Traditional Literature- LOVE it

Perhaps my favorite genre of literature is Traditional Literature.  I don't know why, but the stories that have endured through countless retellings long before the invention of the printing press speak to something deep within me.  Traditional literature encompasses sacred texts, mythology, fables, fairytales, "Mother Goose", and pourquoi tales.  These stories are from all over the world, and frequently share story motifs.

Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell would argue that these stories spring from the collective unconscious of humanity.  Jung developed the idea of archetypes, or patterns of plot and character that appear frequently throughout these tales.  Folklorists, Sociologists, and Psychologists have spent their entire academic careers cataloging and studying these archetypes.  They would argue that understanding the language of traditional stories help us to understand ourselves and others around us.

I would agree.  These stories help us orient ourselves in the world.  Some of the stories are taken quite literally by listeners, and others are dismissed out of hand as being the stuff of kindergarten.  My perspective is somewhere in the middle.  I am not much of a literalist, but I do appreciate the deeper truths about the nature of being human that are revealed within these stories.

I had the luck to come across a modern (well, within the last century) account that had all the earmarks of a traditional story in the following book:  Challenge To Survive, History of the Salish Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation vol.3 (1840-1870).  The story was initially published in 1947, and has been included on pages 65-68 of this book, which should be on every library shelf in Montana.

In this "Medicine Story," a child is either abandoned or lost in the woods, and is cared for by a wise mother and her two lovely children.  The child journeys with the mother for some time, until they reach familiar territory.  The child at some point bends down to drink some water, and when she looks again, finds that her protector is not a woman at all, but a Grizzly Bear with two cubs.  The bear speaks to the child, and assures her that she has nothing to fear.  The Bear also lets the child know that she will grow up to be someone who helps many children.  The child then makes her way back to her people, and indeed grows to become a valued midwife, thereby helping all the children of the village begin their own journey.

My retelling is a poor substitute for the original version told by Pierre Pichette.  Pierre was a Salish historian, and the child referenced in the story was his own Grandmother, Mary Sdipp-shin-mah!  This wonderful, mystical story will stay with me.  I love the way the story establishes a human relationship with the Grizzly, and describes the journey and hardship the child undertakes in order to find her own place in the world.  I can't wait to share the story with my students, who would perhaps like to illustrate, record themselves reading, or simply listen and be astonished.

Every year, teachers have students research animals and write reports. I have a couple of students who are doing nonfiction reports on bears right now.  I can't help but think that the research will be more gratifying if the kids discover stories where the animals they have been learning about have a role.

Flathead River book reveals tiny treasures

An interesting tidbit I want to share with my students RIGHT NOW....

I was perusing one of the books purchased for our Indian Ed collection: 

"The Lower Flathead River, Flathead Indian Reservation".  A significant portion of the book consists of a description of the flora, fauna, and geology of the area.  I was looking for excerpts that might be of interest to my kiddos when I stumbled across this bit.

I had noticed that our pet library rat seems somewhat incontinent.  She occasionally leaves tiny drops of urine here and there. I had suspected that it was a form of scent marking, but hadn't had this thought confirmed.  It makes the children snicker, and I tell them that she only pees on people that she wants to remember.

Now I can amaze the kids even further.  I know one can obtain ultraviolet light wands to check rental units for pet urine,  I think I will try to find one and see if Parsnip the rat leaves a visible trail as well.  I can share the idea of raptor vision picking up on the 

ultraviolet trail that is invisible to humans.  I can see this little paragraph blossoming into an incredibly cool science fair project for some rat or raptor enthusiast!

Gathering and Display of Data

Last year, one of my former students was engaged in research for her senior project.  (although how she became a senior so fast, I don't know!)  She had prepared a questionnaire for this purpose, but it was in printed hard copy, which I found disturbing.

In this day and age, it is ridiculous to be gathering data on paper.  First of all, it's terribly inefficient and a waste of resources.  People will misplace the form either before they fill it out or after they fill it out. Trying to get the completed forms back to the originator can be a problem as well, and that is all before  the data is "crunched" in a spreadsheet, or worse, tabulated by hand.

It's so very easy to create forms online to gather data.  I LOVE Google forms, and the different ways I can author and finesse the behavior of the questionnaire is amazing.  There are also lots of sites online that allow a student to create simple polls without any sort of account.

This week, my students will be taking a poll called "My Voice"  from Pearson Education. I would be willing to bet that my district paid quite a bit for this 50 question survey that I could have put together in  less than an hour on Google forms, and I could have customized it... no generic questions.

When my students finish the poll this week, I plan on showing them how they too, can create online forms to collect data.  With luck, none of them will be issuing paper questionnaires for their senior projects, or any other data quest that they may need to do in the future.  I will have them embed their forms into their blogs.  I know they will love this activity and hopefully understand how the tools can be applied in real life.

