Challenge Brainstorm Area:

Instructions:  Assign a table recorder. The editor should click on edit tab above befor any editing can happen. If the editor needs to establish an account, please do that. Record the ideas you hear around the table. Save the page between presenters.

Cathy Nelson's challenge:  

SO WHAT? The big challenge here is HOW to get them on board--

1) Teachers using the tools--harnessing them for educational purposes

2) Getting students to use them ethically & responsibly, and

3) Getting the filter guards to crak the portals! 

How do we get our teachers/administrators/parents to use the tools and to use them ethically?  

Our Ideas:

Bring in the IT person to our classes to see the context of what we're doing in the classroom - helping them to understand the need to access the TOOLS.

Share with administrator the work that teachers/students are doing in the classroom with the TOOLS.

Fostering collaboration among your teachers: teacher-librarians being onsite and helping teachers with just-in-time job-embedded help with technology.

Developing projects in a team-based approach - collaboratively between/among schools - with grants, funding provided at the district level.

Modelling the tools in our own work.

Perks - initiatives for mentoring reluctant educators - examples: flash drives, flip video cameras, iPod shuffle, etc.

Accessing grant money

Reaching them in multiple ways ....taking into account uniqueness of each person

Christopher Harris' challenge: Cloudy, with a chance of learning: How will school libraries interact with the cloud? As applications and services move online into an always connected space for working and interacting, how do our libraries respond? What applications and platforms can we best use?

Thinking about library services in the cloud...mmm

How about an interactive catalogue...to start with....where students can suggest books for purchase, comment on books they're reading while they're reading, start their own recommended booklists....link to authors/illustrators

MaryFriend Shepherd's challenge: What is the single most useful online tool for helping students collaborate on school projects?  How can this tool be used to help students do things differently AND how can this tool be used to help students do different things?

Our Ideas:

What if faculty/staff meetings were held at least a few times via a wiki?

It's not just choosing ONE online tool....differentiate....different tools for different folks for different circumstances/context

David Loertscher's challenge. Brainstorm ideas for turning websites into giant conversations.

Instructions: pick one or several challenges below and put table ideas right under the particular element you are talking about.

Our ideas:

• Use VoiceThread and various Web 2.0 tools to increase learning throughsocial networking opportunities for students, teachers and parents/communities
• Take project-based learning into collaborative spaces - wikis, nings, blogs

Elements of the Virtual Learning Commons to Develop:

• Turning assignments from classroom teacher dictates into conversations that include the teacher, students, specialists in the school, parents
• Building a reading community through virtual book/movie/other media discussion clubs including wrting and utlizing social networking such as Facebook and Twitter, wikis, blogs, nings.
• Encouraging the production of learner-created content whether for assignments or for fun and storing that content in a virtual school yearbook and museum. The center of fun and creativity.
• The center for school improvement or experimental learningcenter where trials, experiments, action research, professional learning communities are centered.
• A center for metacognitive reflection by both individuals and groups
• The use of various types of tools to create a learning commons nested in the cloud. For example: signing up for Google APS as a school; Netbives, Pageflakes, etc.
• Design as a method of capturing attention and collaboration; for example, perhaps there are multiple "main" pages as direct entry points for learners, classroom teachers, teacher librarians, etc. rather than trying to direct traffic all through one central page.
• Invitations to collaborate at every appropriate place
• Creating Knowledge Building Centers (idea from Deb Wallac) that are major collaborative pathfinders for learning units that are repeated in the school over and over. These knowledge centers might have links created by everyone, tools, data sets, sample units and their success over time, projects across the class/school/world, places to collaborate with experts; links to special collections at various libraries/museums/govt. agencies; student created tutorials/projects/interviews/data sets.
  • Global awareness Centers
  • Financial literacy centers
  • Health and wellness/obesity collaborative centers
  • Any other school wide effort to integrate themes into regular curricular efforts.
• Demonstration of what clients can expect from teacherlibrarians, teachertechnologiests and other specialists (idea from Deb Wallace, Harvard business School)
• Lots of collaborative tools for kids and teachers along with tutorials for their use. CollabTools
• The integration of ICT literacy along with information literacy into learning activities designed to boot achievement.