Thing 10: Search Tools Ninja

Thing 10: Search Tools Ninja

Welp, I made it to the finish line & my final module for this iteration of the Cool Tools for Schools Course. I have enjoyed my stay and have found all of the exercises to be the optimal amount of challenge for me as I made the transition from elementary school librarian to middle school librarian. This course has been a bright spot in my year. At school, I often found myself thinking about, talking about, and recommending things that I learned within the modules.

So, I sank my teeth into this lesson and all of the memories of the early Internet and a world before Google came flooding back. I even had a few memories about getting my Masters degree in Information Studies at SU and learning about extremely vague & extensive paid databases that could be queried for just about anything ever published in any field. Just learning how to conduct a search using these tools was a mini-master’s degree in itself!

I am very intrigued by Duck, Duck, Go. My crazy prediction for the next iteration of the Internet (outside of the rise of digital money) is the focus on user privacy. As, I was using Duck, Duck Go, all I could think about was how I recently began using the Brave web browser in an attempt to take back control over my own privacy. My sense is, the Cambridge Analytica Facebook information leak from a few years ago, is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to internet companies collecting user data. When you agree to the Terms of Use when downloading an app, you are pretty much waiving all of your rights to your information remaining private. In a world where our privacy and ability to lead quiet lives seems to be disappearing, the natural response, to me, will be for the pendulum to swing the opposite direction towards decentralization & increased protection of personal data. Web Tools like Duck, Duck, Go are just the beginning of what’s to come.

Next, I headed over to LibGuides and got completely immersed in checking out created guides from many, many other libraries. The guides were intriguing and are stuck in my head as a way to pass along pre-created curations & resources to my colleagues. I saw resources and guides for everything from college law to black history being taught in middle school. I really like LibGuides.

For the assignment portion of the module, I tackled 2 separate tasks. The first thing that I attempted met an immediate need for a unit that I plan on co-teaching with a 6th grade teacher on the topic of Social Justice. I have been aggregating and collecting resources and stashing them using Google Drive. But, I feel they might look better and be more usable if I use Pinterest to curate them. I kept thinking that a LibGuide would be the ultimate way to complete this task but realize that it’s a pay service...which is preventing me from tackling that task. I started curating the resources on this board: https://www.pinterest.com/ashworth0339/social-justice-unit/

The second task that I chose to was to complete some of the self paced Google Power Searching classes. I found the classes to begin VERY, VERY basic and slow…..almost to the point of being boring so I skipped ahead a bit to Unit’s 4 & 5 where they start to dive into credibility, checking facts and verifying information. I am going to borrow a lot of the concepts and videos when I go to teach web literacy concepts to 6th & 7th graders in the beginning of the school year. The videos posed some interesting search queries and scenarios. I think that I could cobble together a few neat handouts that have the kids complete the same search tasks as in the Google videos and then use the videos as a resource & reinforcement to the concepts being taught. There’s some really good stuff in these self paced lessons….again, particularly unit’s 4-6.

Thing 09: Research Databases

Thing 09: Research Databases

Another topic that is near and dear to my heart as a school librarian! I appreciate this topic more than ever, since I recently switched levels from elementary to middle school and am need of a re-education to the best middle school appropriate databases.

As an elementary school librarian, I feel like most K-2 databases were really difficult for young students to use independently. Pebble Go and Tumble books were two of my favorites and were niche tools that did a really nice job being user friendly to the youngest of all users. As students approached grades 3-5, the readability hurdle was overcome for most students and we used tools like World Book, Britannica and to some extent the entire Gale suite became viable options for students. 

I particularly was drawn to the “What is Wrong with Just Googling It” paragraph. “Googling It” is an epidemic in middle school. I asked all students during library orientation, how many of them trust and rely on Google for their research needs. A resounding 83% of students answered, “Yes, Google is all I need. It takes me to the right answers.” My conjecture as to why there is a such high Google confidence among students is a mixture of: 1) academic laziness and 2) Google’s brilliant search algorithm. Students realize that Goolgle just plain works for most of their lower level tasks and learn to rely on it. I use their data point as a way to launch into my lessons on databases and the harmful effects of relying on one singular tool, for anything, is a really bad idea. But again, if classroom teachers aren’t onboard, this information goes in one ear and out the next. So my struggle at the moment is to get adoption from a handful of teachers, find small success, and build outward from there.

It’s been sort of an awakening for me at the middle school level that I need to be a major collaborative partner with teachers to help them create more authentic projects. If I see one more ‘teachers pay teachers’ inquiry research packet or research scavenger hunt…..I am just gonna LOSE IT!! But, I’ll leave that rant for another time.