Word Clouds

In Portland, I bought a fun book full of ideas for teaching Language Arts with fun technology tools.  One of the suggested activities is to have students visualize their use of language by pasting their writing into word cloud generators.  In the past, Ive noticed that many of the word cloud generators on line are BLOCKED for my students by the district filter.
I expect the sites are blocked because they have galleries, and some users use questionable language when making their clouds.  Blocking the sites for this reason seems weak to me.  All my students that are old enough to use these tools have certainly encountered swear words before.  They understand that   they don't use that language just because someone else perhaps does.  Kids are smarter than that.  Online, just like in real life, encountering inappropriate content is a matter of "when", not "if".
This is why, when I teach about about going online, I explicitly tell them what to do and how to behave.
Enough about my beef with the internet filter.  This week I'm going to see which of the word cloud sites are unblocked, and show the kids how to use them.  I am hoping that they can paste their word art into their blogs.  I will give the students this list of word cloud generators to try, and we will see what we will see!

5th Grade Social Media

Its so very important for kids to learn how to use technology the right way.  I hear people complain all the time about how kids have their heads bent over an electronic device so often that they seem disengaged.  My question to them is, do you teach by example?  When your children are with you do you...

Turn off the TV ?
Put away your cell phone ?
Close your computer ?
Do you insist that electronics are off during meal times?
Do you talk about how rude it is to use cell phones at movies, dining establishments, or anywhere else that bystanders have to listen?

Kids also must learn to use social media responsibly, because they WILL use it eventually, whether you like it or not.  A quick visit the the comments section of the Missoulian should convince you that rules of civil discourse online should be EXPLICITLY taught.

As a means to this end, I have set up my 5th graders with a couple different forums to practice these skills.  They each have their own blog, where they can write about their interests, or write for a classroom assignment.  They also have accounts in Edmodo, which is a Facebook-like environment that is closed for everyone except the class and myself.

With these tools, kids learn about respectful commenting, responsible and meaningful posting, privacy issues and lots more, all while honing their writing skills.  We talk about case studies, how important it is to establish a positive web presence.  I fill their ears with horror stories of kids (and adults!) who sabotage themselves by acting like idiots online.  We discuss cyber-bullying, and how to respond 9or not) if and when they see it happening.

Strong online communication skills are absolutely necessary for success in the workforce, and increasingly in school.  I feel that we would be doing our kids a grave injustice to ignore this or (worse) actively resist letting them learn and practice these skills in a safe, supportive environment.

Why Does Everything I Read Make Me Hungry?

I've been reading some interesting books from our library on the history of the Salish tribes, The Challenge To Survive series.  While the books as a whole wouldn't work for young children, some of the excerpts would be of interest.  For example, in book 2, Johnny Arlee relates the story of how horses were acquired by the tribe.  The humorous detail that I have come to expect from Johnny shines through.  What a master storyteller he is!

The books have interesting cultural tidbits relating to harvesting, hunting, and cooking throughout.  For me, I can really connect with these sections, I suppose because I love food so much!  Also the passages speak to the forager in me.  My husband and I love the wild bounty that living in Montana provides us.  He is the hunter in the fall and collector of morel mushrooms in the spring. Both of us spend considerable amounts of time in the summer picking wild berries.  Company is always so pleased when we have elk stroganoff with wild morels, accompanied by a garden salad with wild chokecherry vinaigrette dressing.  For dessert:  huckleberry pie!

We have never done anything with bitterroot or camas, however.  I'm a little afraid to!

From Encyclopedia Britannica:
"Elaine Nelson McIntosh, a dietitian and food historian, suspects death camas may have been to blame for the illnesses that plagued the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805. Food was scarce and the group was suffering from malnutrition. The Nez Perce tribe offered the travelers fish and bulbs of a plant they believed were blue camas. At the time, the plant wasn’t in bloom, making it hard to differentiate between it and its evil cousin. Soon after, the group fell violently ill for weeks. They ate their dogs to sustain themselves for the rest of the expedition."

Treasure State Nominee Voicethread

Every year, librarians and teachers all over the state share 5 special books with their students. These books are the nominees for the Treasure state Award, given by the Montana Library Association with the help of thousands of little students in the primary grades who vote on their favorite.
I like to create a Voicethread, where students can record their thoughts about the books as we go along. I feel that it is very good practice for students to use technology to develop their thinking and speaking skills. This project is open to the public, so if you'd like to leave a comment on the thread, we would welcome your addition!
I have found that Voicethread also has a nice app for ipad or ipods.  It's super easy to record video on the mobile gadgets.  I have found however, that one must create the original thread on their regular website, or the audio might not save properly for some reason.  Not a problem, but I had to find out the hard way.

