April+26

Post your plans here:

Elaine -  My plan for the library is to stay current in the school in order to continue to provide for the needs of the students and staff. Literacy is still one of the main focuses for a school library and in order to continue to produce literate students we need to provide them with reading materials in a format that enables them to meet their needs – audio, text, or digital. So I need to continue to be aware of what libraries are using to meet these needs. As far as curriculum, we still need to be helping students and staff find resources that meet their needs and that are reliable and credible. Teaching students to be critical thinkers and how to access information that fits their needs is important now more than ever. Teresa Hicks- My plan is to be more flexible and open to change. Using student trends to engage learners and differentiated instruction. Matt-

I am thinking that my model for changing our schools is to become more like the RISK model (see “Delivering on the Promise: The Education Revolution” By R. DeLorenzo). That is to say that we become a standards based school with a standards based system of evaluation. Not only that, but that we align ourselves with the kids needs by... Allowing them to move through the standards as they become ready (earlier or later than their peers) and not as a peer group. They may be working on Alg 2 standards in 7th grade and standards that are an equivalent of 6th grade history. A transition like this is extremely labor intensive on the part of the teachers, staff and administrators, but places the impetus of learning directly with the person is should mean the most to, the individual student. The school district in Alaska that this program originated from turned a college attendance rate of 1 student in 20 years into a 70% rate in the next 5years. Now I fully feel that college is not the barometer of our education system, however, the numbers plus their CAT scores speak volumes. Very interesting stats, and the concept include many of the ideas we speak about, but find difficult to implement because of our current educational structure. I also see the mandate for one computer per student issued at the beginning of their Frosh year, and maintained by both the "students" (families) and the school. For next year, I intend to begin taking my incoming Freshmen down this path. I will start with one class a year and by year 4 should have all of my classes standards based at the very least. I can not implimnet the total RISK plan without the support of the school and evantually the district, so hopefully I can influence my classes. Lookout bandwidth, here we come.

Mary My plan isn't much of a plan, except that the ideas of how I want to go about creating a framework for learning are there. I want to keep these in mind as I work through the standards this summer. Sometimes I tend to get bogged down in the day-to-day work and lose sight of the bigger picture. I guess this would be my bigger picture. [|Kris] My link is basically the idea that when implementing the ideas that we discussed during this class of GRII, we need to take baby steps. It is overwhelming information, but information that ALL need to be exposed to. Once the idea is out there, people will become familiar with it and more likely to take ownership if given the time to "digest" the information. I feel I am more ready for a change now than earlier in the class. I like to refer to this as that "Chinese Drop of Water Torture" I was told about long ago. A little drop at a time, constantly, over time will make a huge hole. And in this case a huge opening for all to step through to make learning more meaningful.

Rob

I thought I'd work on something that we could use on our team at CCMS next year. I'm always spouting off with big ideas, but I don't really ever come up with anything concrete. Well, here's my first attempt.

Basically, I've tried to come up with a schedule so Mary and I can work and plan together next year. Instead of treating Reading and Writing as different subjects, we'd like to integrate the two (imagine that ... reading and writing taught at the same time?) subjects into one.

The schedule dictates that students still go to Reading and Writing classes. I've created a template that will help us to integrate the two. Instead of having classes separated by subject, we'll have them separated by type of instruction.

Check out the document ... it should make more sense than this description..

<span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Julie <span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">My plan only includes broad ideas, but not the implementation. I can't fathom the process to start something like this. I know that changes take time and it is necessary to put out tons of information to stakeholders. <span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">

<span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Rick

__<span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Elaine and Cathy - __ <span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">We are looking into what the future may hold for libraries and with that we are looking into how Johnson County school libraries can incorporate ebooks.

<span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">The Future of the Library

<span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">The Past and Future Library

<span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">What is the Future of the Library?

<span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Thomas Frey interview

<span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">The Future of Libraries - with or without books - CNN

<span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">The Future of Libraries - Thomas Frey blog

<span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Do School Libraries Need to Have Books?

<span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Ebooks

<span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">ebooks and libraries

<span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">The Future of Libraries in the ebook Age (NPR)

<span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Overdrive <span style="color: #471515; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Overdrive website