 Good morning, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event where we cover anything that may be of interest librarians across the state and actually across the country. We do have a national audience here now. We cover any library activities, presentations, interviews, book reviews, anything that's related to libraries and we'll put it on the show. We do these sessions live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. They last for about an hour, give or take depending, but if you're unable to watch to join us live on Wednesdays, that's not a problem. All of our our sessions have been recorded and are available on our website for you to go back and watch at a later date when it's more convenient for you. We have commission, library commission staff that do sessions and we bring in guest speakers as we have today. Today with us on the line is Cary Turner from Westside High School up in Omaha north of here. I'm in Lincoln. She's in Omaha. Hello, Cary. Good morning. Good morning. And she's gonna talk to us this morning about a great learning 2.0 type program that they have been have done for the teachers at the Westside High School. So I will just hand over to you, Cary, and you can take it away. All right. Well what we did was we created something called 17 things and 17 things to soak up and we are a one to one school. So this was something that was very interesting to us to take a look at and work with our teachers. So you might wonder where the original idea came from. It actually came from in the very beginning and Stephen Abrams wrote an article of 43 things I want to do this year. And then Helen blowers in Charlotte Mecklenburg, North Carolina in 2006. She read that article and she thought that that would be a great thing to be able to use with her staff at the library. But 43 things was just a little overwhelming. So she took it down to 23 things. And then the concept for me came about last year when I was lucky enough to go to the ASL annual conference in Minneapolis. I sat in on a presentation by Alicia Dwell. She was from Riverside Brookfield High School in Illinois. And she talked about how she had actually taken the 17 things or the 23 things down to 17. And I had seen the 23 things before. The 17 just kind of struck with me. And I think that that is because as teachers, to try to get them to do 23 things, I thought that might be a little much a little overwhelming for them. And that I might not have as much of a participation as if I were to take it down to like Alicia did and do 17 things that might seem more manageable to our teachers. So she showed us a video and you know what that wasn't what it's supposed to go to. She used with her teachers to introduce them to this concept. So I'm going to share that with you. I wish I could use my creativity to design a really cool website for a class or a project. I also wish I could help students create project websites instead of assigning PowerPoint projects yet again. But since I don't have the software and I'm not a programmer, I guess I'll have to align the librarians to create a website for me. Maybe someday. I know I'll use the free website creation tools at Weebly.com. Thanks, Web 2.0 fairy. What I was just thinking, I wish I could create a really cool introductory video montage for my yoga unit. Something that would use video, images, even music. To my students, what yoga is all about. But I don't have the software, the budget, or the editing expertise. So guess I'll just have to rely on my trusty sign. That's sure. I know I'll create a video music and photo montage for free. Free? That can't be right. Using Animoto. Thanks, Web 2.0 fairy. I wish I could participate in an online community sort of like Facebook or Myspace. But it was made up of others who share the same interests, jobs, or passions as me. We could have virtual discussions, ask questions, share resources, all within my very own social network. A guy can dream. I know I'll create a social network of my own using me. Thanks, Web 2.0 fairy. There are a lot of online resources I use to stay current in my field. I also like to read several online newspapers and blogs. Right now, I have them bookmarked in my favorites folder. But it takes so long to find them. And sometimes I can't even find what I'm looking for. I wish there were a way for me to have everything in one place. Right where I need it. I know I'll use an RSS news feed reader so I can see all of my favorite websites on one simple page. Thanks, Web 2.0 fairy. Thank you. I wish there was a way for my PLC team to work on documents together anywhere in the world without having to create special network folders or run all over the building with a flash drive. And what if we could plan our department meetings and events with a shared calendar? What if everything existed in a cloud? I know. I'll use Google Docs and Google Calendar. Thanks, Web 2.0 fairy. I wish there was a way to use online images, video, music and writing from other people to create something brand new while not violating copyright laws. I wish people had the choice of allowing others to use their work while giving them proper credit. Imagine what we could create together. I know. I'll use content with a creative conference license. Thanks, Web 2.0 fairy. Hey, Alicia, I wish there was a way for me and my students to create a website. Sometimes we could share resources or maybe even create something new and maybe even a place to share something with the community. And what if there's also a way that we could track group work to make sure everyone in the class is doing their part? You're dreaming, Jen. My problem is that I have so many websites and folders in my favorites that I never know where to find anything. And I have different folders on my home and my work computers. Can you imagine if you could access all of your bookmarked websites from any computer? And instead of creating folders, you just tag each website with a