LIB+705



Work for LIB 705

My name is Kerri Pike and I'm in my 8th year teaching English at San Ramon Valley High School in Danville, CA. I live in Walnut Creek where my Bassett Hound, Gus, and I walk everywhere. While I love teaching English (I've taught freshmen, junior, & senior English, Journalism and Creative Writing), I'm ready for a lighter paper load. We have the most //amazing// librarian here who has taken me under her wing and shown me how much a librarian can change and shape learning in a school. Basically, I want to be just like her, so here I am! || TaskStream: []
 * Introduction Forum: **
 * Hi All!

Ethics: Summary: The article //Teaching Information: Ethics to High School Students//, by Kathy Lehman, is a wonderful article that addresses how to embed the AASL standards into a library classroom. In this article, Lehman asserts that as librarians, we can help our students become ethically aware of copyright, citation, etc. though a slew of suggestions, each of which is supported by the AASL standards. In her career, Lehman has noticed that often students at the high school level plagarize unkonwingly- just being lectured on what plagarism is will not create life-long habits for our students. They must learn through repeated exposure and hands-on experiences consistently throughout their high school years, so that by the time they are in college and the work world, such things will be second nature to them. She states: "What we can do is get students off to a good start with their freshmen English teachers, keep our staff informed through in-services and various electronic or print communications, encourage collaborative lessons, provide a current print collection and a 24/7 Web site with outstanding online resources, and maintain an open, welcoming atmosphere for students and staff." It is not enough that we provide students with consistent exposure, but teachers as well. With teachers getting more and more added to their job descriptions it becomes increasingly difficult to expect them to also keep up with the latest research outlets, copyright guidelines, etc. As librarians, we can aide them rather than burden them.

Ethical Implications: At the high school level, students know that they have to put quotes around exact wording, and they know that not doing so is plagarism. However, the finer details of citation are often lost on students and who is to blame? If all we have done is lecture them on citing their sources, and maybe required a Works Cited page, can we really blame them when they misuse information? Citation is not an instinctual habit, it has to be taught and learned through effetive lessons and repeated practice. Posting guidelines by computers and printers will serve as a visual reminder, but is it enough? Showing students EasyBib or Citation Machine is giving them a chance to cite properly, but do we do that? Do we do it with everything or just high stakes research papers? What about music and images in multimedia assignments- do we require citation? It comes down to an agrument in accountability. We need to hold students accountable for their work, students need to hold themselves accountable as well, but we need to be held accountable for teaching them how. We, as librarians, need to teach our various communitites about accountablity. In this digital age, this is not only key to keeping librarians in schools, but it is key in creating a generation of ethical technology users.

Moodle Forum:

Online Database Forum:

Atomic Learning Forum:
 * WOW! Atomic Learning is amazing! It's like a one stop shop to getting all your tech questions answered. If I didn't have to finish grading essays before finals tomorrow I could have easily spent most of the day playing on here...but after next week, I'll have time! I've already got a list going of what I want to learn about next.

I digress. After exploring the site to get a sense of its purpose and layout, I settled on the Google Sites Training page. As a school district we have recently subscribed all staff and students to Google. I've used the Docs page, and many of its various features, but I hadn't jumped on the Sites bandwagon yet simply because I haven't had the time to teach myself. With this Atomic Learning site, and an hour of my time, not only am I totally ready to create my site, I know where to go if I forget a step or have new questions. The beauty of Atomic Learning (at least for Google Sites Training- I don't think this is always the case) is that it's broken up into dozens of much smaller tutorials so you don't have to watch through an hour clip to get the two minutes you need.

Google Sites really is very simple. You can create your site from a template, or from a blank screen. Site can be created for classrooms, families, teams, events, etc. The options are all right there and very clear. For my first site I will absolutely be creating one from a template for my classroom before venturing out to create one from scratch. Why reinvent the wheel, right? On any given site, one can add announcements, calendars, photos, videos, lists (for steps in a project, for example), files (to store files others can download), forms to gather information, etc. Everything can be formatted however you want, and really quite easily.

As a Librarian, being able to teach colleagues, club presidents, coaches, etc. how to create functioning, easy to access Sites that all our staff and students can have access to in a safe, responsible manner would awesome. || Blog Forum: Pike's Ponderings

Google Docs: Each year our juniors work on a long term project called the Junior Portfolio. The project is a compilation of business, technical, and reflective writing (whitch aligns with our state standards). They have to research post high school options, potential majors and/or careers, conduct interviews, create action plans, write resumes, cover letters, business letters, and then ultimately reflect on where they've been, where they want to go, and why. This year, our district got Google Apps For Education, which allowed teachers and students to each have a Google account, so we decided to use that to create a paperless portfolio! To do this I made templates in Google Docs that I shared with my students who then were able to fill it in and the table was able to expand the more they wrote. We also had then use Google Drawing to create a visual depiction of the next yearif their life to help with long term planning. Overall, it was awesome. Students overwhelmingly responded positively to Google Docs, mainly because it immediately saves their work so they can't lose it, they can easily access it from home, and they can edit other papers on their own time. Attached ate some screen shots.

The action plan, then the template, Then all the shared folders- one per student that has all the required assignments included in the folder: