STAGE 1: Preparation
Kathy Fielder explains very well how to start a Shelfari group in Discovery Education. It is a bit outdated but it is a good place to start.
All you have to do is:
- Open a library account and created a group.
- Help students create an account and ask them follow me.
- Invite them to the group ( You can batch process this by opening Followers>> Invite them to your group)
- Define what account and profile settings need to be changed to protect students from bullying.

I created a mock student account to go through the process. I took screenshots of each step and created a slideshow. I shared it with the teachers who are taking care of the reading groups.

STAGE 2: Invite students and teachers
I invited each group (ten to twenty students) to the library.
- I described the project briefly and we watched this movie for an overview of Shelfary (It is a little childish but it is funny).
- Students followed the instructions from this presentation to sign up, edit their settings, write reviews and join the group.
We needed two periods to get it done.

The girls loved to invite their peers and started uploading books right away, so I had to interrupt them to make sure that they edit their settings too.
The second session was about avatars (upload a picture and give credits), writing reviews and adding books to the group shelve and start discussions.

STAGE 3: Stay active
The girls loved to use the site to communicate with friends, but there is work to do to encourage them to be part of the group too.
- Adding books to the group shelf and starting discussions.
- Sending announcements. This is very handy, but, unfortunately, they disappear from the page once sent. I copied them in the discussions or in the group description areas (depending on the subject).
- Replying to students reviews and send encouraging personal messages to them.
- The group is also a good place to launch new books, especially series sequels (send announcements) and non fiction books (add to group shelf).

STAGE 4: Getting global
I will give a presentation about this project to Librarians Japan, and hope that we will connect with other reading groups soon!

This is a COETAIL Course 5 final project. It includes a unit planer.

exislepublishing.com.au

Stick to Traditional book suppliers and publishers offering their own e-reader platform.
Travis Jonker writes in Travis Excellent (Ereader) Adventure that Baker & Taylor has Axis360, and Mackin has VIA (Baker and Taylor and Mackin are two big american library book suppliers). I didn’t start exploring their sites because I know that they offer pretty much the same content as Follett.

Instead, I might purchase titles from:
Panda Books Japan is a division of RIC publications working with Capstone Press, a big educational publisher from the US.
Panda books offers a good selection of books on Japan, IB and material for EAL students. They have multiple access copies of books for class projects too. Titles can be purchased individually or as bundles on specific topics. I can catalogue them with a link to Panda Press platform for check out/downloads.

Brain Hive is a new model currently tested in school libraries in the United states.
“Here’s how it works: When you set up your free Brain Hive account, your school’s students and teachers gain access to a fun, vibrant online reading community where they can access 3,000+ eBooks. Your school pays only for what students and teachers check out, at a budget-friendly cost of $1 per title.”
It is easy to incorporate each ebook in a library catalogue because MARC records of each book is available.
I need to talk to my colleague about it but I think it could be an option for additional titles not available from Follett, Questia and Panda books without big investment or commitment.

Overdrive: I wrote about Overdrive in my previous post and we are still debating about it. I like that patrons download ebooks or audiobooks on their own device. It can be a Nook, a Kindle, an Ipad, or an Android. Unfortunately, it is very costly, certainly something we can’t start as an experiment! No MARC records are available which means that I would have to catalogue each book individually if I want them to appear in our catalogue.

Buy Kindles, Nooks or iPads, download a number of books on them and check them out to your students.
A lot of libraries in the US choose this solution. I don’t think that it is an option for us because we are in Japan (copyright issues) and because most of our students have their own device.
BUT Amazon just launched a Kindle store in Japan. At the same time, Amazon US started a new service, Wispercast, that allows you to manage multiple devices from one account and distribute Kindle fonts to any device PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android tablet or phone with the free Kindle app. Does it mean that I can buy copies of a book and download them into the school iPads? Not really. This is what Christopher Harris, the coordinator of the school library system for the Genesee Valley (NY) Educational Partnership and SLJ columnist, writes about it:
“ Amazon’s Kindle Store Terms of Use dated Sept 6, 2012, does not refer specifically to educational use, stating instead that licensed content from Amazon is “solely for your personal, non-commercial use.”…“Before I could in any way endorse the use of Kindles in libraries, I would want to see a written confirmation from Amazon that this is an allowed use,” Harris says by email. “Barnes & Noble provides an education-specific statement of use. Why won’t Amazon?” “Given the ambiguity of these statements, and the lack of updated terms to explicitly address school/library use, the termination section is quite worrisome: “Amazon may immediately revoke your access to the Kindle Store and the Kindle Content without refund of any fees,” writes Harris. ”
Hmm, wait and see!

