Digital Literacy and Digital Citizenship

Thanks to the librarians on #tlchat, I discovered Google's Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum (http://www.google.com/goodtoknow/web/curriculum/).  The detail on the lesson plans is incredibly comprehensive and inherently flexible - at least from the first cursory glance I was able to give it before my daughter work up from her nap today.  This is something I would like to teach to every class, every grade level, at the beginning of the year.  I do these kinds of lessons every year, even if it is just-in-time reminders when classes come in for research.  But I've wanted something more systematic - something that would give our students and teachers a common knowledge base and a common vocabulary.

Has anyone used this curriculum yet? What did / do you think?

On a related note, I like Google's tech jargon dictionary (http://www.google.com/goodtoknow/web/jargon/) - I just wish it had more entries than it does now.

QR Codes

"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."  -Abraham Maslow

Whenever I hear about or begin to use a cool new tool, one that grabs my attention and imagination and seems to have limitless applications, I often think about that quote - perhaps as a self-regulation mechanism to avoid being a one-trick librarian.  And using QR codes in the library are no exception.  I'm hooked, and so are my students.  

As an aside:  I'm a devotee of all things Google - I use the goo.gl URL shortener tool to create QR codes - all you have to do is add .qr to the end of the shortened URL and Google gives you a QR code.  How cool is that?  The app we use for scanning QR codes is called 'Scan.'  

With the help of one of my fabulous library interns, we used QR codes for two major projects this semester:  African American research with a self-contained class and Summer Reading book promotion (we're starting early) with every student in the school.  

For the African American research project, the classroom teacher and I wanted the students to to choose their person to research based on something other than whomever was in the news at the time.  We wanted it to be a true research experience and have the students choose someone they were unfamiliar with or had never heard of.  We created categories of contributions made by African Americans (artists, politicians, activists, celebrities, sports figures, famous African American Women) and created a QR code for each category that linked to a web page with teaser questions, such as "I refused to give up my seat on a bus when I was just a teenager. Who am I?"  The questions themselves were links to video clips about the person that we found on Biography.com.  Students spent the first class period of that research unit scanning QR codes, watching videos, and making notes about what they watched so that they could pick someone to research by the end of the period.  

The dynamic in the library was wonderful:  the students were quiet, on-task, and mostly self-directed, which are all challenges for this particular group of students.  More importantly, they enjoyed the activity.  

My intern did all the heavy lifting for the summer reading book promotion - it was one of her major activities for her internship.  She found trailers for all the books on the SC Junior Book Award Nominee list for 2013-2014, printed color pictures of the book covers, created giant QR codes for the trailers and we put the whole thing on one of the library walls:

At first, this was simply going to be book display for the kids.  Then, my principal told me that she found some money to purchase one summer reading book for every student in the school and to write a PO for the books (our school is a Title I school - many of our students cannot count on being able to buy a book or get to the public library or the school over the summer).  She and I and the English department decided to bring in the kids for a day or two with their ELA classes, scan the QR code links to the trailers to learn something about their book, and use a Google Form to "place their book order."  ELA teachers who wanted this to be a writing activity required the students to watch each trailer, decide if the book was something they'd want to read, and write three to five sentences justifying their opinion.  For the two teachers who wanted the activity to go more quickly, I printed a brochure with the titles and descriptions, told the kids to scan as many as they wanted to and make notes on the brochure.  

The activity was an amazing success.  If you have ever worked in a middle school, you know that putting three classes in the library simultaneously is a recipe for disaster - especially the day before Spring Break.  Not in this case.  The kids were silent, self-directed, and on-task.  There's something about giving a kid an iPad and a set of headphones and telling him or her to go scan something and then watch something that equals instant, magical classroom management.  Then, we did the same thing on the day we got back from spring break with the same results.  I took about 150 pictures and pulled in my AP and the school's administrative assistant to watch, and sent pictures to my principal (she was in a meeting both days).  Everyone was impressed.

How have you used QR codes in your library?  I'd like to be ambitious and put tiny QR codes on book covers that link to book trailers or an audio recording of a book talk, but I haven't had the time to do that yet.