SLO 6
The student applies appropriate technology for effective information services.
For my LIS 635 (Media Production Services for Library Programs) App smash assignment, I created a blendscape designed as a professional development workshop for beginning children’s librarians (specifically in public libraries) about how they can create their own blendspace to digitally plan a multi-age storytime around a certain theme (in this case winter). I was able to digitally curate a variety of resources into my blendscape to illustrate how to appropriately select and incorporate the recommended elements of a well designed storytime; these elements include the books, songs, fingerplays, flannels, literacy activities (crafts), and, for the older ones, digital apps that reinforce basic concepts. The blendspace mashed together YouTube videos of librarians singing songs, Google images and Flickr images of the crafts and literacy activities, web links to curated book collections, and a link to an original Voicethread recording of myself explaining how any librarian could create a blendscape outline of their own storytime plans and then embed this in a blog to share with other librarians. Ideally, I would teach librarians how to build one of these blendspaces during an interactive, hands-on workshop that would allow them time to search for their own images, video clips, and curated collections to include.
Because I know that children’s librarians love to share ideas and resources from a lot of different curated sites (pinterest, librarian blogs, YouTube, etc.), I felt that blendspace, more so than any other digital tool I examined, allows librarians to share resources in one place in a very visual way with components can be drug and reordered until the storytime flows in a very natural way for each individual librarian. I also liked that blendspace allows you to add your own written instructional text in between boxes with digital content; using blendspace as an instructional tool, I was therefore able to type steps and tips for how to build a multi-age storytime and intersperse these throughout the sample content I curated. The beginning librarians would be able to use the text feature to write in their own literacy tips that they hoped to share with the caregivers during the storytime. Forcing beginning children’s librarians to type their literacy tips for caregivers into the blendspace lineup makes the beginning librarian more mindful of how they are going to incorporate these tips into their actual storytime. After experimenting with Voki and Tellagami, I decided that these tools seemed a bit too cartoonish and elementary for my audience. So instead, I decided to record myself talking in Voicethread (which was easier to embed).
Artifact 1 - App smash instructional blendspace
Because I know that children’s librarians love to share ideas and resources from a lot of different curated sites (pinterest, librarian blogs, YouTube, etc.), I felt that blendspace, more so than any other digital tool I examined, allows librarians to share resources in one place in a very visual way with components can be drug and reordered until the storytime flows in a very natural way for each individual librarian. I also liked that blendspace allows you to add your own written instructional text in between boxes with digital content; using blendspace as an instructional tool, I was therefore able to type steps and tips for how to build a multi-age storytime and intersperse these throughout the sample content I curated. The beginning librarians would be able to use the text feature to write in their own literacy tips that they hoped to share with the caregivers during the storytime. Forcing beginning children’s librarians to type their literacy tips for caregivers into the blendspace lineup makes the beginning librarian more mindful of how they are going to incorporate these tips into their actual storytime. After experimenting with Voki and Tellagami, I decided that these tools seemed a bit too cartoonish and elementary for my audience. So instead, I decided to record myself talking in Voicethread (which was easier to embed).
Artifact 1 - App smash instructional blendspace
For my LIS 688 class (seminar for school librarians), I created a curated and annotated list of videos and other online resources that explain to future educators the pros and cons of flipped instruction in the classroom. I had originally curated this list in learn.ist; however, that web server has since been deleted. So I recently repopulated my curated list in a libguide pathfinder. Learn.ist was originally a great tool for curating content because you could add some kind of visual image or logo to represent every website in the list. It's a little harder to do that in a libguide, but at least annotations can be added to the libguide. I also considered using Symbaloo, which allows you to populate a series of visual tiles to representing each resource in your list; while Symbaloo is a very visual curation tool, it does not allow you to annotate your websites like libguides or learn.ist.
This list was devised primarily to help school teachers decide if they want to introduce flipped instruction into their classrooms. Flipped instruction is basically having students view video recordings of that days lesson for homework so that they can come to class the next day and do the homework in class along with other hands-on assignments; that way, the teacher would spend less time doing initial teaching and more time scaffolding the lesson to fit the needs of each learner and their learning style be being available to provide more personalized support if necessary. I tried to include annotations that might help a potential teacher who was reading the website to make more informed decision about whether or not flipped learning would be right for them and their students. I view this flipped instruction libguide as a type of virtual professional development that I, as a potential media specialist, could send to the teachers at my school as another resource option.
Artifact 2 - LIS 688 curated flipped instruction content
This list was devised primarily to help school teachers decide if they want to introduce flipped instruction into their classrooms. Flipped instruction is basically having students view video recordings of that days lesson for homework so that they can come to class the next day and do the homework in class along with other hands-on assignments; that way, the teacher would spend less time doing initial teaching and more time scaffolding the lesson to fit the needs of each learner and their learning style be being available to provide more personalized support if necessary. I tried to include annotations that might help a potential teacher who was reading the website to make more informed decision about whether or not flipped learning would be right for them and their students. I view this flipped instruction libguide as a type of virtual professional development that I, as a potential media specialist, could send to the teachers at my school as another resource option.
Artifact 2 - LIS 688 curated flipped instruction content