IEFA LiveBinder

I've been developing a LiveBinder in order to collect Indian Education For All resources that I like.  I hope this will be a continually growing tool.  Perhaps it might even be helpful for someone other than myself!

IEFA Elementary

Teaching Tribal Sovereignty

Teach it?  I can barely spell it.
I have been combing the "Interwebs" for teaching materials that will help students understand this key idea in IEFA.  Most of the resources are geared toward older students, which I suppose makes sense.  For younger kids, I think some of the current events topics that are frequently in the newspaper might lead to a good discussion, especially the controversial ongoing drama at the National Bison Range. Even that might be too political to understand.
In the lower grades, I think it is helpful for the students to first grasp that various tribes have very different traditions, which is evident in a examination of picture books containing different stories from different tribes.  I have been teaching "Fire Stories"  to my 3rd graders, and have found this site with several different stories of how mankind acquired fire.
I visited a site "Indian-Ed Washington State"  that looked like it would be a rich depository of teaching resources, but when I clicked on the items, I just got a "404 errors".
Our state Office of Public Instruction should be a great resource, but it's not easily navigable AT ALL.  I entered "sovereignty" in the lesson search box, and received exactly one lesson (High School Level) for my efforts.  The link for the Small School Alliance teacher plans is also dead.  Obviously, the OPI site needs an overhaul!
I have no problem with the "Challenge To Survive" series, and they are parked with reverence on the library shelves in the 970.004.  It's just difficult to conceive of how they will work into my teaching yet.  Today, OPI sent my library yet another IEFA resource book that I'm afraid will never get read.  The intended audience is adult, like most of them are, and frankly, busy teachers don't have the time to sift through them trying to mine for relevant teaching materials.
This is why most of the teachers in elementary depend mightily on folklore to try and meet IEFA standards.  It would be great if more child-friendly, high quality materials (like the Johnny Arlee stuff) were shipped to us instead of obscure, longwinded works.

NCCE 2013 Portland, Oregon

I spent the week in Portland for the National Council for Computing in Education Conference.  It was really good, and I learned a lot, but I am missing my munchkins at school.  I also feel like I am horribly behind in some of the rest of my life.  For example, I'm taking two online classes that I've put on the back burner all week, and now I'm struggling to play catch up.

Before I launch back into regular librarian mode, however, I am going to quickly review some of the highlights from the trip before the details are absorbed into the indistinct, porridge of my memory. Thus, following is a chronology of the visit:

Monday Night:  Upon departure from Missoula, I am stopped and hassled briefly by security because my name is spelled incorrectly on my ticket.  Worse, my travelling partner, Crista, receives the full treatment from security-  just shy of a cavity check!  Finally, we arrive unscathed at our hotel around midnight and fall into bed

Tuesday:  Crista is assisting with a pre-session class.  These pre-session events are really expensive, but I appoint myself an assistant to the assistant, and thus am able to freeload on the content that I really should have paid for.  The session focused on the importance of developing a strong professional learning network, primarily through social media.  As a librarian, I am isolated from others with my specific interests and concerns, so I have long exploited digital communication to connect with other like-minded souls.  This session was a little basic for me, but it's always good to have a review.
The afternoon was devoted to the power of Google Docs.  I have been a heavy user of the Google suite of tools for many years, and will soon have the opportunity to help my staff and students discover the value of all the tools, as my district is soon adopting the gmail and google docs for education.  I am very excited about this upcoming opportunity.  I think the session offered a very good model for teacher training that I could easily reproduce at my own site.

Wednesday:
 I learned about the theory of "Gamification" of the classroom.  Proponents claim that students who are proficient gamers have a statistically higher earning potential.  This idea flies in the face of what I'd always thought about gaming, namely that it numbed the mind and the sensitivities of players, and glamorized violence and antisocial behavior in general.  Well. I was forced to confront my prejudices in light of what I saw demonstrated.  The gaming platform exhibited really did engage students, and also actually made them get up and move.  I could really see how the systems would be beneficial, especially in the primary special education room. I also learned  how one school district received funding for the purchase of xBox hardware and software through a "healthy kids" grant.  Another schools' efforts were financed through a Kickstart grant.  It had never occurred to me to harness Kisckstart for a school project.  I had always associated it with the arts or entrepreneurial efforts. Hmmmm...  That's what I love about these conference events-  unexpected learnings.

