wanted to share.

Students are borrowing more books!

In response to a slight dip in circulation in 2017-2018, we amped up our independent reading program this year. As of October 18, 2019, our booktalking activity is up 220% (16 classes in September and October), our print book circulation is up 20%, and our eBook circulation is up 25 % as well.

While the graph below shows that student use of ABC-CLIO, EBSCO, and Statista dipped last year, use of Gale (social studies research database), the newspaper collection (Christian Science Monitor, Hartford Courant, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post), and JSTOR (peer-reviewed academic journal articles) doubled.

This may sound like a mixed report, but it is a great one. It tells us that our instruction has been effective. In 2018-2019, we learned from reviewing student work that students were not selecting resources that were appropriate to their inquiry tasks. We built new instructional experiences designed to improve higher order thinking, and source selection skills. This graph shows that students used fewer reference resources and doubled their use of more challenging materials. Here are some sample lessons:

Absolutism (10th grade Global History II)
Enlightenment (10th grade Global History II)
Napoleon (10th grade Global History II)
Junior Research Paper (Junior English)

While we would ideally love to have all students shift their research to the rigorous databases, we still need to subscribe to materials that will meet the learning needs of our incoming 9th graders. Britannica, ABC-CLIO, and EBSCO help us meet their needs.

Is Geography Destiny (9th grade Global I)

It is clear that we are visiting 10th grade history classes with these lesson on distinguishing reference from more substantive content quite regularly. For most classes, we will see them at least once more for Imperialism, and possibly also before that for the Industrial Revolution. Our aim is to have our current sophomores ready for their two required research papers (English in the fall and social studies in the spring) right at the start of their junior year so that we can focus our junior year instruction on inquiry synthesis, not source selection.

If we were to create a macro picture of our library program's inquiry instruction, it would look something like this:

We construct this learning around social studies and English because those are required courses. Students have more flexibility in selecting their Math, Science and World Languages classes, so we tend to focus our assured experiences in other disciplines. This is not to say that we do not work with other disciplines, only that we acknowledge that our instruction in those course will not have universal impact.

APA Style: the 7th edition

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 12:37:00 -0700

On October 1st, the American Psychological Association (APA) released the 7th edition of its APA Publication Manual. Our New Canaan High School library copy is on order and we are eager to start pouring over it. So far, we see two major changes in the citation format.

The words "Retrieved from" are removed from citations for sources found online
The place of publication is removed from citations for books

At New Canaan High School, we tend to focus our instruction on MLA for the first 3 years of high school, then we introduce APA to seniors across disciplines. We did our best to update our LibGuide on APA today. We will add more when we get our book!

The @APAStyle Twitter feed has done a great job of building hype around the release, as you can see in the video below. They aggregated their Tweets about the new manual into one feed here.

The APA Style website features a bounty of instructional aids on its website including the useful Quick Reference Guide in PDF:

The Reference Examples page categorizes examples by material type:

journal article
magazine article
newspaper article
whole book
edited book chapter
dictionary entry
government report
YouTube video
Tweet
Facebook post
webpage on a website

The last one in the list above - the web page on a web site - is new. This was not well covered (or covered at all, really) in the 6th edition.

We suspected (totally guessing here) that the APA's decision to omit this information from the last edition had to do with scholarship. Many webpages on websites are not considered "scholarly" and are therefore not worth referencing. Date of publication and authorship are extremely important in APA. If a web page does not feature this information, one should probably reference something else instead. We teach students to consult and reference books, magazines, newspapers and scholarly journals.

Having said that, there are times when open web content is pertinent and appropriate for an inquiry task. It is a relief to have guidelines for citing it.

The Instructional Aids page also features links to sample papers. These are exceptionally helpful as they are annotated with lots of detail that contextually informs the reader about APA Style.

That's all I have for now. Stay tuned! We will update when we receive our book.

School Librarians Can Save Democracy

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Wed, 5 Jun 2019 14:19:00 -0700

This year, I had the extraordinary experience of attending the TED conference in Vancouver. I was inspired. Truly. This is my response to one of the running themes of the conference.

At TED2019, reporter and feature writer for the Observer, Carole Cadwalladr, told tech billionaires - calling out each one by name - they had broken democracy in Facebook's Role in Brexit -- and the Threat to Democracy (Cadwalladr, 2019). Her talk left a rippling undercurrent that coursed through the rest of the conference. Is democracy in jeopardy? If so, what role does social media play in the crisis?

When Carole finished, I leapt out of my seat with the rest of the audience and cheered. It was an emotional response. This is the new normal: social media companies profit off of our attention, relying on our emotional triggers to keep us swiping for a date, a couch, a rescue pet, and certainly for news - including, of course, fake news and alternative facts. We choose to believe some stories over others, but the choice is too often an emotional one. Placing our stamp of approval or rejection on our discoveries - participating in an ever-growing culture of outrage - is emotionally empowering, and we are hooked.

Two-thirds of Americans get their news from social media channels (Matsa & Shearer, 2018) and while 57% of those folks expect the news they see on social media to be inaccurate, 42% think it is "largely accurate" (Shearer & Gottfried, 2017).

Fifty-six percent of college students said that they accessed news for their personal consumption (as opposed to academic use) via social media. These students reported that they applied different source evaluation strategies to news content accessed through social media channels than they do to news accessed via their college library's periodical databases (Head, Whibey, Metaxas, MacMillan, & Cohen, 2018).

Confirmation bias, the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories, may play a role in media consumers' ability to evaluate the news they access online. According to British academics of psychology, Ben Tappin, Leslie Van Der Leer and Ryan Mckay, "Confirmation bias is often conflated with 'telling people what they want to hear,' which is actually a distinct phenomenon known as desirability bias, or the tendency to credit information you want to believe." They conducted an experiment hoping to learn "whether a reluctance to revise political beliefs was a result of confirmation bias or desirability bias (or both)." Their results "suggest that political belief polarization may emerge because of peoples’ conflicting desires, not their conflicting beliefs per se." (Tappin, Van Der Leer, & Mckay, 2017)

National Public Radio's On The Media host Brooke Gladstone summed this up succinctly, "Confirmation bias has nothing to do with thinking and everything to do with feeling." (Gladstone, 2018).

The Pew Research Center reports that political polarization is on the rise, "Partisan antipathy remains extensive. The shares of Republicans and Democrats who express very unfavorable opinions of the opposing party have increased dramatically since the 1990s." (Pew, 2017). Antipathy is a feeling. It is emotional. This antipathy manifests itself at the polls. When citizens seek emotional gratification from the news they read, they view political candidates as personalities who stand for, or against their political team. Political consultant and pollster, Frank Luntz - whose TED2019 talk followed Cadwalladr's - said, "Populism is a great way to get elected, and it is a horrible way to govern.” Great personalities are not by default great leaders (Luntz, 2019).

When Carole's spell broke and I gained some perspective, I started to push back. I am not expert enough to gauge whether social media has led us to a democratic crisis, but teaching inquiry to high school students for nearly two decades lends me sufficient expertise to know that education can remedy a crisis of democracy.

Calling on Silicon Valley tech moguls to curb their capitalistic motives in order to protect democratic principles is unrealistic. Call me a cynic, but it just ain't gonna happen. Teaching the citizens of tomorrow to consume news with skepticism is a more realistic strategy to safeguard democracy.

The Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) affirmed this in 2016 when they published the results of a two-year study on young people's (middle school through college) ability to evaluate online information. They summarized their findings this way:

Never have we had so much information at our fingertips. Whether this bounty will make us smarter and better informed or more ignorant and narrow-minded will depend on our awareness of this problem and our educational response to it. At present, we worry that democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish (Stanford History Education Group, 2016).

Here is the rub: who is going to teach this?

Classroom teachers have prescribed content to teach. Assuming that all teachers in all schools will enthusiastically embrace yet another instructional mandate is... well... just as unrealistic as expecting Mark Zuckerberg to redesign Facebook because Carole Cadwalladr told him to. As it is, classroom teachers are struggling to stay afloat. Teaching is really hard work. The data confirms my claim. Teacher attrition has been a problem for nearly two decades. The Learning Policy Institute describes the problem in its 2016 report, Solving the Teacher Shortage: How to Attract and Retain Excellent Educators, "national estimates suggest that between 19% and 30% of new teachers leave the profession within their first five years, with turnover much higher in low-income schools." (Podolsky, Kini, Bishop, & Darling-Hammond, 2016).

If teachers aren't in a position to embed lessons that teach learners to read and think critically about the news they consume with logic and a dose of healthy skepticism rather than emotions, who can?

School librarians have the training and expertise to teach precisely this. They have the pedagogy, classroom management skills, content knowledge and technical know-how to co-develop and co-teach engaging and authentic inquiry driven project-based experiences for every student in their learning community. In the right environment, they can partner with classroom teachers to embed news literacy across grade levels and content areas.

School librarians teach kids to learn how to learn.

School librarians teach inquiry. They teach students how to formulate questions, then to question the information they select to answer their questions. They teach students to infer author purpose through word choice analysis, to distinguish opinion writing from reportage, and to select information sources critically. They teach students how to process information with skepticism. I know this because I live it. In 2017, my friend and colleague Jacquelyn Whiting and I pooled our cache of lessons together to create our book of replicable inquiry lessons, News Literacy: The Keys to Combating Fake News.

School librarians teach every single student in the building(s) they serve. As an experiment, I tracked my time usage over a 35-40 day period for three consecutive years and I discovered that I spend over 80% of my school day helping students develop these inquiry skills - skills that safeguard the future of democracy (blue slices in graph below) .

Librarian time spent teaching

Unfortunately, school librarians are frequently first in the line of fire when school leaders decide to eliminate instructional positions. The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) does not have data on this, but I did a quick, informal survey in my home state of Connecticut, which has the the highest per capita income of any state in the union (Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2018). Survey results indicated that a total of 197 Connecticut school library positions have been eliminated since 2000. If this is the inquiry infrastructure in Connecticut schools, I am left wondering how learners are being taught inquiry skills in states with less funding. Will learners from these communities blindly scroll through their social media feeds to learn about political candidates and take their emotionally-formed impressions to the polls?

School librarians provide a feasible and thoughtful solution to a universal concern. Given the opportunity to do their job, they can ensure the future of democracy, regardless of what social media feeds deliver. Here is the uncut version of my idea pitch (1:34 minutes).