There are many ebook platforms available and it is a difficult to decide which one is the best for our library needs. Audrey Watters lists in her excellent article on tablets “the top five issues libraries face when it comes to using ereaders and tablets in school”. The same issues are also relevant for choosing ebooks platforms:

1) Interoperability: can my student download an ebook to their device and read without internet access?
2) Administration: Is the platform easy to navigate for the librarian as well as for users?
3) Availability: How easy is it to obtain the titles students and teachers want?
4) Integration: Does the ebook catalog fit with the library catalog?
5) Cost: How expensive are the platform and the ebooks?
6) The password issue: Users need a username and password for each database, search engine and ebook platform they access through the library. I dream of a solution to allow them to enter ONE username and password and have access to all online content at once. I am confident that we will get there someday, but there is a long way to go!

Jedi Archives in ” The Clone Wars”
I wonder why the ebooks are so similar to books!

Welcome to Seisen Library!

“Libraries across the world celebrate Teen Read Week with a variety of special events and programs aimed at encouraging teens to read for pleasure and to visit their libraries for free reading materials.”

This year theme is “Dare To Read For The Fun Of It”, with a focus on horror and gothic literature and movies. Here is how we celebrated!

Come to The Library If You Dare

Seisen Library Entrance

Sarah, Science teacher, reading “The Silence Of The Lamb”

Watch A Movie On Halloween
We selected adaptations of books into movies and invited students to vote for the one we are going to watch after school on October 31 . Elective students uploaded the movie pictures on our screen savers and desktops and bookmarked movie trailers in the favorite bars. We will offer drinks and popcorn.

Working With Students
Like always, part of the fun was working with electives students on the project. They learned:
- How to create posters and downloading new fonds in Pages.
- Look for large pictures in Google Images to change our screen savers and desktops and to work on posters.
- To collaborate and respect deadlines.
- They are also taking pictures and will learn how to select and enhance them for a slideshow.
- They will embed the slideshow in the school website and Seisen Parents newsletter and upload it for the school wide screens in the school entrance and the corridors.

This Event is a big success. People come to see what is going on and end up borrowing books!

Sharing The Fun
I signed up in YALSA Teen Read Week Showcase to share this blog post with fellow librarians!

What about next year?
It would be nice to celebrate Teen Read Week in collaboration with other international schools in Tokyo. I need to remember to talk about it during our May Librarians Japan meeting.

Selection Books In Films (Middle School)

Ipad catalog at Harris County Public Library

I followed the simple tutorials from our tech person and from YouTube, a bit at the time, and start to understand the point about ipads: It is easy to use, opening one app at a time helps staying focused, but things you need are just one click away. I feel like comparing my computer to a desk and my ipad to a house. It is awesome! (and so time consuming!)

This is what I explored and what I am going to ask our tech person to install on the school devices:

Reading:
- Blue Fire, ebooks, Kindle, Questia and Follett to allow English and language classes to study the same text downloaded from Project Gutemberg, Google Books,Questia and Follett (see my previous post on e.books) and work on text simultaneously.

Citation:
Easy Bib: Easy bib is a bibliography maker and management service. Most students use easy bib already. The app allows them to scan books ISBN barcode , e mail their citations and take notes. We have been working with Noodle Tools in the past, but students had to type all copyright information manually and the software only put them in right order. So we are going to change to easy bib and will use their terrific Research Guides for classes.
Collaborating:
Drop Box: since all seisen i pads have the same email account, I thought that it would be a good idea to use dropbox to enable students to share url and files when searching on the same project.

