The Social Media Infused Classroom: Mediated Messages 2.0

I have written a few times about my experiences as a member of the Certified Google Innovator #SWE17 cohort and the ongoing learning as part of #GoogleEI . The focus of my application to the Innovator Academy (and the ongoing thread of my work with students and my colleagues) is the development of media literacy. The importance of media literacy can not be understated. Nor can the value of social media as a teaching, learning, and publishing tool.

In the latest iteration of my Innovator project, Mediated Messages, I have added a section on lesson ideas and launched a Facebook group for building a collaborative community dedicated to expanding our capacities for media literacy instruction. Social media is a multi-faceted education tool; it can be used for personalizing instruction, as a research resource, to foster global engagement, and to provide authentic digital citizenship practice. Here are examples of it being used or practiced in each of these contexts.

For Personalizing
In this previous blog post I wrote about my collaboration with an English teacher creating The Selfie Project. Ultimately, as a corollary to their study of Transcendentalism, the students used the makerspace to create 3D representations of self (we called it, "Yourself, in tangible relief"). The project started with an examination of all of the ways a student's identity can be explored, including through playlists, social media, school pictures, the contents of their bedrooms, and their school data. The lesson steps are here and this is a gallery of pictures of the students and their work

For Research
Understanding "Journalistic Truth" and the impact of digital media on our sources of information is essential to student development of savvy research skills. The journalistic truth slides outline a two-period lesson I co-delivered with an English teacher to the students in the non-fiction writing class.

Finding experts and research or non-profit foundations on social media is another excellent way for students to collect valuable insight and potential interview subjects to inform their inquiry.

For Global Engagement
An educator with a global PLN has the resources to connect students with adults and other students around the world for a sharing of culture and point-of-view. Exposure and interaction builds empathy and collaboration. My favorite experience using social media as a teaching tool happened when I was a social studies teacher working with a group of American Studies students. We were studying the cold war and I happened to have a Tweep who is an educator living in eastern Germany. She joined my class for a twitter chat about life in eastern Germany behind the wall and after the wall came down. We were scheduled to chat for 30 minutes and ended up chatting for the entirety of a 70 minute block period. During that time a few of her teacher colleagues joined the conversation as did her daughter who was a student at university. Now my students had both adults and a peer with whom to share perspectives. Several of my students and Ines' daughter began following each other on Instagram, too. The conversation began as a discussion of cold war life and evolved into a discussion of how do we each learn about the other. It was a rich exchange that far exceeded my expectations when Ines and I were planning it!

Teachers at my school haven't yet warmed to Twitter but they are enjoying Flipgrid in closed, classroom-based exercises. Expanding their grids to include participation outside of our school will be a first step building PLNs.

As anyone in the Google Innovator program knows, my cohort, my coach, and my mentor are unparalleled in their support of my work and the counsel they provide. And it's all happening via social media and Google Hangouts.

For Digital Citizenship Practice
I have an on-going collaboration with the teacher of our school's Digital Literacy course. Together we have launched a class Twitter account that the students use to post reflections on lessons and units and provide insights and guidance about good habits of online conduct. To launch this account we had students use Canva to design channel art. We loaded each of their submissions into a Google Form which we pushed to them in Classroom. Students then voted for their favorite design and that was uploaded to Twitter. Then I taught a brief lesson on Hashtags & the Anatomy of a Tweet. The conclusion of the lesson was each student drafting what the first class tweet should be. Again, we shared the submissions with the class and they chose which would be used as our introduction to the Twitterverse.

A Social Media Think Tank for your students is another way to engage them with social media in the context of your course material; here is an elevator pitch you can use with your students.

And that's not all!

My interest in educational use of social media preceded my acceptance into the Innovator Program and new opportunities to continue my learning in this realm have emerged because of the connections I made there. Here are some of the other irons I have in the fire at the moment:

At ISTE18 I will be co-presenting on using social media in the college search and application processes. From building a brand to researching schools to writing the college essay, there are so many ways students can powerfully use social media.

Public libraries in my area are interested in hosting seminars about media savvy and I have a couple happening this month.

My book is about to be released! I co-authored News Literacy: the keys to combating fake news with my friend and fellow librarian, Michelle Luhtala. It will hit the stands in May 2018! I am very excited about the companion video workshops that are being released in conjunction with the book. Those lessons include outreach into social media communities so that the learning is ongoing.

If it isn't personalized, can it really be inquiry?

When given the opportunity to write a research paper about any topic that interests them, many students become overwhelmed by the task of deciding what to research. Many librarians recommendation is to survey topic collections in the databases and pick something interesting. I say this because a member of our state's librarian listserv asked for suggestions about getting started with topic selection and I was the only participant who didn't recommend the databases. Maybe this is because I am new to librarianship. But I just don't start there. Ever.

