Standard 2-2 Reflection


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Standard 2.2 Effective and knowledgeable teacher
Candidates work with classroom teachers to co-plan, co-teach, and co-assess information skills instruction.  The library media specialist as teacher of information skills makes use of a variety of instructional strategies and assessment tools.  Candidates analyze the role of student interest and motivation in instructional design.  Student learning experiences are created, implemented and evaluated in partnership with teachers and other educators.

 

Artifacts:

 

            Most of the artifacts, which meet this standard fall within my secondary practicum placement, however one artifact from this program fits nicely.  The Pathfinder lesson had me collaborating with an 8th grade science teacher in creating a Pathfinder for an Element project.  I explained what a Pathfinder was and she liked the idea so together we discussed resources both print and non-print and (she being new to wikis and this being a class assignment for myself) I put all our resources on a wiki along with the information about the project including downloadable scoring sheets.  When selecting resources we made sure to choose ones that would be easy and pleasing to navigate.  We also made sure the information was available, accurate, and easily found within the sites.  The instructor and I still update her wiki with the assignment and its resources today to make sure students are able to access the information.  The teacher was actually so excited about using a wiki I helped her create a list of resources and Web 2.0 tools on the 8th grade wiki.

            In my secondary practicum, I collaborated with a number of teachers on lessons and I feel one unit displays all of the points in Standard 2.2.  The History Day unit was extremely long and in depth, requiring students spend many hours researching in the library.  Most of the collaboration was already done by the teacher but worked with both social studies teachers in what other resources could be provided.  The one major resource would be an online space for students to collaborate with each other.  I went about designing a part of the Cockeysville library wiki just for the History Day project to ensure students privacy but allowing my mentor the teachers and I accessibility to the workspaces.  I created a lesson to help students understand how to use the wiki, including a video about what a wiki is, which was both educational and comical.  Students signed up for the wiki if they wanted to use it, the teachers did not want to make it mandatory because they wanted the students to have a good amount of control over the project and what they did with it.

            We thought it necessary for students to be reminded about copyright policies so I conducted a quick lesson on copyright so I would not take up the student’s research time.  I asked the students if they knew what a copyright was and they seemed to understand but they did not know that even the tiniest violation could get them into a lot of trouble.  I used the Happy Birthday song as an example, the students did not know that the song was copyrighted and that is why restaurant do not have employees sing it, because they would have to pay for the rights to the song or pay a hefty fine for copyright violation.  The students were impressed by this and I handed out a little sheet for them to complete asking them if they have used the resources listed and if they knew all of those resources needed to be cited.  I shared the findings with the teachers as it helped us direct the instruction with resources.

            The final major lesson I conducted with the students was on presentation tools.  I found a number of presentation tools and discussed them with the instructors and my mentor.  We decided to keep a few on the resources page but focus the explanation on three tools, Prezi, Show Beyond, and VUVOX.  I explained the tools, how they worked, and showed an example.  The greatest part of it was that the kids were paying close attention to each one, as if working out in their heads how to create something with it.  When I finished my explanation the instructor explained what entries were accepted for the National History Day competition.  One of the entries for the competition involved making a movie so I included Windows Movie Maker and Audacity as two resources on the page.  When the students began their work, many of them were fiddling with the presentation tools.  I was excited they were so eager to get started but did my best to keep them on track with their research, which is why they were in the library that day (and they all still had a lot of research to do and few days left for library visits).