This how far I got. There are plenty of websites on apps on the web, but these are the ones I found really interesting:
Langwitches blog: There is More to iPads in the Classroom Than Apps is a good place to start for apps and thoughts about teaching practices.
David Andrews: An Apple for the teacher: are iPads the future in class? is an inspiring article in The Guardian.
The Digital Shift From School Library Journal from library practices.

COETAIL students blogs such as Clair Wain’s fascinating The ‘Grammar’ of the Ipad about “relationship between the children’s expressive languages and the I-pad”.

My goal is simply to be able to help students and faculty make better use of their ipad, not only finding new apps.

MarleyKatz Cat iPad Painting

Click here to view the embedded video.

Katrina Szyszkoski created this creature for our first Poetry Week in 2008.
Seisen Students baptized him “Fred”.

The part I like best is:

“Does it matter? What use is the imagination—as opposed to, say, the kind of mental agility, the quick-reflex thinking, that video games encourage? What is the argument we make for reading and daydreaming and cultivating inner resonances? I would say, to put it in the simplest terms, that imagination nourishes the primary self. As much as our skills and practical accomplishments bolster a sense of independent identity, imagination fills out the inner counterpart. It consolidates the “I” by making plausible the other. Imagination enables empathy, and imagination exercised through reading, through the work of inhabiting the language and sensibility of created characters—and of course the author herself—pushes continually against the solipsism fed to us by a marketing industry selling consumption as the index of our worth.”

This article sums up what I want to tell parents when I invite them to the library:
- A library is NOT only a place to find information for assignments
- A library is NOT a only a place to take books to improve grades
- A library IS a place with things to read for the FUN of it and to improve your imagination! If you enjoy reading, chances are that your kids will enjoy it too.

I write articles in the school newsletter each month, but this year, I decided to change for blog posts about thoughts and tips on reading with related links rather than lists of events going on in the library.
I imagined this “letters” as:
- short, focused on one theme at the time
- connected to what is going on in the school (courses taught, sport competitions, exhibitions…)
- linked to useful web sites and bibliographies
- embedded in our library web page with a place to write comments

I already published my first post. “Read With Your Daughter”.

Mother and Daughter by Katrina Szyszkoski

I would also like to improve the way we use technology to involve parents to events.
I started “A Poem For Your Daughter” during Poetry Month in April 2008 and repeated it every second year. It is quite successful!
The idea is to ask families to offer a poem to their daughters. Either a poem they like or something they wrote themselves (We got nice poems from grandparents!). Then I print posters of the poems and hang them around the school, as well as create a Picasa album to share via the library website.
This year, I would like to use a new tool to share the poems because they are sometimes difficult to read in Picasa and because it would be nice to have feedback.

I had a lot of fun revisiting Alan Levine’s Story Tools wiki, but couldn’t find something matching my expectations.
I remembered that our art teacher gathers her student’s works through Issuu and tried it. It looks nice, but I can’t find a way to embed it to the library google site, while Picasa albums were really easy to use.
I wonder if there is a tool that could allow parents to add their poems to a site and see what other parents added instantaneously.

In November, I am going to attend a workshop about Digital Storytelling with Jason Ohler. I might discover my dream tool there!

The idea was to offer
- multiple copies of best sellers such as “the Hunger Games” that everyone wants now, but will be less popular in a few years.
- classics
- series that take a lot of space on shelve
- books for EAL students who enjoy being able to look up for words in a dictionary and take note while reading
- memoirs and short stories because 9 and 10 grade students have to read one each year and we would like to opper them as many choice as possible
- multiple copies of Sakura Medal books

Follett

My Follett Shelf

Students, parents and faculty use their library ID number and a password to access the site.
They choose a book and can either read it online or download it to their iPad (there is a Follett App) or to their computer. Books can only be read through Follet e-reader. The layout is similar to a pdf file .

Readers can’t choose a font style and size, but they can search keywords and dictionary definitions, they have access to the table of contents and it is easy to take notes, look for definitions, highlight and bookmark pages.
Downside:
I was frustrated last spring that a a lot of titles were not available overseas or out of print, but It seems to be better now.
Users have to make sure to close their book properly before closing their browser otherwise the book is marked checked out and can’t be reopen. This is difficult for younger students. We had to contact Follett to get the “frozen books” available again.

