A great way to impact everyday teaching and learning in your classroom is with eBooks. Many people consider adding eBooks to their library collection, yet bringing these digital tools into the classroom provides another opportunity to improve teaching and learning.  

eBook Tools

The tools included in most eBooks can assist students with understanding, organizing and retaining information.

Vocabulary. I rarely see a student go to a print dictionary anymore to look up a word -- with the click of the mouse they can easily find what a new word means while never leaving the eBook.

Struggling Readers. Students who need a little extra help may listen as the book is read aloud and the text is highlighted - often being able to change the speed of the read-aloud to meet their needs.

All of these features help students "unpack" the information and assist in their understanding of the material, in both fiction and informational texts.

In addition, including eBooks in research provides students with even more tools. Students can highlight important information, bookmark pages for future reference, and take notes in the eBook. (These are all things we prefer they DON'T do in our print collections!)  When using Follett eBooks, these notes stay with the students’ accounts and don't get deleted when the book is returned—very important in student research. Being able to take notes directly in the eBook and keep them electronically may also decrease the big issue of "copying and pasting."

 Teacher-Led Instruction

So where do you start? A good way to start using eBooks in the classroom is through teacher-led instruction. Picture books are great instructional tools for all ages. They not only introduce a concept, but, as an eBook, they often have much better graphics and images. To ensure everyone see the pictures as they enjoy the story, you can use a data projector to share an eBook with your entire classroom.

Another option is to select a history or science informational text in an eBook format when teaching reading skills with your students. Project a page(s) that highlights a topic students are studying in another class or subject. As the students read to select main idea and supporting details, sentence subjects, etc., they will also be reviewing the topic. Project the pages on an interactive white board and students can take turns highlighting/underlining their selections.

Individualized Learning

To take it a step further, we are beginning to use Follett Shelf™ Classroom Connections™, an option with Follett eBooks. This product facilitates lesson-based interactions between students and teachers within the eBook. Teachers can assign students to groups, assign groups specific eBook titles and embed questions and discussion prompts in the assigned eBook.  As the student reads the eBook and comes to a teacher prompt, they respond without ever leaving the eBook environment, and the teacher is able to respond to the student individually.  

This is a very simple description of the platform, but I think it provides many opportunities for using eBooks to enhance teaching and learning. As a teacher you may select an informational text to use for instruction in a specific topic and individualize your instruction to meet your individual student's needs.  

I also see this is a great tool when teaching a novel.  We all remember the "read a chapter and answer the questions" days. I think it would be a much better option to insert discussion prompts directly in the novel and interact with the students digitally while they are reading. This allows students to move at their own pace and allows the teacher the opportunity to respond to individual student responses and provide immediate feedback and follow-up questions. Classroom discussion is not eliminated, but enhanced by the student/teacher interactions.

Consider using eBooks to enhance your instruction and student learning. If you haven't looked at them in a while, take another look. The quantity and quality of titles available have increased greatly and they are an excellent option to enhance instruction!  

by Anna Cosio, Executive Regional Educational Consultant, Europe

Librarians from schools all around Europe and from as far as China and Zambia gathered recently in three European cities for the fourth annual European Follett Workshops. Madrid, Vienna and Copenhagen played host to this year’s workshops and it was delightful to have old and new friends come from near and far to join in the fun and learning!

Larry Gilbert, aka 'The Destiny Doctor', was on hand to provide full days of training on Destiny's new features and enhancements, debate cataloging questions, and share tips and tricks. "Dr. Destiny always has good tips and fixes so I always appreciate his presentation and one-to-one time," reported one attendee. "Also, seeing other librarians' presentations gave me some great ideas."

Attending librarians exchanged ideas on how they are using Destiny in their schools and shared their excitement about the newly released features from the AU1 update, such as the link to EasyBib citations in Universal Search. One librarian said, "It was great to see Universal Search working. I also came away with lots of little tips that I can put into practice here. These shouldn’t be underestimated!"  

The second day of the workshops was dedicated to professional development and attendees shared stories and discussed usage of eBooks and Classroom Connections, summer reading programs, supporting the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum in the library, and Titlewave scavenger hunts. There was even a rather hot debate on “Do We Dewey?”.  

As always, much laughter was heard and new connections and friendships made. When the workshops ended, we heard many statements like these from attendees:

"I LOVE these workshops, as the personal connections with Follett staff last a long time beyond the workshops. Follett is singular in its commitment to customer service. . .  Thank you very much for putting the workshop together, communicating with us and listening!"