When out to dinner with a group of people from librarian world while attending the AASL conference back in November, an interesting question arose that none of us could answer. Several people grabbed their phones to start searching for the information and I offhandedly commented that I was fairly certain none of them were searching their databases. And they weren't.

Databases are fabulous resources. Access to them is not universal or forever. And, until a student knows how to manipulate a search, databases are horribly impersonal and sterile. Students should learn how useful databases are and how to use them well, but unless they are a future librarian, starting there is a big turnoff. If we want students to enthusiastically -- or at least willingly -- engage in the hard work that is research then we need to meet them where they are, embrace it, and use it to hook them. This isn't pandering; it's personalizing.

Start with their playlists, their favorite books, their video streams, their social media feeds. Look for the threads that show possible lines of inquiry. Whom do they follow who isn't an actual acquaintance? Why do they follow? What about that person, group, or organization intrigues them? Choose a topic or idea. It will be broad. Too big for a typical research project, and now we start to narrow it.


To give them practice I choose a current event with long roots for them to work as a class to narrow. Recently, I used "protest movements" and I explain how recent protests have captured my attention and in some I have been a participant so I am using my experiences as an opportunity to select a topic. The class divides into four groups. I then do a Google image search for protest movements and ask them to just look at the images and, by themselves, consider what looks familiar and what is new. While they are looking and thinking, I give each group a large piece of chart paper or a white board. Across the top I have written one of these categories: events and issues, time periods and dates, people and organizations, places and landmarks. I give them 90 seconds to work as a group and list as much as they can about protest movements that fits the category they have been assigned. At the end of 90 minutes, they put their markers down and rotate. Same group, new topic, 90 seconds on the clock, GO! We do this until each group works on brainstorming for each category.

When they finish -- which means they return to their original table -- they compile all of the ideas on the chart paper into a Google Doc that looks like this:

Then I highlight looking for threads. In this example the thread I was using was "students" and this large topic allows for many different threads. In fact, in one class they realized that even if every student in the class started with protest movements as their original topic, once they narrowed their focus, they would still be researching 25 discrete topics. I wouldn't suggest dictating to a class that they all research about protest movements because it removes student agency from the process and therefore undermines personalization. That being said, I do work with teachers who do assign the umbrella topic.

The thread provides the first narrowing of the topic. From "protest movements" we derived a more focused topic: How schools and colleges responded to student activism in the 1960s. Then we examined that topic for points that were still general and the students were able to ask questions such as: Activism about what? And, which schools? So our final topic became:

This exercise was just the model. We completed the exercise as a class in about 25 minutes. That meant they had another 25 minutes to try this protocol with their proposed topics so I provided them an organizer in a Google Doc pushed to them through Classroom.

As they worked, the classroom teacher and I circulated helping them expand their thinking and answering questions about the images that emerged from their Google search. Ten minutes into working, I stopped the class to share my observations. I told them that I noticed some students were plowing through lists and generating lots of ideas to consider. Other students were stuck, their organizers mostly blank. I hypothesized for them that the reason some were blank was because they weren't really interested in the topic, and that if that was the case, this research paper was going to be a painful experience. Some of them snickered and nodded in ascent. I told them now was the time to choose something that really mattered and that if they really didn't have any ideas they should take out their phones, get on Instagram, and raise their hand so one of us could chat with them. And they got back to work.

By the end of class, each student had chosen a topic -- each student had agency over that topic and how it was focused. Real inquiry can now happen because they will be exploring something that matters to them, not something a teacher told them matters. This week, among other things, we will work on generating a research question, another element of personalizing the research process, so that each student is seeking the insight s/he craves about his/her unique topic. They do this by listing everything they think they know about their topic and then turn each of those statements into a question. For example:

What I already think I know:	Phrased as a question:
Upheaval on college campuses during Vietnam War	How did universities respond to student activism? Do universities tolerate student activism? Did students organize across universities? Did employers hold students’ activism against them?

It is key that they be coached to ask authentic questions, not questions that lead to a predetermined answer. In other words, stay open to ideas and avoid seeking bias confirmation. As they turn what they think they know into questions, they begin to realize two things: 1) they may not be sure about everything they think (or not know as much as they think they do), and 2) some of their questions will be easily answered (closed) and others are open to interpretation (open). They can then group closed questions with the open questions they help to answer. They are starting to organize their thinking and plot a line of inquiry. Of course they will revise and update this plan as they go, but with a starting point and a plan they can be more purposeful in their searching.

Finally, we get to the databases! We will also learn how to search Google like a database by using advanced search and how to search social media for field experts.

Thanks for reading. If you have other strategies and tips for personalizing inquiry I would love to hear them!

