Communication Coordinators Meeting- 2016/12/07: Presentations

Demonstrations on the following topics were presented focusing on how these items were being used in the classroom or could be used to promote student learning in our schools.

• Christina Lupo discussed her experiences using Noodletools and Turnitin.com in the classroom. Her teachers use Noodletools to teach students about the research process. They also use Turnitin.com to teach students about how not to plagiarize information for their reports. She reports that teachers are enthusiastic about these tools.
• Anne Mlod discussed and demonstrated using Voki with students and Weebly to make information available to her students.​

Newsbank Resources that Support the NYS Social Studies Curriculum.

Matt Stwaicki discussed with us the structure of the social studies curriculum framework and identified specific Timeline Topics from Newsbank's Amerian's Historical Newspapers that would support them. He showed us specific elements of Timeline Topics, including primary source documents. He also showed us how to search this database and talked about how it could be used  at both the elementary and secondary classrooms.

He did set up a trial for us.

Resources shared: 

• Access World News Curriculum Coverage.pdf ,
• African American Timeline Topics.pdf ,
• Historical topics currently in the news - America's Historical Newspapers.pdf,
• Immigration Timeline Topics.pdf ,
• Labor History - Timeline Topics.pdf ,
• Literature - Timeline Topics - America's Historical Newspapers.pdf,
• Native American Timeline Topics- America's Historical Newspapers.pdf,
• NewsBank's America's Historical Newspapers.pdf,
• NY Social Studies Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES.pdf, 
• The Arts Timeline Topics.pdf, 
• Women's History-Timeline topics.pdf.

Looking at and Discussing Rosen eBooks and Databases.

Judi Dzikowski talked with us about the important role of the school librarian in K-12 education. She shared with us information about numerous Rosen databases and their Spotlight ebook series, focusing on the Spotlight on New York. She described the different elements found with these interactive ebooks like videos, activities, interactive timelines, primary sources, and teaching tools. She also shared with us their editorial philosophy of their nonfiction ebook titles to include current important discoveries that occur after publication.

She did set up a trial for us.

Makerspaces and 3D Printing in School Libraries.

Tony Abbatiello shared with us information about the various coding and circut-building kits that we demonstrated as part of our makerspace event in October. These are all available through OPALS for loan for teachers to use in their classrooms. We also demonstrated software applications for teaching coding like Hopscotch, Python, and Scratch, and we are in the process of figuring out how to best support these in the schools.

He also discussed his experiences with 3D printers and demonstrated a machine that would soon be available in schools. He pointing out the general characteristics, how they work, some of the operating challenges involved, and the support that would be available through BOCES. He discussed the different types of filaments available and the different types of software available. We also discussed the curriculum and instructional application area relating to modeling and 3D printing.

New Developments With Axis 360 eBooks.

Andrew Dutcher talked about recent developments with Axis 360. It is now Chromebook compatible. Axis 360 now allows readers the option of reading ebooks using a built-in browser-based reader. With more Chromebooks popping up in the classrooms, teachers can now more easily integrate these ebooks into their curriculum.

Another enhancement allows students to easily highlight sections, take notes in their ebooks, and access a built-in dictionary to look up unfamiliar words using the browser-based reader. This means that students can now use these ebooks to practice interacting with digital texts using Axis 360. This is a skill that they will need as we start doing more computer-based testing in our schools.

These developments are so new that they do not yet have online documentation available. These enhancements may still be a little buggy and they are currently being made available to users upon request. The SLS requested that these be enabled for us so that we could better meet the needs of our teachers and students.

These enhancements were demonstrated to SLMS. Please contact the SLS coordinator if you have any questions or experience any challenges with this service.