"I would like to thank the team from Follett for their professionalism and overall seriousness with the workshop. I look forward to more of these opportunities in the future!"

"Thank you for a great day, the time flew and I would have loved to have a whole second day with Larry, continuing on from what we did on the Friday.  I look forward to next year and learning more."

It is wonderful to see everyone come together and share and we look forward to many more years of workshops around Europe! We encourage customers to join us at next year's workshops, which will take place in Amsterdam (April 11th and 12th, 2016); Warsaw (April 14th and 15th, 2016); and Budapest (April 18th and 19th).

See you there!

Anna Cosio, Executive Regional Educational Consultant, Europe 

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By Andrew Davis, Director of Early Learning at Follett School Solutions

In my travels around the country, I’ve observed several schools and early learning programs boasting about the technology they’ve acquired. From interactive white boards to tablets to computer stations, programs for young children are becoming increasingly wired (or wireless, in some cases) almost as a prerequisite for serving the perceived needs and expectations of incoming digital natives. When asked how the acquired technology is being used, however, these same programs are often slower to articulate any current programming or plan of action. Many even admit that the drive to acquire the technology outpaced the plan for its use.

The role and presence of technology in early learning settings has been one of the most hotly debated topics over the last few years. In January of 2012, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College released a joint position statement on technology and interactive media in programs serving children from birth through age 8. The document was intended to provide some initial guidance to programs considering the use of technology and ultimately led to more discovery, research and the growing acceptance that not all technology is evil. But while there is an increase in acceptance and acquisition of technology, there must also be a corresponding increase in intention around its use.

I’ve found that there are three general intended uses for technology and interactive media that start the planning process. Programs that can establish clarity early in the process have a better chance at success and avoid the confusion of purchasing to satisfy one purpose while trying to implement another.

1.       Technology for learning and discovery. Among the many benefits of technology are the affordances it brings. The ability to animate content or extend lessons in different media formats can have the benefit of increasing engagement and supporting the different learning styles of young children. While care must be taken to avoid the many entertainment programs available or those promoting a passive experience, there are several alternatives that promote healthy adult-child or child-child interactions around a topic or subject. The key question to ask is, “How does this tool enhance what I want the child to learn or experience?” This helps keep in mind that technology is merely a tool that can be useful in the proper, developmentally appropriate context and might not be the best solution in every case.

2.       Technology as a teaching tool. While there are several administrative technology tools that aim to make life easier for teachers, the focus here is on tools for teaching young children. Several apps and software programs allow educators to monitor, track progress and deliver feedback and messages through their platforms. Technology devices like interactive white boards or digital microscopes can allow for the delivery of lessons in novel ways. A key question here for educators is, “How does this tool allow me to enhance the delivery of information and content around this subject?” With an emphasis on enhancement, educators will be guided to consider where the technology tools fit in their lesson plans.

3.       Exposure to technology. One under-articulated goal of technology is merely to expose children to its presence. In communities where there is limited access to technology, exposing children to the many capabilities of the technology in the broader world can help to bridge the experience gap between those with and without technology. All children, however, can benefit from an intentional exposure to not just the existence of various forms of technology and interactive media, but guidance on its proper use and direction for healthy engagement. The key question here is, “How would exposing children to this tool enhance their understanding and connection to the world around them?”

It’s no accident that each question focuses on the intentional use of the tool and its ability to enhance an overall learning experience. We know that the demand for technology in learning environments will continue to grow and the technology itself will change and evolve over time. But it is us in the learning community who bear the responsibility for ensuring that the technology tools that are the most useful, developmentally appropriate and supportive of our intended uses are the ones that survive and thrive.

Andrew Davis is the Director of Early Learning at Follett School Solutions. His interests include effective early education strategies and education as a vehicle for social mobility. 

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Some say April is the cruelest month (T.S. Eliot for one). I love April, especially here in Texas. 

The bluebonnets are everywhere—and I am reminded why with my annual re-reading of the Legend of the Bluebonnet by Tomie de Paola. 

Reading this picture book multiple times has not diminished its luster one bit. It has deepened my reading and allowed me to see things I had missed in the first and second and twentieth readings. That is, in part, why this picture book remains one that appears not only on my syllabus for children’s literature, but on syllabi and reading lists across the country. These picture books that speak to a wide range of readers, that stand up to repeated readings, that remain as timely as the year they were published are some of the books I refer to as mentor texts. And so for April, I thought I would highlight some of the newest books to join this collection of mentor texts. The books on this list have received multiple starred reviews (and do not get me wrong, it does not take a star for a book to be worthy of mentor text status) and have been on shortlists of the best picture books for 2014.  Although the system might label these as books for K-3, they really are appropriate for a much wider range.  