An off-Broadway lesson on personalization: the selfie project

Back in December I saw “In and Of Itself,” the one-man show by Derek Delgaudio off-Broadway in New York City. I was utterly awed by this show, both the concept and the performance. Perhaps you have seen, on social media, images of Neil Patrick Harris, the show’s producer, holding a small card that proclaims “I AM an individual.” The whole show, all of the stories and the magic, evolve from and respond to the individuals in the audience. All audience members, as they enter the theater, select a card that they decide defines them. My chosen card said “I AM an innovator” because I had recently returned from the Google Innovator Academy in Stockholm, Sweden. At the end of the show, Delgaudio jokes that some people may have snarkily chosen their card seeking to be something funny, like a ninja, while others may have chosen a card that is something they aspire to be, and still others a card that proclaims who or what they are. Regardless, he reminds us, each member of the audience selected a card for personal reasons that the rest of us would never know.

You might be wondering what does this has to do with libraries or school or teaching. My answer is: Everything. If Delgaudio can personalize a 75-minute long show in response to an audience of 200 or so strangers (give or take for the smattering of celebrities who attend the shows), then we can personalize our instruction for the 25 or so students in our classes whom we see daily and know by name. Whose data we review and analyze. Who spend more waking hours of their day in shared space with us than with anyone else close to them in their lives. At the end of the day, we want them to have conversations like this:

LEE: Hi!!! It’s been awhile! How are you? I just wanted to text you to see your thoughts on Derek Delgaudio’s show! As you may remember I’m a magician, and Derek is actually a friend of mine, he was my counselor for years at camp. I’m seeing his show again next week.

ME: Get out of town! I thought the show was amazing. We talked about it all night and for days

afterwards. It still comes up periodically in conversation and certainly resonates with me with things I read as you can see from my posts on Facebook. What a privilege for you to study with him! And of course I remember you are a magician, I could never forget!

LEE: Haha I’m so happy to hear you love it, I think it was a phenomenal show magic wise and theater wise. The ending was beyond beautiful, and I think the last moment of the show is jaw dropping. It’s so cool how the show extends out of itself too, with the brick leaving the theater, and having someone come to the next show, that’s just genius

ME: Yes, on all counts! I just love that I am constantly reminded in my daily interactions from having seen that show that everybody I encounter is more and different than what I think they are upon first glance or even if I have known them for a very long time.

LEE: I love that you got that out of the show, magicians just can’t normally give an audience a good message besides “haha I fooled you”....

LEE: What “I am” card did you choose?

ME: I chose innovator. I don't know if you know, but I was accepted into the Google innovator Academy and went to Stockholm to study this past October. And then when he asked people to stand if what they chose is how they see themselves, I stayed in my seat because I decided that being a Google innovator is a label someone else has given me and I am still aspiring to deserve it…. When you see him can you tell him that an aspiring innovator who is also a high school librarian in Connecticut is still thinking about the messages of his show and will for quite some time into the future.

LEE: Of course I heard! Congratulations! And I’m rly interested in that way of thinking. Of course I’ll tell him for you! ...

This is the transcript of a Facebook messenger chat I had with a former student who saw my social media post about seeing the show. Parts of the chat have been removed to prevent show spoilers, but the spirit of the chat is in tact. I have included this chat, with Lee’s permission, because it shows a teacher-student relationship outside of the classroom and because the interaction was made possible by a social media connection. Lee and I first shared a classroom, classmates, and a curriculum. Now we safely and respectfully share a digital space.

This dialogue with Lee helped me articulate for myself the ironically simple lessons I have taken from Delgaudio’s performance and translate those lessons into teaching and librarianship. What follows is an exploration of a way I am collaborating with a teacher of AP English to apply these lessons to the students’ examination of Transcendentalism. First, the lessons (in no particular order):

Lesson 1: Be authentic. Share stories from your life so that your collaborators (students and teachers) understand your backstory. It is impossible to develop empathy otherwise.

Lesson 2: Acknowledge, then disregard, your preconceptions. We all have them and they limit how well we can understand each other.

Lesson 3: Magic inspires awe. Embrace wonderment. It leads to questioning, theorizing, teamwork, and problem solving. It may not lead to “right” answers, and it doesn’t have to.

Lesson 4: Timing is everything! Capitalize on the moment. Know where the students are and meet them there. Don’t wait for them to come to you.

My co-teacher in this exercise is a highly-regarded veteran educator. Her background in the pop culture publishing world helps her bring an edge to her curriculum application that students appreciate. We have only known each other for six months. While she has invited me to teach lessons in one of her classes, we have just begun to transition from me as guest teacher to us as co-teachers. And this is the first time she has opened her high stakes, AP class to working with me. Transcendentalism is perfect content fodder for applying the four lessons.

