With this new position comes a lot more responsibilities. I will admit to feeling overwhelmed by what is before me. I know that I have a big learning curve ahead of me and because of that I reached out of to some of my amazing Lead Learner friends for words of advice. I am so happy to have them as part of my Personal Learning Network (PLN). Here are just a few of the amazing words of advice that they gave me. Dr. Joe Mazza @joe_mazza - Project Manager for Connected Teaching, Learning and Leadership in the North Penn School District "My advice would be to listen most. Now matter how bad you want to get in there and show them what you're made of, take good notes & get to know the players, the history,culture and any landmines you will need to do your best work...Keep blogging and reflecting as well - this will help you and role model transparency for your team." Jay Eiter @iSuperEit - Superintendent of Lower Alloways Creek School District "What I also learned very quickly that was very hard for me to take; You can’t make everybody happy, and not everybody is going to like you. This job requires some tough skin. You’ll grow it in no time." Eric Sheninger @NMHS_Principal - Principal of New Milford High School "It is important for YOU to establish your vision for teaching and learning and collaborate with staff to make is a shared vision that is embraced." Brad Currie @bradmcurrie - Vice Principal and Supervisor of Instruction for the Chester School District " Be incredibly patient and know that most are not as tech savvy as you. Really take about a year to understand culture and listen to what people need. If you build they will come! " Tom Murray @thomascmurray - Director of Technology and Cyber Education for the Quakertown Community School District "Form relationships. Show people they matter. Cultivate teacher leadership. Show humility. Keep kids at the heart of all decisions. " Daisy Dyer Duerr @DaisyDyerDuerr - K-12 Principal Saint Paul Schools "Leadership must be something you are willing to share and you must be willing to seek out others to be leaders....some of those 'reluctant leaders' I have found have proven to be my BEST leaders! " Tony Sinanis @TonySinanis - Lead Learner Cantiague Elementary School "Change must come from within so try to get staff voice behind a change so they feel it’s coming from them, not you.Take your work seriously but do NOT take yourself too seriously! Keep learning and model that each day for your teachers… that is huge!" John Fritzky @JohnFritzky - Vice Principal Byram Township Middle School"Be a dot connector! The state of NJ and the Dept of education throws out a lot of things that teachers have to do. Teachers view these things and independent mandates, it is up to us as admin to connect these dots and show teachers how they can connect and can benefit students whenever possible. " I can not tell you how grateful I am for there words of advice! What are your words of advice? What do you think new administrators need to know? What did you wish you knew when you became an administrator? I would love your thoughts!
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Last week I accepted the postion of Coordinating Supervisor of Educational Technology, Media and Multi-Media for the Parsippany - Troy Hills School District. I very honored to be choosen to be the Lead learner for the Librarians, Computer Teachers, and T.V. Production Teachers. I will also be helping to lead the PD for the district and also help develop and implement the districts technology plan. I am very excited about this new opportunity but will miss greatly all of the students and staff of the South Orange Maplewood School District. For the past almost 10 years I have laughed, cried and had fun with all of the amazing people who make up this district. I think the hardest part of this new job is that I will no longer be working with the students on a daily basis. I know I have a huge journey ahead of me and will be relaying heavly on my PLN for advice and guidance in this new job. Here is the smore that I wrote to my new staff. I was looking for a creative way to introduce myself and thoughts this Smore might do the trick. Last week, I showed the students in Mr. Portas class the chromville augmented reality coloring pages. They had so much fun and loved how the pages came to life! I tweeted out their excitement and was really happy when the creators DM me back saying they would love to hangout with my students! This morning we got to meet with them and it was so much fun for them! They were amazed that we could be talking with someone from Spain. And thanks to google maps, I was able to show them just where they were located and show them pictures of the town! Technology at its best! My students loved sharing the pictures they made and were blown away by some of the technology they showed them! I can not thank the guys from Chromville enough for taking the time out of their day to connect with my kids! It was truly a experience they will not forget soon. I am so excited about the 2014 Poetry Summit! We have some really great schools joining us and the kick off event with Professor Mary Brancaccio which you can watch here was so much fun! I can not wait for May 16th! If you want more information about the event check out this smore below! There are tons of ways that you can join in. From the Edmodo Group, to the Padlet! To learn more about this event check out the website! The amazing librarian Andy Plemmons started a hashtag #whylib as a way to hear stories about why people became a librarian. I am loving reading all the different stories, and thought I would share mine.