References

Bureau of Economic Statistics. (2018). Per capita personal income in the United States in 2018, by state (in U.S. Dollars). Retrieved June 5, 2019, from https://www-statista-com.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/statistics/303555/us-per-capita-personal-income/

Cadwalladr, C. (2019, April 15). Facebook's role in Brexit -- and the threat to democracy. Retrieved June 5, 2019, from tedlive.ted.com/webcasts/t2019/session/334

Gladstone, B. (2018, September 28). Your moment of Zen. Retrieved from http://www.wnycstudios.org/story/your-moment-zen

Head, A., Whibey, J., Metaxas, P. T., MacMillan, M., & Cohen, D. (2018, October). How students engage with the news: Five takeaways for educators journalists and librarians. Retrieved June 5, 2019, from https://www.projectinfolit.org/uploads/2/7/5/4/27541717/newsexecutivesummary.pdf

Luntz, F. (2019, April 15). TED2019: Bigger than us - session 1: Truth. Retrieved from https://tedlive.ted.com/webcasts/t2019/session/334

Matsa, K. E., & Shearer, E. (2018, September 21). News use across social media platforms 2018. Retrieved from http://www.journalism.org/2018/09/10/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-201

Pew Research Center. (2017, October 5). Partisan animosity, personal politics, and views of Trump. Retrieved from https://www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/8-partisan-animosity-personal-politics-views-of-trump/

Podolsky, A., Kini, T., Bishop, J., & Darling-Hammond, L. (2016, September). Solving the teacher shortage how to attract and retain excellent educators. Retrieved June 5, 2019, from https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/product-files/Solving_Teacher_Shortage_Attract_Retain_Educators_REPORT.pdf

Shearer, E., & Gottfried, J. (2017, September 7). New use across social media platforms 2017. Retrieved June 5, 2019, from https://www.journalism.org/2017/09/07/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2017/-->

Tappin, B., Van Der Leer, L., & Mckay, R. (2017, May 27). You're not going to change your mind. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/27/opinion/sunday/youre-not-going-to-change-your-mind.html?_r=0-->

Using Design Thinking to Think About Design Thinking

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Tue, 14 May 2019 17:49:00 -0700

This is long overdue. No, not this post. I have no guilt about extended lapses between posts. It is overdue because back in 2014, when I interviewed ten Maker experts (MakExperts?) to prepare for my 54th edWebinar, I noticed the similarities between the Stanford Design School's design thinking model and our Barbara Stripling-inspired New Canaan High School inquiry model).

WONDER:

At the time, I thought I should spend some time thinking about that alignment. Spend time is exactly what I did. I wondered about that alignment for five years! Over the years, I visited and revisited the idea of an "overlay project" that would involve animating superimposed Design Thinking models... maybe? I hardly ever made these visits alone. Many friends hashed this out with me at conferences, via Hangouts, over the phone, and right in the library where I teach.

And this is what I love about webinating: my May webinar (slides, resources) at edWeb focuses on Design Thinking, thus forcing me to deliver on what I promised in the description - to "explore design models that guide innovative thinking... examine points of intersection and divergence." Clearly, I had run out of thinking time, so I buckled down and got to work.

INVESTIGATE:

I am an independent worker, but a social learner. I knew that I needed help with the content of my webinar so I invited one of my favorite tinkerers of all time, Bill Derry, to present the webinar with me.

Bill was one of my first instructors in the library science program at Southern Connecticut State University (where I now teach). Later, I shadowed him for a day in the library where he taught at Greens Farms Elementary School in Westport, CT. Still later, when he became the Library Coordinator for the Westport Public Schools, we collaborated on a project although embarrassingly, I cannot remember what that project entailed. I only remember working on something with his team. Still later, when he became the Director of Innovation at the Westport Public Library, I was dazzled by his leadership, which led me to reach out and interview him for the aforementioned 2014 webinar on maker culture. Shortly after that, Bill invited me to speak at a TEDx event at the Westport Public Library, which was quite an honor. Since then, we have remained connected through two separate "projects." We walk our dogs together, and Bill co-facilitates innovation workshops in which our district participates.

Ziggy and Hero are fierce!

I had seen Bill present on Design Thinking, the Entrepreneurial Mindset, tinkering, and innovation. I knew he had much to share, so we met online to review the organization of our upcoming presentation. I asked tons of questions and, as I'd hoped, he shared a plethora of incredibly valuable resources. I researched, investigated, took notes, analyzed, outlined, made charts, sketches and then I dug deeper and then deeper still into Design Thinking hoping to discover, among other things, the key to my "overlay project."

THEORIZE:

Let's pause for a minute. Why was I so fixated on this "overlay project"? What did I hope to accomplish? There was an empathic element to this quest. A Google Image search for Design Thinking produces results that look like the screenshot below. As a maker leader in our school, I was expected to integrate Design Thinking across disciplines, yet I could not envision how to help teachers who already relied on their own discipline-specific workflow guidelines to adopt an unfamiliar model on the promise that it would promote creativity and innovative thinking.

Innovation was my priority. Theirs was content. We needed to find the points of intersection between their templates and some of the Design Thinking models that aligned with our common educational objectives. I theorized that the alignment had to be there. After all, I didn't have to look too hard to find the parallels between inquiry and Design Thinking so we should be able to identify similar connections in other content areas. This was my thesis (I'm gonna do this like a teenager): While design thinking purports to promote creativity across disciplines, it is important to help teachers see where Design Thinking intersects with their current practice before asking them to adopt an unfamiliar model.

PRODUCE:

I was finally ready to tackle the "overlay project" I'd long envisioned. I used Google Slides because I figured I would start with one of those handy little diagrams they provide (Haha! Get it? Figured?). There was one problem. I was looking at well over a dozen models and their step count ranged from 2-9. The Slides diagrams feature a range of 3-5 step options, so I knew I was going to have to do a lot of tweaking before inputing the stages. If you are wondering which models I used, here they are:

So I spent a ridiculous amount of time on graphics. This is pretty typical. I suspect that I would not have a time management problem if it weren't for trying to get the visuals right (I didn't, by the way. I hate these diagrams). Ask anyone at edWeb.net about this and they will laugh out loud. And then cry just a little bit. You'll get the same result if you ask my daughter about her wedding invitations.

I got through 5, 6, 7, and 9 step models before realizing that I hated the project. Oh sure, making the diagrams was a pain, but more importantly I wasn't learning anything new. Plus, did I mention they were super ugly? My longed-for overlay project was no more productive than looking at the screen shot of a Google Image search for Design Thinking (see above). The connections were not materializing for me at all, and if it wasn't happening for me, it sure wasn't going to help teachers! It was time to start practicing my #failforward skills.

REVISE:

It occurred to me that if I layered the elements of each model in rows, I could align like tasks in columns and find connections, so I tried a table. I started to make one in Google Docs, but the aesthetic value wasn't worth the time it took, so I just sketched my table on a large notepad.

I soon realized that if placed the model with the most steps on the bottom and the one with the least steps at the top, I could reshape my table into a pyramid - a Design Thinking pyramid that looked a little bit like the old food group pyramid if the carbohydrates were broken into many subgroups. Remember back when carbs were the most important food group? Yeah, I miss that too.

Click to enlarge

Well this was an improvement, but I still could not see the connections as clearly as I'd hoped. The structure was sound, so I decided to rainbow-ify my pyramid.

Click to enlarge

This was a super helpful revision. I could now see what I was pining for during all those wonder years. There were strong connections! Some models (mostly education models) scaffolded the problem side of the pyramid with additional steps. Others (mostly business models) emphasized the solution side with incrementalization (yup, I just made up that word). This makes sense. Businesses need to provide solutions to problems while educators focus on teaching the process of problem solving.

But wait. There's more!

That pyramid is a list of verbs that describe what kids will be doing while Design Thinking. Isn't that a taxonomy? Could this be a taxonomy of Design Thinking? What if teachers could build their own design thinking models to suit their disciplines, tasks, learners, chronological proximity to a holiday/lunch/nap/Friday?

What if kids personalized their learning by using this taxonomy to customize their own plan for creativity and innovation?

Isn't this what Design Thinking is all about? Empowering the learner with ownership of the creative process?

Click to enlarge

Natasha Jen, a graphic designer for Pentagram gave a talk in June of 2017 called Design Thinking is Bullsh*t. I want to thank Bill Derry for sharing this with me. Ms. Jen has a few issues with Design Thinking, but this is the one that caught my attention.

“The problem with design thinking as a diagram is that you

really cannot understand the outcome of it and without

an outcome, you cannot critique how good it is.”

~ Natasha Jen, 2017

If I was a graphic designer and my livelihood depended on a product as an outcome, I would probably agree with that statement.

But I am an educator and this is what "products" look like on good days. Teaching helps us focus on process rather than product.

Isn't this the product of Design Thinking in education?

Click to enlarge

And if this is the product, how can we "critique it to know how good it is"? Should we? Or should our learners? Well... I thought about that. How about this as a self-critiquing guide?

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SHARE:

So there we go. I used Design Thinking to think about Design Thinking and now, I am sharing this with you.

NEXT STEP:

This process helped me identify a new problem to solve. I loved our inquiry model when we first made it, but I've noticed lately that students are not often afforded adequate time for revision. This comes into play when we offer them feedback on their research but they do not have time to make revisions based on that feedback. Unfortunately, the students who need it most are those who get discouraged and give up on one of the most valuable services we offer. We need to give kids time to revise their work.

So yeah. Now I want to change our Inquiry Model. Damn! I promise to share after I wonder, investigate, theorize, produce, and revise. Hopefully, it won't take five years.

Cross-posted on Medium

References

“Design Thinking: The Process to Innovate.” SAP Design, design.sap.com/designthinking.html, Accessed 13 May 2019.

Hoffman, Libby “10 Models for Design Thinking.” Medium, 29 July 2016, medium.com/@elizabeth7hoffman/10-models-for-design-thinking-f6943e4ee068.

Holcomb, Sarah, et al. “Design Thinking Bootcamp.” Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, Stanford University, 2019, dschool.stanford.edu/executive-education/dbootcamp.

“IDEO’s Human Centered Design Process: How to Make Things People Love.” UserTesting, 5 Dec. 2018, www.usertesting.com/blog/how-ideo-uses-customer-insights-to-design-innovative-products-users-love/.