The students will read and unpack Emerson and Thoreau’s consideration of self. The students are discussing the musings of two men who, more than 150 years ago, dedicated themselves to understanding the nature of intellect, the connections between humans, and what it means to be self-actualized. Needless to say, this is a stretch for 17 year olds. Thoreau, at least, disconnected himself from organized society to get in touch with himself and the natural world. Disconnect is not something digital teens do often or willingly. But portrayals of self are something they do constantly. So selfies and snapchats are our authentic route by which to bring transcendental thinking to the digital teen.

With fidelity to the TPACK model of educator collaboration, the English teacher will guide the students through a viewing of Into the Wild and an application of Emerson and Thoreau to Chris McCandless. They will also be reading the article from the May 21, 2009 New York Times called “The Case for Working with Your Hands”. As colleague says, working with your hands is “a very Thoreauvian thing to do.” This means the students are coming to work in the makerspace!

We are starting with a consideration of the art of portraiture and these guiding questions:
How do artists and photographers capture the essence of a person?
Has the artist captured not the person but whom we want the person to be?
Or, do we not matter and the artist portrays the subject as the artist wants the subject to be seen?
Students will apply these questions to various portraits and self-portraits including Arnold Newman’s iconic photograph of Alfried Krupp, Annie Liebowitz photographs of Patti Smith and both a Frida Kahlo self-portrait and a still from the movie starring Selma Hayek in which the painting of that self-portrait is portrayed. Artists have been making selfies for centuries; these are the ones we selected because the content of each will likely resonate with our students (Lessons 1 and 4).

Now we will turn the students to examine different conscious and unconscious ways they are portrayed and in the interest of time, the introspection and artifact collection that must occur in preparation for the final project will be facilitated through a series of shortscreen casts, thus flipping the classroom and allowing for private reflection on the nature of self. For each type of portrayal we will both share a piece of our own story (Lesson 1). We will start with student data. Between Naviance, PowerSchool, and College Board, there is lots of data that is compiled to tell a story of each of these students -- both as individuals and as part of an aggregate. They will collate their data and decide, “If all we know about you is your data… who are you?” (Lesson 2)

Next we will turn to their playlists and ask them to consider what do their video and music preferences say about them? “If all we know about you is your playlists… who are you?” Related to their playlists is the constructed reality of their social media self-portraits. After they review what they think are their important posts on a variety of platforms, they will decide: “When you post on social media, what narrative of your life or yourself are you creating?” (Lesson 4)

Next, we will turn to the tangible. Students will inventory their bedrooms making a list of what they find there and respond to this question: “If all we know about you is the contents of this space… who lives there?” Finally, we want them to collect their school pictures, arrange them from youngest to oldest, and when they see them in sequence consider what story they tell (Lesson 1).

Have you noticed an absence of Lesson 3? Here it comes!

Now the students are ready to get Thoreauvian. It is time for them to unpack themselves. Using all the information about themselves that they have curated: their data, their playlists, their social media, the artifacts in their rooms, and their school pictures, they are going to answer these questions:

What do you:
Hope? Fear? Believe? Desire? Wonder? Deny? Aspire? Want? Plan? Anticipate? Avoid? Regret?


Each response must include evidence from their curated information and artifacts.

And now it is time to create! The class will visit the makerspace to create a selfie, a tangible representation of all that it means to be them. They can use light and sound, texture, mixed media, positive and negative space, and all the possibilities of their imagination (Lesson 3). They might compose and shoot their own photographic portrait, or create a mixed media representation of themselves, or build a sculpture, or something else we can’t anticipate. In other words, your self, in tangible relief. It will be magical and they will appreciate that there is so much more to them and each other than can possibly fit on one card.

Hacking Assessments with Augmented Reality

In my new role I am overseeing the students enrolled in our help desk course. I am in the process of invigorating a program that has been languishing. To do this, the I returned to the core of what the program is supposed to be or supposed to accomplish: independent learning by students and service to the community. Each student has identified a problem, of sorts, that they want to solve, they are working through design thinking protocols to develop and prototype solutions as well as identifying areas of new learning for themselves in order to implement the solution.

Two students have partnered to help revamp our freshmen orientation and new student transition programs by creating a 3D virtual tour of our school.

One student is investigating high levels of stress in shelter animals and plans to use our makerspace to create toys and other tools for donating to local shelters.

Another student is responding to teacher frustrations with our current program for reporting grades by building a grade book as a Google add-on.

Yet another student is hacking assessment.

He decided that the problem he experiences impacts his classmates as well, and that is, lack of choice in assessments. From his perspective, students are assigned to do the same thing in all of their classes. No variety and little choice. So he is learning augmented reality tools to systematically hack assessments that are assigned to him. His goal is to apply an AR hack to one assessment in each discipline over the course of the semester.