Throughout my life I love history and current events. I loved listening to the stories of our past and trying to figure out why things happened that way. To me a good history teacher is really a good storyteller, and in school I had some outstanding teachers and professors like Dr. Quinn whose World History class was like listening to the most amazing stories every class. I also loved working with students so to me being a Social Studies teacher was a natural transition. Here is the problem, I was not a great teacher. I loved the student and connected with them but it is very hard to teach all of World History in the span of a year. I believe that students learn better in project based learning but because of constricts with time and curriculum, I ended up lecturing and giving worksheets way to much. I was not passionate about what I was doing but wanted to stay in the education field. I loved technology and was always interested on ways to incorporate it into the classroom. But over ten years ago the internet was a new thing and computers were not really used much in the classroom. Things were quickly changing and if I became a librarian I knew I could be the technology leader in the school. Becoming a librarian has allowed me to share my passion for technology and to share the joy of reading with my students. I followed my passion and am so happy I did. I have never looked back and love my job. I do have to say that I have learned more in the last few years about being a librarian then in all my other years thanks to my PLN. Social Media like Twitter has allowed me to connect with other librarians from around the world. I has allowed me to learn so much from so many people and grow in my field. I would not be half the person I was today if it was not for my PLN. Every year, Ms Butler and I work on an author study unit with our students. The students have to choose and author, read two books by the author and read biographical information about the author. The ultimate goal of the unit is that they write a research paper about their author. But through the years, Ms. Butler and I have used this unit as a way to build up the students toolbox of web 2.0 tools and introduce a large number of different technologies to the students. Every year we change the pyramid of choices to make sure that we are including the latest technology. This year saw the addition of Layar, Soundcloud, Pinterest, and Thinglink. We also made it that one of the squares of the pyramid was a "choose your own" so that the students could choose a technology or project that they wanted to do. The students really liked this option because it gave them a chance to shine. Here is a link to the entire author study folder which includes directions to all the components that we give to the students via Edmodo. This year, I also made a symbaloo which links to all of the websites that we were sharing with the students. This made things so much easier because the students no longer had to search around for websites they just had to look in one spot. One of the biggest changes this year was the we added an augmented reality component to the pyramid by having the student use Layar. In the past, I had one group use Aurasma.(You can see the posts here) which did some of the same things as Layar but was just much more complicated and harder for the students to use. Layar has a much easier to use interface and does a nice job allowing people to put multiple interactive elements like websites, videos, and sound onto one imagine or "page' as they call it. There are only two downsides to Layar, one is that in order to publish the elements you must either pay money or accepts advertisements. I had my students do ones with advertisements. It does not really take much away from the experience and is free.The other downside is that they only stay active for 60 days. I am in the process of emailing the founder of the company to see if there is a way to work something out with schools so that we can have a way to keep stuff up longer. I really think they have the best Augmented Reality creator out there and has some great uses in education. Below are some examples of the students work. I am very impressed with the amount of time and effort they have placed in this project! I have spoken at numerous conference on Augmented Reality and I start most presentations with having participants color some of the the fun ColAR coloring pages. It is a great way to introduce augmented reality to people. These pages can also be used in elementary classrooms and even in makerspaces in a library. Everyone loves to color and everyone loves what the pages do. So it it is a win win. Today while looking though my twitter feed I came across a tweet about Chromville. Much like ColAR you download the app, print out the coloring pages, color, and then the drawings come to life in really cool ways when you scan the page with the app.Chromville looks really promising and I am looking forward to incorporating them into my presentations. Here is the video about Chromville - Welcome to Chromville from Chromville on Vimeo. I used colAR pages with weekend with my 5 year old niece and 2 year old nephew and they kept asking me to make the "magic" pages come to life. They loved it! Please share with me ways that you are using them with your students or kids.
Today I was honored to judge a virtual debate on the Effects of Social Media done by the students at Strayer Middle School in PA and Markham Place School in NJ. The kids were well researched, had very well thought out arguments and did an amazing job!
I can not believe they are only 11 and 12 year olds! The amount of time and effort that both classes of students put into this debate was so evident. As one of the founders of the VIrtual Debate it was beyond amazing to see it in action. I love seeing our idea take off and grow! Thank you for allowing me to be one of the judges! It was a great experience and one I will alway remember. The SOMS library Edmodo group has become so much more than just a place to talk about books and get questions about school work answered. It has become a place where students showcase their talents. Talents I never know they had. Last year my students took it upon themselves to celebrate poetry month, by writing the most amazing poems on the libraries Edmodo page. This year one of my students William posted this question to me in the library group. I just loved the idea! So then William decided to crowdsource his drawing ideas via Edmodo. And that is how he got his idea for his first drawing the 50 Foot Duck which you can see above. He did another drawing yesterday of a Mutant Cyborg Potato and will do more drawing each day next week. He asked if he could take the weekends off and I said it was fine :-) I asked him how he came up with the idea to do this and this is his response which I just love! This ability for him to be able to share his absolutely amazing drawing would be not have been made possible with Edmodo!
I can't wait to see what he makes next! My goal for the SOMS Library is that it is a place where all children can come to learn and create. A true learning commons! The SOMS Library is filled with book art, legos, and student created art but does not have a true place where students can create on their own. That is why I so badly want to transform part of the library into a makerspace for my students. I want them to be able to create using 21st century technology like a Makerbot 3D Printer. Having a 3D printer at SOMS will benefit all the students in the school because they will all get a chance to use this technology. Not only will it be the centerpiece of the newly created makerspace, but it will become a integral part of our STEAM curriculum. Please consider donating to the SOMS Donors Choose Project to get a 3D Printer in the library. Your donation will impact the over 700 students at SOMS for years to come. Click Here to donate to the project or find out more information about it! |
AuthorElissa Malespina is the High School Librarian at Verona High School and a Presenter, Author and much more. The views are my own. Find my full resume above. Archives
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