Welcome back, Everyone! It feels like we haven’t done this in a while, but I attribute that to the start of the new year. The community has been quiet, and I hope that now that we are in full swing – post Labor Day and all, we can pick up the conversation. I want to thank Follett for sponsoring today's webinar, which is the last of the introductory ones. We had an overview of the program in July, then we talked about Millennial brains in August. Here we want to address pedagogy. Without a solid foundation or rationale about why using emerging tech for instruction is not only important, but necessary, it might be hard to convince colleagues and administrators to open access and consider taking the leap (notice how I said “leap”, not “plunge”) – call it semantics, but there is a difference. So I’ve been a teacher for 20 years now, and I have learned that the word “pedagogy” can engender a fair amount of cynicism from veteran teachers – you know the lines “Oh, I’ve seen that one before! Remember when they brought that guy in to teach us how to do blank, then we spent a whole year on it and then replaced it with something else?” followed by” Yeah, and then remember when….” You’ve all heard the conversation. Whimsical district initiatives breed profound distrust among classroom teachers

I rather purposefully pixilated this guy. I hope no one knows him, and I apologize for any unfair stereotyping, but I think you know what I am talking about.

So to approach pedagogy constructively, it is important to make sure that new initiatives are both malleable and provide the potential for permanence – a fairly incongruous combo. I am proud to say that in our district, we embraced Understanding by Design and Differentiation back in 2003. We’ve rolled in 21st Century Learning since then, and renamed Differentiation RTI (Response to Intervention), but we are still forging ahead on the same path. It helps unite us and gives us a common language, even though the acronyms keep changing. Today, we will look at a few initiatives that seem to work, the rationale behind adopting them, but more importantly focus on how they can impact student learning, and how librarians can use emerging technology to improve student’s 21st Century learning. Next time, we will start with the practical, hands on, how to stuff. First up, Online course management.

Who needs helicopter parents when you have kids like this!

Response to intervention is upon us. Really, it is what good teachers do, but the federal mandate means that it has to be addressed in professional development and requires teachers to document their interventions with predominantly typical students who are not progressing at a satisfactory rate. Universal assessments are now part of the lexicon. Teachers are required to examine individual student performance a little more carefully, and students have more opportunities to improve – three, exactly

Tier 1 – Intervention in the everyday classroom. In many cases, what good teachers have been doing for years, just documented, and student progress against set benchmarks is measured. Tier 2 – Strategic intervention – usually involves more time and intensity than Tier1, but principally still involves the classroom teacher and student with some outside help, like a specialist or parent Tier 3 – Customized learning intervention – usually occurs outside of the classroom and involves more structure and a larger pool of stakeholders This is all great news for students. Their progress will be more closely monitored. And school districts will now provide a variety of strategies and protocols for teachers to follow when students perform below expectations as indicated on universal assessments. This is not only true for academic learning, but also social and emotional learning. Basically, less kids fall through the cracks. Good news, right?

But when teachers see this, their first reaction is “OMG! I don’t have time to do any more than I already do! I can’t do this!” The reality, is that the good ones already do it without even being aware of it. They just need to write stuff down. That’s where librarians can help!

When starting a new research project, we can offer a baseline assessment – something simple – it doesn’t have to be complicated. Using Google Forms, the answers can feed into a spreadsheet and they can be sorted according to articulated need. In this case, students were asked to complete a research action plan (universal assessment): Beyond the questions here, students were asked:   What free online resources (not databases yet) are you considering using to help you with your research   What databases are you considering using to help you with your research ?    What print resources are you considering using to help you with your research?   What other resources are you considering using to help you with your research?   How do you plan to take notes for this project?   How well do you understand the process for in-text citations?   When do you think you should start compiling your working bibliography    Do you plan on using an online tool to help you with your bibliography/works cited list? *    Do you think you will need help from a librarian with this project? *   Do you think you will need technical assistance with this project? *   Do you think you will consult a teacher from the Writing Center for this project? *    What grade do you want to earn on this project? * Choose one from the list, please.  

Check this out! Now we have identified who may need support – part of the assessment asks students to self-assess, but some of the questions allow teachers and librarians to look for warning signs – note taking, internal source acknowledgement, documentation, etc… You will also note that students have options. They don’t all have to do things the same way, which allows for varied learning styles. Doing things differently is fine, just have a plan.

If we re-administer the same assessment after the project, we can measure student achievement and hone is on the kids who may need additional support. Now note, the assessment you just saw was administered outside of school via email as a homework assignment using Google Apps.No class time, no lab time - The assumption being that kids could get online.

Here is another pre-post assessment – results are easier to see. If you look carefully, we saw significant improvement in some areas, but an actual decline in others! Clearly, our teaching in the prioritizing research and accuracy categories must have been confusing or negligible, so we were able to use this to revise our instruction based on this assessment.

Same pre and post assessment. Different view. Now we are looking at individual student before and after instruction scores on specific questions. For obvious reasons, we removed last names, I just did a screenshot of the first kids in the list (it was a class of 333), so that’s why there are so many duplicate names. Alexander in line #8’s score dropped significantly. Now that’s where we have to go in and figure out what happened. But it is the technology that made this possible. There is no way we could have done this manually with a class of 300 plus students! This is what I mean about using emerging technology to compile data, help faculty, and most importantly help students learn more, better, faster, taking into account their individual needs. It has always been especially difficult for librarians to do this. Without a class roster and a fixed meeting time, with a whole school of kids to service – as opposed to one-five classes, depending on your students’ grade level, it was simply impossible. But now, with online communication tools, quizzes that automatically convert to sortable spreadsheets, and the ability to instruct computer based work outside of school – a reach for many, I know – but if you missed the last webinar, check it out because we talked about the statistics on that.

Realistically, 3rd,4th, and 5th grade classroom teachers might be able to differentiate some instruction to accommodate specific students’ individual learning styles. They have a relatively small number of students – as compared to a 7-12 grade level teacher so they get to know their students rather intimately. Their students are comparatively independent next to say, Kindergarten through second grade students. I am not suggesting that 3-5th grade teachers have it easy. No teacher does, I am only saying that as far as being able to customize instruction for individual learning styles, the most realistic place to make it happen is in the 3-5 classroom, possibly 6th, but usually that is a transitional year between the self-contained classroom and traveling, so probably not. My point is this. It is often very hard to adapt for learning styles when teaching, particularly where universal assessments are concerned as in the last few slides where we instruct a unit to over 300 students. It is actually counterintuitive to do so. Yet, it is clearly beneficial for students. It improves their learning, enhances retention, and supports their socioemotional development.

Remember this kid? She is merely self-advocating – that’s a 21st Century skill!

How do you teach this kid (click), and this kid (click), and this kid (click) the same concepts in a way that each student can understand?

Social media and collaborative tools give students the opportunity to self assess and choose the instructional approach that best meets their own learning style on that day at that time. Just look at all the ways they can select independent reading books! This is just a sampling of the tools we have used in the past two years! There are so many more. But giving kids the choice allows them to self assess, consider the features within each tool, evaluate how those features align with their current needs, develop adaptability, teaches them how to navigate independently – this is all great 21st Century stuff, not to mention it engages them with reading.

Here is another example: Group work? How would you like to collaborate with your classmates?