Collaboration - Thing #15

Working with teachers is one of the things I like best about being an LMS. It's fun to hear about projects the kids will be doing and to be part of the process by providing good sites, pulling books for them, and helping the students when they visit the LMC. Having been in the classroom for many years, I can empathize with the lack of time teachers have to do everything they want to do. Helping them with the research piece I know saves them precious time. Unfortunately, my EA was cut two years ago; consequently, there would have been no book pulling had it not been for the great interns I've had, and that part of the support I offer would have suffered. I worry about the future and I'm afraid that when there are no LMC interns or EAs at Como, the collaboration process will suffer. Working with the Como staff reminds me how lucky our students are to have such creative teachers who are very concerned about what their students learn. The MILI project has also reinforced LMS-classroom teacher teaming. When LMSs and teachers have the equipment they need, it makes the transfer of information literacy tips that much easier, not only from LMSs to teachers and students, but from teachers to students as well. For example, recently Kita, Kathy, Kristin and I got together (Steve had a 1 on 1 session later) and we explored how to do a smart search on Google, using the advanced search page and limiting searches to various domains like .edu. It took about 15 minutes. This productive time, then, led to these teachers showing their students the same tips. The result? Hundreds of kids benefited and will continue to benefit from one short collaboration session between the LMS and four teachers. This is just one example of the good that can come from LMSs and classroom teachers working as partners.

Dribbling Lessons - Thing #8

I like the access route to the dribbling lessons. If you want to work on question generation, just click "question," etc. I've been incorporating search term lessons into each project introduction when a teacher brings his/her class to the library to learn about the teacher's webpage for the project. I've written some suggestions for searching directly under the project title so the kids can refer to them later and won't have to take notes when I'm presenting. An example is Nancy Plagens' project webpage. One simple search tactic many kids don't know, for instance, is that when searching for famous rulers you use Roman numerals, not 1, 2, etc. or the words one, two, etc.

Research Project Calculator - Thing #7

It was a good review to see Leslie's presentation on the RPC at our last MILP meeting. I was reminded that while there is a great deal of info, one can focus on portions here and there when needed. The whole thing doesn't have to be tackled at once. I guess that's the approach I've taken, and it makes the RPC more usable for me. One way I introduce students to the RPC is by showing 9th graders during library orientation where the link to the RPC is on the Library Media Center website, so they all have easy access to it in the right column of the Research Process webpage. Also, because the 9th grade English teachers are present during these orientation sessions, they can see where it is too.

Metasearching - Thing #12

Years ago I used Metacrawler and Dogpile all the time, but dropped them as soon as Google hit the market. I was glad for the opportunity to revisit them, and to try out some new metasearch engines I'd not heard of before. I loved Kartoo's graphics, but personally prefer the simplicity of Clusty's Googlesque homepage and easy-to-follow clustering categories. As a matter of fact, I have it as a link on my ROR page. I'd seen the Search Engines Features Chart before and had found it helpful, so I posted it on my Smart Search Webpage. Clicking Quintura brought up an error page, so I'm not sure about that one, and MusicPlasma looked interesting, but I didn't want to set up an account.