Jen, Natasha. “Design Thinking is Bullsh*t.” 99U, 7-9 June 2017. YouTube, youtu.be/_raleGrTdUg.

Jenkins, Martin, and Nicole Halliday. “Design Thinking — Silver Bullet or White Whale?” From the Exosphere, Medium, 17 Dec. 2017, medium.com/from-the-exosphere/design-thinking-silver-bullet-or-white-whale-89b679db377d.

Michaels, Phil. “Stanford D.School.” Medium, 11 Jan. 2017, medium.com/@philmichaels/5-components-to-design-thinking-by-stanford-d-school-48dd111bbbe5.

Saveker, Dani. “A More Beautiful Question – Warren Berger.” Visual Synopsis, 2019, visualsynopsis.com/question-2/. Accessed 13 May 2019.

Spencer, John, and AJ Juliani. “The Launch Cycle: A Design Thinking Framework For K-12.” The Launch Cycle, 2016, thelaunchcycle.com/#Beginners.

Find additional resources referenced in the webinar at bit.ly/edwebet97

The 2019 Summer Reading List is Here!

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Wed, 1 May 2019 08:39:00 -0700

Post your video review here!

It is summer reading time! That's when we get to catch up on what’s new and exciting in publishing. Our summer reading list is primarily recreational. Its purpose is to connect our learners with resources they may enjoy.

We generally keep the list relatively short – under one hundred books so as not to overwhelm. We are mindful of genre and diverse interests. We focus on contemporary publications - the last two years or so, but we also include a few classics. We aim for balance between young adult and adult literature.

Keeping in mind that our library users include young teens and adults, our list is thematically comprehensive. Not every book is for every library user. Selection is part of the reading process and we encourage young readers to be reflective about their choices - to contextualize them with their personal and family values. Readers are encouraged to consult reviews and publisher notes to make predictions about whether a book will suit their interests and to switch to a different book when one falls short of their expectations. There are so many books to enjoy. Summer is not the time to slog through a book that holds little appeal.

As in previous years, New Canaan (town) Library runs a dynamic Summer Reading Program. We send our copies of the summer reading books to the town library so students may borrow them over the summer months. We carry as many titles as are available in both eBook and audiobook format. Students may use Destiny, our online catalog, to access those formats. They can text the library at (615) 669 6670 if they need help.

As always, we aggregated our summer reading list in GoodReads - which is a social book recommendation site (see right). The entire NCHS learning community is invited to connect, share what they are reading, rate books, and write reviews in GoodReads and this year, we invite students to post video reviews to Flipgrid. Members of our learning community can use their @ncps-k12.org login to add a 90 second clip telling us about a book they read over the summer.

Again, the list is here (below), and the tabs at the bottom of the sheet allow viewers to switch organization – title, author, genre, etc.

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Test your (and your students') News Literacy and Close Reading Skills

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Sat, 16 Feb 2019 08:58:00 -0800

This is a great activity for news consumers of any age!

This started as a simple screenshot experiment back in the fall. Then I started to see its potential as a lesson.

At this time of year, our students move into units on op-ed writing in their English classes. I anticipation, the New Canaan High School information and communications technology team has been developing instruction on language choice and close reading. This lesson, which is a work in progress, is a simple, replicable, and adaptable one that will help your students' improve skills in

close reading
news literacy
reading comprehension
awareness of the intention(s) behind author word choice

This lesson should also heighten their skepticism when analyzing the messages their devices flash at them throughout their waking hours.

1. Introduction Part I
You can start the lesson with a discussion about what is meant by "left" and "right" political leanings. The 2010 infographic below, created by David McCandless and Stefanie Posavec and published on Information is Beautiful can be found on Slide 2.

Questions to consider:

What do we mean when we say a person leans “left” or “right”?
Examine this infographic and create a persona for each side in one paragraph.

2. Introduction Part I
Extend the conversation to focus students' attention on how media outlets can lean "left" or "right". The 2019 AllSides Media Bias Chart below can be found on Slide 3.

Questions to consider:

What do we mean when we say a publication leans “left” or “right”?
Review this graphic, making a note of your “surprises”
Which news outlets are familiar? Which are not?
What is the difference between newspapers, magazines and Internet news agencies? Does it matter? How can you tell the difference?

3. Introduction Part III

Explain to students which of these news outlets we will focus on for this activity:

New York Times
Washington Post
FOX News

Note: I tried to include the Wall Street Journal (a New Canaan favorite), but their mobile notifications so seldom align with the other three publications that I ultimately left it out of the experiment.

4. Introduce the activity by showing slide 5

Questions to consider:

Read these three headlines.
Compare the language.
Which words stand out?
Does language choice change the message?
How so?
To what extent does the message point to the editorial slant (left or right) of its publication?

5. Introduce the activity (cont.) ...and slide 6

Concept to highlight:

What a publication chooses to not publish can be as telling as what they choose to publish.

6. Activity:
Note: This can be done on paper, or Google Form (I haven’t created one - yet). Feel free to open the Document, make a copy, and pull out as many rows as you wish. As it is, it is far too long.

Review the directions, and set the students to work. I would have them work individually, and then compare their answers in small groups before a class share.

Directions (slide 8): Each pair of mobile notifications (distinguishable by shading) cover the same story as delivered via different media outlets (FOX News, New York Times or Washington Post). By analyzing word choice in each alert, try to infer the posting publication’s political leanings. In the Clues column, write the words that helped you decide. In the right-hand column, compare how word choice changes the readers’ understanding of the story before reading it.

7. Review

Once students have completed their individual, group work and class share, you can review the headlines with publication branding with them. Remember, there is a key but you need to request access.

Slides:

Activity:

8. Reflection:

"Republicans are more likely to trust The New York Times and Democrats are more inclined to trust Fox News when they do not know which source they are reading, according to a new study by Gallup."

Questions to consider:

Does this align with your experience? Explain.
How will this activity change how you read your mobile notifications?

An MLA 8 Question (or two or three)

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Thu, 29 Nov 2018 06:45:00 -0800

Yesterday, I sent an inquiry to the MLA Style Center. It follows:

Section 1.2.3 in the MLA Handbook 8th edition implies that a bibliographic citation for a U.S. Supreme Court Case should begin with the named parties in the case (pp. 70-71). If we want to include author information, should that be pushed to element 4 (additional contributor)? This is what that would look like:

What follows is a continuation of the question I posed yesterday. I am citing legal documents. Clearly, MLA is not the citation format of choice for these materials, but because the bulk of New Canaan High School's instruction on citation style comes through the English department, the library exclusively teaches MLA 8 to students in grades 9-11. It is more effective to teach students to master one thing before showing them the alternatives. We do switch it up for some Advanced Placement courses, UCONN Early College Experience courses, and senior year curriculum.

Soooo... for my question:

I rethought my U.S. Supreme Court case citation after emailing yesterday's inquiry and working on a few more examples for our (temporary) MLA 8 Help Page. We are building a better one in LibGuides, but it is not finished.

Given the nature of our students' research task, I would want the title of legislation or a court opinion to appear in an embedded parenthetical reference. This would help strengthen the evidence and support teachers who are grading the work. So the citation should start with the name (not number) of the legislation or opinion (e.g., “Civil Rights Act of 1964.”, “Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.”, “Miller-El v. Cockrell.”).

This presents a challenge when determining how to classify the other elements of the citation. Can, for example, we use the legislative body - US Supreme Court or 115th Congress as a element #3 (container)? This allows the student to include more detail about authorship under element #4 (contributing author):

In the above example, we pushed the Web storage information to the second container. Otherwise, the citation would feel disjointed: title, Web container, contributing author, number, publisher, etc. The Web container information would clumsily break up related author and title information (see the first citation in this post).

Continuing with the sequence used in the above citation, other legislative documents would be cited like this:

In the case of an executive action or order, the enacting president’s name should appear in the parenthetical reference (Bush, Obama, Trump, etc.) because authorship contextualizes the order. Therefore, the citation should begin with the author (president) name. This follows the 8th edition Handbook instructions, "If your discussion of such a work focuses on the contribution of a particular person - say, the performance of an actor or the ideas of a screenwriter - begin the entry with his or her name, followed by a descriptive label." (MLA Handbook, p.24). The title of an executive order about immigration policy is not as telling as the name of the president who issued it. An immigration order from President Obama sets up very different expectations about its content than one from President Trump.

Does this make sense? Do you agree? What would you do differently?

Measuring Librarian Impact on Student Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Sun, 23 Sep 2018 08:20:00 -0700

Last year (as in all the years before it that I can recall), I set out to measure the impact of librarian instruction on student learning outcomes. This time, I think I made some headway. I included my end-of-year reflection, but the slideshow below summarizes it more succinctly.

What's going on at New Canaan High School

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 16:27:00 -0700

We hope that everyone had a wonderful summer!

The NCHS football team helped us with a project a couple of weeks ago. As they entered the library, they greeted us warmly asking about our summers, and then one student asked, "What's new at the library this year?" We love that he asked the question because it shows that our students expect a dynamic and responsive library program. So yes, there are quite a few new things in the library this year.

Rams football & the Rams library join forces #strengthinnumbers

Ms. Sheehan is our new librarian. She is coming to us from the Saxe Library. She has decades of experience teaching inquiry to students and she knocked out several awesome booktalks for sophomore English classes this week.

A new familiar face in the library!

Makerspace reorganization: We reorganized the makerspace following last semester's Interior Design class recommendations (thank you, Ms. Zilly!). Students were given a budget and they worked in groups to develop and present proposals. Using their recommendations, the library faculty then developed a plan for a makerspace makeover. We are very excited to see student's ideas driving makerspace workflow.

Ms. Zilly's interior design students presenting their makerspace makeover proposals

A new media lab: The green screen and Virtual Reality lab was so popular last year, we felt compelled to create a second one. We hope to train student volunteers to become Virtual Reality VIPs (VRVIP, pronounced ver·vip) who can help facilitate student use of the VR equipment. If you love virtual reality and you have one free period per 8-day cycle, please ask about this opportunity!

Biology students exploring anatomy in virtual reality

Ms. Burns switched her office to "the other side". She is now outside of ColLabB.

Ms. Burns in her new office

Ms. Sheehan and Ms. Luhtala became permanent nomads, meaning that we removed our fixed desks and now have mobile standing desks. We work where we are needed.

