MAME37 Presentations -- Dearborn Hyatt Regency

It's great to be back at the MAME Annual Conference this year.  This will be my third appearance at a MAME activity, and the school library media specialists are a favorite audience.    Last year, I introduced a presentation on my digital anthology, a topic I repeated for the MHS staff and the MACUL Cloud Conference.

Today, I am presenting on the following topics:

(12:45- 1:45) Using Apple’s Challenge-Based Learning to Build Learning Networks
Apple's Challenge-Based Learning model fosters authentic understanding and leverages technology. Students use the web for research, planning, and collaborating while seeking solutions. The media specialist's role as guide will be explored.

(2:00 - 3:00) Building A Knowledge Hub for Your Learning Community presented by Larry Baker
Baker's M-Hub Project helps life-long learners build personal learning networks.  It is grounded in the Department of Education's "2010 National Educational Technology Plan."  Staff are networked as real-time resources.

This will be the maiden voyage of my M-Hub preso-- It has recently been accepted for MACUL at Cobo Center in March.  But today will be unique, because I will be honored with the assistance of two student leaders from M-Hub.

As promised to attendees, here are the slides of the presentations: 

Challenge Based Learning 1

Challenge Based Learning 2

Challenge Based Learning 3

Building A Knowledge Hub

  

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Screen capture from CBL 2

M-Hub Update

My involvement with Challenge Based Learning has been pretty all-consuming these days.  But M-Hub has grabbed my attention in a big way.  This is largely due to having a remarkable student-leadership team which is bent on getting things done has helped move moved M-Hub from an interesting idea to a reality.

The basic concept of M-Hub is to provide studetns with a tool for building personal learning networks within our greater school community.  We want to build a highly searchable database of "expert" alumnae, staff, parents for students to contact for a wide variety of information.


The idea has received support from all parties, but actualizing the plan has been challenging.  Suddenly, we have major break throughs

Data Collection
We believe that Zoomerang can provide us with a polling instrument that we can send out by email or link to a web site.  If the "free version" is too limited, we think that the "pro" pay version can certainly meet our needs.  We are ready to begin building a prototype.

Web Solution
Finding a place to store our data which would allow students to gain access has been more perplexing.  However, with the help of some "seed money" from the school we will be able to secure the services of a web designer who is going to begin constructing the back end of this database.  He also is confident that the data from Zoomerang will be easy to import to the web site.  Working with Drupal our web designer will be able to integrate this feature right into the school's web site.

Fund Raising
In order to pay for the complete services of the web designer and meet other expenses such as an upgrade to Zoomerang Pro, we will need to raise funds.  Here, our status as a school club comes hand.  With 25 club members its feasible host activities.  One likely possibility is a sale of M-Hub logo flash drives.



Leveraging Technology
I'm also pleased to note that while we are not overtly a "tech club",  we are pretty clever at finding virtual tools to help us keep pushing M-Hub along.  We use "Doodle" to schedule leadership meetings.  We also carry on discussions between meetings on a private blog site created with iWeb.

MAME /MACUL
The world is about to hear about M-Hub.  Two of the student leaders and I will be presenting our project to the school library media specialists at MAME 37, this week.  I also just learned that M-Hub has been selected as a topic for the 2011 MACUL Conference at Cobo Center in March.

What a rush!

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Screen capture of M-Hub leadership private blog site

The Teacher as Curator

When I am feeling a little morbid, I sometimes check in on Newspaper Death Watch. A post on the evolving role of newspapers as online content curators grabbed my attention:

Content curation is about filtering the stuff that people really need from out of all the noise around it. In the same way that museum curators choose which items from a collection to put on display, content curators select and publish information that’s of interest to a particular audience. This function is becoming more and more critical as the volume of information on the Internet explodes. It’s projected that the amount of digital information that will be created in 2010 could fill 75 billion 16 GB Apple iPads.

"Curating" was a word that was banded about quite a bit at our 2010 ADE Summer Institute. In fact my project group has continued to "curate" Challenge Based Learning materials right up to the present. This is for good reason. We're all daunted by the amount of information out there regarding technology and education. Consequently my project team is pretty much bent on the task of identifying valuable resources for teachers interested in Challenge Based Learning. This really motivates me because I think we will be providing a potentially valuable, (and free) service.

I also think it is useful for teachers to think of themselves as curators. Personally, I enjoy this role, because I am interested in a range of subjects and I suppose I have some knowledge about a lot of things. I'm helpful with information searches and I am familiar with a range of resources.

I am interested in sharing this point of view with media specialists when I present at MAME 37, in October.  I'm guessing that I will be preaching to the choir.  Do you agree?

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"Overload Information" Flickr Creative Commons photo by Maty