For the assignment portion of this module, I hope that it’s okay that I thought about the task a little bit differently. Rather than look at one tool more in-depth or compare or contrast databases or create an instructional quest using them (all would be valuable exercises), I had a bit more of a pressing need. Since I made the switch to middle school, one of my first tasks was to create a new webpage. To make it more difficult on myself, I ventured way out of my comfort zone and used the website creator tool: Wix. It was an ADVENTURE creating a webpage with Wix…..much like learning a new language. I settled on a clean, 21st century theme and my new website only has one page with multiple page anchors. It looks really cool and is quite functional. 

The major issue that has plagued me with my new page is finding a way to create a password protected page that leads directly to my databases. For the first six months of school, my webpage simply had hyperlinks pointed directly to the databases. This shouldn’t have been an issue except most of the databases were link authenticated, meaning they logged any remote user in with my school’s credentials (username & password.)

The BOCES along with the database vendors become very unhappy when Librarians do this! The BOCES has spoken to me on multiple occasions about fixing it, but I just haven’t had the time to figure out how to do this with Wix. So, if it’s okay for the purposes of this assignment, I self educated using the Wix FAQ page and YouTube and created a password protected page for all of my databases. Now, any visitor to my webpage that wants access to database content has to enter a password to access a protected page. The beauty in the way that I set it up is, that one singular password leads to every subscription, and most subscriptions are automatically logged in to their corresponding resource.

Baldwinsville’s Junior & Senior High School also have similar configurations. In collaborating with the junior & senior high Librarians, we all now have the same three letter password that grants students access to our databases. So, if students memorize the access code in middle school, they will have it on auto-pilot by the time they reach high school.


I hope completing the assignment in this way is acceptable. It was a huge need for me and I am very satisfied with the way that my page turned out.


https://jashworth8.wixsite.com/rayllc

https://jashworth8.wixsite.com/rayllc/research-links

Thing 08: Digital Curation Tools

Thing 08: Digital Curation Tools

As a school librarian, this topic is very near and dear to my heart. As a matter of fact, curation was featured heavily in the latest iteration of the AASL Standards. I had to chuckle a bit in the reading and reminisce about the days of the early web with Yahoo’s Subject directories and InfoSlug - the world pre-Google. I think an important idea that was mentioned in the reading that stuck with me is that anybody can make lists & curate but there is a difference between quality and just dumping a bunch of links onto a website. Unfortunately, it’s easier to run into crap on the Internet than it is to find quality. To curate resources, and do it well, takes skill. A good Librarian can help with this process ;)

In looking at the resources for this module, I’d say that I have familiarity with using about half of the tools that I looked at - mostly Pinterest, Diigo, and Symbaloo. I know that some of my fellow librarians love curating using Symballo but I’ve never warmed up to it….I’ve never found it visually appealing. ScoopIt looked cool but I was really disappointed to learn that the service was discontinued.

Flipboard is a personal favorite that I have installed on my iPhone.I love that I can aggregate content that interests me and I frequently get new articles delivered in a magazine style feed.

I’ve learned so much and have come across loads of interesting new content just by having this app installed on my phone. I was so satisfied to learn that they enhanced their website

I played with Diigo for a bit and was intrigued by the possibilities of using it with students. I like that there is a Chrome extension and it plays nice with Google accounts. The annotator tool attached to my mouse really started to get on my nerves when it was turned on all of the time. I could see using it once and a while but having it pop up and be attached to my movements really bothered me. The bookmarks on steroids thought really was stuck in my head throughout using the tool. In terms of using it instructionally, there definitely is some instructional value.

For the assignment to this module I felt a little sleazy, as if I was cheating, because I chose to spend time with Pinterest. I really do enjoy Pinterest in my personal life and have many boards to keep track of my recipes and ideas for remodeling my house. I never thought of using Pinterest to the extent that Weston High School did in Joyce Valenza’s SLJ article. I like the idea of creating a public board for anyone to add titles to as book suggestions. It was extremely easy to set up a board and label it with a genre and begin adding titles. Pinterest makes it easy to share boards as well, so I can see passing along the link to teachers & students to have them populate it with books. Since I am doing a complete overhaul of my collection, this is a great way to get a birds eye view of everything to purchase. It would also let me see if my orders were balanced with fiction vs nonfiction and among genres. Additionally, Pinterest is the most visually appealing of all the curation tools….hence its popularity!

https://pin.it/l5ljj2vnfwy7jk