Ms. Luhtala at her mobile standing desk

THE ANNEX@ has a new face. This is a process. We are still fine tuning the default project template. We think that our instructions for the Philip II Global History project may be the model we will use for all projects. We invite students to give us feedback and suggestions for improvement.

Library instructions for the Philip II project

There are new procedures for getting librarian feedback on bibliographies. They follow.

We are personalizing the booktalk experience. Before meeting for a booktalk, each student completes a questionnaire about their reading preferences. Then the librarian(s) make book recommendations for each student based on their questionnaire responses. Student responses also guide our book selection for the featured book talk, then at the end of the day, the librarians generate a circulation report for the class (just the titles, not student names). The recommendations, featured books, and circulated are then posted on THE ANNEX@ to guide future booktalks with the same class. Here is an example.

Personalized booktalks are documented

Speaking of booktalks, we had record turnout for our first Somewhat Virtual Book Club meeting on September 5th. Our next NCHS book group will meet in the high school library on October 3rd at 6PM. The History of Jane Doe is our featured selection. The author, Mike Belanger, who graduated from NCHS in 2004 and teaches history at Greenwich High School, will join us live for the discussion. Please check out a copy of the book, and join us for this exciting event.

Mike Belanger (NCHS Class of 2004) signing his book at Greenwich Library

Somewhat Virtual Book Club meeting on September 5, 2018

Desperately Seeking Balance Balance

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Sat, 11 Aug 2018 07:50:00 -0700

While I periodically cross post content from my school library blog, I have not written fresh content for this blog in over a year. It is not that I am short on things to write about. I did co-author a book, News Literacy: The Keys to Combating Fake News last year. Yes, that kept me busy for a bit, but my co-author Jacquelyn Whiting and I wrapped that project up a while ago so that is no justification for not writing blog posts.

Gwyneth Jones once said that you should never apologize for not having posted to your blog. I agree - mostly because it seems presumptuous to assume that someone may have noticed the silence, but this is not an apology. I am not sorry. This is a reflection about time, media, and balance.

My hiatus extended to Twitter and Facebook. As of this morning I was still trying to sort out why. Originally, I explained that being on those platforms made me feel as though I was not doing enough. Given that I was doing as much as I could, I withdrew. But I watched Manoush Zomorodi’s 2017 TED talk about boredom and brilliance today, and that may have given me deeper insight into why I checked out of Facebook and Twitter. It was a brilliant talk, by the way. I posted it below. I’ve been a Manoush fan for years. I found her through her Note to Self podcast (formerly know as New Tech City) out of WNYC, New York’s National Public Radio station. Now she is co-authoring a captivating narrative podcast with Jen Poyant called ZigZag. It is outstanding. I binge-listened to the first five episodes yesterday.

That brings me to another point. Podcasts... they are cannibalizing my ear time. This would be fine if I was not a school librarian, but I am so it is not okay. When I say cannibalize, I mean it. My ear time used to be dedicated to staying on top of my reading. Because of my work, I try to read 50 books a year. Ask me how many books I read this summer. Go ahead, ask me. NONE! That’s how many.

You may be wondering why I don’t read with my eyes. I used to do that all the time, but I lost the time/ability/focus/all-of-the-above to do that with any regularity a decade ago. Reading a print book is now a luxury in which I only indulge during beach time which, as of this summer, is now consumed by paddling (SUP and kayak). So yeah. Now I am not even reading at the beach.

Do you see where I am going?

The ear time battle actually started when Audible introduced Channels to subscribers. My book consumption started to dwindle once I was able to get the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal read-by-a-real-live-human every day. That was a couple of years ago. My daily papers are delivered to me by Keith Sellon-Wright, Kristy Burns, and Sam Scholl, among others.

I once rationalized that I did not read with my eyes because I had more ear time than eye time. Now it seems as though I don’t have enough of either. Did I mention podcasts? I’ve spend my summer (when not on a paddle board) with Anna Sale and Marc Maron accompanied by the host (no pun intended) of comics, actors, authors and artists he interviews. I only have another 800 or so WTF podcasts to go before I am caught up.

Cable television and streaming video producers, such as Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, etc., downright scare me. My blood pressure rises when someone tells me about a new great show to watch. I (generally) trust the recommendation. It is, in all likelihood, indeed a great show. I just don’t know how to fit it in. It is always a relief when I discover that a recommended program is several seasons along. It gives me a pass. There is no way to catch up on that!

After unwisely accepting a challenging line up of commitments last fall, I have given time management quite a bit of thought this year. I am trying to develop strategies, set boundaries, prioritize. I keep thinking that this should come easy to a librarian, but it doesn’t - at least not to this librarian.

I cannot count the times I have seen, heard or read something worth sharing, picked up my phone, start to open Twitter, then close it and put the phone away. I cannot bring myself to restart the conversation. This is the opposite of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). This is FOBO - Fear of Being Overwhelmed.

The irony of course is that my dog has a very active Instagram account and I have the capacity to squander a full 40 minutes looking at all the adorable doodles "he" follows (doodles are poodle hybrids, in case you are not a dog person). I suppose I should give that up. I rationalize that it is a harmless guilty pleasure but it is accompanied by feelings of guilt and shame once I snap out of an “episode” and calculate the lost minutes. They matter, those minutes. I have a lot to do in real life.

So that’s it. I have no solutions. I have nothing to offer but a very frank account of my struggle to find balance while bombarded with an abundance of really terrific media content, the pressure to re-engage with my social media accounts (and relinquish my dog’s), and the need to be fully present in my real life. And read. And blog. And... no. I will stop there.

There is one thing I know for sure. I am not alone.

PS If you are wondering where I found the time to write this, I missed my O’Hare connection on the way home from a professional development gig in Florida. Once I was rebooked and my initial frustration subsided, I experienced a vague sense of relief. Four free hours? Wow! I started to write a post about using student data to inform instruction, but it turned into this. 😳

Junior Research Paper, Round Two

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 22:16:00 -0700

As Juniors begin working on their second research paper, New Canaan High School librarians are facilitating the transition between the English and social studies research experiences.

During the first semester, students participated in a flipped learning unit of instruction. They watched videos, took mini quizzes, were assessed in class, and earned digital badges. Students then submitted their works cited list to the library Moodle for feedback. Additionally, students completed an exit ticket at the end of the semester.

As a result, librarians were able to gather several data points from each student.

Number of digital badges
Score on in-class quiz
Grade(s) on works cited drafts
Responses to exit ticket questions
Score on the English junior research paper

They are compiling this information into customized learning plans for each student.

From the open-ended responses to the exit ticket, we are able to glean what kind of support each student wants from the library for the second semester research paper. We found that there are essentially six categories of help requested.

Finding good sources
Advanced search strategies
Writing the research paper
Creating embedded references
Citing in MLA 8
Work independently

Combining this information with student performance on various checkpoints such as the MLA 8 quiz, the bibliography, or effort, we are organizing students into learning groups. This allows us to run mini-workshops and offer lots on one on one help to better tailor our instruction to individual students learning needs. We are sharing this information with both the English and the social studies teachers.

In the meantime, we continue to document our days in photos:

And here are some photos of New Canaan High School library learning this week:

How will Your Librarian Help You?

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Thu, 1 Mar 2018 22:13:00 -0800

Two years ago, we did a 44 day experiment. We set our alarms to ring every period of the school day and one more time at 3PM. Each time our alarm went off, we took a snapshot of what we were doing. At the end of the experiment, we analyzed how we spent our time. Here was the resulting post.

We wanted to see what changed over the last few years. Are services changing? Are we using our time differently? There was only one way to find out so we are rebooting our experiment. We are now three days in and this is what we have so far. It will continue to grow throughout the day, every school day through the end of May. We hope you will follow along!

On February 16, while students were on vacation, teachers spent the afternoon brainstorming strategies to personalize learning at New Canaan High School. Here are a few photos of what teacher learning looks like:

Here are some photos of library learning this week

Searching & Researching in Google

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 22:12:00 -0800

This week, we had a chance to review some useful Google search and research tips with Tasha Bergsen-Michaelson, the the former Search Educator at Google, and we thought we would share a few here. Parents, students and teachers are likely to learn something they did not know before. So here goes:

First, we should probably explain the difference between searching and researching. Search is what happens on the fly. It answers those "I wonder..." questions. We all know the routine, right? Here is an example, "What was the name of that Zac Efron movie with Amanda Crew from a few years ago?" Then we search for that answer. In other words, we look it up.

Research is so much more than looking something up. It is a process. At New Canaan High School, we follow an agreed upon research protocol -- a research model -- that guides members of our learning community through the research experience with some degree of systematization. We acknowledge that the process is recursive, and that researchers may need to modify their steps depending on their learning goals, but having a guide helps learners internalize what it means to do research. This skill will serve them for the rest of their learning careers.

NCHS Research Model

Our students often use Google for Web searches and Google Images to locate... wait for it... images! It should be added that Video search is becoming increasingly important as an increasing number of teachers ask students to include multimedia content in their resource lists.

Google Web queries can be refined in very useful ways. There is an advanced search option. The link is located in the bottom right corner of the Google Search window.

Where to find Advanced Search

Google Advanced Search is incredibly powerful. You can find pages with...

all these words
this exact word or phrase
any of these words
none of these words
numbers ranging from

Then narrow your results by...

languge
region
last update
site or domain (.edu, .gov, etc.)
terms appearing

anywhere in the page
in the title of the page
in the text of the page
in the URL of the page
in the links to the page

SafeSearch
file type
usage rights

You can also...

Find pages that are similar to, or link to, a URL
Search pages you've visited
Use operators in the search box
Customize your search settings

Unfortunately, many students do not know these options exist, and yet we have evidence that they would benefit from using them for research.

Google Advanced Search

Image searching is widely used across disciplines. Images searches can be filtered in powerful ways as well. The "Tools" option allows for the following refinements:

size
color
type
time
usage rights
more tools

SIZE	COLOR	TYPE

TIME	RIGHTS	MORE

Google Images Tools

It helps to know your operators. Most of our students have learned basic Boolean operators (AND, OR, & NOT) by junior year, but Google has its own operators, and they are a little different. Click on the image below to learn more about Google operators.

Google Operators

Over the past few weeks, many NCHS 9th graders researched themes addressed in nonfiction books they read. The titles follow:ge

We built a research guide in our new THE ANNEX@, but we did face one challenge. We have the option of building two kinds of custom Google searches. The first kind confines student searches to specific sites. The other searches a predefined set of search terms to which our students can add their own terms.