Thursday:
I started the morning with a session by Tammy Worschester, who is always excellent.  Her topic was on the uses of google docs (a pervasive theme this year) to collect student work in the form of URLs into a central spreadsheet.  She also showed us a bit of html that we can use to generate QR codes for each of the URLs turned in, so I won't have to work on them individually (Hallelujiah!)  However, she didn't tell whether or not the QR codes automatically shorten the URL (which I suspect)./  If this is indeed the case, they would all be blocked by the district #%&*! internet filter.
Nonetheless, the single idea of collecting student URLs with a form on each workstation and/or library page was revolutionary to me.  Why didn't I ever think of this before?  This may be the one most powerful game-changer that I came away with from this conference, and I could have learned it here in Missoula, (or thought of it independently).  It's somewhat annoying that I didn't.
Tammy also shared numerous web 2.0 tools for students to share their learning.  I had already heard of some of them, but there were plenty of new ones.  A later session from Tammy expanded the list even further.
A second session was delivered by Andrew Miller, with whom I was unfamiliar.  He was a very engaging speaker on the topic of Project-Based Learning, and is a leading consultant in that area.  He made quite a to-do about the distinction between PBL and simply a culminating project.  The main difference being in front-loading the end result, and having numerous active, creative learning episodes interjected with traditional learning methods, rather than vice-versa.  He was pretty down on most of the distance learning initiatives, which he sees as perpetuating a failed pedagogy model, in essence, the lecture method. He showed numerous examples of wonderful student projects, which could easily be adopted into our STEM initiative, Capstone Initiative, or Baccalaureate program.  He blogs about PBL on Edutopia regularly, so I have begun to follow him.  He gave some fabulous links in his talk to explore.  They can be found here: www.2013.ncceconnect.org/T303.
More learning tools came my way with the following session, offered by Missoula's own Jason Neiffer and Mike Agostinelli.  They used a Live Binder to present, which I adore, because the entire presentation is so easily added to my own "shelf" on the Live Binder site.  They had a wealth of tools to share, some new and some not.  In addition, they also shared their favorite ipad apps for education.  Of all that they discussed, I am most interested in pursuing Simple Booklet and Sim City Edu.
The final presentation of the day was on creativity in general, and was frankly somewhat painful to sit through.  Granted, by this time I was tired and my brain was full, but I thought I would diebefore the session ended.  I guess it wouldn't be fair to expect every session to be fabulous though.
Wednesday evening was well-spent informally, by meeting with the Adobe Education team for a drink at a local microbrewery.

Friday:
I was lucky to attend a session by Kathy Schrock, who is a rock-star among school librarians.  Her topic was on infographics, including their history and development.  She explained how she used the to represent data, and how to start kids with making their own.  She gave evaluative tools for assessment, as well as scaffolding lessons and ties to the Common Core standards.  Her site is veritable GOLDMINE.
A visit to the vendors yielded lots of swag for Crista's children, as well as some great contacts for STEM (such as Lego for education)  and the sad discovery that there really isn't an iPad solution for keyboarding at any cost.  There are, however, several apps in development, so perhaps by next year the landscape won't be so bleak.  I attained a little insight into our district filtering problems when I visited the LightSpeed booth for a chat and an airing of grievances.  I must remember to ask Art why we aren't utilizing the mobile management module and My Big Campus.  They are powerful tools for management, and I'ms sure we are paying plenty for the services.
A second session from Tammy Worcester was somewhat repetitive of her earlier one, but nonetheless hooked me up with numerous tips and tricks that I hadn't been using.  She is generous with her knowledge, and provides numerous online resources.  She covered under-used tools in Google, such as reading level search, research tools, and map distance tools.  Other tools included:  online flash-based timers of various kinds, Drawzit (online drawing tool-  I think it's blocked), Thinglink (makes image maps), Dinky Page (makes easy fast web pages), Record MP3 (would be good for fluency reads or making podcasts), and Croakit (ditto).  She also shared some of her favorite tools for staying current, including Stumbleupon, Twitter, and Pinterest.
I made the mistake of attending a session that was really intended for tech directors on the management of i devices.  Luckily, it was a short session, and mostly gave me a preview of what I can expect from my upcoming 2 day training on using the i configuration utility to sync and drive settings for the school devices.  The Apple representative also fully explained how important and easy it will be to use the volume purchasing plan for education in order to manage our apps.  I will be getting 100$ at the upcoming training, and need to start thinking about what I want to spend it on, with the idea that we will be getting more full sized devices in the future (or perhaps ipad minis)
As with many conferences, some of the best learning was incidental, and unrelated to any particular workshop.  Some of the better aspects of these informal learning experiences included new apps such as Videolicious, Tellagami, and DocsTeach.  I also began to appreciate the power of the Dolphin browser (very twitter-friendly).
Overall, the conference was time very well-spent and I feel so grateful that I was afforded the opportunity to attend.  I can't wait until next year, when the conference will be held in Seattle.  Crista and I are already dreaming and scheming about what we will present together.

Oregon Convention Center