Helping Hands: Working Together for the Best of Our Students

Our students take an assessment called NWEA-MAP three times per year. With our goal group, it was important for us to see if they had made growth from the fall screening until the mid-year point. The sticky part of the process is the some kids always finish quickly while others may need a few class periods to complete the test. After some discussion, my co-teacher and I decided to have the kids who were done come to the library and do their regular checkout and reading rather than stay in the computer lab with their peers. At this point in the year, I plan to have these students every week and have gotten to know them, so it made sense to keep our normal schedule as much as possible and to separate the kids who were done in another location. It was fun to have half of each class to myself.

Two of our students poring over a Guiness Book of World Records

After checking out their books and doing some reading, we decided that they could have some free time on the computers or iPads at the end of the period for doing such a great job on their tests (more on that soon!). When I handed each student at iPad, I had no idea what they might decide to do. One of the things I noticed when we used the iPads for our initial survey in the fall is that they are not very familiar with iPads. Many students did not know how to navigate to the Internet or have much of an idea what they might do with the device if allowed to use it for any school appropriate purpose. Several of the boys immediately asked if I would play Kahoot with them. They have used Kahoot on the iPads for review games in their social studies classes, so that is what many imagine an iPad is for. I had not prepared a game, but told them that we would play Kahoot next week as part of their library visit activities, or, as I actually said, "It's ON!" I'm looking forward to the opportunity to incorporate Kahoot into their library visits as I have witnessed the power of teachers using it for an engagement tool and it was one of our AASL Best Apps in 2015. What sponge activities utilizing technology have worked in your library or classroom?

AASL's Best Apps and Websites 2015

The American Association of School Librarians publishes a list of the 25 best apps for teaching and learning each year. The 2015 list was unveiled at the American Librarian Association conference in San Francisco in June. The list includes apps in five categories: books, STEM, organization and management, content creation, and social sciences. This was my last year on the committee and I curated the book apps along with John Schumacher. We will be presenting these apps at the AASL National Conference in November as well.

The 2015 Best Websites list was also revealed in San Francisco. Although I served on that committee many years ago, I continue to follow their work as they continue to honor innovative websites and provide excellent models of how technology can be used to improve learning.

Do you have an idea for an app or website that should be honored on the 2016 lists? Please use the nomination links below to let the committees know:

App nomination

Website nomination

Best APPs for Teaching and Learning

As a part of the American Association for School Librarians, I have had the opportunity to participate on several committees. My most recent service has been to the Best APPs for Teaching and Learning committee. We spent a year reviewing hundreds of APPs in order to create a list of 25 that are exemplars for use in education. At the American Library Association annual conference this summer, we revealed the inaugural list to our colleagues. As Maple Street and Milwood now have access to iPads for classroom use, you will notice the free versions of many of these APPs have been downloaded for your use. Please feel free to play around with them and get familiar with their function. I would love to co-teach some lessons using these APPs to help support your content. I am also interested in what APPs you would like to use-- and what you might recommend for our next list (coming June 2014!). The 2013 list is available here for your use.