The first option piqued our interest because students were asked to locate one article in the New York Times, and we thought we could create a custom search restricting their results to that publication. But Google offers a site search operator, so we taught them the operator instead:

site:nyt.com "North Korea"

The second option - the one that allows us to pre-filter student searches with relevant search terms - was more appealing. Students were assigned to locate Web sources about a topic of global concern, for example, child poverty in India (Behind the Beautiful Forevers), human rights in North Korea (Nothing to Envy), unaccompanied migrant children (Enrique's Journey) that were not news articles, so advocacy websites, think tanks, etc. We designed and embedded custom search boxes that limited student searches to sites that featured the terms [nonprofit] or [nonpartisan], two terms that typically lead searchers to advocacy websites. This was helpful to learners.

While we ultimately want our learners to be able to master both site search (New York Times, in this case) and signal phrases ([nonprofit] or [nonpartisan]), it is helpful to introduce these strategies one at a time. We do not need to teach all of Google search in one lesson, and thus we helped students concentrate on one new skill: site search while using technology to simplify one of their other research tasks (for now): finding an advocacy website.

Sophomores researching Imperialism were introduced to a few new strategies for the early stages of research, including:

Signal phrases
Threshold concepts
Pattern recognition

Click on the bulls-eyes in the image below to learn more.

Finally, we know that Wikipedia is immensely popular with our learners. It is great for looking up information, but we caution learners to beware of inaccuracies and editor infighting. Students are encouraged to do their due diligence when using Wikipedia as a reference tool. They should always check the "View History" tab (top right). We teach students to look for arguments between editors. This teaches students how Wikipedia works, and increases their skepticism which is a highly desirable disposition among researchers.

Here are a few pictures of library learning:

Flipping & Badging

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 22:08:00 -0800

On the surface, one would think that creating a list of consulted resources is a mechanical, lower-order thinking task, but creating citations involves resource evaluation.

The chart below cross-walks Essential Questions (EQs) with the nine Modern Language Association (MLA 8) elements of a citation, and the widely used C.R.A.P. Test (Currency, Relevance, Authority, Purpose). The citation seldom helps learners evaluate the accuracy of their source, but it does tell them something about currency, relevance, authority, and purpose. Creating a citation will not help researchers evaluate a resource as a stand-alone activity, but it will help learners think more analytically about what they are consulting.

Learning, practicing, and perfecting research documentation habituates students to reviewing author bios, reading "About" pages, checking dates, and deconstructing URLs. This goes a long way toward sharpening students’ skepticism – a disposition that serves researchers brilliantly.

Back in October, we introduced a new strategy to teach all students in grades 9-11 how to create a bibliography following the new Modern Language Association's guidelines (MLA 8). This has been a year long process. Each week, we think of new ways to improve the system.

Digital badges work! If we'd known the degree to which digital badging would incentivize learning, we would have introduced them ages ago. In our last post on this topic, we were just about to launch a digital badging program in the library Moodle. Moodle is one of the high school's current learning management systems.

"My badges" in Moodle

Showing off an IRL badge

15 Digital Badges Earn 1 IRL Badge!

Students watch our 14 instructional videos (as a homework assignment in grades 10 and 11; in class for 9th graders). After watching each video, students take a mini quiz. A sample question follows:

When students click the "check" button, feedback appears. Correct responses generate validation feedback, whereas incorrect responses generate additional instruction on that concept. Students may re-attempt each quiz as many as three times.

When a student's quiz score meets the established criteria, he/she is issued a digital badge. This is automated, so it occurs instantly. When class meets again, students should theoretically have 14 badges. Then, one of the librarians administers a 10-15 minute quiz in class. A score of 75 or higher will earn students their fifteenth badge. Nearly 400 students have taken this quiz since October 17, 2017.

We encourage students to submit their bibliographies to the library Moodle for feedback. In fact, many teachers require it. In a recent analysis of 65 bibliographies, we learned that the program is effective in improving student learning outcomes.

The table above features data for three ninth grade history classes. This is brand new learning for these students. They have never created bibliographies from scratch before. In middle school, they relied on EasyBib, an online citation generator, to do this work for them. The learning curve is steep and it will require many tries and much practice before the process feels seamless to them. Given that context, a 60% success rate is excellent this early in the school year. While we did not collect data last year, anecdotal feedback from teachers assures us that we are on the right track.

Nearly 200 students have submitted bibliographies for review since October 23, 2017. In order to provide timely feedback to each student, we embedded grading criteria into Moodle to establish clear expectations for student success. It follows:

We embedded a comment bank to support learners and teach them how to improve their work. We had one last year, but we streamlined it by cutting to half as many comments. The list is embedded below.

Because this list is embedded in Moodle, we can click relevant comments into each of the ten grading criteria fields to personalize feedback. This not only helps students understand what they got wrong, but how to fix it, and for those who need further explanation, each comment includes a link to examples, such as the one below.

What learning looks like at New Canaan High School Library:

A Word (or 1300) About Databases

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 21:57:00 -0800

October is budget month. We take time to review our database subscriptions, and their usage to help plan for the following fiscal year. We are often asked about these subscriptions. here is our list.

ABC-CLIO

This has traditionally been our most popular database. We actually have to DIScourage students from using it once they get past the reference phase of their research. It has, to a large extent, replaced our print reference collection.

World History The Modern Era

World History Ancient and Medieval Eras

World at War

American History

American Government

World Geography

Modern Genocide

Daily Life

World Religions

Issues

American Indian Experience

U.S. Geography

EBSCO

OpenAthens

OpenAthens is the third party software that enables students to log on to ALL databases simply by being logged into their @ncps-k12.org account in the browser they are using to access them (see lesson). Until we subscribed to this Single Sign On (SSO) service, database use was impeded by authentication issues. Since SSO, our database usage is up by 34 percent.

EBSCO Modules

Points of View

This database provides opposing points of view on contemporary issues. It is similar to the New York Times’ Room for Debate and Gale’s Opposing Viewpoints in Context, but it features different content than the others. Students find these resources particularly helpful when working on OP-Ed pieces in 10th grade English and the Junior Research Papers in 11th grade.

EBSCO Discovery Service

This is a service that permits students to cross-search most of our database content through one search widget. In tandem with OpenAthens, this service streamlines database searching for students and generates extremely relevant search results. It also generates fairly accurate MLA 8 citations for all its content.

Academic eBook Collection

Through this collection, students have access to over 123, 000 ebook titles. The collection includes texts in world languages, highly specialized manuals and technical information as well as reference materials. It is impressively inclusive.

Flipster

This is the portal that provides our learning community with access to our online magazine collection (there’s an app for that!). The list grows a little each year. This year, it includes

The Atlantic

Automobile Magazine

Bloomberg Businessweek

Car & Driver

ESPN Magazine

Esquire

Food Network Magazine

Forbes

Gentleman’s Quarterly

Horse & Rider

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance

Mother Jones

Motor Trend

The New Yorker

Reason

Rolling Stone

Vanity Fair

The Week

Wired

Slam

Poetry and Short Story Finder

Students searching for poems and short stories are often surprised to find that what they seek is not always available on the free Web. Authors frequently withhold their work from the open Internet to protect their intellectual property. This database provides learners with access to full-text poems and short stories. They use it 11th and 12th grade English classes.

GALE

Rationale

Gale is the only database provider that recognizes the limitations Library of Congress’ resource classification and chooses to label reference resources as they are: Reference. This amplifies our message that there are appropriate times in the the research process to use reference materials and that there are other times, as students move through the research model, when reference materials are inappropriate.

Gale Opposing Viewpoints - Students love its interface. We gave this up for one year because we felt the state of Connecticut provided us with a similar product, but we brought it back in response to student and teacher demand.

Google Classroom and Google Drive are now integrated into Gale so students can highlight and annotate their readings, create citations, and send them on to their school Google Drive account. Teachers can send articles and resources to their Google Classroom and share them with classes. It is the most seamless integration of Google into database services we have seen. We added the following modules to our collection.

Modules

Gale Global Issues in Context

There is no comparable product on the market, and it is aligned with our 9th and 10th grade history curriculum

Gale Literature Resource Center

Literary criticism and author biography

Gale LitFinder

Similar to EBSCO’s Poetry and Short Story Finder, but more navigable interface and more K-12 aligned content

Gale World History in Context

Gale US History in Context

Gale Science in Context

JSTOR

This database features copyrighted scholarly and peer-reviewed periodical articles. It is the gold standard in higher education libraries. Our students will be expected to know how to navigate its admittedly clunky interface as they move into the next phase of their academic careers. This product is integral to our learners’ high school to college transition.

LIBGUIDES

We have a long and proud history of NOT using subscription resources to publish our instructional content. But our LessonPaths/Blogger combination has failed us this past year on two fronts:

Ad content on Blogger

Downtime in LessonPaths

We want to provide students with the best possible user experience when it comes to library instruction. Therefore, we are adding a subscription to LibGuides (the industry standard across K-12 and higher education libraries).

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

This subscription includes three very distinct modules.

Oxford English Dictionary

There is no other dictionary like it, and we no longer carry it in print.

Oxford Art Online

This is the only database we have that specifically targets the Visual and Performing Arts curricular program. It supports learning in 9th and 10th grade history courses as well, particularly the museum project, which asks students to defend their selections for a hypothetical museum exhibit about Mesopotamia and other River Valley civilizations.

Social explorer - This database allows students to interact with demographic information through maps, charts, and graphs. It helps learners discover new strategies for consuming, mashing, and publishing census data.

NEWSBANK

After a long hiatus, we resubscribed to this service because they overhauled their interface. Newsbank allows students to cross search most English Language periodicals and news sources (including televisions and radio transcripts) from specific countries and/or regions of the world. This is an essential research tool for 9th and 10th grade English and social studies learners as they are expected to do country studies over and over again, each time from a different perspective - not an American one. Access World News also includes regional American newspapers including local publications and these serve the Civics classes as they work on regional politics for mock elections and senate simulations. Our collection includes 3 modules:

Access World News

Latin American Newspapers

This historical newspaper collection is used for the Revolutionary Diaries Project (10th grade history)

Foreign Bureau Information Service (FBIS)

Historical newspapers from around the world - extremely useful for point of view comparisons during world conflicts such as World Wars, civil wars, and/or genocides.