few keywords. And now this is really crazy. What if I could share my bookmarks with you? What a world that would be. I know. I'll create a class wiki and I'll use delicious to collect, organize and share all my favorite websites. Thanks, Web 2.0 fairy. Well, pardon me. That was the video that Alicia used to introduce her staff to the 17 things that she created. I didn't have quite the ability that she did to do that. See if I can get it to go back where I want it to go. No, it's not going to be happy with me. Let's just do it a different way then. Sorry. Testing my technology skills. No problem. I have to say I do love that video that she did the Web 2.0 fairy is a very cute. This was appealing to me because I was a one to one. We're in a one to one high school and Web 2.0 3.0 and beyond is really, really important to teaching. And like it or not, we still have a lot of teachers that even though they carry a laptop don't necessarily know how to use it in the classroom to benefit the kids the best. So when I looked at this as a possibility of something to use, I thought that it might be a great way to introduce the teachers to different ways to utilize technology in their classroom. So who were the players? Alicia went about this in the session that I attended. She talked about the fact that she had to sell this to certain people in the school. And she was very right about that. I had to sell it as well. I had to sell it to my principal. I had to sell it to the district tech coordinator. And I had to have approval to not only do this to present it to the teachers and actually use my time and possibly theirs to teach them something new. But I also needed some time to introduce it to the staff. And Alicia was very fortunate. She had quite a bit of money to work with for prices. But we're kind of in a bind in our district right now. And so I didn't get as much money and she did it. And the second time they gave away a laptop. So her prices were really big and carried a lot of incentive. We weren't as fortunate, but that's okay. But I didn't know that I had to have money for prices because without an incentive, there was going to be no way that I was going to get people to try to participate. We have over 160 teachers at the high school level. And we did make the decision to just offer it to the teachers and not to the aides the first time through. We wanted to see how well it was received. And if we could grow it, that would be great. But if it started out huge, we wanted to make sure that we were going to be able to accommodate everyone that wanted to participate. So we did stick with just the teachers. And then actually, I'm going to pop out of this again, because what they did was they allowed me to present, they allowed my colleague and I to present. We had maybe two minutes to present our our concept in a staff meeting. And so I went this direction to present it. And if you listen very carefully, you might pick up on some of the different web 2.0 tools that are available out there. I'm looking for some delicious ideas on ways to use my computer. I like to do presentations, but I want something besides keynote or PowerPoint. I know what you mean. I'm not a Picasso, but I do like to take pictures with my camera. Especially when I'm doing things with my family like making PB wikis or playing with my zoom ear hang. I'm looking for online programs that will let me store my thousands of digital photos and maybe even edit them. My friends are all twittering about online forums and their voice threads tell me I'm missing something big. I try not to be wet paint and be more of a wall wisher, but I don't always understand what they're talking about. It's a puzzle maker to me. I hear it too. I mean, I don't really want to go to the library thing, but it may come down to that. I know those ladies are adventure makers because they've earned the audacity to say so. Well, we do have an awesome library. True. I think we are on the same page flakes. It's not like they tried to wire SS speed me things I don't need. Maybe I will get the watching and ask them. I don't want to sound like a whiner and they go a hole here by boring you. But the net vibes I'm getting from you tell me that you're really a mindmeister. I just want something to do while I'm home for my three snow days. I want to have my mind look and learn at the same time. It sounds like you have a flicker of interest in what I'm talking about. Send me an effort note and let me know what you find out. Thanks for the tiny chat. I'll let you know. So you can see that I got a little carried away with the hand motions and that that was the first time that I had actually used that extra normal. And I just I thought was such fun that I kind of got a little carried away. But the other part of it too was that because we were presenting in a staff meeting and staff meetings are probably the least favorite things that we have to do. I wanted everybody to laugh and I wanted it to be humorous so that they would wonder what we were going to be talking about. And basically what we did was we showed that and it was just kind of a little teaser and then said we were going to be sending out a link for a survey. And we didn't tell them anything else. Just a side note. One of the things that it said in there was that she wanted to have something to do for her three snow days. West Side is one of the school districts that requires all of the teachers to report on snow days. And it was negotiated into our contract the last two years that we would now have three three snow days. So that was kind of an inside joke for the teachers and they all thought that was rather humorous which was what I wanted to accomplish with that. So I used Survey Monkey. We just did seven questions seven very simple questions. I did not want this to be something that they wouldn't participate in because it was too lengthy. So I put together seven questions and put it up on Survey Monkey and linked