Technology, Diversity and the Media Center

When one thinks about the definition of the term diversity, we are immediately drawn to the word different. We think about different genders, different races, different cultures, different languages, etc. When I think about the term diversity with regard to technology and the media center I am also drawn to the term different, specifically different learning styles. I feel that the greatest challenge that the media specialist faces in every aspect of their position boils down to meeting the learning style needs of the entire school, staff and students alike. Every decision the media specialist makes has to pass the different learning styles litmus test. Does this resource accommodate the three basic learning styles (auditory, visual and kinesthetic) as well as students with learning disabilities?

I know that this seems like a tall order, or even an impossible request, for the media specialist to fulfill. On a certain level I might agree with you, however I do not believe media specialists have a choice in this matter anymore. The big push within the Cobb County School District right now is instructional differentiation. In other words, how can teachers within the school district meet the individual needs and learning styles of all of their students? If the teachers are expected to provide differentiating instruction, then the media specialist will be expected to provide individualized resources and support that will assist with the differentiation movement. That said I believe that using different learning styles as the primary concern that permeates all decisions made by the media specialist will do nothing more than make the media center stronger as a result.

In addition to assisting the student population, I feel that the media specialist’s focus on differentiating instruction will do wonders to benefit the faculty as well. I think that this is especially true with regard to administering technology training in-services to the faculty. Within the field of education I often feel that the focus on different learning styles stops at the student level. Just because we became education professional does not mean that we stopped having a specific learning style through which we acquire information best. Technology training in-services should be administered to the faculty in the same manner as a lesson is administered to the student, with everyone’s individual needs and level of technology experience considered.

Diversity

The term "diversity" typically refers to differences in culture and race, but really includes anything that can make us different from one another, such as intelligence, learning style, socio-economic status. As media specialists, we are in a unique position to bring diversity into a school through our collections. Materials should appeal to all students, no matter what learning level, race, language, or gender, for example. A variety of materials should always be available and abundant to serve our school's population, depending on its particular structure. Not only can we build collections to appeal tot he students population, but also professional collections to help our teachers serve students the best way possible. This can include technology materials to assist any impairments that exist in our children - visual, hearing, learning disabilities, etc.

Unfortunately, I have not had the opportunity to serve any disabled students where I am. Our population is an interesting mix of a male majority (we are a STEM-magnet elementary school, grades 3-5) and majority African-Americans and sub-continental Indians. Our media center, where I am the parapro, has a number of biographies on famous African-Americans, more than the school where my mentor is. Unfortunately, we don't have any books, fiction or biographies, that are stories about Indian culture. I understand there isn't much available, but more fiction is being written for the upper grades about Indian families and culture. We also have a wide-variety of AR reading levels represented in the collection because some children are classic left-brained strong math students, but somewhat weak readers. We have something for everyone, strong readers included. Finally, our media center is quite small. I am sad to say that if we had students who were in wheel chairs, they would not find our library so easy to navigate.

We are a STEM-magnet school, so technology plays a strong role in our curriculum. However, because we don't have any special needs students, I don't believe wee have any assistive-technologies on campus. I have never seen support in action, although the school my mentor is in just began housing an autism program. I am not sure how often these students visit the media center, though - I'll have to ask Lynn after our Thanksgiving break...

Digital Stories and Ebooks

One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about the information I’m learning in our media classes is how much we are being taught about technology. This week’s reading and exploration on digital storytelling and ebooks has been very interesting. I have always love to see sideshows of pictures put together with music; it evokes more emotion and “understanding” than just looking at pictures in a textbook. Fortunately, there are several ways to incorporate this activity in the classroom.

According to Bernard Robin of the University of Houston, “Topics used in digital story telling range from personal takes to the recounting of historical events, from explaining life in one’s own community to the search for life in other corners of the universe, and literally, everything in between.” There are benefits for both teachers and students from the use of digital story telling. For teachers, it can be used as a lesson hook, used to integrate multimedia into curriculum, make difficult content more understandable because it allows coverage of multiple learning styles, and facilitates classroom discussion. For students, it helps improve multiple skills: research, writing, organization, technology, presentation, interview, problem solving, and assessment skills.

I am currently teaching about the Holocaust in my World Literature class. We’ve had background discussions and read different short stories; Throughout, the students had a lot of questions: “you mean, they really did this to them?” or “Were they really that starved, etc.” I needed a way to get them to see the reality of this horrible event, so I went to the Internet and started searching Teacher Tube. I was able to find several examples of digital storytelling and actually decided on one that was created by a 9^th grade student. My students were in awe of the images they were seeing on the screen, and their questions and discussion from that point on demonstrated that, finally, a light bulb had been flipped on. Not only did they finally “get” it, but they also had images that would remain with them throughout our unit. This is a great use for digital stories in the classroom; for the teacher, it can be used to enhance instruction while students can create their own stories to show their understanding.”