PROQUEST

We primarily use ProQuest for its newspaper collections. These play a vital role in our news literacy instructional program.

Research library:

The Economist Archive (1992 - present)

Another 692 publications including

Scholarly Journals (‎502)

Trade Journals (‎85)

Magazines (‎82)

Historical Newspapers

Christian Science Monitor‎ (1908 - 2004)

The Washington Post‎ (1877 - 2000)

New York Times (1851 - 2013)

Hartford Courant (1764 - 1922)

National Newspapers

The Christian Science Monitor‎ (1988 - current)

Hartford Courant‎ (1992 - current)

Los Angeles Times‎ (1985 - current)

The Wall Street Journal‎ (1984 - current)

The Washington Post‎ (1987 - current)

ROPER iPOLL

Database of public opinion surveys, such as Gallup, the New York Times, Quinnipiac, ABC, etc. information starts in 1930. This is an excellent resource for examining change over time (demonstration of how students can use this resource to generate change over time statistics).

SAGE

CQ Researcher

A Staple in the 11th grade curriculum to complete an assured experience called Congress and the American Dream.

CQ State Stats

Widely used among Civics classes for senate simulations

STATISTA

This database aggregates polling and census data from around the world and presents search results in a variety of formats, including spreadsheets so students can sort, reorganize and mash-up their findings (example).

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 07:24:00 -0700

Cross-posted from NCHS Library blog

S.T.E.A.M.4 T.E.A.M.
Our S.T.E.A.M. 4 T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology Engineering, Art, Math, for Talented Enthusiastic Adaptable Makers) met this week as they do on the 2nd Wednesday of each month after school. Our new Club Fair recruits joined our veteran Maker Majors and Techxperts to review short term and long term projects for the year. They set up shift rotations on a Google calendar. It is our hope to have someone "on duty" every period of every cycle. We still have many slots open so we are still in recruiting mode. Please contact the Techxperts if you have an interest in joining the TEAM.

Texchxperts recruit new STEAM TEAM members at the club fair

SWVBC:
We held our second Somewhat Virtual Book Club meeting on October 4 at 6PM in the library. The club meets on the first Wednesday of the month at 6PM in the library, but students who cannot attend the face-to-face book group can join virtually via Google Hangouts. This month's discussion focused on the book, The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas which sparked a deep discussion between members of Dorman High School in South Carolina, James Caldwell High School in New Jersey and members of our club. Our next book is Light Years by Emily Ziff Griffin who will be joining us. We will meet on November 1 at 6PM in the library, we serve pizza and the meeting is open to anyone. Please consider joining us, but please RSVP so we have enough food for everyone.

#SWVBC meets with other schools to discuss The Hate u Give

Maker Magic:
So far this year, 16 classes have schedule makerspace time. Projects have ranged from creating 3D name tags in Earth Science to 3D representations of Absolutist rulers for history class. Here is the list of makerspace-created projects since August. To document curricular connections for these innovative learning experiences, we link the teacher sign-ups to their assignments on the Makerspace calendar.

Earth Science: McLellan - 3D Nametages - 3
Earth Science: Haag - 3D Nametags - 1
Economics: Staffaroni - Posters/Economic Principals - 3
Civics: Goldhawk - What is Democracy - 1
Film as Literature: 3D writing prompt - 1
Global History I: Shwartz - Is Geography Destiny? - 2
Global History I: Bacon - Is Geography Destiny? - 1
Global History II: Patrizzi - Absolutism - 3
Earth Science: McLellan - Timing Devices - 1
Game Design: Honohan - Board Games - 1

The Many Faces of Absolutism

MLA 8:

Last year, starting in February and based on student reflections provided through a research project exit ticket, we made several changes to our approach to teaching students how to document their research process. We moved away from online citation generators, we created a substantive MLA 8 Help Page, we created a template for research journals to facilitate consistency among disciplines and teachers, we started collecting and providing feedback on bibliographies from students twice per week (Tuesdays and Thursdays), then created a script to expedite feedback retrieval for students, and we developed a series of lessons documenting common errors and instructing students how to avoid them. Some of those posts follow.

What we learned from collecting and scoring 380 bibliographies over the course of the last academic quarter of 2016-2017, was that students need more instruction on how to create bibliographies. Unfortunately, taking scheduled instructional time away from teachers to teach students how to perform a fairly mechanical task is inefficient. Instead, we developed a student-paced instructional experience in which students will be asked to participate at home. The virtual lesson (sign in as guest) is comprised of 14 mini-videos (1-2 minutes each; 22minutes in total), each followed by a 1-4 question "Check" (quiz that requires NCPS log-in and is thus not visible to the public). The entire experience should take 30-60 minutes depending on student retention of the video content. As a follow up activity, the teacher will administer a brief (5-7 minute) quiz in class to students to check for understanding. Once students have participated in the experience, they will receive a digital badge which will qualify them to submit bibliographies for librarian review and feedback.

This new system will serve grades 9-11. By June 2018, all NCHS freshmen, sophomores. and juniors should have earned a digital badge for mastery in constructing MLA 8 bibliographies.

A Lesson on MLA 8 in 14 parts

Our new 3D Printer!
We have a new 3D printer, and it works beautifully, silently, and quickly! Students can moitor their project's progress through the built in printercam which broadcasts to a phone app or through their computer browser. It is a work horse and it has been working all day every day. Students are encouraged to reach out to the Techxperts to learn more about becoming certified in 3D printing. and designing and programming their own projects.

Flex furniture:
We've hosted quite a few classes in the lower library (#lowerlib on Twitter) this year, the new furniture facilitates scheduling multiple classes at one. The new ColLabA is open for business and students and teachers alike are making great use the new flexible learning spaces for a variety of learning experiences. Even after school the space is in full use. The football team watches video, the math team meets regularly. the TED Club meets there too, just to mention a few uses.

Double-Header of Global I "Is Geography Destiny?"

Please follow our photo feed on Flickr:

Please follow us elsewhere on social media as well:

#SLJSummit 2017

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Sun, 8 Oct 2017 08:21:00 -0700

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Thu, 7 Sep 2017 07:20:00 -0700

Cross-posted from NCHS Library blog

NEW TEAM MEMBER:
Please welcome Ms. Pacelli as the new NCHS Librarian! Ms. Pacelli comes to us from Stratford. She lives in Trumbull, where she also taught for many years. She has two grown boys; one who is getting married in October and the other who will graduate from Syracuse University in December. She loves to do yoga, read, knit and travel when she's not working with technology. She's had wonderful experiences visiting The Southwest, Alaska, Paris, Norway, and South Africa, and would love to talk about those adventures. Stop by and say hi!

LIBRARY MAKEOVER:

We are so excited to have a fresh look in the library! Students asked for a lounge and they got one. This summer, the district upgraded the library flooring, painted the walls, transformed the old computer lab into a second ColLab, added cafe-style seating to the upper library, flexible instructional seating to the lower library, and moved the makerspace into any maker's dream space! We now have room to accommodate as many as five classes at once. Teachers are encouraged to sign-up through our Google Calendars (ColLabA, ColLabB, LibNorth, LibSouth, and Makerspace) to bring their classes. Students may do so upon request. Please scroll through the photos below to see how students are learning in our updated space:

NCHS Library's 2017-2018 Flickr Album

When students enter the library, they can review the Library Use Schedule on the easels to determine which spaces are available to individual students.

The new flexible furniture allows us to now pair up overlapping classes for library instruction in the lower library (see below). This is great for grade-level collaboration and it improves alignment between librarian availability and teachers' instructional schedules.

Co-teaching made easier!

MAKERSPACE TEACHING:

Seven classes have already made use of the makerspace. While we are still working on sorting and organization, students have made great use of the space to complete assigned projects.

BOOKTALKS:

So far, we've hosted booltaks for three English class, and two social studies classes. We have several more scheduled over the next few weeks.

With the social studies classes, we showcased special collections: The Big History Read, and The Big Legal Read. These collections were curated with the course curriculum in mind. Students are asked to read one book per quarter in their class. Selection day is a fun and eagerly anticipated event by all.

Somewhat Virtual Book Club (SWVBC) met on September 3rd for the BYOBook season opener and will continue to meet regularly on the first Wednesday of each month. Next month's selection is The Hate U Give. We will meet in the library at 6PM on Wednesday October 4 and connect virtually with schools in 4 other states via Google Hangouts to discuss the book.

CLASSES:

We sent out an invitation to social studies teachers to schedule librarian co-teaching on Friday, September 1. My Monday, we had enough responses to fill our schedules for the following three weeks. We feel very fortunate to teach in such a collaborative learning community!

COMMUNICATION:
We are returning to Flickr as a photo curation tool this year. We set up the album and it is streaming on our nchslibrary.info website (and at the top of this post).

We made a few changes to the high school library website. Stay tuned for more!

Can you spot the changes?

The New Canaan Advertiser interviewed us about collaboration in libraries. Here is the article.

For those who are new to the high school library program, we offer both face-to-face and virtual instruction. All of our lessons are archived on THE ANNEX@ Here is our first 9th grade lesson of the school year:

Create your own Playlist on LessonPaths!

S.T.E.A.M. TEAM:
Our S.T.E.A.M. Team, which combines our Techxperts with our Maker Majors is growing fast! Students who wish to facilitate makerspace usage one period out of their 8-day rotation are invited to sign up in the makerspace. We are scheduling this old-school style on a sheet of paper until the calendar is set. We meet on the second Wednesday of each month right after school in the ... wait for it... MAKERSPACE! Ms. Pacelli is the team's faculty advisor and the Techxpert teacher.

COLLABORATION:
We met with freshman social studies teachers to give the first 9th grade research project of the year a makeover. It is now called Is Geography Destiny? Through collaboration, our butcher block paper meeting notes evolved into a multi-day co-taught lesson which launched in ColLabB today.

We set up a meeting with Special Education teachers to show them how to access all the resources available though our new interactive eBooks (LightBox). These resources will be valuable to learners of all kinds. Our initial collection is comprised of the following books, but Ms. Pivovar loved them so much that she requested several more. Needless to say, this collection is growing fast!

The Cold War
Deforestation
The Great Depression
The Great Gatsby
Macbeth
Migrants and refugees
New century conflicts
Night
To kill a mockingbird
The Vietnam War
World War I
World War II

Summer Reading 501

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 09:10:00 -0700

Can you believe it?