it. So you can see here that the questions were just basically asking them on a scale of one to five how familiar they were with certain things with Web 2.0 and how if they were interested in learning more about 2.0 if they'd ever heard of certain ones and certain types of 2.0 programs that are out there if they use certain items in their classroom. And then you can see that out of 160 plus teachers that we had only 81 actually took the survey. So you can see that we were going to have a tough audience here because we couldn't get even more than half to take the survey. So that was a little disappointing. But we did recognize that this was the first time we were going to be doing this. And so we were going to it might be low numbers the first time but hopefully we'll be able to do it another time and perhaps more people will choose to participate. And I want to clarify something very quickly. I know I'm going back and forth between saying I and we. I did create this program and I was the one that went to the seminar at ASL. But I do work with a colleague. There are two of us librarians here at the West Side High School. And so both of us make decisions together and everything. And while I created this and put the program together, I do consider it to be something that Teresa and I did together. So you'll hear me say we and that's what I'm talking about when I say we. Okay, so what next? Well, how do we implement it? We had the permission. We had a little bit of money. So I went ahead and put together a wiki on our server. And this is actually what it looks like. And you can link to it now it isn't opens. It is open to the public. I created different pages. So week one was the introduction. And you can see that I linked it to a page that talked about what we were going to be trying to accomplish. The different things that I wanted them to learn. And then I you know, I linked it to the original program so that they could see what that looks like. And I just wanted to give them a little background information in order to help them as they progressed in the actual 17 things to soak up. Each week we did two to three missions, we called them. And so the first week was Mission 1.0 that they needed to create a blog. And I asked them to create it on less side 66.org, which is our own wiki and log site on our server. But we did have a couple of people that created off site, which was perfectly fine. And then the second thing was I wanted them to find an educational blog. So as you look through these weeks that we have, you're going to see that I actually only put eight weeks on here. And so you're probably asking yourself, well, I thought there were 17 things. Yes, you can see on week eight, the 17th mission was to summarize their thoughts. So I didn't I tried to really push this down into a small section, you know, eight weeks for the teachers, I felt was doable. And I felt like they wouldn't bulk as much in participating if we offered a smaller number of weeks that they were able to participate in. This did take me quite a bit of time to put together because you'll see that when you go to the different pages that I created, like the initial pages for them to take a look at and see some of the, you know, so that I could introduce the program, I would embed pictures so that I could make it easier for them to follow along. Because I did, we did run the gamut of people who were incredibly familiar with technology and how to utilize different 2.0 things and how to use things on their computer to people who really weren't very familiar with their computers. And so I tried to give them step by step, you know, pictures that would help them as they were looking at items. So that it was simpler. I didn't want them to be flustered or frustrated. I think one of the hardest things about getting people involved in technology to begin with, is when they become frustrated, then they might just toss it aside, especially adults. Kids will, I think, work around it. And I see that with the high school kids more so. But with adults who haven't grown up as digital natives, sometimes they'll just toss it aside if they find it's too hard. And so I tried to be very careful in everything I did and step it out and make sure that I gave them every single step that they might possibly need. Which sometimes was hard because I am much more adept at doing these things than the people that I was working with. And so I wanted to make sure that I really thought about each particular step that I was asking them to do. And I gave them each, you know, in time I gave them each step that they would need. And I, you know, the pictures I thought were very, very important. You can see that I've also linked different things on each page. This one, because I was talking about online image hosting, I wanted them to know some of the different things that are out there. I think it's very important not to stick with one item, just because I might use Flickr or Shutterfly doesn't mean that the next person will like that as well. And so I tried to give them, whenever I was talking about the different Web 2.0 things, I tried to give them several options so that they could choose their own, what they were most comfortable with, what they liked, the layout best. So they felt like they had control over whatever it was that they were using. You can also see here I did talk about Creative Commons. I think that's an incredibly important lesson that we give our teachers in this school because the kids are constantly researching. And so I think it's really important that they understand Creative Commons and that they understand that just because they've done a Google search for an image doesn't necessarily mean that that's an image that they can use without having some sort of copyright tied to it. So I feel like if the teachers have that understanding that perhaps they will be more likely to pass that information on to their students as they're requesting