Ebooks seem to be the wave of the future. There are actually schools that are considering using ebooks instead of text books. I am not completely sure how I feel about the use of ebooks as a replacement for the traditional book. I am English teacher; I love to read, and to me books are a precious thing. I love the feeling of getting a new book, dog-earing the pages, and getting a sense of accomplishment when I finish something that looked so daunting in the beginning. With Kindles, computers, and other ebook readers, all of that is lost. It will always just be words on a screen, and to me, that loses some of the lure and attraction of books. However, I can see their benefit. For a lot of students, books are a turn-off, but give them a piece of technology and have them read, in their minds, it’s different and it is intriguing. A lot of our students need that. At our school, the only thing that could possibly be considered as an ebook would be an online version of Newsweek and Education Leadership. Unfortunately, neither of these is ever accessed. Our media specialist doesn’t even know how to do so. When I asked her opinion on the use of Ebooks in the media center, she said that “it would be a great thing, but I don’t ever see it happening. We have very limited funds and moving in that direction would suck up all the money, not only in purchases, but in repairs, etc.”

Fortunately, there are ways to access free ebooks. Project Gutenberg is a site that had over 30,000 free ebooks. Most of the books available are books whose copyright has expired in the United States. One thing I found interesting is the difference between books that are “free of charge” and book “freedom”. Free of charge means that there is no charge for the book, but you are bound by very strict copyright laws. Book freedom means that the user can do however he or she pleases with the book. A lot of people don’t realize there is a difference.

I think ebooks will definitely find their place in media centers and in the classroom. With the new use of SmartBoards, ebooks can be used in whole class discussion and interactive lessons. One example I really like was to use books from International Children’s Digital Library to work with learning languages. Students can look at children’s books and work at translating, finishing, or illustrating these selected books.

Digital Storytelling and eBooks

I had not heard of a digital story until I took this class. I am currently working on my story right now. As a teacher I can see where these would be very beneficial in the classroom. However, I am overwhelmed as to how much time goes into creating just one story. I know as with everything else that a person would become more familiar with the process and it would have to get easier. I teach in a primary school, and I think that it would be very difficult for these to be student driven. I do feel that they would provide good instruction for students if they were built by the teachers around the standards.
Digital storytelling can also be used to post short movies on school websites or teacher websites. I could see using one to showcase some of our classroom activities. That is only with the students who have permission for their pictures and videos to be posted.
Now on the the other subject, the schools where I have worked are not doing much with eBooks. I think that the media specialist at my current school knew she was close to retiring and did not want to create anything new that she had to deal with. We do not even have a subscription to the Gale Virtual Reference Library. Keep in mind that we are only a K-2 school. I am not really sure how much use we would get out of it. Should we have a subscription? Would this be good for K-2 students? I don't know. Maybe I should check into that next year. So, I don't really know much about eBooks. I look forward to reading the posts of someone that does understand them.

Technology Training in Schools

The current state of the faculty’s technology skills at Wheeler High School skills runs the gamut between inexperienced and apathetic to tech savvy and overzealous. Recently, as part of the 21st Century Classroom initiative, Wheeler High School classrooms received a DVD/VCR combo, laptop/computer connections, LCD projector, pull down screen, and many classrooms were also equipped with Smartboards. Unfortunately many of these new classroom technologies have been greatly underutilized because many teachers have not been trained to use them because they were either to busy or apathetic to attend the training in-service that the media specialists held. In my opinion this is a shame. Many of the veteran teachers at my school are reluctant to learn about new technologies because they fear that the county will change it on them the next year. The newer teachers who are technology savvy and would love to learn more are often overwhelmed with other responsibilities such as athletics and clubs that consume all of their “free” time.

In conversations I have had with the media specialists and other teachers at Wheeler High School in the past, I discovered that the Cobb County School District is in dire need of technology training for teachers and students alike. Due to recent budget setbacks, the Cobb County School District eliminated all of their ILT (Instructional Lead Teacher) positions at the end of last school year. As a result, technology training for the entire county has landed in the lap of the media specialists at each individual school. The media specialists at Wheeler High School are always willing to help with technology questions and training, but even they had to admit that it is very difficult for them to do much with this new job responsibility considering everything that they already had on their plate. When I asked how they handled requests for technology training and assistance when they themselves could not assist, they pointed me towards Atomic Learning. Since the Cobb County School District was forced to eliminate the ILT positions, they purchased a subscription to Atomic Learning. Atomic Learning is remarkably easy to use online resource that contains thousands of technology training videos and instructional resources. Actually, I decided to do my second in-service module on it because of the current state of technology skills at Wheeler High School.

