https://prezi.com/view/ObjJ6gQOM7aph5n1NjDd/
Learning Reflection
Please see Adobe Spark document here:
Games/apps: Code.org
Code.org. 2017, https://code.org/. Accessed July 16, 2017.
Above image taken by C. Cournoyer.
It’s hard not to notice the giant push in education toward coding and STEM in general. When I visited a retiring librarian at my son’s school and asked her for advice in becoming a school librarian, she said “Learn code. Go on to code.org. Have your son teach you.” So that’s what I did– my son Henry (age 7) showed me around Code.Org, his favorite educational website, he taught me some beginning code using some of its games, and he helped me write this review.
Henry (as dictated to me, mostly, with some editing and prompting): Code.org is a lot of fun for kids because coding makes up computer games… and kids love games, right? It’s easy to start because you can set up your own account, or you don’t have to– you can just start right up so you don’t have to remember your password. Then you can choose courses, but instead at school we like to do Hour of Code. We take our computer or library time and start a lesson and work on it as long as we have the time. There’s fun stuff like Minecraft, which is my favorite of course, and Moana, and you can make her canoe sail through the ocean with 3D graphics when you learn how to. It’s so cool.
Code.org has coursework for students of all ages and literacy skills (pre-reading and beyond, and anyone new to coding regardless of age) in the form of units with set objectives and activities, some of which are “unplugged” and some involve computer work. The site also has resources for teacher professional development– how to code as well as how to teach coding, and where to go for in-personal PD as well. The site is mostly easy to navigate once you figure out what exactly you’d like to do. Logging in is optional, but an excellent way to track your progress.
All lessons for students start out with a video where kids who code or adults who do it professionally explain what they do, how it works, and how kids have used that skill in their own game-playing. It’s a fantastic way to answer the ever-present why do we have to learn this question, and gives users concrete examples of a specific coding skill at work.
I usually skip over the vids, mom. They’re fine but kind of boring. I usually just want to start the activities. So I like that they have Minecraft and Disney stuff. It makes it more fun. I get stuck sometimes on some steps. I have to be patient and I get irritated. But if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and you have to try again. Once you figure out how to do the basic stuff, they give you options like creating a game, where you can choose sound effects and you have to do certain challenges, like create loops and come up with rules for the game. I love coming up with rules. Me and my friends at school laugh at the stuff we make our birds [the character that is programmed] do.
Each lesson in the sequence builds on the last. Students are told at the beginning what they’ll be learning, so there’s a clear learning objective, and a sense of what the end result might look like– good scaffolding techniques in terms of instructional design. Many lessons are branded with things familiar to kids, including Disney characters and, yes, Minecraft. Because Code.org has made it a fun game with graphics, sound, color, and a challenge to complete, there’s an intrinsic motivation for students to figure out why things go wrong, and to correct them. Excellent hands-on problem solving at work.
I highly recommend spending some time working through Code.org. It presents a fun challenge to think concretely and sequentially to complete a task. And it’s important for librarians to understand and do a bit of this themselves, as increasingly library spaces are incorporating computer labs and makerspaces.
Book talk: Inside Out and Back Again
Lai, Thanhha. Inside Out & Back Again. New York: Harper, 2013. Print.
I found Inside Out and Back Again, and our group book discussion, so very exciting! I was bursting at the seams to share all of the ideas I had about it, all of my impressions upon reading it… so much so that the most challenging part of this assignment was actually quieting myself to listen to what my colleagues had to say about it and waiting for my turn to speak!
The book itself is a lovely gem, full of depth and beauty and power, I think. The verse is written simply and lyrically. Upon picking it up, it didn’t take me too long to realize what a teaching opportunity it presented, not just for English classrooms but (especially) for history and social studies as well. Some of the themes are particularly timely– racism and immigration, for example. Others are timeless, and address essential questions around colonialism, identity, migration, civil war (specifically the Vietnam War), coming of age, family, and the strength of love.
It was fascinating to get my classmates’ perspectives on the book, and I found our conversation around the author’s use of verse particularly interesting. We each had our opinions about books in verse, why it works or doesn’t, and our impressions of Inside Out and Back Again. We also had interesting ideas about which types of audiences this book might appeal to; middle grades, yes– but what about high school? or younger grades?
I have really come to appreciate exploring these last ideas in particular. It’s a slow but definite transformation in the way I approach literature– coming from a secondary English and Social Studies teacher, and now thinking in terms of a school librarian. And I have really come to appreciate my classmates’ refreshing and creative takes on literature. Their perspectives have taught me so much about the importance of enthusiasm and clear thinking around presenting literature to youth.
Thoughts on the collection development project
I greatly enjoyed the collection analysis process and project for Clayville Elementary. Meeting and talking with the school librarian and visiting her library was tremendously helpful and informative, and working with my classmates in person was particularly fun and helpful.
Looking at a library space in a small elementary school; discussing the issues surrounding collections, spaces, and technology, and especially budgets and how they affect library services; and looking through elementary-level books (something I haven’t done since I was in elementary school) all offered some of the important practical knowledge and experience I am lacking. Mrs. White was wonderfully open about the challenges and benefits of working across two small elementary schools and about the collections in the library and her approach to its management. Having a look at RICAT and seeing how she created circulation lists was also informative– I think in many respects it is the day-to-day operations that make me a bit nervous about running a library, and being introduced to some of these things gradually is a great thing!
I also found it very useful to really dig into the shelves in our chosen section. What did kids’ literature really look like on the shelf? What would I find in terms of condition and content? How well-used would these titles be? I was pleasantly surprised at most of the usage statistics– it seems students were using these books, many of them quite often. Looking through professional and commercial websites for book reviews and user feedback, scanning through publisher lists, and finding some interesting digital content was very helpful; discovering good digital content was a bit more difficult than I thought, but now I have a sense of where I can go for these resources.
Meeting and working with my classmates was definitely the highlight of this project. It was gratifying to meet them in person and connect with them about the class, talk with them about their backgrounds and their plans, and work through the challenges and issues the project presented. I think we worked well together– it’s important to stay organized and on-task when working in a group, and Sue and Melissa were exactly that. Communicating through email (and sometimes text and phone) suited our workflow, but it might have been more difficult if we were less cohesive as a group.
Working on the collection analysis project was a valuable opportunity to get some practical, hands-on experience, do some digging into the issues surrounding collections management in the public schools, and get to know and work with my colleagues in class. It’s energized me, too, in moving along in a new direction– I can’t wait to work on this in my own library!
For Tots to Teens 