Questia

My Questia Account

Teachers liked questia but I felt like it didn’t have the success it deserved because of slow search feature and a old-fashion design.
So, I was impressed about how Questia improved over the summer and I guess that it is going to become a very popular site for faculty and IB students.
This is what I like about the “new” Questia:
- an attractive, colorful home page featuring new and popular e-books
- an easy to navigate browser to find documents on topics
- new tutorials and a newsletter
- an app for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch

Marketing:
A Pew Study from last June shows that “53 percent of tablet owner don’t know that they can read an ebook from the library.
When I asked our students, I realized that only few of them use their device to read.
I introduced Follett ebooks to our grade 7 students this week. They were very excited about it and most of them checked out a book right away. I will buy new titles before I show the other classes how it works!

On our home page, I also advertise Project Gutemberg, Feed books and Google Books
Those sites give access to ebooks and audiobooks to download and read on Nook, iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone.

I also included two links about e-readers
Best Free Reading Apps For iPad and Ten Must Have iPads Apps for Readers (Check the “Use Drop Box” tip).

I will be happy about any tip and comment on ebooks and ereaders and about ways to encourage teens to read online!

For the ones interested in Overdrive, please read this interesting COETAIL blog post.
For Follett, check this post by Jeff Hasting in School Library journal.

My Manifesto

What went wrong and what can I do about it?

What should I add? remove?

Thanks to COETAIL I feel that I got better in assisting students and teachers in their research and presentations.
I started moving around when students are working in the library, giving advices and pointing out sources and tools.
This led to a better collaboration with teachers. Most of them give me a copy of their assignment when they book the library, which helps to prepare activities and sources for them.

We only started the school year one month ago and for some reason most teachers decided to start a research project in the library at the very beginning of the year, when the usual beginning-of-year-PSHG-research-skills classes are scheduled.
I have been very busy and overwhelmed, but it gave me a great opportunity to reflect on our COETAIL class and try to answer this question:

Whose job is it to teach the NETs standards to students and how do we ensure they are being met in an integrated model?

During PSHG classes, I showed our students what we’ve got, hardcopy and online, one database after the other, going through the Big Six research process within two or three hours.
During the other classes I gave fifteen minutes mini lessons connected to their assignments, showing how and where to find books,magazine articles, dvds, databases and websites.
The rest of the time, I gave advices to each group according to their needs:
- pointing out a fantastic new book about Shakespeare and the Globe
- giving advices about adding credit to pictures
- using ISBN numbers to download citations from EasyBib
- reminding to work on Google Docs and share to be able to work collaboratively from home
- showing how to use Safari’s “reading lists” to keep track of interesting sites (It is very handy, but I couldn’t find a way to save those lists easily. Any advice out there?)

Conclusion:
I am sure that students visiting the library for an assignment learned more than the other ones.

My goal this year:
Try to work even more in collaboration with teachers and INTEGRATE ISTE Net standards and AASL standards through the year.
I revisited David Warlick’s blog post What Difference Might One “S” Make?.
I like the comment:

The little bits of technology education that I have included in my classes have been much more effective when I briefly overview the possibilities of a given technology tool, and then instruct students to “play with it”, see what it can do, and share it with their classmates. The ability, and in fact the encouragement of sharing ideas with each other is a key concept for both education and the work world of today. (Karen)

Makes me think: one of the the big advantage of introducing tools in context is that students understand better that each tool has a purpose.

And the good news is: it is more fun for everyone!

The library should be a place of connection and interaction where parents:
- get an idea of their kid’s life at school
- connect with their kids by reading the same books and magazines
- get advices and information about parenting
- get magazines and books for their own recreational reading for free
- participate in the school life and volunteer
- understand how to use online tools from the library to help their kids use them

Recently, I attended a workshop by Doug Johnson, a librarian and consultant on school libraries and technology issues.

“You can’t be a professionally competent librarian, even if your area of expertise is literature, if you can’t use technology tools in your work.”

In his presentations and articles, he stresses the role of technology, not only to connect kids to books, but also to promote events and to establish transparency and trust with the school community.

