Free Accessible Resources for Reaching 21st Century Learners

I'm excited to be sharing some great resources at the St. Clair County RESA sponsored 21st Century Symposium on Thursday, August 26th. My colleagues, Joni Rogers from Yale Public School District and Kathy Levandowski from the RESA, will join my in sharing some practical tools available at no charge to assist teachers and adminstrators in implementing activities that will appeal to our 21st Century Learners. Please use this blog as a resource; for the tutorials and for continued support through the comments option.

We will be covering a lot in a short hour, which is why we're using this blog to provide additional support. We will begin our journey with Joni sharing a great resource for lesson planning called MORE (Michigan Online Resources for Educators). MORE is available through the Michigan electronic library @ www.mel.org. From the home page please click on the MORE link. Creating a free account is recommended, but you can begin searching and accessing lessons without signing in. As many of the districts in the county will have interactiave white boards in their classrooms this year, Joni will highlight access to interactive lessons and demonstrate them on the SmartBoard. MORE focuses on Michigan standards. For a National databank checkout http://thinkfinity.org. Look for a tutorial to be posted soon!

From MORE, Jonie will take you back to MeL and highlight some of the other great resources, especially the databases. Clicking on the database link from the home page brings up a list up options with descriptions of the type of material indexed in each. Of special interest to schools is the Learning Express Library which offers practice tests (including AP and ACT), content area courses and skills building. Many of the databases offer full-text access to professional journals and magazines, making this a first stop for research and for informational text to use in the classroom.

We will switch gears with Rachelle demonstrating Animoto, a video creation platform software that offers free accounts for educators. Animoto offers some creative solutions for education. The web-based feature solves the server space issues so often associated with video content. Also, the software itself makes most creative decisions, such as timing and special effects, for you. This allows new users and younger students to make creative movies without getting bogged down with technical details. For this very reason, some of your older, more tech savvy students are going to want the creative control available with other tools such as Windows MovieMaker. Go to www.animoto.com to register for your account today. **This may take SEVERAL weeks. Be flexible in your planning the first time. The tutorial provides you with step-by-step instructions.

21st Century students want their work to have real world application. So while movies are fun, what is the real world application? Two ideas come to mind quickly. Public Service Announcements for Health class is a step-up from your typical No Smoking brochure! Probably the application most often used is to create book trailers. Students, following the format of a movie trailer, create a movie advertising a book. This is an extension of the idea of digital storytelling that has been around for some time and is popular at the elementary and middle levels. Storyboarding before creating the video covers many writing and reading standards while the movie offers students a fun project at the end of a book study or favorite read.  St. Clair County schools have a library management system that is web-based and includes social and interactive components. Here is an example, using the book Tweak, of how a student made book trailer can have a real world application when it is included in the record of the library catalogue. Simply click on the weblink in the Explore section of the record.

Now that we're at the Destiny library management system, let's look at some of the interactive features. To use these features, you must login. Please remember that the tutorial demonstrates how to login for St. Clair County Michigan schools. The login formula will NOT work for all Destiny subscriptions. The other features demonstrated are available.

Some of the features, such as having students review a book or make recommendations are self-explanatory. Resource lists may require some examples. Here is how I have used Resource Lists. Teachers can identify books to be used with a particular unit or lesson, allowing the media specialist to pull the books or the student to find a resource from the list. This list is then available the next time the unit or lesson is taught. Lists can be used to identify particular genres, a favorites list or added to a visual search. Students can also login and create their own lists. This allows them to keep track electronically of resources used for research, allowing them to return for additional information or clarification. If your building collection includes websites and e-books, students can access identified materials without search time when working from school or home.

In our live presentation, Kathy will wrap up the hour by reviewing how different districts have set-up access to Destiny and who to contact in specific buildings or districts. For my online viewers, your best bet is to contact your building or district library media specialist. If you don't have one, find out from a building administrator who administrates Destiny to obtain login information and additional training.

We hope our live and virtual viewers enjoy these resources as much as we enjoy sharing them! Feel free to comment, ask questions, subscribe to this blog and continue the discussion.

Jing

As I prepare for the 21st Century Learning Conference hosted by St. Clair County RESA I want to share with you a great tool that I heard about @ the conference 2 years ago. It's called Jing. It's a web capturing tool that you can download FREE from http://www.jingproject.com. As with many of the tools that I love, my time is too limited to try all of the great features available. It's actually a great screencasting softward that enhances online conversations. However, I use the screen capture feature to create visual tutorials. Save the screen, add visual highlighs and instructions and save to presentation software. Using Google presentations or saving a PPT presentation to slider sharer allows you to easily link and share your help tools. How will you use this tool? How can your students use this tool? The application possibilities will be fun to watch unfold!

Here is an example I created to show teachers and students how to create and iGoogle page:



One word of caution with this tool. Unless you have adminstrative rights on your network you will not be able to download the software. At this time I am forced to use it from my home computer, but many tech departments are willing to add software for teachers and students if getting some time.