It's summer reading time already!

A couple of years ago, I did an edweb.net webinar on innovative library programming to promote summer reading. I featured a number of inspirational librarians and their fabulous ideas.

Jane Lofton

This year, I am revisiting that topic on Wednesday May 24 at 5PM with the help of next month's guest, Jane Lofton.
We would love to feature as many library programs as possible in this, thus we are looking for folks willing to submit to a 15 minute Skype interview about innovative strategies to promote independent reading.

Please complete this form if you wish to be included!

We hope to hear from you. :)

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Strategy for Evaluating Student Work (Cont.)

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Thu, 13 Apr 2017 07:07:00 -0700

In my last few Bibliotech.me posts, I reflected on what students understand and know how to do in terms of research. I apologize for the redundancy, but we added a few elements to what I posted earlier.

It may seem as though a bibliography is a fairly superficial instrument to measure student learning, but it can reveal a great deal about the students' approach to the research process.

New Canaan High School's research model

For example, when researching how today's nations have been impacted by a legacy of imperialism, currency is of paramount concern. When we see bibliographies featuring books such as Iraq: a Country Study or Libya Since Independence with publication dates of 1998 or earlier, it raises questions. Those books do not exist in New Canaan High School Library's collection. We would have removed them years ago as it would be hypocritical for us to carry such outdated materials while instructing students to focus on resource currency. A quick search for those resources reveals that they refer to book reviews published in academic journals which are indexed in our databases.

Such citations indicate that students are not doing one or more of the following:

citing their sources correctly.
evaluating the sources they find.
analyzing the relationship between their research task and the resources they use.
reading the sources listed in their works cited.

Lately, we've been collecting bibliographies using a very simple Google Form.

Students upload a link to their visible, but not editable bibliography. This provides us with a spreadsheet of data describing the nature of the assignment with which the bibliography was aligned and links to each learner's bibliography.

We set up a comment bank to provide students with speedy, yet comprehensive feedback on their bibliographies/works cited lists. We are still fine tuning its elements, but this is what we have so far:

Using the spreadsheet functions, we created a drop-down menu in 61 columns listing all the possible comments from the aforementioned list. While reviewing student work, we click across that student's row adding coded feedback. Ultimately, we hope to embed links to instructional materials for each comment so that the feedback does more than tell them what they did wrong, it tells them how to fix it. This will take time, but it is a worthy goal.

We aggregated common mistakes. They are detailed in the chart below. We are working on creating a script to automate this process so that it updates live in our Research Help page. The most common mistakes for sophomores follow. They are different from the juniors' most common mistakes, which we interpret as positive news.

Using what we learned from the chart above, we built a lesson to help students revise their bibliographies. Then they resubmitted them. Once we review the revised drafts, we will look for overall growth within the cohort and individual growth for each learner. Here is the lesson.

We recorded the lesson as a video for the teacher to use in class.

While creating a bibliography is a fairly mechanical task, the bibliography reflects more than just the mechanics of citation creation. Unfortunately many, many students lose points on critical assignments because their bibliographies do not reflect the hard work they invested in the research process. We are constantly looking for ways to help students understand why it is important to master this skill, and how to be successful. In college most students are expected to complete 3- 5 research papers per semester, and it is our aim to equip NCHS students with research skills that will follow help them succeed not only in high school, but in life beyond high school.

If you like this post, please add a testimonial (scroll all the way down) to my "Curriculum Champion" nomination for the AASL Social Media Superstar award. Voting closes on April 14, 2017. Thank you!

Finding the story

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Thu, 30 Mar 2017 19:47:00 -0700

This is a follow-up to How to Grade 75 Bibliographies in Jiffy. We graded 10th graders' bibliographies last week. This week, it we graded the juniors'. The common mistakes are quite different. There is a story here. I am just not sure what it is yet. It may have to do with

Higher order thinking?
Depth of knowledge?
Growth?

A taxonomy might help me better understand it.

Still thinking.... (here is the comments bank)

If you like this post, please add a testimonial (scroll all the way down) to my "Curriculum Champion" nomination for the AASL Social Media Superstar award. Voting closes on April 14, 2017. Thank you!

How to Grade 75 Bibliographies in a Jiffy

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 03:25:00 -0700

This is super quick and a little sloppy, but super helpful. Sydnye Cohen and I started this system back in 2013-2014, and I thought someone else might find it useful. It is not tech-y or sexy. It's pretty old school, but it is efficient.

Problem: You've promised a teacher who is struggling with mediocre researchers (75 students, 10th grade, social studies) to help her evaluate bibliographies and provide students with feedback BUT you've had a crazy week and you've been pulled in 17 different directions and here it is, Thursday evening at 8PM, and you need to be done by morning.

All nighter? No way. Those days are over for me.

Let's just start with how we collected the assignment. The teacher's plan was to have students print their bibliographies, bring them to my colleague Jackie or me, and have us "sign off" on those that "met goal".We nixed that. It would have been a logistical nightmare - particularly given all those 17 directions I mentioned.

Teacher form

So we created a very simple Google Form for her. Literally, this is the form.

We sent students an email with a link to the form. The teacher gave students time in class to add their link to the form. You may have noticed that we did NOT ask students to give us editing rights. That was intentional. It takes too long. I don't know about you, but if I have editing rights to 75 bibliographies, I am going to spend 8-10 hours correcting them. This was a self-preservation strategy.

So... using the student responses to the form, I now have a spreadsheet full of links to bibliographies. Cool. Well, not really, but let's pretend.

I split my screen into two browser windows. I open the spreadsheet on the left, and a blank document on the right. I spend some time on the first five works cited lists (to avoid redundancy, I will use the terms bibliography and works cited list interchangeably even though they are not interchangeable), typing into the blank sheet on the right all the comments I would have posted if I had editing rights to the bibliographies.

Then I use the "bullet" function to number them. Once I have the first 12 (or so) comments in the document on the right, I add a few columns to the right of the students' links in the spreadsheet on the left. Now I go back and review the bibliographies I already looked over.

Using lined notebook paper, I note in one row all the numbers of "comments" that apply to that bibliography. For example, in the one above, I would indicate an 8 and a 9 without having to read a word, but I would add more as I scanned the entire work. I do not recommend going in order. Just jot down the numbers as you notice things. Also, don't try to address everything. Hit the big things. The whole point of this exercise is to avoid getting bogged down by minutia (unfortunately the task itself is all minutia - therein lies the time-suck factor).

OK. I now enter the comment numbers into the column to the right of the link in the spreadsheet. Then I reflect on the comments and I assign the student work a holistic score on a 1-4 scale (this rubric needs an overhaul, but it was what I used - loosely). I add the score to one of the other columns to the right in the row with the link for that bibliography.

Then you hustle on through the rest of the bibliographies. It goes faster and faster, because you start to memorize the numbers as you revisit them. Before you know it, you have given 75 students comprehensive feedback, and a teacher a holistic score for each student. Everyone is happy. Well, the kids usually aren't but hey, it's school and we're talking about bibliographies after all. You can hide the score column to preserve the students' dignity or just make a copy of the spreadsheet, removing that column and share that with the students instead. There is instructional value in having all students see what comments other students receive. One in-class work day with this spreadsheet will encourage students to help one another fix their mistakes. It's kind of messy - a lot of chaos and shouting across the room, "Hey, who got 18 wrong? How did you fix that?", but it is worth it.

One more thing: This only works if you have comprehensive online instructions for your students. Telling them what they got wrong is only helpful when you can provide access to tools that will teach them how to get it right. We are expanding this into a more fleshed out online research guide (Soon! It's coming soon!), but this is what we link to in comment #6.

Later... I crunched the numbers and here were our areas of concern:

So I created a slide show

Which became a video lesson for the teacher to use in class (I will be out the day she wants to teach it).

If you like this post, please add a testimonial (scroll all the way down) to my "Curriculum Champion" nomination for the AASL Social Media Superstar award. Voting closes on April 14, 2017. Thank you!

"Unpacking" with Joyce Valenza this Week!

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 05:01:00 -0700

On the weekend of Thanksgiving 2016, a Tweet caught my attention with the word "Truthiness." Originating from one of of my two favorite episodes of the Colbert Report (linked below), the "wØrd" prompted me to do a double-take.

The Colbert Report Sea. 1 Ep 1 - 10/17/05

The Colbert Report Sea. 2 Ed 96 - 7/31/06

It was posted by Dr. Joyce Kasman Valenza, Assistant Professor in the Masters of Information Program at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information. Before Rutgers, Joyce worked in special, public, and school libraries from which she taught not only her students and faculty, but all of us in K-12 library world some of our very best literacy lessons. Joyce is the author of the NeverendingSearch Blog for School Library Journal, which was the subject of that Tweet.

Even though I had a house full of relatives, I sat down and I read "Truth, Truthiness, Triangulation: A News Literacy Toolkit for a “Post-Truth” World." And I read. And I read. Then I read it again. This was no blog post. For school librarians, this was a bible.

SHEG's Study

When planning this year's edWeb.net's syllabus, I was determined to spend some time focusing on information literacy. Joyce's post, along with the release of the Stanford History Education Group's (SHEG) publication of Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Online Civic Reasoning were the driving forces behind that decision.

2/22/2017 edWeb.net/emergingtechwebinar

I started last month by interviewing Greg Toppo, USA Today's National Education and Demographic Writer. We "tackled the big thorny issues" (as Joyce would put it) in journalism today. It was a really great discussion and I encourage you all to check it out. It was covered by eSchool News on March 10. Every week new webinars surface on how to keep kids from consuming "fake news" as if it were real news. Very few of them include conversations between journalists and educators. The webinar might have left a few participants with a nagging "Yes, but how?" Well that's what this week is about. On Wednesday, March 22 at 5PM, eastern time, I will have a chance to unpack Joyce's information literacy masterpiece with her. I am so excited to have this opportunity, and I hope you will join us.

Media Literacy Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle Luhtala) — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 07:13:00 -0800

During my edWeb.net webinar today (5PM, eastern), I will interview Greg Toppo, the National Education Writer for USA Today, and author The Game Believes in You. “Fake news” is the buzz phrase of the season. For librarians, this is not a new topic. Teaching source evaluation is our bread and butter. So when I started thinking about what to discuss with Greg during this webinar, it occurred to me that I’ve been stockpiling questions for over five years. I am honored that Greg was able to join us today. Here are my questions for today's discussion:

1. About five years ago, I called the editor of a Wyoming newspaper, and asked him if his publication represented a conservative viewpoint. He bristled. He explained that this was an entirely new phenomenon; that he’d been in the news business for over three decades, and that he resented my assumption that all newspapers had a political slant.*

Question: Does objective journalism exist?