“- Open budgets: Put your budget in an online spreadsheet that is available for anyone to read – teachers, administrators, parents and the community.
- Open calendars: Put every library calendar online and share it.
- Open goals: You long-term goals and annual short term objectives should be available on-line with a means for your stakeholders to comment and discuss them.
- Open statistics: Don’t wait until the end of the year to file an “annual report.” Keep a running list of total numbers of items circulated, students using the library, classes you’ve taught, and other things that “count.” Make the numbers public – right on your library home page.
- Open doors: Take every opportunity to have parents, administrators and teachers come into your library both during school hours and outside school hours.
- Open opinions: People ought to know where you stand. If you think both kids and adults should have access to a divergent set of opinions about issues, say so. If you see that teachers and students are not taking advantage of fair use guidelines, say so. If you believe student reading test scores will improve if they are given more opportunities to read voluntarily materials of their own choice, share the research.”

Doug Johnson also suggests to have a readers’ advisory group that includes students and parents to discuss about goals, acquisitions, policies and events.
I have to admit that I worked a lot to improve our presence online and collaboration with teachers, but I still have a lot to do to build a good relationship with parents.

My first step will be to include this slideshow to my “Back To School” newsletter article and embed it into our web site.
I will also try to plan an orientation session for parents about the library and technology issues.

According to Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, there are only two states for children these days. “They are either asleep or online … even if they wake up in the middle of the night they go online,”
This is scary isn’t it?

In an article published in The Guardian, Stephen Carrick-Davies tells how his family started having a day per week without technology after how his ten-year-old son said “I think we should have one day a week where no one looks at a screen,” “I think it would make us more imaginative as a family.”

There is an increasing number of books and articles suggesting that technology diminish us and that it is time to unplug:
. “technology is threatening to dominate our lives and make us less human” (Alone Together by MIT professor Sherry Turkle)
. “the internet is altering the way we think to make us less capable of digesting large and complex amounts of information, such as books and magazine articles” (The Shallows by Nicholas Carr)
. “ It has made people lazy and enshrined the illusion that clicking a mouse is a form of activism equal to real world donations of money and time. (The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov)
. “the intellectual future of the US looks dim” (The Dumbest Generation by Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein)
. “The proliferation of communication tools poses a problem of self control in the modern world” (We Have Met the Enemy by Daniel Akst)

Saturday, March 24, was The National Day Of Unplugging where millions of people around the world took the time to slow down and enjoy a day without electronic device.
I sounded like these “No-My-Car-No-Hi” in Japan (the Japanese version of Car-free Day!) or “No Alcohol Day”, suggesting that we need a day to “detox” from time to time.

We are all more or less dependent to technology, and some experience withdrawal symptoms when deprived from device for a long period of time.
It means, of course, that some of our students suffer. How do they cope? What can we do?
“In a forthcoming book, iDisorder, Larry Rosen argues that all our tech gadgets and applications are turning us into basket-cases suffering from versions of obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention-deficit syndrome.”
But he offers another approach to help students concentrate instead of having their mind wandering about texting or twitting:

“rather than taking a break from technology, you give yourself permission to embrace technology for a particular amount of time, be it one minute or 15. “It works amazingly,” he says.”

I must confess that I stared at the screen and shook my head when I read this. I took a break for cup of tea and thought “well, actually, why not? If there is a problem, we are not going to solve it by burying our head in the sand don’t we? After all, elementary teachers sometimes let their students jump around when they feel that they get unsettled.”
Larry Rosen adds “The trick is to be disciplined and only take tech breaks at predefined intervals.” This could be implemented easily during a school day.
I guess that this kind of tech breaks could also help students manage their time it would give them the opportunity to experience how much they can do in a given among of time.

Kim Cofino gives us a great example of prevention instead of treatment by organizing information sessions in her school community called “Living With Laptops” , with tips and links to “to strategize ways to help our children maintain a healthy, balanced lifestyle”.
one of her advice is “to remember that all of the adults in our children’s lives are role models”
What example do I give to my students when they are browsing the shelves and I sit in front of my computer and only acknowledge them when they come to me to check out their books?
I should make a rule for next year to move around during break times.

