Reflection and Evaluation

I am really glad I completed L2P3 this summer! I am participating in a research based pilot program for 7th & 8th grade GT students in the library this coming school year in which we will be teaching the research process, and the students will be creating technology-based projects at the end of each of their four topics. I am going to use these resources.

1. How did analyzing each portion of your project as you worked through it aid you in thinking about how to help students (and other teachers) create their own technology-enhanced projects.

The five steps made the research process seem so easy and simple, and gave me a big picture of the research process as a whole, which makes it seem less overwhelming. I think both teachers and students will feel the same way.


2. How do you anticipate using your series of blog posts and the L2P3 blog itself in the future?

I'm sure I will refer back to it time and time again. I will encourage teachers to look at the steps on the L2P3 blog (if not do it themselves), and they will also be welcomed to view my blog and posts from my experience. I kind of wish the teachers could do 5.75 Things for credit even if they haven't done the 23 and 11.5 Things because I think it would be so beneficial for them (and they would be more apt to do it if they received credit for it). However, I understand the benefits of doing the prerequisites as well, so I plan to encourage the teachers who have completed 23 and 11.5 Things to build it up to the other teachers, as I know how much they've benefited from it.


3. Describe one other way you anticipate helping others grow in using technology.

I think I am going to use the new blog I created for L2P3 to post "how-tos" and "help sheets" for all things technology in the library (instructions for creating Photo Stories, iMovies, Animotos, various image generators, Mac shortcuts, wikis, etc.). Also, I send "technology tips" randomly to the teachers via email, and I am going to try to do them more frequently -- and point out that all the tips are on my blog.


4. The success of the 23 Things program has been established. How did the "23 Things" format translate to this type of program that was more systematic?

I think the self-paced blog format is so much more beneficial than sitting through an inservice because we can all relate back to our own experience while doing it, and refer back to the L2P blog and our blog posts on an ongoing basis, which I know my teachers are doing (as am I).

Thing #5: Share the New Information

The tags I used on You Tube for my video (other than the required sbisdL2P3) are nutrition, teenagers, teens, heath, food, diet and calories.

The audience for this project is the middle school students at SBMS. I would like to share it with our health teacher (a) to see if he could use it to show in class, and (b) as an example of how his students can use PhotoStory for a class project. But certainly anyone (not necessarily just teens) could benefit from this information by viewing it on You Tube.

Other than this blog, you can find my video on You Tube by searching "Teenage Nutrition" (or some of my other tags) AND "sbisdL2P3." It comes right up!

Thing #4: Create New Information

I had originally planned to make an iMovie for this project, but switched to Photostory because iMovie doesn't allow very long sentences in the text templates (only short titles), and it would have taken a lot more pictures to tell my digital story. Photostory doesn't have as many bells and whistles as iMovie, so the final product doesn't have the same professional quality to it, but I find Photostory to be less complicated and finicky. Because the pictures in the Creative Commons section of Flickr are somewhat limited, and there are so many great photos of food, I changed my thoughts about what pictures I had originally had in mind to go along with my text. Instead of finding pictures to tell my story, I went with photos of healthy, nutritious food for the psychological aspect. Bon Appetit (I mean, enjoy)!

I showed my project to my husband. He thought it was good, and only made a couple comments: "Where did you get all those pictures?" and "I don't think we are doing at home with our daughter what our video says to do." I think we have some new habits to develop!

Thing #3: Plan, Organize and Synthesize Your Information

I have made several digital stories, but I've never used a storyboard. And while I know many teachers require their students to use them, I sort of viewed them (for me anyway) as an extra step. But not anymore. I used one of the basic printable storyboards linked in the blog. What I think a lot of teachers struggle with when students write research papers is getting them to write what they find in their own words, as opposed to copy sentences word for word. I struggled with that myself when doing research papers, and I found the storyboard to make it so much easier. After taking notes from the websites (even if word for word), whenever I began to put it into the storyboard, it was almost as if I was telling someone about something I had read in the paper that day. It just tends to come out in your own words when you're retelling it. I am computer oriented, so I finally put down the pen and paper template and used Keynote slides for my storyboard, which I found to be a lot more convenient because I could edit and add slides. I knew I would be making an iMovie for this project, so instead of physically drawing pictures on my storyboard, I included a sentence on each slide stating the kind of picture I would try to search for on the web to go along with the text ("picture of the food pyramid," or "picture of a vending machine," etc.). This really made things a lot easier and organized for me, as opposed to jumping right into the iMovie and having to think it out as I go along. I have seen students find their pictures first when making a digital story (even encouraged it), and that makes no sense without a scripted text. Since students learn and create in different ways, it would probably make sense to give them a choice of using either a pen and paper templet, or using a powerpoint as their story board.

Thing #2: Evaluate Information

I evaluated a site called Nutrition for Children and Teenagers which I found on Family Education.com. It definitely measured up. And as I mentioned in Thing#1, it came up as one of the top hits on the various search engines I tried, so that gave me confidence in it as well -- although I realize that is not part of the evaluation process. This a renown organization for students, families and teachers, and this particular page was excerpted from an actual book. I used the first two evaluation forms listed, and I guess I can say I had more checks (or positives) than not on both. I've always found teaching the evaluation of websites difficult because there aren't certain standards that are required for every site. For example, I know this site is reliable, but there wasn't an author necessarily listed. I found the author of the book it was excerpted from, so I know that counts, but in this case, it's more like the organization is the author -- which I think can be confusing to students. Another checklist on the second evaluation form was whether or not Help Screens were available. Again, they weren't on this site, but that doesn't make it not reliable. I guess what I'm saying is while these check lists are a good (and maybe only) place to start, they aren't 100% objective. In other words, does five checks deem a website reliable (or more checks then none)? I just think experience and common sense also play a role (which would make it a more natural part of the research process), but because those things aren't teachable these evaluation forms are all we have in the beginning.

Thing #1: Accessing Information

I chose the topic of Teen Nutrition for this project because I know that many middle school students struggle with their looks, and particularly their weight. This information could be very useful to our health teacher. Every year he has his students create a brochure on the information they research, and this project might show him a different way for his students to display their research.

As a librarian in SBISD I am already quite familiar with many of these online resources. And for the topic of teen nutrition, I found useful information in the district's online database (Teen Heath and Wellness, and more specific articles in Consumer Heath Complete and Student Research center), as well as the Web. I'm definitely a Google person, but I tried three different search engines (Ask, Bling, & Clusty) and they all seemed to bring up many of the same sights. Therefore, I doubt I will encourage my students to explore a variety of different search engines. In our library meetings we have been looking for websites that could replace some of the subscription databases we pay for, and we found lots of teen wellness sites, so I knew there were some good ones out there. I also found some useful videos on You Tube -- things similar to the project I might be creating at the end of 5.75 Things.