He has started by using Metaverse to create a guide to solving a complex math problem. He is anticipating all of the errors a student could make while solving the problem and using his AR tour to provide hints and redirection. This is the student explain his progress so far, obstacles he has encountered, and how he is getting around them.

He is still doing all of the work that is assigned to him. He is using the one period each day during which he is assigned to help desk, to show the same learning his teachers expect in a different (and personalized) way. When he is done, he will share both products with his teacher: the assigned one, and the hack. Once he has completed two or three of them, we plan to offer an "Appy Hour" seminar for faculty to learn from him about his projects and what he is learning along the way.

To that end, he is regularly sharing with me his metacognitive moments along the way. Here he is sharing his reflection about learning while working on his math problem:

Shakespeare in the Garage

Students enrolled in the English department elective, Shakespeare, will be the first class to work in The Garage (our re-branded makerspace). Before the winter break the class visited for an orientation to the space and their project. Next week they will begin creation now that they have had time for project ideas to gestate and to collect materials they may want to use or contribute to their classmates.

I consulted with the classroom teacher to understand his learning objectives, assessment needs, and concerns about embarking on this type of project before designing options for the students. Primarily the teacher was concerned that the level of rigor to which he was accustomed when he assigned papers to students be maintained in this approach. In addition, if there was to be a collaborative component to the project, he wanted to be sure that each student contributed fairly and purposefully to the group product.

In the past, the teacher had consulted the resources and suggestions from the Folger Library when planning for this Shakespeare class so when I developed three options for the students, I began by adapting an idea he had seen there knowing that he recognizes their resource credibility. Here are the ideas I proposed:

Idea 1: Character in a Box (individual project)

What kind of box or container best fits this character? (could be a steamer trunk, magical cabinet, barrel, burlap sack, coffin, etc.) Why? And how will you show this?

Does this box ground this character to a place or allow (force?) this character to move? Why? And how will you show this?

What does this character:

• Hope?
• Fear?
• Believe?
• Desire?
• Wonder?
• Deny?
• Aspire?
• Want?
• Plan?

As a result of the attributes above, what would s/he put in the box? Find or make those things to add to your box, at least one item per attribute. Justify each selection with an excerpt from the play.

As a result of the attributes above, what else would be in the box whether or not s/he wants it there? Add it to the box and justify it with an excerpt from the play.

Design the outside of the box to resemble how the world sees the character; design the inside of the box to represent how the character understands him/herself.

Idea 2: Wandering Journal (group project with individual components)

You will work in a group of four; each student assumes the role of one of the main characters in the play: Prospero, Caliban, Ariel, or Antonio.

Create an entry in your journal, in character, in response to the following words by Miranda:

“Oh wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is!  O, brave, new world

That has such people in ‘t! (5.1.215-218)

Then, trade journals with another group member, and, still in character, create a journal entry in response to the original one.

You will continue to trade journals until your original journal is returned to you.

Identify journaling techniques that will work for each play element to be explored; each group member must use at least the techniques in bold and at least two additional techniques:

• Using the actual text page(s) as canvas
• Using the same passage (Act V, Scene 1) from the text for a found poem
• Image creation and annotation with lines from the play
• Found image collage and annotation with lines from the play
• Color vs. monochromatic - purposefully use color as a symbol or motif
• Storyboard: segments vs. whole page
• Multiple drawings of same concept or object (POV) incorporating color and media as it pertains to each POV
• Media/material variation

This cycle will be repeated with a new prompt of the group’s choice or a new set of characters.  Your complete journal will have a total of eight character entries (two from each student in the group), artwork, and additional creative writing elements.

After you review the different entries, you will then make an entry in your own voice (not in character) in which you respond to and comment on what you learned from the collection of entries. 

You might consider:

• Origins of conflict and obstacles to resolution
• Gaps in understanding rooted in differing cultures
• What it means to be, or to consider someone else to be, the “other”
• At least one way in which these themes of the play resonate in contemporary society

Also, you will design an appropriate cover for your journal. 

Students must write a Shakespearean sonnet as a closing exercise and document the sonnet in their journal.  Use this checklist. (provided by the classroom teacher)

Idea 3: Personal Journal (individual project)

Students work independently to create a journal that explores all of these elements of the play:

• Setting
• Characterization
• Culture and conflict
• Family
• Intersection of tragedy and comedy

As well as these themes:

• Origins of conflict and obstacles to resolution
• Gaps in understanding rooted in differing cultures
• What it means to be, or to consider someone else to be, the “other”
• At least one way in which these themes of the play resonate in contemporary society

Identify journaling techniques that will work for each play element to be explored; you must use the techniques indicated in bold and at least two additional techniques:

• Using the actual text page(s) as canvas
• Using a text passage for a found poem
• Image creation and annotation with lines from the play
• Found image collage and annotation with lines from the play
• Color vs. monochromatic - purposefully use color as a symbol or motif
• Storyboard: segments vs. whole page
• Multiple drawings of same concept or object (POV) incorporating color and media as it pertains to each POV
• Media/material variation

Design a cover for your journal and create at least eight, full-page entries in your journal, at least one entry for each element of the play and at least one for each theme. Each page should incorporate relevant lines from the play.