When I think about how I as a media specialist would provide technology staff development, I often find myself leaning toward asynchronous technology education as opposed to school wide in-services. I know that sounds like a scandalous suggestion, but let me explain. At Wheeler High School, the majority of the teachers that would be interested in pursuing technology training often complain that they do not have time to attend lengthy in-services that consume their entire planning period. Many of them inquire with the media specialists in advance to see if there are any resources that they can take home with them to use or if our video production class plans on recording the training for viewing at a later date. However, the teachers that are apathetic about learning new technology always seem to begrudgingly attend the mandatory in-service training if for no other reason than to complain that they are wasting their planning. In other words, the teachers that want to be at the in-service are not there and the teachers that don’t want to be there are. Overall, this gives technology in-services a bad rap. I would like to empower the teachers that want to go to in-services by letting them learn the material whenever they want, wherever they want. How does this help the entire school you might ask? Well, the teachers that are turned on by the new technology will help to sell it to the reluctant ones. Additionally, the more teachers that get on board with a new technology the greater likelihood that the technology being used sticks around.

Technology Staff Development

I spoke with my mentor who is a media specialist in a Cobb county elementary school. We discussed technology staff development somewhat in general terms, but more specifically in terms of the tech refresh this school received two weeks before school started this August. Keheley Elementary has been a MAC school for years, but with the refresh, all computers were changed over to PCs. Many of the teachers knew nothing but MACs because they have taught there for so long, so there has been quite an adjustment period that is still going on. Generally, Lynn provides one, possibly two, in-services once a school year. However, with the refresh issues, she developed a year-long technology staff development workshop that she holds once a month after school for an hour. Eighteen of the staff members signed up for this class. She is teaching things such as basic PC skills, OPAC (Destiny in Cobb), and basic PowerPoint.

The strategies she uses for technology staff development include developing and writing lessons, determining times when staff can attend, and allowing additional time for other topics to be covered because there are always questions. Because she is in an elementary school, staff development can only be held after school and therefore has to be voluntary. I asked about professional learning days; Lynn told me those are predetermined by the county as to what will be taught those days, so there is no flexibility for professional learning days. She did say that she has those trainings approved by the county so that her staff can earn PLUs.

The most common problem is time. Again, locally-driven elementary staff development for technology has to held after school whereas middle and high school staff have built in planning periods during which these classes can be held. This leads to another problem: lack of funds, for if the staff developments were held during the school day, substitutes would have to be hired.

As an SLMS, I would love to provide staff development on a number of topics such as Destiny, PowerPoint, and use of online tools for teachers that they may not realize exist, such as simulation sites for concepts of science. On-site and live staff developments would be ideal, but the option of in-services via tutorials I design is a fabulous one. These are lessons that can be stored online or on CD to be taken whenever it is convenient for teachers. Dos and Don’ts: DON’T assume all learners are at the same starting point. DO start from the beginning, but find something for those more advanced students to do while you are teaching others. Lynn provides head-phones for those teachers so they can go on Atomic Learning.com to view video tutorials on the same subject matter. DO explain all lingo and vocabulary because you DON’T want to assume everyone knows what you are saying or talking about. Finally, per Lynn, she suggested not creating too many hand-outs first because of tighter budget constraints, especially on paper, and secondly, because she finds that many teachers don’t use them, so they tend to get thrown away often. Great tips, and I am excited about being able to help my staff as much as possible.

Broadcasting

The school I teach at does have a broadcasting system that we use for several different things. Every morning, the announcements are broadcast for the entire school and Channel 1 is shown immediately after that. The majority of the televisions in the classrooms are considered Channel 1 televisions...they were provided by Channel 1 as long as we show it each day. Our announcements are very simple with usually two-three anchors and one camera. I think our broadcast has a lot of potential, but doesn't have the opportunity to reach it because it is not associated with a class. These are simply volunteers and the media specialist oversees the broadcast each morning. There are several teachers who utilize Georgia Public Broadcasting, also. There is an opportunity to have shows recorded and broadcast at given times, or the most popular use for teachers is to access Discovery/United Streaming on the Internet. I actually used it today to show a video of Donna Washington as she told African Trickster Tales. The students really seemed to enjoy the mixture of storytelling with humor and graphic elements instead of simply reading the tales from the book.