We also started working on classes on fair use and usage agreement for next school year and I am thinking of adding a project on time on time management to this program, with the help of United World College South East Asia and Jeffrey Kalmikoff’s lists of applications to manage time online.

HOW DO YOU UNPLUG?

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Students aged 10 to 12 who are in their final year of the programme are expected to carry out an extended, collaborative inquiry project, known as the exhibition carried out under the guidance of their teachers.The exhibition represents a significant event in the life of both the school and student, synthesizing the essential elements of the programme and sharing them with the whole school community. It is an opportunity for students to exhibit the attributes of the student profile that have been developing throughout their engagement with the programme. It is a culminating experience marking the transition from the PYP to the Middle Years Programme.”(Primary Years Programme. IBO.org).
This year theme was “Sharing the Planet”

As global citizens, we have the responsibility to work together to create a better world.

I noticed right away that something was different from the previous years. The girls didn’t stand shy and intimidated before the audience but all of them were eager to share their presentation.
Why? because each project was about making a change to the world.

We just read about Challenged Based Learning and I had great examples of it before my eyes!

“A unique feature of challenge-based learning is that problems are tied to an idea of global importance (war, say, or the sustainability of water) . Students are able to research the area of the challenge in terms of events taking place in the world around them, strengthening the connection between what they learn in school and what they perceive outside it . They then work in teams of co-learners, further increasing their interest in the process and giving them valuable experience in team dynamics and collaborative work . Teachers act as coaches to the student-centered communities of practice, addressing individual questions and concerns and stepping in to help the students retain their focus if the problem seems too large” (The New Media Consortium: Challenge-Based Learning: An Approach for Our Time)

Seisen girls started working on their exhibition at the beginning of the school year. They identified issues, researched, met experts, took action. For example, one group working on endangered animals contacted WWF (World Wildlife Fund) and sold painted T shirt to raise money for endangered species and for animals lost after the earthquake in Tohoku. Another group contacted our ward to encourage saving energy projects.

I talked with Doug Brittain and Beverly Bibby, the two grade six teachers about their experience. They were extremely enthusiastic:
“You must keep in mind that exhibition is a platform where students demonstrate their learnings and understandings of the last 3 years. We don’t teach them during exhibition, they choose their own project and we support them on their path of learning, especially for time management and collaboration skills.
“ Students came with an idea about a problem but in order to solve it, they needed to get deeper knowledge, be responsible and take action”.
“ Because kids searched on things they were interested in, they worked at their own pace and extended their knowledge further and further.
“ Being able to take action empowered them and every single child was forced outside her comfort zone.
“ They grew more confident because they prove themselves that they could do something concrete from what they had learned.
“ They will keep for their life what they learned for this project.
“ The kids wanted to do another project!

“Technology was central because it allowed students to engage and decide about their own learning.”
- With the help of the librarian, students search about topics, issues and possible ways to make a difference.
- They learned to use primary sources and connect to real life.
- They contacted experts using e mails, Facebook and Skype. For example, one group conducted a Skype interview with Paul Nieklen, a National Geographic photographer about endangered species, another one invited an expert on sustainable energy to Seisen, and another one organized their own field trip planning schedule, budget and contact person
- They learned to write letters and e. mail to ask for support, they collaborated with their groups and their mentors using technology.
- They choose and learned, mostly on their own, the best suited tool to collaborate and present their project to the community ( Moodle, Prezzi, Voicethread, Sketch Star, Piratepad, Edmondo, Powerpoint etc…)

As a visitor, I was amazed about how much effort they had put into their project and how much they knew about their topic. I experienced Project Based Learning when I designed our library web page with library electives, but
Challenge based learning goes further, it really connect students to the world.

Doug Brittain pointed out that this kind of project is more suitable to the Middle Years Program, where students are more mature to evaluate, plan, investigate and create a product/ solution.

Sure enough, this year younger students proved that they “grew through their project” enough to make a change to the world!

More about Project/ Challenged Based Learning and the PYP:

IBO. IB Primary Years Curriculum Framework.
Kim Cofino. Creating Independent Learners: The MYP Technology Design
Buck Institute For Education. Introduction to Project Based Learning
New Media Contorsium. Challenge Based Learning: An Approach For Our time