Students must write a Shakespearean sonnet as a closing exercise and document the sonnet in their journal. Use this checklist. (provided by the classroom teacher)

These materials are available in the Garage for students to use:

3D printer

Basic circuitry, LED lights, sound cards

Markers

Colored pencils

Chalk pastel

Oil pastel

Poster & watercolor paints

Duct tape, various patterns & colors

Glue: sticks, hot, tacky

Felt

Foil

Embroidery floss

Ribbon, Fabric & Yarn: various widths, lengths, patterns & colors

Buttons

Sewing supplies

Construction paper

Wrapping paper

Cardboard tubes, varying sizes

Recycled: plastic containers, magazines, plastic netting, 3D printer shapes

LED finger lights

Mason and other shaped jars

Sequins

Pom Poms

Feathers

Popsicle sticks

Pipe cleaners

Bottle caps

Beads

Clothes Pins

I developed this rubric for the students to use in planning their projects and for assessing their final products. To learn how the rubric works, students practiced by applying the rubric to the work of Lynda Barry which is available to them in print form in the Library Learning Commons collection as well as personal copies I let them borrow.

MULTIMEDIA PRESENTATION RUBRIC

	The Way You Do the Things You Do * The Temptations	Knockin' on Heaven's Door Take your Pick	Unchained Melody The Righteous Brothers	What's Goin On? Marvin Gaye
General Appearance & Aesthetics	Strong aesthetic appeal, not cluttered, graphics enhance content; image selection is appropriate; makes you want to continue interacting; enhancements enrich the viewing and learning experience and significantly contribute to conveying the content and meaning, content-relevant visuals establish a clear visual pattern that aids audience understanding	Multimedia elements adequately contribute to conveying the content and meaning; most graphics used appropriately to enrich the experience; although purpose may not be readily evident; main points are evident and expanded through presentation; good, relevant visuals	Lacking attention to aesthetic design. Graphics are random or insufficient and do not enhance content; too much text, needs to be condensed	Graphics interfere with or distract from content and communication of ideas; inappropriate or no use images; an essay on a poster
Critical Thinking & Content Mastery	The presentation of ideas is thoughtful, insightful, clear and focused. You approach the topic from an unusual perspective, use your unique experiences or view of the world as a basis for communicating; you make interesting connections between ideas. It is implicit that this exploration matters. Explores the complexity of the issues; in-depth analysis; confrontation and discussion of conflicting information, motivations and ideas; critical thought & research evident; interprets principles in accurate and insightful ways. Thoroughly researched; all points substantiated by evidence; no assumptions; sophisticated understanding of details, nuances and subtleties of the content; sufficient information to make the presentation worth reading or viewing; information is conveyed; content effectively achieves its intended purpose; historical information is accurate and relevant. Makes frequent, meaningful and rich cross-discipline and/or real-life connections	You attempt to develop all ideas; although some ideas may be developed more thoroughly and specifically than others; the overall development reflects some depth of thought, enabling the viewer to generally understand and appreciate your ideas. Analysis accurate but lacking depth of understanding; may not demonstrate clear understanding of audience motivation; may lack thoroughness in addressing purpose. Considerable evidence contributes to message development but lacks depth; assumptions cloud facts, some ideas are ambiguous. Makes relevant cross-discipline and real-life connections	Limited by superficial generalizations; unclear or simplistic; may be simply an account of a single incident instead of articulating a purpose; therefore the viewer cannot sustain interest in the ideas More descriptive than analytic; relies on summary of information and events rather than application of information to audience opinion; makes errors in interpreting research; ineffectively synthesizes the information. Exhibits only sketchy or insufficient evidence; may have errors; some understanding of details, nuances and subtleties of the content; most subject knowledge is literal and does not enhance message development. Attempts some cross-discipline and real-life connections that demonstrate partial understanding	Confusing and hard to follow; disorganized; develops no connections among ideas; statements are convoluted and viewer is left questioning the work itself and not the ideas presented in the work Inadequate or inaccurate understanding of the information, events or audience; attempts at analysis or insight are confused or inappropriate; major errors in understanding. Almost no use of evidence; attempts are confused or inappropriate; major errors; complete misunderstanding or no effort to understand the details, nuances and subtleties of the content. Learns primarily without cross-discipline or real-life connections
Presentation	Shows sophisticated sense of audience; uses language artfully and articulately; meaningfully organizes; uses media/materials effectively	Shows clear sense of audience; uses language effectively; clearly organizes; uses media/materials appropriately	Shows some sense of audience; uses language somewhat effectively; somewhat organized; somewhat appropriate use of media/ materials	Shows little sense of audience; uses language ineffectively; weak organization interferes with meaning; ineffective use of media/materials

