Posts

Showing posts from September, 2019

Screencasting in the Classroom

Image
This week I sought out a tech tool that would be useful in my work as a future High School Librarian. Since I come from a High School English education background, I decided to use this content area as my focus. However, the tool I found could be used in any classroom, and also in the library. Edtech VISION , a blog run by Colette Cassinelli, a library and instructional technology teacher, focuses on valuable tech tools that she has found useful. It was almost difficult to decide on a tool to share! I ended up choosing to focus on the topic of screen casting because I have often wanted to know how to use a screen casting program, both as a teacher and a librarian. I think that screen casting has universal appeal as a teaching tool. Cassinelli discusses screen casting software in her post Screencasting for Everyone , made on June 14, 2019. The software Cassinelli uses is called Screencastify, a Google Chrome extension that lets you record your screen directly from your browser. As y

Media Literacy and Fake News

Image
Media literacy has always been a topic of interest and passion for me. In my brief stint as a high school English teacher, the first lesson I taught to all of my classes was on how to evaluate news sources, and yes, how to identify "fake news." Needless to say, I wish I'd had the Liturgists podcast under my hat then; "Science Mike" and his "phat beat" would have been a hit, I feel sure. In all sincerity though, it was great to have such a clear and concise set of points that one could use to evaluate a news source (author, publisher, editorial review board, date of publication, cited references, and how well it is written). ALA's Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education was similarly helpful, providing readers with both a method for evaluating information, background on the need to do so, and then steps for implementation.  "Fake News" is a pervasive and insidious concept in our society that has become increasingly warped

AASL and ISTE Standards

Image
This week, I looked at two different sets of library standards: the new AASL National School Library standards and the ISTE standards. Coming from an education background myself, I am definitely familiar with standards and their use, as well as how often they are liable to shift and change. As I read, explored, and learned more, I was able to see all the awesome ways that these standards have evolved into something more comprehensive and wide reaching than they had been previously. I was unfamiliar with both AASL and ISTE standards, so I was excited to learn about both, compare the two, and apply that to my future work as a high school librarian. The linked crosswalk HERE does wonders to assist in the understanding of how these two standards sets compare. Furthermore, the structure of the AASL Standards is outlined clearly in the video below: For the purposes of this blog post, I have chosen to compare and contrast these standards using the context and perspective found in Engagin