different types of research from their students. The other thing, as I said, was that they were required to create blogs. Now you can see right here that our disappointment increased because we had 81 people respond to our survey and I think 11 people actually completed the 21 or the 17 things. And so that was a frustration as well. And we had to talk later about what it is that we need to do to increase that participation level to make it more tempting and to make it more something that the teachers would look at as something that they could actually do and not have to spend time from home to do it because I think that was the biggest piece of it. This particular blog that I pulled up, Mike is not as tech savvy as some of the other people that participated. He stopped in almost weekly and because of him I was able to determine more of what it was that I was missing on my actual sites because he would come in and he would say, well, I don't understand how to do this. And so I could take a look back at what I had written and realize that I had missed a step or maybe I needed to include a picture there. So I could go back and refine what I had initially put on my site because of Mike, because he was really wanting to learn this stuff and so he was always in here talking to us about how to complete some of the different challenges and some of the different missions that we asked them to do. And the other thing that I thought was fun was that they could create their own banner as you can see at the top. He put a volcano banner, which is neat because he is a science teacher. And so he figured out how to choose his own banner from the top because of the way we told them to create their blog. So that was really fun to see that he had actually chosen something that his area of teaching. So you can see that you can take a look at any of our 17 things pages. And I'll be honest, if I had known when I started doing this how much work it took, I probably would have spent more time going into other people's 23 things and probably copying more almost directly and just giving them credit on the page because I just don't think that any of us expect others to create things from scratch. I think that I'm putting mine out there and I would certainly hope that if you wanted to use it and modify it to fit your needs that you would feel like you could do that. Because like I said it did take me quite a bit of time to put it together and in hindsight it would have been better not to try to create the wheel all over again that I probably would have been better off just taking things from different people's 23 things and creating in that way. Again this is the staff blogs and I could link on any one of them. This is the way that we were able to keep track of what they completed each week and in order to be eligible for the prizes they had to complete each week's mission or missions. And so I would look at their blogs and I did have a Google doc that Teresa and I when we had a chance to look at the blogs and make sure that they completed the week's work that we, I'm so sorry, pardon me, but we would go in and check off that they had completed that week and then that week they were eligible for the prize drawing. Now in order to be eligible for the final prize drawing they had to complete the entire thing. So of the people that completed all of them they were all eligible for a Nebraska furniture mark, $50 gift card. We had about $100 to spend on our prizes so you can see that we kind of got goofy. We were trying to be creative. We have a girl whose husband is a plumber so and she has an iPhone so we actually bought that little iPhone stand specifically for her and so the week that she completed it she won and that was what she got. So you know we did know our clientele. We knew the people that we're going to be participating so we also knew some of the things that they would be interested in receiving. You can see these colored styluses. Those were very inexpensive. We got them on Amazon. I think we paid maybe $14 for the whole set of them. They have the soft tips so they're perfect for use with an iPad which more and more people are going to iPads in the building and so we did purchase those and gave several of those out. This little guy over here those are available on Etsy and that is that marketplace where people create things. We did have some that were like Snow White and some really really cute ones but we were trying to stay away from copyrighted things and so we did get stickers and we got about five of those and because we had such low participation sometimes people won two prizes a week. We'd give away two things but because every person in our school carries a white MacBook laptop we thought this would be very fun. We had several different stickers that they could choose from and then they could put it on their laptop which would distinguish it from student laptops and a lot of people really thought that was fun. These are magnets and we gave these out. We gave two of these to each person that completed the entire process of 17 things to soak up and then if they didn't win the $50 they still received something for participating. We really felt like it was an important thing to just acknowledge the fact that they had spent extra time that they didn't have to. There wasn't a requirement and they're fun. Everybody's desk here has a file cabinet that is magnet you know that is metal so they can stick these magnets on it and these magnets are the app images that you would find on an iPhone or an iPad so you know because we're a Mac school we thought that was kind of appropriate and and everybody thought those were very fun to receive. Again a very inexpensive thing that we picked up from Amazon so when we purchased all three of these things from Amazon we didn't even end up paying shipping because I think if you purchase $25 and more you don't pay shipping or something like that so yeah it was really a good