All Different Now is a perfect book for social studies’ classes. 

Share Draw and Ashley Bryant’s Puppets with the art teacher. 

There are some textless books that would work well with ELL classes.  Poetry and nonfiction offer different forms and formats. For anyone looking for a cross section of the wealth offered by picture books, this short list is a good place to begin. I urge all of you to build out from this list on Titlewave.com. 

Plant some seeds, and see what blooms!

by Dr. Teri S. Lesesne

Dear Mr. Fröbel,

On the occasion of your birthday, I thought it fitting to share a perspective on the current state of your kindergarten concept in the United States. After all, here in the states we commemorate April 21st as “Kindergarten Day”. I realize that you, of all people, would be happy to know that in each state, every child has access to kindergarten, although it is not always required.

While we have provided access, kindergarten often seems like the battlefield where the academics of birth-to-five child development and K-12 education square off. There has been fierce debate over how it should be implemented, what is best for children and the role it should play in our system of educational matriculation. Here is a short summary of my observations:

To play or not to play is too often the question. You once wrote, “Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul.” Today, advocates of play-based classrooms say that the push for more academic rigor in the kindergarten classroom comes at the expense of valuable allowances for physical expression and exploration. Frequently, teachers and schools responding to these demands feel forced to shape daily activities that will drive the desired results on tests or assessments.  

What I observe are not as much direct opponents of the need for active learning, but well-intentioned educators who need more direction on how to include opportunities for play.  Conversations are sometimes positioned on one side of the play spectrum versus the other. In reality, neither a classroom with too much play and not enough active adult support nor one with little to no play but lots of scripted, teacher-led activity fully benefits the child. The ideal environment is one where children are allowed to actively explore in the presence of teachers who provide guidance through experience-rich activities. Unless play is valued as a key driver in children’s learning and a connector to the academic benchmarks we seek, our kindergarten classrooms will most likely fall short of the environment you intended.  

Practice makes perfect when it is developmentally appropriate. What kindergarten-aged children can do and should do is another highly debated topic. There is such a proliferation of research on effective practice available that to simply base kindergarten expectations on the retrofitted goals of the subsequent primary grades seems short sighted. While this is not always the case, there certainly is room for several more collaborative conversations between the leading thinkers in child development and those crafting K-5 curricula and programming.

As you stated, “Children are like tiny flowers; they are varied and need care, but each is beautiful alone and glorious when seen in the community of peers.” This perspective gives us the perfect blueprint for the developmentally appropriate kindergarten classroom. By understanding what is typical for all children at this level, we can create a context for determining and appreciating what is both individually and culturally appropriate. Just as we wouldn’t expect a sprouting plant to bear fruit too soon, we must be careful to nurture children in their early stages of learning and development. Including child development specialists as part of the conversation is necessary to do it correctly.

Look for meaning in the name. The word “kindergarten” means a child’s garden or a garden of children. Either way, it implies a process of care and patience. Although many educators might naturally be caring and patient, our schools frequently have a stigma of being anything but. Were we to rename the kindergarten year as Grade Zero – representing a launch to the remainder of formal primary schooling, it might be more consistent with how some kindergartens are actually operated.

But I believe the name you left us is appropriate. As our population becomes increasingly diverse and our schools endeavor to deepen their service to our children, recalling the name and its meaning just might serve as a reference point for how accurately we align with its intentions.

As with anything worth doing, Mr. Fröbel, there are successes in the midst of the challenges. You wrote, “If three hundred years after my death my method of education shall be completely established according to its idea, I shall rejoice in heaven."

As you can see, we’re just over halfway there. And while we still have some work to do, I’m confident together, we’ll figure it out.

Sincerely,

Andrew M. Davis

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Math isn’t really about numbers. I know this may sound heretical. Math is the course with the numbers after all. 6+2=8. That’s math. Well, sort of. That’s a part of math. Those numbers and symbols we learned in school allow us to take very complex ideas and express them in symbolic shorthand. They allow us to communicate big ideas in elegant ways. Eight is just a simple way of saying 6+2. It expresses the concept in just one number instead of two numbers and a symbol.  

Math is about taking the complex and messy and making it simple, elegant and refined. Math has been defined as the science of patterns and order. A mathematician takes the chaos around him/her and seeks to make it ordered and understandable.  This is done using a four-step process. Understand, plan, solve, check.

