Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Thing 32 : Evidence Based Practice – Collecting Data

The quote from Doug Johnson in Demonstrating Our Impact: Putting Numbers in Context talks about “enumerating how many instructional activities were accomplished:  booktalks given, skill lessons taught, teacher in-services provided, pathfinders/bibliographies created and collaborative units conducted.”

For instance, the fourth-grade teachers and I share the work of monitoring each student’s progress in their projects.  After looking at Methods to Assess Learning in the Library Media Center and clicking on the link to her presentation, “Four Methods to Assess Learning in the Library Media Center,” I realized that I should use Google Forms or Sheets to create checklists for those classes so that each homeroom teacher and I could see the progress as a whole.  We could see what each of us has done and which students need a push. I just have to make it really easy to use or the teachers and I won’t use it.  

I would love to have the ability to use Google Forms for pre and post lesson assessments and to use student response systems, but we just don’t have enough technology at this point to make it feasible.  Exit tickets seem like a better option though slogging through the data seems onerous.  I know that Google Classroom has the option of comment pages or I could use something like Padlet, but without 1:1 tech, the process of students logging into and out of something takes SOOO long.  I generally only have 30 minutes to teach and every minute is precious.  Does anyone have an option that doesn’t require the students to log in?

I decided to explore the Teacher Librarians Toolkit for Evidence Based Practice.  (The links from Thing 32 didn’t work for me anyway, so I had to Google it.)  I think I will download the Learning Logs at school as a way of having students be accountable for what they accomplish.  I can see myself using them with 4th and 5th grade this year and I will add them with 6th next year.

After reading Samples of Student Work, I realized that I need to do a better job of copying student work.  I liked their list of possible student samples: Note making sheets, Completed graphic organizers, Works Cited list, Reports, Brochures, Posters, Multimedia presentations, Brainstorming sheets, and Web pages.  I don’t usually make copies of any completed projects, just some of the prior steps.

I liked the Facility Improvements page.  There were two areas where I need to work: displays of student work (which has fallen to the side now that the emphasis is on long-term projects) and enough computer workstations.  I don’t have a periodical display area, but it doesn’t seem to be missed.  I honestly think that the databases more than make up for it.

The Capital Region BOCES training some years ago for APPR made me start collecting Feedback from School Library Stakeholders. I copy emails and save whatever thank you notes or articles mention our activities.

For exploring the tools, I first tried the two Joyce Valenza articles.  Most of the tools seem to require 1:1 tech and logins that I previously discussed were problems, but the Kahoot did not.  So, I started to explore Kahoot.  It seemed easy to make.  I liked the fact that you could always go back and see how your students responded so that you could analyze the data.  I’m wondering if I could create Kahoots as Exit Tickets and have the students complete them on the available workstations before or after they book exchange.
Okay, that won’t work as it has to be simultaneous users.  (I HATE the music in the background by the way.  Very distracting!!)
Still, I will mention this tool to my teachers who are getting a laptop cart for each grade level.  This just emphasizes the fact that I need devices!  

Back to my previous idea… 
There was an email discussion on the listserv this past week about how we go about collecting student recommendations for new books.  One of the respondents said that she has a widget to a Google form.  I think that exploring this could be the answer to a lot of my data collection issues.  I could presumably have multiple widgets: collection requests, facilities data, display data, differentiation data, collaboration data, etc.

I looked through Lyn Hay’s slides which seemed to mostly duplicate Joyce’s ideas except that there were more examples of reports for the final step of EBP.

The LibGuide from CISSL at Rutgers, though full of useful information, was difficult to read.  It was too small and too cluttered for me to really digest what I was seeing.  If, in fact, it was simply a collection of what was presented in a different format, then I think that it could work for people, but as an introductory resource it was overwhelming AND it, too, seemed to duplicate Joyce and Lyn’s.

The Evolving with Evidence presentation covered much of the same ground as the previous tools, but it did give me a link to Anchor Charts for Libraries which gave me some great ideas for my library –just not this project.  In addition, despite the anchor chart link, it was definitely targeted to high school.  Some parts were difficult to follow without the speakers’ input and some slides were so cluttered as to be unreadable.  (Of course, I have editing problems myself!)

So, in summary, I guess my action plan is:
1. Get out my camera and try to document.
2. Do a better job of organizing evidence of what I already do.
3. Start to create exit tickets.
4. Investigate using widgets to access Google forms and sheets. 
5. Tell everyone about Kahoot and beg for devices for my library so that I could use it, too.

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