way for us to shop for our prizes. So where do you get ideas for this kind of thing? Well you know the first time I googled 23 things over four billion results came up and I'm sure that not all of them have anything to do with 23 things like the you know 17 things to soak up but that's an awfully lot of results and you will find a great deal of these do have to do with these kinds of programs that people are putting on. A lot of public libraries use them and so you can go in and find different public libraries and look at their 23 things that they have listed and like I said I really think that you would do well to copy you know some of the things maybe you know week by week just copy something almost word for word and just giving credit like if I had used San Jose public libraries if I'd used one of their weeks of 23 things and just giving them credit for having that up there because that would have simplified everything and then you know I still know that my people would have learned some things you know teachers here would have learned a lot and here's another one 23 things on a stick and then of course the Nebraska Library Commission has their web 2.0 and I did utilize quite a few different ideas from there so again it's a gliss you know just go out and Google things and find the different web 2.0 web 3.0 things that you feel like the people in your environment would benefit from learning about and you can see that our teachers Mike in particular he really enjoyed doing it and I liked the fact that he was awesome he said he didn't really feel like he would use them in his classroom right now because I while that was our original intention for people to feel like they had a better understanding of what they could use in their classroom the truth of the matter is that the more comfortable they are with their computers the more they're going to utilize them in the classroom so whether they use the things that they learned from our 17 things to soak up or whether they feel more comfortable going out and finding me I'm so sorry finding more information about how to utilize different things and that's really what our bottom line was that was what we really had intended to do to make them more comfortable with what they have at their fingertips which is their laptop the other thing I noticed as I was looking at this was he he did the eyes in the small like the kids do when they're texting and I thought that was really kind of cute because you know it just goes to show that even teachers you know use shortcuts every now and then now Angie she is she's a little more skilled with technology and so the fact that she participated was really really good for me to see that that even people who are adept at technology feel like they can still learn more and that was kind of where Angie was we she showed we showed them things that she already knew about but then apparently she learned some new things as well and so basically that's that was the bottom line we were successful when we did that because she was able to learn some new things and everyone who participated no matter how how skilled they were with technology or how you know maybe they felt like they weren't as skilled learn something and that is what we hoped to accomplish and and even though there's over 160 teachers in our building and only 11 completed this program you know we accomplished with those 11 people they all learned something and that was what this program was about so I hope that you learned something new here today and I hope that if you have any questions you feel free to email me ask me take a look at our wiki this Prezi is also available online and you are more than welcome to take a look at anything that will help you to to do this program in your own environment great well thank you Kerry can you hear me hi yes I'm not sure can you hear me I don't think Kerry can hear me Kerry are you there can I can hear you but I don't think you can hear me I think from setting up the speakers the setting of the videos it does doctor from be able to hear we have an other side well I'll just say thank you very much anyways Kerry for presentation it was very informative if anyone does have any questions you can contact Kerry there's her email address there her videos and the link to the website that she's showing there is has been saved into the Commission's delicious account right yeah hold on just a second here all right I'm just going to take back presenter control from Kerry so we can wrap up here oh wait can you hear me now Kerry are you there can you hear me Kerry from your side nope doesn't look at okay no problem okay we'll just pull back control here there we go so yeah thanks very much to Kerry for presenting if anyone does have any questions they said you can contact her the session has been recorded so it will be available for you to watch later and I hope you'll join us doesn't look we had any questions come in during the show so that's fine and I hope you join us next week when we have our monthly tech talk with Michael Sowers who is our technology innovation librarian here at the Nebraska Library Commission he is going to have some staff from the University of Nebraska Lincoln here with him Dianne Allison and Laura Dawes who have done a very interesting thing a chatbot at UNL and they're going to talk about using that for reference and how it is used in the libraries so please go to our website to register for that we are also on Facebook so if you do have any if you do use Facebook you can go to our Facebook page facebook.com forward slash and compass live and like us there whenever we have any sessions they are recorded or when they're coming up they are announced on here so you can see whenever anything new is coming up related to end compass live you can follow us on our Facebook page as well so thank you very much for attending thank you very much Carrie for presenting and hopefully we'll see you next time thanks bye bye