* a note on the use of song titles in rubrics

It has long been my practice not to designate point values in rubrics. I use song titles, movie titles or other pop culture references as category headings. I want students to focus on the descriptions of their process, habits of mind, and choices rather than point values. Students frequently debate whether certain category headings are appropriately assigned which is an indicator that they are considering the characteristics and qualities of each section of the rubric.

The Garage: Rebranding a makerspace and a help desk

Makerspace

Innovation Lab

Genius Bar

Student Help Desk

Perhaps as educators we are jazzed by these terms. Their connotations are infused with creative possibility and agency. But I have spent a few months watching both an area dedicated to making and a student help desk in our library learning commons just languish. Coincidentally, an area not far from the entrance to the LLC is set aside as a space dedicated to seniors, called "The Jungle." And it is vibrant and thriving with both social and academic activity. In fact, so much so, that we have very recently dedicated resources to adding power and connectivity to that space!

Maybe it was because I was collaborating with the teacher of our Shakespeare course that I started thinking about what is in a name. What a space is called can impact how it is perceived and used. And so I started to think about spaces where I create:

My dining room table (much to the chagrin of my family at meal time!)

My desk

and then it hit me... MY GARAGE!

In my garage I paint. I deconstruct pallets.

I build shelves and birdhouses.

I disassemble and reassemble the components of my Jeep.

I accumulate and store the raw materials of future projects.

And, of course, Google was born in a garage.

So our maker space is now called The Garage. Unfortunately we are no longer in flea market or tag sale season, but in the spring I will be in the market for a peg board and tools and the various accouterments of a high-tech and low-tech garage to complement our other creation materials. I plan to commission a student artist to render a garage door on one of the walls. I am excited to have the students watch as a mural created by one of their peers emerges on The Garage wall!

This re-branding effort has also enabled a rejuvenation of our student help desk program. I don't know if they will choose to call themselves grease monkeys, garage attendants or technicians or some other term I haven't imagined (I am leaving that up to the students enrolled in the program), but what ever they are called, they will be our models of innovation in the The Garage. The working slogan for The Garage is: "where ideas meet the tools of innovation" so our student techies will work publicly in The Garage on independent, problem-based projects. They will study design thinking and problem solving in order to acquire the insight and skills necessary to make their solution a reality. They will plan, iterate, and fail forward in a collaborative work space and become models of self-directed (personalized) learning. Rolled into their work is participation in a closed Facebook group dedicated to the program so they can share ideas, get and offer feedback, and recommend resources to each other. This will be important since they are each assigned to the space during a different period of the day.

The slides below outline the first couple of weeks of the program and draw heavily on my experiences at the Google Innovator #SWE17 Academy:

Periodic updates will appear once their program starts at the end of January!

The first class to visit The Garage will be a Shakespeare class and they will be making character boxes or wandering journals (student choice). They are scheduled to visit early in the new year so more on how they respond to our re-branding in a future post.

Big Takeaways on Personalizing Instruction through Use of Technology

As the year comes to an end, I am reflecting on how I worked to personalize instruction through the use of

Photo taken while visiting colleges
with my daughter

technology as an instructional tool.

Technology for Demonstration of Mastery:

In working with an English teacher on her op-ed unit for her sophomore classes we discussed and planned ways for students to select topics that are meaningful and interesting to them. This unit is key for enabling each student to focus on a personal topic of interest or concern. Furthermore, we planned for digital writing, informed by Troy Hicks' book, Crafting Digital Writing, so that students would be creating for an audience beyond the teacher and include multimedia extensions of the their writing to expand the discussion of the issue they selected.

Technology and Media Information Influences:

With another member of the English department, we planned a unit that focused on student exposure to media and advertising through various outlets -- print and digital. We guided the students to choose an aspect of their lives and American society and examine the influence that media has on it. This unit enabled students to practice their research skills and apply them to an aspect of their own lives particularly influenced by technology and digital media. Together we watched and discussed advertisements for the products of companies like Apple and analyzed how those ads changed over decades in response to current events, societal concerns, and target audiences.

