To be noted, be noteworthy

In January 2007, I attended a small gathering of semi-professional and professional bloggers and, without a doubt, the tip of the evening came from Steven Noble, then of Hill & Knowlton, who used to write a blog for them called Elbow Grease: Getting Results in PR & Digital Communication.

Steve told us, “If you want to be noted by a particular audience, the first step is to ask how you, in their eyes, can be noteworthy.”

Of late, that quote has become a very useful, personal touchstone for me in the realms of both blogging and teacher-librarianship.

My main links for my talks at ISLA on Thursday are:

Primary educators

* Kindergarten weaves a wiki

* Book raps and event raps – Beijing Olympics & Book Week 2008 (Stage 2)

* The Shaggy Penrith Times – supporting the Rap

* Blogs – eg. Goldquest (Stage 3)

* Professionals blogging.

Secondary educators

* Identity rap

* Goldquest blog – two schools interacting

* Wikis – for shared projects

* Professionals blogging.

What they’re saying about…

… ummm, me. 😉

This week, I did a quick Google search on what other schools around the world are doing regarding Kindergarten students using wikis. (Answer: still not much?) It’s now been a full twelve months since the unit of work, documented at penrithpslibrary.pbwiki.com, was done at this school, and I’ve just launched a similar project for a group of (possibly) gifted and talented Early Stage 1 students, hoping to repeat and improve upon the 2007 successes.

What surprised and delighted me was that numerous sites recently have earmarked/bookmarked our wiki pages, as an exemplar from which others can draw inspiration:

For example, on the University of North Texas School of Library Science wiki pages, Janienne Brown says, about our site, “This example of a Wiki from Australia shows exactly what a Wiki can accomplish and in this case [Stage 3 book review page] one of the students had their review printed in the newspaper and another student won a voucher for their participation, this is above and beyond the immediate benefits of the Wiki. Also shown are the stages the Wiki went through to illustrate that this is a process [Kindergarten fables] and the process is part of the journey. The setup of this Wiki is from their home page and names the book and author of the book and ‘A book review by first name, last initial, and grade’. This Wiki shows beautifully what we hope to accomplish, students reading, writing, getting other students excited about reading and writing too.”

Cool!

And, in an excellent and enthusiastic PowerPoint presentation (“Web 2.0 – Join the journey”) , for a Summer Institute for School Librarians by Lori Franklin, our Core Values Fables pages were recommended in her section called “Why in the world wiki?”

Even cooler!

I’m making sure I take lots of notes (ie. “evidence-based practice”) again as I run the program this term. I’m already realising that some things I did last year, as a bit of a fluke, were very effective. We still don’t have an interactive whiteboard in the school, so last year, when I had the wiki page set up on a bank of three computers, the students were able to see, quite dramatically, that changes to one wiki page on one computer, were instantaneously altered on the other two computer screens, after a simple page refresh. I only had one screen on for the first lesson this year and I suddenly realised a missed opportunity.

The twelve students, from three different classes, are highly motivated and are excited about working together on some “special”. I was impressed that they seem to be more Internet savvy than the 2007 group. It will be an interesting term!