Feeling Appreciated.

A. just sent me an email about our KBC. She called me her "dream librarian."

That's pretty awesome. :) Nice to feel like the work of teacher librarians is appreciated and that A. will be able to use what we did for her class.

KBC is UP!

Hooray for weekends--I built the KBC today. I'm pretty pleased with how it has turned out so far, and sent A. the link so she could look at it as well. Hopefully I'll get her feedback tomorrow and can make adjustments from there. It would be nice to be able to turn this in before class on Tuesday!

Working with A. has been really energizing. I'm excited that some of my hard work might actually be used with students next semester, even though this class will be over by then. I'm also interested to see how closely our lesson plan is followed or if A. ends up making changes to suit her style (or compensate for the fact that I won't actually be there). I hope she keeps the student learning blogs as a component because then I can read/comment on them from afar.

Lesson Plan!

Our lesson plan is complete! We were able to meet tonight at A's house and get everything finished. My next task is to build the KBC, which shouldn't be too hard since I've done it four times this semester already.

A. has been sending me some resources she's used with students in the past, and I'll include more that I find as well.

I do wish I knew more technology tools. I feel like I need a class just in tools students could use to create products for the classroom. I've learned a few for this class but in a real-life situation I'd feel like I was bumbling my way through teaching the tools to others.

Wordle

A. and I started talking about Wordle today and we found the perfect way to transition students from their infographics to the leader ad campaigns, and it allows her to use primary sources which is a requirement at her school. We are going to use Wordle to turn key speeches from different leaders into, well, wordles, and then show them to students as a way to help them identify key ideas within each speech. We're going to see if students can guess which leader gave which speech. We're hoping this will help them identify similarities and differences between the leaders, too.

In thinking about infographics, I think it would be awesome if a graphic designer could come talk to the class about design elements when creating them. I know someone, so we'll see if he'd be willing to visit A's class next semester. Ideally we'd have someone who works in advertising come as well. A. is going to see if any of her students' parents work in advertising.

We have started fleshing out the lesson plan in Google Docs. So far, we work pretty well together. I hope the finished product is something that really is useful in her classroom.

Hopefully we can get together in person again after Thanksgiving.

Fleshing Things Out

Today I posted our ideas in Google Docs so A. and I can begin fleshing out our lesson plan. It looks as if Re-Create (13) and Learn By Doing (15) are going to be the best think models for our lesson.

I also did some research on infographics and found a really interesting video on the background and development of them (although it's not that helpful for students). I do not have the skills or access to the software needed to create infographics in the way a publishing company would, but we should be able to do something in PhotoShop or even using a wysiwyg editor for a website. Students could also use VoiceThread to make their infographics interactive.

First Meeting

A. and I had our first meeting at Panera Bread tonight. I think it was really productive. She sent me the content area standards ahead of time as well as some ideas of what she has done with this unit in the past. It was helpful to hear from her what her priorities for this unit are and how what she teaches differs from what students learn about World War II in American History.

I showed A. Dr. Loertscher's books (she had looked at them before) and we discussed some of the think models she might like to try. We also discussed which content area standards we'd focus on and how we could make this unit relevant to student, building on what they had already learned. I took notes on our ideas; some of them are pretty exciting.

First, we want to focus on significant battles of World War II. Content standards require students to identify major theaters on a map and ask students to consider the role geography played in the war. One standard mentions the "long-lasting" effects of war. This got us thinking about how, for our students (and us), war is something that happens somewhere else. Other than the attack on Pearl Harbor, there has not been a war in the United States since the Civil War. How, then, can students understand the long-lasting effects of war?

We decided to help students make that connection by finding geographic areas within the U.S. that are similar to the areas where major WWII battles were fought. A. is very interested in having students make infographics, so I am going to research ways they could do this with their original and "new" battle areas.

We also discussed how students could study political, military, and diplomatic WWII leaders. We don't want to have students do reports or research papers, and we'd like to avoid PowerPoint if possible since they already use it for so many other things. Eventually we decided to have students work in "Ad Agencies" to create advertising campaigns for a leader. We will have them use Glogster to create a campaign poster and post "commercials" for their leaders on YouTube.

We need to work on some connecting materials and I need to look at the think models and see which ones, if any, these ideas follow.

Collaboration Partner

I have a partner for my collaborative unit for LIBR 250. My friend A., who teaches 10th grade World History at a local high school, is going to work with me. She has suggested we focus on World War II for our collaborative unit. This should be interesting since I don't remember much more than the basics about my study of World War II!