Biometrics. . . continued
It’s working! Students at an elementary school and our high school are enrolling their fingers in the biometric system for media center checkout and school nutrition services! A few senior high students protested; most are eager and enjoying the experience as are many teachers. We have learned to use the proper teminology –Finger ID–Stay tuned as we progress!
Flying Penguins & Biometrics: A fun day in the media center
Some of the best lessons are those spur of the moment, just for fun lessons that really get kids involved and thinking. As a 4th grade class was beginning to identify topics and resources for their annual rainforest Research/Powerpoint projects they watched the amazing BBC Documentary about flying penguins who fly from Antartica to the rainforest.
They shared what they saw and answered the question, “Why did we look at this?” They got it! A perfect lesson for introducing kids to age appropriate resources and the potential pitfalls of Internet research.
3rd grade students began the process of enrolling their fingers in a biometric check-out system. They are so excited! 
Thing #12: Social news sites
My first experience with these– for now I will say “not my thing.” But, as watch print newspapers struggle and think about my own daily online news reading habits–it is easy to see the popularity of these sites. My preference of those I viewed is NewsVine where I learned about the ball team I was watching on TV while viewing the site.
Thing # 11. Del.icio.us
Delicious was on my “to learn” list for far too long; it was one of the motivating factors for my participation in “23 things!” I desperately needed a way to better manage all the wonderful ideas I’m acquiring for teaching and writing. It was a bit of a surprise-and humbling– to see that I’d been tagged and bookmarked by others. . . now the challenge is thinking of the appropriate tags and remembering how to spell delicious.
Thing #8: Go Warriors
I was so inspired by Leanna’s photo carousel (Learning 23 Things blog) I just had to try a photo carousel of my own using photos of WSU basketball games. Learning principle applied: We’re motivated to learn when it’s a topic we’re interested in!
Thing # 10: Wikis
I’m meeting my original goal–getting my feet wet, picking up some new ideas for online teaching and trying to figure out which options are the most workable both for me and busy adult students. As I explored the 23 Things on a Stick Wiki I noticed the value of transferrable skills and how the editing feature looked just like what I use in Desire2Learn. The Sandbox wasn’t as user friendly.
The potential for creating wonderful collaborative environments in our schools is tremendous. What staff development opportunities are school media specialists providing to help teachers?
A thought: Will our young students soon think that wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 tools that we are learning are BORING. What will be next for them?
Thing #9: Google Docs
Now this is practical — and doable, even though I had to set up another account. At least it’s an account at a site I visit often! I am inspired to use Google Docs for planning our summer tech academy in the district. A great opportunity to model!
Biometrics
Biometrics! I have no idea how many schools are using biometric systems for student identification–it looks like we are about to embark on a pilot project for school nutrition services and media center checkout at one small elementary school and our large high school. The amazing thing was how quickly people approved of the idea and how many other uses they thought of! The possibilities for efficiencies, standardization, and freeing staff from some moderately time-consuming tasks are huge. Stay-tuned as I embark on another pilot project will keep me on my toes and add something new to the ever-changing field of school media. We will be working with Finger ID, http://www.fingerid.net/.
Thing # 7: Webinars
It’s quite exciting, actually, to learn more ideas for email’s expanded potential for connecting with media center patrons. But as one of my online students so nicely stated, we have filtered and policied out so much of what our patrons would relate to and could easily connect with.
Webinars are a fantastic tool; our participation in the recent Inspire Data webinar generated a high level of interest. Downside: the computer in our conference room wouldn’t accommodate the conferencing software; the phone by a computer that would wasn’t a speaker phone.
I’m planning to arrange a webinar for our elementary software selection committee–slight problem; there is not a speaker phone in the lab — perhaps we will be a passive audience.
This has gotten me thinking about another consideration for planning media centers and labs: The new conference/collaborative group work room in new elementary media center MUST have a good computer and speaker phone. I envision the room being a central meeting place for future small group training sessions and meeting spaces for teachers from all over the district–and a neat spot for some great student experiences.
Webinars are provideaccess to training we might not otherwise attend; the downside for K-12 folks is the difficulty in finding a chunk of time to set aside for full participation in sessions on some of the topics we should know more about. Would be great to involve teachers in some of the MINITEX webinars, but it would be even more difficult for them to find the time. . .
Good old email. I couldn’t do my job without it; yet I believe face-to-face and a piece of paper are needed more than they are used.
Thing #6: Tagging. . . and university partnerships
I’m negligent; I haven’t learned to use del.icio.us yet; it’sone reason I signed up for 23 things so I need to get going. Increasing information overload is motivating. . .
Yesterday Vern from Winona State University’s Krueger Library and a student in one of his classes worked with a group of senior high students to help them make better use of online databases our senior high subscribes to. The h.s. students were great listeners! I was struck by Vern’s use of the word “tags” for subject headings and he explained how they are evolving I hadn’t realized they had taken on that use and I was pleased; the official subject headings have always appeared intimidating and unnatural to so many folks.
I was surprised by how excited the college student was by our print reference collection; she spoke about her future plans to study at a college in downtown Chicago and how cool it will be to be close to the Chicago Public Library. Interesting.
