A Hands-On Workshop with Frances Jacobson Harris, University Laboratory High School Librarian, sponsored by The Center for Children’s Books, Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Who should attend: School and youth services librarians, K-12 teachers. Earn 3 CPDUs.
When: Saturday, May 2, 2009 from 9am-12pm
Where: LIS Building 501 E. Daniel Street, Champaign
Cost: $45.00

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by talk about blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, social networking and tags? If these Web 2.0 terms seem foreign or if you are simply not as familiar with these terms and activities as you’d like to be–this hands-on workshop is for you!

Participants in this 3-hour session will receive a user-friendly introduction to the world of Web 2.0, followed by two hours of instruction and guided practice in a lab format. You will learn how Web 2.0 can benefit you, through personal productivity tools like iGoogle and RSS feeds; and how Web 2.0 can benefit us, via collaborative tools such as wikis. Whether you are new to Web 2.0, or you’d like to be a more knowledgeable and confident Web 2.0 user, this workshop will give you the information and tools you need to take that next step.

For additional information and to register visit:

http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/programs/cpd/web2.html

Frances Jacobson Harris is the librarian at University Laboratory High School, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is a professor of library administration at the University Library. She team teaches a required computer literacy course sequence for eighth and ninth grade students, which includes information literacy and Internet ethics components. Frances has presented and published on topics related to young adults, Internet ethics, and digital information. She is the author of I Found It On the Internet: Coming of Age Online, published by the American Library Association (2005). She can be reached at francey@illinois.edu or through her library website, http://www.uni.illinois.edu/library

Are you looking to set up an educational presence in Second Life but don’t know where to start? Join us to learn about planning, needs assessment, goals, expectations, buying or renting land, where to find help, prefab versus building, challenges, positives, teaching tools in Second Life such as Power point, class management, groups permissions, communication, and evaluating your presence once you have it set up. We will take field trips so students can see and discuss some of the educational presences in Second Life.

Week One: Planning a presence in Second Life
Week Two: Setting up a presence in Second Life
Week Three: Managing a presence in Second Life
Week Four: Evaluating a presence in Second Life

Instructors: Rhonda Trueman (Abbey Zenith) and Tom Peters (Maxito Ricardo).

Audience: Open to anyone interested in using Second Life for educational purposes. Students should have experience navigating in Second Life.

Dates and times:
Thursday, April 2, 9, 16, and 23 from 4:00-6:00 PM SL (US Pacific) time
Location: Second Life
Cost: $150

Offered by the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, university of Illinois and Illinois Alliance Library System.

Registration deadline, January 16, 2009
EDC 920:  USING THE INTERNET FOR TEACHING, LEARNING, & PRACTICAL APPLICATION (3) grad credits.
Registration cost: $500.00*
(If you have never taken a course at URI before, the course cost is $535.00 which includes a onetime transcript fee charge of $35.00)

Students will learn how to find relevant information among the abundance of raw data found online, evaluate its worth and credibility, and effectively use it to solve an issue or problem. Students will also learn “Information Literacy Skills” (how to develop their own ‘research and evaluation’ skills) and transfer this knowledge to the students in their classrooms. This will occur by continuously integrating practical application, real research projects for their individual classrooms, and discipline specific lesson plans. Appropriate for grades K-12.  This is an online, asynchronous course with no classroom meetings. There is no designated time that you have to be on line.  Each week’s lesson is posted on line and participants have 7 days to complete and post their assignments. Students will interact completely through a blog, as well as learn what a blog is, how to use one, and how to access educational blogs from teachers around the world. All lessons will be completely downloadable and, therefore, reusable in your own classrooms.

Course Instructor: Dave Fontaine, NBCT
Registration Contact:  Christine P. Dolan at Christine@uri.edu
Class Meeting Dates:  January 19, 2009-May 1, 2009

EDC 921: USING BLOGS AND WIKIS TO FOSTER LITERACY (3) Graduate Credits  Registration cost:$500.00*
(If you have never taken a course at URI before, the course cost is $535.00 which includes a onetime transcript fee charge of $35.00.)

This course focuses on the pragmatism of using Web 2.0 (interactive tools) in education. Participants will learn how to use interactive, online tools to: foster literacy in and out of school; Differentiate Instruction; deepen learning and increase student achievement; create opportunities to bring these technologies to the larger school community; and identify assessment tools that measure the effectiveness of Interactive Web technologies in their personal practice as well as with their students. Appropriate for grades K-12. This is an online, asynchronous course with no classroom meetings. There is no designated time that you have to be on line.  Each week’s lesson is posted on line and participants have 7 days to complete and post their assignments. All lessons will be completely downloadable and, therefore, reusable in your own classrooms.

Course Instructor: Dave Fontaine, NBCT
Registration Contact:  Christine P. Dolan at Christine@uri.edu
Class Meeting Dates:  January 19, 2009-May 1, 2009

EDC 922: Online Texts in the 21st Century Classroom (3) Graduate Credits  Registration cost:$500.00*
(If you have never taken a course at URI before, the course cost is $535.00 which includes a onetime transcript fee charge of $35.00.)

In the 21st century, teachers and students are finding traditional textbooks less useful.  Most are out-of-date before they reach the classroom. Teachers only use a fraction of the material, and the costs have skyrocketed; even the smallest districts spend over $100,000/year on textbooks!  More and more teachers are beginning to access online resources like: interactive tutorials, videos, edu-games, and podcasts to supplement their instruction. In this economic climate, and with the proliferation of free, quality content on the Internet, is it possible to create your own digital textbooks? The answer is yes and the movement is already underway!  Some of the greatest minds are banding together to harness their Collective Intelligence. They are collaboratively writing textbooks and giving them away for free for the common-good through a non-profit organization called CK-12.  Learn about this movement, share your own knowledge, and let your district benefit from the generosity of others. Save and retain each week’s lesson in its entirety so that you may review it repeatedly and manipulate it for your own classroom use.  Learn about Creative Commons Licensing and how it allows you to keep, modify, and share each week’s lesson. Participants will explore and use collaborative, online tools like wikis to improve instruction, as well as create digital textbooks from Open Source material. They will also contribute, and gain access, to unlimited amounts of free digital textbooks that can be used in their classrooms, schools, and districts and create an Open Source chapter/subsection that will be shared with the world!  This is an online, asynchronous course with no classroom meetings. There is no designated time that you have to be online.  Each week’s lesson is posted online and participants have 7 days to complete and post their assignments. Students will interact completely through a blog.  This is a 3-credit, graduate level course offered through the University of Rhode Island.

Course Instructor: Dave Fontaine, NBCT
Registration Contact:  Christine P. Dolan at
Christine@uri.edu

Class Meeting Dates:  January 19, 2009-May 1, 2009

Registration deadline, January 16, 2009

Michelle Boule wrote an awesome article for the School Library Journal blog called Go With the Flow: Selling Social Networking.  She links to several helpful sites that may help you sell social networking to your teachers and administrators.

Sarah Hill, Librarian
Paris High School
ISLMA Treasurer