2. The newspaper business is apparently volatile. Interestingly, the Modern Language Association stopped requiring publisher information for periodical citations in April 2016. I can only wonder if that is because ownership changes so rapidly, In 2013, the Washington Post was bought by Jeff Bezos, the Boston Globe was bought by John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox (from the New York Times). In 2015, the Economist which had been owned by Pearson, was sold to the Agnelli Family (owners of Fiat).
Newspapers, which used to focus exclusively on article writing, are now expected to produce content that competes with a variety of other online journalistic entities. Newspapers compete for “readers” with cable and network television, streaming and podcast radio, and strictly online media outlets in ways that seemed unthinkable two decades ago.

Question: Do you consider yourself a newspaper journalist? What distinguishes the newspaper journalist from all the other kinds of media reporters out there?

3. At the 2016 New Yorker Festival, Susan Morrison interviewed now retired late-night talk show host David Letterman. The interview was broadcast on the December 22, 2016 edition of the New Yorker Radio Hour podcast. During the interview, she made this statement, “One of the things that is different about the crop of late night shows out there now … [they] seem to exist to create a batch of YouTube clips that everybody watches the next day.”

Question: To what extent, if at all, does that pressure apply in the news industry?

4. I had a conversation with an editor at the Wall Street Journal several years ago. She explained that while most of the publication’s journalistic content remains behind its paywall, they keep much of the editorial content, Review & Commentary and blogs, available to non-subscribers. She also explained that the publication periodically (no pun intended) released exclusive, or high-interest journalistic content to the public for free for a short period (12-72 hours) hoping to drum up subscriptions once the article received extensive attention through social media and then dropped it back behind the paywall.*

Question: As a reporter, do you think we ought to explain the difference between “free news” and subscription news to our students, and if so, what is that difference?

5. This is a follow-up to the last question, and I will talk about this more next month, but it is very difficult to teach students how to differentiate between media producers. They do not understand the difference between NPR, the BBC, MSNBC, Newsweek, and USA Today. To them, they are all generating news either in video, audio, text, infographic, or some other format.

Question: Should students know the difference between the various formats of news or is news just news?

Ben Smith, BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief

6. In the January 27 edition of the New Yorker Radio hour, David Remnick interviewed Ben Smith, BuzzFeed’s editor-in-Chief. During the interview, Smith made this statement: “There are certain kinds of decisions that I’ve certainly made through my career and that I think a lot of places that grew up in this new ecosystem have where the fact that older institutions have a reflex that’s rooted in their history and their traditions in this notion that they are - this sort of vestigial notion - that they probably wouldn’t even say aloud - but that is in their culture and that their job to keep the gate and keep information from their audience at certain times.”

Question: Do you agree that long-standing news providers feel a gate-keeping responsibility when it comes to releasing stories? If so, is this sustainable?

"In a way, Twitter is the new bus" - Anne Kornblut

7. Several years ago. NPR’s Steve Inskeep interviewed three reporters on the 2012 campaign trail about a 40 year old book called Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse, which was about the 1972 Nixon/McGovern campaign.

Steve Inskeep: “There’s another thing that strikes me about this book, and it’s the way that there were a few reporters who are identified who seem to influence other reporters. In 1972, I think I think the leading guy was R.W. Apple - Johnny Apple of the New York Times.”

Jonathan Martin of Politico: “Walter Mears too of the AP. There was a saying about, ‘What’s the lead, Walter?’ which was sort of the stock phrase these guys would say on the campaign trail - and that was to Walter Mears, ‘What is the news out of this event?’ ‘What’s the lead of the story?’ I think that there are still those individuals on the campaign trail, certainly. I think there is much more fragmentation now in the political news media and there are just so many outlets that you don’t quite have the same pack journalism that you probably did back in 1972.”

Steve Inskeep: “Oh wait a minute, let me just challenge that and you guys tell me if I am wrong. I think if I follow the coverage there are many, many outlets who all will obsess over the same irrelevant story at the same time.”

Martin: “Oh that’s fair. Oh sure.”

Ashley Parker of the New York Times: “But that’s less of turning to one person who's sort of the pack leader and I think part of that is a result of Twitter. Which is that anyone with a handle can Tweet out a story and generate buzz for a story so it doesn’t matter if you’re the senior correspondent or you’re a blog with a scoop. And then it all sort of gets retweeted.” “If you see lots and lots of Tweets about something, do you feel compelled to jump on that story?

Question: What drives the lead these days? This interview is five years old. Was Twitter the new driver for media then? Is it still? What other forces are out there?

8. There was a time when the newspaper was delivered to us on our doorstep and that an editorial board in a nearby city controlled the content in that publication. In that world, we read the paper, which was not tailored to our individual opinions, but rather designed to appeal to the widest possible readership. Ad revenue depended on that. We were exposed to information with which we did not necessarily agree, and content that may not have fit within our realm of interests. This is how we made discoveries about new perspectives and information.

In 2011, Eli Pariser did a little experiment that turned into a book called The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. Here’s a quote, “Ultimately, democracy works only if we citizens are capable of thinking beyond our narrow self-interest. But to do so, we need a shared view of the world we cohabit. We need to come into contact with other people’s lives and needs and desires. The filter bubble pushes us in the opposite direction – it creates the impression that our narrow self-interest is all that exists. And while this is great for getting people to shop online, it’s not great for getting people to make better decisions together.”

The concept of the Filter Bubble resurfaced shortly after the election.

Question: What role do you think our mechanisms for news retrieval have played in the political polarization of this country?

9. This fall, The Stanford History Education Group published a study called Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning. Here is an excerpt from the executive summary:
“Our “digital natives” may be able to fit between Facebook and Twitter while simultaneously uploading a selfie to Instagram and texting a friend. But when it comes to evaluating information that flows through social media channels, they are easily duped. We did not design our exercises to shake out a grade or make hairsplitting distinctions between a “good” and a “better” answer. Rather, we sought to establish a reasonable bar, a level of performance we hoped was within reach of most middle school, high school, and college students. For example, we would hope that middle school students could distinguish an ad from a news story. By high school, we would hope that students reading about gun laws would notice that a chart came from a gun owners’ political action committee. And, in 2016, we would hope college students, who spend hours each day online, would look beyond a .org URL and ask who’s behind a site that presents only one side of a contentious issue. But in every case and at every level, we were taken aback by students’ lack of preparation. For every challenge facing this nation, there are scores of websites pretending to be something they are not. Ordinary people once relied on publishers, editors, and subject matter experts to vet the information they consumed. But on the unregulated Internet, all bets are of. Michael Lynch, a philosopher who studies technological change, observed that the Internet is “both the world’s best factchecker and the world’s best bias confrmer— often at the same time.”1 Never have we had so much information at our fingertips. Whether this bounty will make us smarter and better informed or more ignorant and narrow-minded will depend on our awareness of this problem and our educational response to it. At present, we worry that democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish.”

Question: What role does education play in the “gullibility” of news consumers?

10. In 2008, Nicholas Carr wrote a piece for The Atlantic called Is Google Making us Stupid? Three years later, he published the follow-up book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. Here is a quote:

“The Net’s interactivity gives us powerful new tools for finding information, expressing ourselves, and conversing with others. It also turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment.”

Question: Do you think our attention spans are shrinking? If so how does that change the way news outlets deliver media?

11. Very recently. Teen Vogue recently shifted its focus toward social issues, identity, and activism.

Question: What lessons can we as educators, and media outlets learn from Teen Vogue’s choice to focus more on social consciousness and civic awareness?

12. That’s all I have for questions.
Question: What should we add before we close?

* Had I known I would refer back to these two conversations over and over again for years, I would have approached them more "journalistically"and documented the names of my sources, and the dates of the conversations, but sadly, I approached them both as a school librarian trying to get questions for my next class. I will always regret this.

The Atlantic	Automobile Magazine	Bloomberg Businessweek
Car & Driver	ESPN Magazine	Esquire
Food Network Magazine	Forbes	Gentleman’s Quarterly
Horse & Rider	Kiplinger’s Personal Finance	Mother Jones
Motor Trend	The New Yorker	Reason
Rolling Stone	Vanity Fair	The Week
Wired	Slam

Bibliotech

What High School Juniors Want to Know

How is Our Collection Being Used?

APA Style: the 7th edition

School Librarians Can Save Democracy

Using Design Thinking to Think About Design Thinking

The 2019 Summer Reading List is Here!

Test your (and your students') News Literacy and Close Reading Skills

An MLA 8 Question (or two or three)

Measuring Librarian Impact on Student Learning

What's going on at New Canaan High School

Desperately Seeking Balance Balance

Junior Research Paper, Round Two

How will Your Librarian Help You?

Searching & Researching in Google

Flipping & Badging

A Word (or 1300) About Databases

October is budget month. We take time to review our database subscriptions, and their usage to help plan for the following fiscal year. We are often asked about these subscriptions. here is our list.

ABC-CLIO

EBSCO

GALE

JSTOR

LIBGUIDES

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEWSBANK

PROQUEST

ROPER iPOLL

Database of public opinion surveys, such as Gallup, the New York Times, Quinnipiac, ABC, etc. information starts in 1930. This is an excellent resource for examining change over time (demonstration of how students can use this resource to generate change over time statistics).

SAGE

CQ Researcher A Staple in the 11th grade curriculum to complete an assured experience called Congress and the American Dream. CQ State Stats Widely used among Civics classes for senate simulations

STATISTA

This database aggregates polling and census data from around the world and presents search results in a variety of formats, including spreadsheets so students can sort, reorganize and mash-up their findings (example).

#SLJSummit 2017

Summer Reading 501

Strategy for Evaluating Student Work (Cont.)

Finding the story

How to Grade 75 Bibliographies in a Jiffy

"Unpacking" with Joyce Valenza this Week!

Media Literacy Part I

CQ Researcher

A Staple in the 11th grade curriculum to complete an assured experience called Congress and the American Dream.

CQ State Stats

Widely used among Civics classes for senate simulations