Technology Tools for Feedback and Formative Assessment:

For all classes, whether they were working on the junior research paper or other research-based projects, we streamlined the feedback loop for the steps of the research process. When students were brainstorming topic ideas, they submitted these ideas and the reason why those topics were interesting to a Google Form. This allowed me to review their ideas, use the Google Sheet that held the Form responses to provide feedback, and pose questions to help the students refine their topic selection when I visited class. The classroom teachers also began adding their feedback to the Google Sheet when they realized the utility of the sheet for tracking feedback and the students' revised thinking. The next step was for the students to add a draft of their research questions to the Sheet so I could provide feedback on their question development. Entries into the sheet were followed by a class session where I co-taught with the classroom teacher. Working one-on-one with students in class helped to ensure that students were choosing fruitful and manageable topics. As the research projects evolved, I joined the classes for multiple days dedicated to source location and provided instruction on citations and works cited. We developed a research journal as a Google Doc to help students organize their sources, notes, questions, citations, and thinking about their topic. These journals were excellent formative assessment opportunities for the classroom teacher and I to give students feedback on the depth of their questions and sources, gaps in their thinking or understanding, and next steps in the process.

Tech Tools for Conveying Information:

Second semester we built a rich MLA 8 citation website. After our first semester frustrations with Noodle Tools and EasyBib, we agreed that students would be better served by learning to build their citations from scratch. Doing so pushes them to thoroughly examine the scope and quality of their sources of information and become savvier consumers of information. Teachers in the Social Studies and English departments value accurate citation protocols and several of them supported our initiative by granting us class time to work one-on-one with students and recognized the value of the students' increased access to educator (librarian and content teacher) support and feedback in class. 

The Google Site includes a slideshow that steps students through the citation building process, an infographic illustrating the nine elements of an MLA 8 citation, a video showing how to create a hanging indent, copious models of works cited pages and citations, and a form for receiving librarian feedback on works cited and warnings about most common student errors. This site continues to be a work in progress as we refine the resources and streamline individualized student feedback.

Our Google Form for submitting final works cited for feedback before submitting the product of their research to their classroom teacher gave us insight into the most common errors that students were making so we could supplement the resources in the MLA 8 Citation Google Site that we created during second semester. The data we collected showed a dramatic difference in the quality of works cited being submitted by students who had received library instruction as opposed to those who worked only with their classroom teacher. The average score out of 5 for students receiving library instruction was a 3.34; those who did not receive this instruction scored an average of 2.33.

The Value of the (Virtual) Library:
My use of forms to collect individualized information from students on their stages in the research process and provide feedback combined with one-on-one in-class instruction and the library texting service were key elements differentiating library instruction. Teachers benefited by having me provide feedback to their students throughout the research process which essentially means I shared their grading load. Students benefited by having increased access to educator support and copious feedback to help them refine their work. At a time when districts are eliminating library media specialists and our profession is being maligned, my first year in this role is evidence of how vital information literacy skills are and necessary a library media specialist is to this skill development.

Supplement: Anonymous Feedback from Our Colleagues:

Thank you for all of your help with the research process. Having never taught this before, I would have been lost without your help! I greatly appreciate every lesson and helping hand you gave to me and my students during this process. Additionally, you both have such a knowledge of a range of books, and it helped open the variety of books I could offer for book groups!

 Additionally, you both have such a knowledge of a range of books, and it helped open the variety of books I could offer for book groups!

Library services are crucial to the mission of the social studies department. I would love it if there were quizzes for the most frequently used videos so that we can ensure students understand and access the information.

The opportunity to work together with library staff is invaluable to my teaching

I believe the Media specialists are all knowledgeable and collaborate with both each other and the teachers. It has been a pleasure working with them this year.

It was a great unit -- I appreciated the support and the help on this inquiry based learning!

The planning stage went very smoothly as my library/media collaborator was attuned to my specific goals and even to my work style. The lesson she planned was focused directly on the needs of my particular students at that particular stage of our unit.

With the failing implementation of MLA8 by easybib, working with the librarians on building a citation from scratch was important.

The question generator was awesome Help with MLA 8 citations was absolutely excellent! Teacher and students ALL benefited immensely from the face-to-face interactions with incredibly knowledgeable librarians.

There are so many skills students need to learn to be effective researchers that it is easy for them to be overwhelmed. By presenting kids with tools they can use to ensure the validity of their sources, the collaboration allowed me to focus my instruction on the reading skills necessary to master the research essay task.

having librarians in the class room during the start of the jr research project, assisting with research question tweaking and thesis development was incredibly helpful

I found it effective to have multiple perspectives on research questions, thesis statements and citations.

I like the op-ed format to create a dialogue in writing.

Yes, we chose new texts for the speech unit, which were excellent!!! And your help on MLA 8 with both the freshman speeches and the junior research paper were invaluable!

Keep listening to individual teachers and customizing your presentation so it dovetails with the individual teacher's experience and eccentricities.