To solve a problem, first you have to understand your situation.You have to look at where you are and what you have to work with before you can move forward.

Once you understand the situation, you can create a plan.This process can happen very quickly, but it is a critical step. Without a plan, you have no framework for solving the problem.

Next, it’s time to solve the problem and try to bring order to the chaos. Put your plan into action.

Lastly, you have to make sure your solution works – that you really did bring some harmony to the discord of a problem. Sometimes your plan works, and sometimes it doesn’t. If it did work, awesome! If not, go back and start the process over. Make sure you really understand the situation. Come up with a new plan. Execute it. Check. Start over if necessary.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should. This is life. We are surrounded by problems and spend our days trying to solve them. Some are small and happen in the blink of an eye. We are constantly solving problems while driving. Speed up? Slow down? Change lanes? Turn? Other problems are bigger. Much bigger. Much murkier.  But our experiences in math have armed us to handle those, too. Understand. Plan. Solve. Check.

The world seems inefficient and complex. Math class teaches us to simplify it, break it down to its component parts, and strip away what overlaps so we can make order of the chaos.

Be aware of the math around you. It is everywhere.

by Michael Cherone, Academic Consultant

Earlier this month, I talked about the challenges our profession faces - ourprofessional paradox, I called it - reconciling authority control andmillennial learners’ search habits, which are anything but standards-driven. Materials classification presents a similar challenge. Material types are changing so fast that the guidelines for indexing and citing them feel perpetually out-of-date.

 In Questioning Authority Control, I explained that at New Canaan (CT) High School, a Destiny (our OPAC) search will produce results that include an array of formats - free websites, database links, copyright protected eBooks, digital files, and of course, call numbers for print books. Follett Learning, the creators of Destiny, rely on the Library of Congress standards to identify indexable material types. So when students choose the “Material type” filter in an OPAC search, their options include:

Unfortunately, our students are unfamiliar with much of that terminology. We weeded globes, atlases, maps, printed music, hard-copy image files, VHS, and music in 2006 while undergoing library renovation, and we’ve had no need to replace them since. Last week, we weeded the remainder of our audiobook collection - our students don’t listen to CDs. much less cassettes (as an experiment, we circulated a Sony Walkman for a while, but no one borrowed it). Our students exclusively borrow audiobooks in downloadable format. Our visual collection is limited to DVDs, and our students don’t borrow those either. Many of our students’ households do not have DVD players, and DVD drives are becoming increasingly rare on computers. Our students prefer streaming their video content from their family subscription accounts. So clearly there is a disconnect between the list of material types and our collection.

 The most glaring lexicon issue involves websites. How do we index a website? At New Canaan High School, we label it "computer file", but it's a poor descriptor - and its icon is a floppy disk. Ouch. How about an article? A document? And while we're at it, why do we call visual recording a "video"? How is a student supposed to know that a "serial" is actually a magazine? This language may work for the 20th century, but not for this one - at least not in K-12 learning. There are so many instructional priorities. Teaching outdated lexicon should not be among them.

 This problem bleeds into another area - citing sources. The seventh edition of the Modern Language Association’s Guide to Writers of Research Papers was released in 2009. The 6th edition was released in 2003. Five and six year stretches between editions leaves students with too many citation questions that have no answers. The information landscape is evolving so fast that we have to invent solutions. Content providers (database vendors, publishers, eContent distributors, library management systems developers, and online research and citation facilitators, such as NoodleTools and EasyBib rely on the standards-makers - Library of Congress, the Modern Language Association, the American Psychology Association, etc., to classify resources, and waiting for guideline updates compromises their capacity for currency.

 The Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and their facsimiles in non-CCSS states prescribe that students learn to distinguish among article types. It would be helpful if database providers featured filters that facilitated this instruction. Article types, their authorship, and purpose impact how students reference them in their writing. Many database providers in K-12 education offer the same article type filters.

A student trying to locate an OP-ED article will not necessarily know that “Commentary” might be the right filter. Or they might choose “Editorial”, which, in theory, should be an unsigned article representing the publication’s viewpoint rather than an individual’s. Why not offer OP-ED as an option so the student can focus on learning rather than searching? The library of congress designates a number of the categories in the list, and the classifications fail to mirror the terminology used in contemporary media.

As school librarians, we have limited instructional opportunities and innumerable instructional responsibilities. Our time will be better spent teaching students new media literacy and critical reading rather than outdated terminology. The standards should evolve with the shifting information landscape.