Teaching Students about Subscription Databases

I had a great experience yesterday involving one of our best teachers.

Bob Winkler teaches English at Redwood and has brought his students to the library many times over the years. Though Bob has a reputation as being cautious in relying too much on technology for teaching and learning, he has really started to see how our subscription databases can help in his classes.

Bob has three 10th grade English classes (not honors) who are reading Macbeth and he wanted them to find a "real" piece of literary criticism about the play to use as they were reading and develop a deeper understanding of the play from what another author had to say about it. There are about 80 students in the three classes.

Previously they had read Oedipus Rex and he had given them pre-selected critical essays from Twentieth Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex and another book of essays about Sophocles in general which the library had in its collections. This was to introduce them to the type of work they would later be finding on their own. Many of the students were able to use ideas they had gleaned from the essays in a Socratic discussion they had following the reading of the play.

Bob saw the next step as having students find and use critical essays on their own.
He developed an assignment that gave me the chance to show students how to search three of the library subscription databases: EBSCO's AP Source, ProQuest Learning: Literature, and Questia. Each of these requires slightly different approaches and gives quite different results.

Over about forty minutes the students and I we were able to explore in pretty great depth some search strategies, ways of saving information, setting up individual accounts, and so forth.

Following my presentation, Bob immediately took each class to an open computer lab and had them start setting up their accounts and searching on their own. From the on-going feedback I've gotten from him and some his students, they have been very successful in finding the kind of material he wants them to use. He's going to send me a list of the essays they have used and we will follow this assignment up with an intensive on the proper citing of sources.

Among many things I admire about Bob is his attitude toward collaboration. We both retain a certain humility about what we do and can provide to students. He is the expert on using the texts to help students better understand what they are reading, I am able to help them find the texts they need to accomplish that task.

And to top it off he sent me a thank-you note! I want to thank Bob publicly for making my job rewarding and giving his students a great classroom experience which they really do appreciate.

Being Away Too Long

It's been a while since I've added a post. It's not that I haven't been busy--maybe too busy--but really I need to motivate myself to add to the blog on a more regular basis.

Report to the Board of Trustees
So--the three librarians in the Tam District are going to do a report to the local Board of Trustees this evening. Until last year we had turned in our regular annual report to the Supt. for Curriculum and Instruction and she/he had presented it to the Board for their approval which had been required by state law to receive state funding. When the funding dried up, the requirement to officially approve the plan(s) was not seen as a necessity but the Board did like to see the reports and plans regularly. Last year our new supt. decided that it would be good if the librarians made a personal appearance so that's what we did. Even though only two of us could be there, the presentation went very well. The Board was engaged, asked good questions, and challenged us to keep up the good work we were doing.

Tonight all three of us will be there. We don't really have a presentation. We will point out some specifics of each of our reports and answer Board members' questions.

Since we're already halfway through the year it always seems a bit odd to be making "plans" for the current year but I guess no time is ideal. Planning seems to be on-going and never-ending which is OK.

I promise to report back soon on what happened at the Board meeting.

CTAP Region IV Council meeting

I attended the CTAP IV Council meeting last Thursday (Dec. 6).

CTAP Region IV is part of the state-wide California Technology Assistance Program and has a representative group of folks from the Bay Area counties to help devise and review plans for projects the Region is working on. I've been on the Council for three years and it's been fun see all that CTAP IV does for counties, districts and schools in the Bay Area.

One program which they have begun pursuing recently is providing support for mentor teachers who support new teachers in the schools. There has been a dearth of attention paid to technology which is one of the areas that new teachers are supposed to be competent in. In many cases it's because their mentors just don't have the experience themselves and are not able to help new teachers as well as they'd like to.

CTAP IV has been working with the New Teacher Center in Santa Cruz to provide training for lead mentors with the expectation that they will take what they've learned back to their site mentors and they in turn will make using technology an everyday experience for new teachers.

The librarians and library supporters who are were there (including Jackie Siminitus and Linda Guitron) suggested that a link to Classroom Learning 2.0, which CTAP co-sponsors, be prominently featured on the CTAP IV Web site.

A Visit to Montgomery High in Santa Rosa

Yesterday a few of us from Redwood went to Montgomery High School in Santa Rosa to see the International Baccalaureate program in action. Redwood has decided to apply to become an IB school and Montgomery High is the closest IB school to Marin County. IB, as the name implies, is a curriculum of internationally-focused education for the last two years of high school.

Nancy Neu, our principal, and Steve Butler, the district's assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, lead this second group from Redwood to visit Montgomery, which has had an IB program for at least ten years. Our group consisted of three math teachers, two English teachers, a social studies teacher and myself.

After hearing about the program in general and some of the local experiences from the director of the program at MHS, we discussed one of the signature courses of the program, the Theory of Knowledge class, with the current teacher and then met and chatted with several of the students in the program. All the experiences they reported were very positive. Both the kids and the teacher were enthusiastic about their support of IB.

The second half of the morning was spent by teachers visiting IB classes. I chose go to the library and interview the library media teacher, who I had never met before. Kate Farrell has been librarian at Montgomery for five years. One day a week she also serves as the librarian at two(!) elementary schools in the district. Kate is nearing retirement from a varied life in librarianship and the world of children's literature. She developed a very successful story-telling program in her earlier years and even worked at the state level giving story-telling workshops around the state. She was a librarian in the SFUSD for several years and while with the district served as a liaison with the SF Public Library.

She mentioned a couple things which I think we will have to consider if we decided to become an IB school. One is that in IB there are two history courses, both with a more international focus than what we may be used to. The first course, for juniors, is the history of the Americas and it requires more materials than most school libraries have on Latin America. The senior course has a world-wide focus and so requires more materials which consider the international implications of history.
The other requirement is strong support for fairly high-level research resources of all kinds. This need is generally met these days with online subscription databases. Montgomery students are fortunate in that they have access to the SF Public Library databases which are very rich and diverse.

In all, I thought the trip was very useful and it was my first taste of what Redwood students and staff will need to be provided by the library in order to succeed in this intriguing and potentially wonderful new educational program.

Lots Happening, Part II: Class at Dominican U.

This actually happened Tuesday of last week so it's a little out of order with the previous post.

Martha Allen, a former English teacher-extraordinaire at Redwood, has invited me for a few years to come a talk to her secondary curriculum class at Dominican University. This was the third time I've visited and been able to share my insights with would-be teachers.

There were about 15-20 students present for the class which is a good number for sharing and discussion. I was with the class for just about an hour. About half of the time was taken by my explaining just what a library media teacher is in California, the sad state of our libraries in general and what a good librarian can do for them in promoting and teaching information literacy and helping their kids learn and hone skills they will need their entire lives.

Many of the students had had experiences with librarians, both good and bad, and as always I stressed that most librarians are eager to help in whatever way they can. I emphasized that they really like to be part of the planning process so that the opportunities and challenges of any assignment can be discussed before the kids begin their projects.

We talked a bit about what kids are reading these days and I reassured them that we have a wide range of materials to support various reading levels and interests. We also discussed the concept of free reading which many teachers put restrictions on. I explained, and Martha concurred, that the best kind of free reading is really free, ala Stephen Krashen. His theory and practice is that whether students (children or adults) are reading comic books, magazines or the most ancient classics, it's the act of reading which is essential, not the content.

I really like the opportunity to share with folks who may not be very comfortable around librarians the chance to interact in a free-flowing sort of way, bring up challenges they have faced and see what kinds of solutions we can reach. It's too bad we don't have the time to do something similar at our school sites often enough.

Lots Happening, Part I: The TV Taping

Wednesday of last week I, along with two other Marin County librarians were interviewed by Marin County Superintendent of Schools, Mary Jane Burke, at the Comcast studios. The interviews were part of the up-coming Education Matters TV program to be aired in December.

Also present for the interviews were Dane Lancaster, director of technology for the county office of education, Jane Ritter, district librarian for the Mill Valley school district, and Lori Deibel, library director at the Branson School in Ross.

Never having participated in such an experience it was fun to see how it all happens. Comcast had already been to Redwood as well as to Strawberry Point Elementary School to tape activities in their library media centers. Two short pieces will show their students and teachers in action in the library.

Taping started with the program introduction and closing by Mary Jane. The five minute segment with second graders at Strawberry Point was aired so we could all see it. Then Jane and Dane were asked a series of questions by the superintendent. The time, just under nine minutes, went very quickly with the two defining information literacy and talking about how technology has changed the way we look at and use information starting in the youngest grades.

Next it was the high school librarians' turn. The segment filmed at our library was shown and Lori and I were interviewed in our turn. Questions focused on how high schools students are finding and using information in ever more sophisticated ways. The time was way too short and in the end we assured Mary Jane that we'd love to come back for a follow-up some time.

Look for more information as soon as we find out when the program is available online and on the air.

California at the AASL 2007

Here's a picture John McGinnis, photographer extraordinaire, took at the conference following the first keynote speaker on Thursday, Oct. 25, 2007.