Good morning:
I enjoyed getting together on Friday and taking the opportunity to explore applications that potentially could help students become more effective users and creators of ideas of information. I wanted to take a few moments to recap our activities, and make all of the resources we covered available in one place…
This is the document that AASL put together to correlate the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner and the National Common Core Standards. As ambitious as this is, and parts of it will be useful, it may be a bit too ambitious: the document is unwieldy, and although it makes a strong case that the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner are heavily integrated in the Common Core Standards, in the interest of time, we needed to focus on a document that is, well, more focused — specifically on technology.
These are the NYSED revised standards, based on the Common Core Standards, adapted to incorporate additional standards as deemed appropriate by the Board of Regents. From this document, we can focus on the standards that we feel have a close connection to technology applications.
From here, we identified several specific standards to focus on (the emphases are my own):
Reading – Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
Standard #7: Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.
Writing – Production and Distribution of Writing
Standard #6: Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.
Writing – Research to Present and Build Knowledge
Standard #8: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism.
Writing – Responding to Literature
Standard #11: Develop personal, cultural, textual, and thematic connections within and across genres as they respond to texts through written, digital, and oral presentations, employing a variety of media and genres.
Speaking and Listening – Comprehension & Collaboration
Standard #1: Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
Speaking and Listening – Presentation of Knowledge & Ideas
Standard #5: Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.
Common Core Standards That Speak Closely to Technology Integration — This is adapted from the Common Core Standards and includes the specific skills that students use in grades 6-12 to meet the standards.
From here we explored several resources to identify applications to support the Common Core Standards:
- Fully Loaded: Outfitting a Teacher-Librarian For The 21st Century (School Library Journal, 1 Jan. 2011) — This article outlines the various tools that school library media specialists should be familiar with and could use to collaborate with teachers in developing projects and outcomes that meet the Common Core Standards.
- Manifesto for 21st Century Librarians — This is a document that outlines skills and dispositions that library media specialists should have in order to help students identify when information is needed, understand how the information is organized, identify the best sources of information for a given need, locate those sources, evaluate the sources critically, and share that information.
- AASL Best Websites for Teaching a Learning, 2009 — This is a list of 25 free websites, tools, and resources of exceptional value to inquiry-based teaching and learning.
- AASL Best Websites for Teaching a Learning, 2010 — This is the addendum to the original list, with 25 more websites, tools, and resources of exceptional value to inquiry-based teaching and learning.
One of the challenges with lists this comprehensive is that they are sure to include some resources that are currently not available in school. I opened up the network using my filter bypass account to give workshop participants an opportunity to explore some of these resources.
Over the next few weeks, I would like all workshop participants to explore some of the technology applications on these lists and develop potential uses for them in the classroom, either by incorporating them into existing projects or developing new projects that would incorporate some of these applications. Please make a note of the following information:
- Website or application you would like to use
- Subject area in which you would like to use this resource
- Unit in which you would like to use this resource
- Common Core Standards that this resource would support
Here is a worksheet that you can use to organize your ideas — Library Applications to Support the Common Core Standards Worksheet
Thanks again!
ECB