Is it true? Gr. 6 Media Literacy in Action

Posted on December 30, 2019 by Ms. Boulay

The Media Literacy BrainPOP movie states that “most kids spend more than half their waking hours consuming media.” Hmmm? That would mean about 7 or 8 hours per day!

This statement led Grade 6 students to ask themselves several questions . . . Where did BrainPOP get their information about this topic? How did they get this information? Does BrainPOP want us to believe something specific about time spent engaged with media based on this statement? Is this a positive message or a negative one?

Students did a Google Search and found many websites with both corroborating and differing information than that found in BrainPOP. Many sites contained articles that were based on the same source: the census conducted by Common Sense Media Media Use by Tweens and Teens 2019

The infographic based on the census showed that teens spend 7 or 8 hours per day or more with media on their phones, but among TWEENS like them, the number of hours was on average, 4 hours and 44 minutes per day.

What is a census? How was this information gathered? were some of the new questions that students wondered about. We decided that Common Sense Media used surveys to get their information, and that we needed to do our own survey to see if this amount of time on media was true for our school’s Gr. 6 students.

First, we had to decide exactly what we meant by the term “media”? We made a list and created a spreadsheet with the types of media students are engaged with during their week. Not all students have phones of their own and not all of the media that students are engaged with (video games) are found on phones. So, how to proceed? Students agreed to include all media types that they are likely to use in their days, whether they were on phones or not, in their self-surveys: reading, TV, YouTube, video games, music, social media apps and the internet.

Students then learned how to use the Google sheets app to create a pie chart representing their data.

Students also wondered about the days when they were not engaged with media due to sports commitments, parental controls, homework or other reasons. Which days should they choose to report? They ultimately decided to add up the hours per week that they were engaged in media and then divide that number by 7 to find the average time per day.

Lastly, students found the average time spent with media per day for their homeroom class and then they found the Gr. 6 average, which was 3.5 hours per day.

Next up in Media classes, we will be doing a deeper dive into YouTube.

ISTE Standard #3. Students as knowledge constructors. Students evaluate the accuracy, perspective, credibility and relevance of information, media, data or other resources; they create collections of artifacts that demonstrate meaningful connections or conclusions and they build knowledge by actively exploring real-world issues.

Information Literacy

Posted on September 16, 2018 by Ms. Boulay

I recently read an article by Elizabeth Mulvahill on the website We Are Teachers posted on August 28, 2018 and have excerpted it below.

Information Overload from Chanty.com

“There is an infinitely greater amount of information available to our students than we ever had to deal with.

Think about it, you can find the answer to any question you have about practically any topic in the world in seconds via technology. The problem is, there’s SO much information available, it can be overwhelming. How do you discriminate between what’s important and what’s fluff? What’s true and what’s baloney? How do you know what sources to trust and where to look for proof? Learning to evaluate and prioritize information quickly and efficiently is one of the most important life skills we will ever teach our students.

In addition, with the landslide of information available, it may seem to our students like everything’s already been said. Our challenge is to teach them to sort through and use the best information to create original works and solve problems in innovative ways.”

At Spofford Pond School, a significant portion of students’ Library Media classes are dedicated to Information Literacy. Students will be learning how to use trustworthy sources, apply effective search strategies and to look critically at the information they find in order to create understandings.

“In the complex technological world of today, education is no longer simply the acquisition of a body of knowledge. It is rather the ability to continually access and use a
vast array of information sources. The learner must be able to effectively evaluate these sources, combine them in meaningful patterns and react creatively to the results.
For a successfully educated individual, this mode of learning becomes a lifelong habit, since knowledge acquired today may be inadequate tomorrow, while the process of
searching out answers, once learned, will be a lifetime skill.”
—Rationale for Today’s School Library Media Center, MSLA

Using Padlets in Gr. 4

Posted on March 11, 2018 by Ms. Boulay

More Research Adventures in our National Parks

Posted on May 14, 2017 by Ms. Boulay

Gr. 4 students continue to learn how to access and use various forms of information in our year-long National Parks research unit.

Students practiced using both the search engine and the menu features of the National Parks Service website in order to locate a free pass to the parks for all 4th grade students, a special promotion of the celebration of the National Parks 100th anniversary. Students then learned how to download the pass document to their Google Drive accounts. If your family has plans to visit a park soon, print out and use this pass and the whole family as well as any friends along for the trip get in admission-free!

In addition, students searched for information about the nearest non-historic National Park, Acadia, using the Menu feature. After viewing a video created by visitors of the park, students responded to a short answer assignment in their Media Google Classroom regarding the content and purpose of the video.

Massachusetts School Library Association Information Literacy Standards

1.8 Gather background information by reading, viewing or listening to a variety of pre-selected and self-selected resources.

2.10 Explain that there are different types of resources that can be used for different purposes: books, databases, periodicals, pre-selected class websites, reference materials such as dictionaries, encyclo- pedias, thesauruses, almanacs, etc.

Survey Says . . .

Posted on March 5, 2017 by Ms. Boulay

“Survey research is often used to assess thoughts, opinions, and feelings. Surveys can be specific and limited, or they can have more global, widespread goals. … A good sample selection is key as it allows one to generalize the findings from the sample to the population, which is the whole purpose of survey research.” (Wikipedia)

Grade 6 students have been creating and taking surveys with their classmates using Google Forms and Google Classroom.

Star Wars Survey by Madeleine Payne, Ms. Stewart’s class

Once the surveys were taken, and students received the results, each student analyzed the results of his/her survey using Google Sheets.

Students asked the following questions in their analysis.

“Did my survey give the results I had expected when I created the survey?”

“What would I do differently with my survey now that I have seen the results?”

“How could I “tweak” the survey to get different results?”

Students then revised their surveys for their classmates to retake and noted both the difference in the results and their explanation for the difference.

Massachusetts School Library Standards

5.7

Use appropriate medium to produce an original product to communicate research results.

7.9 Review and evaluate the process of transforming information into knowledge.

Grade 6 Happenings

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Ms. Boulay

Google Sites

By the end of Semester 2, all Gr. 6 students have worked with the following Google for Education apps in their Media classes: Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Forms, Google Slides and Google Drawings.

As an extension of our last unit, Evaluating Web Sites, students were encouraged to explore Google Sites, once they had completed their Google Classroom assignment.

To see an example of student work evaluating their favorite websites, click on the link above.

Tri-Town School Union Technology Learning Standards for Grades K-6 Standard 3. Demonstrate the ability to use technology for research, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, communication, collaboration, creativity, and innovation.
This standard:

focuses on applying a wide range of technology tools to student learning and everyday life;
aims to ensure that students will be able to use technology to process and analyze information;
is to help students develop skills for effective technology-based communication;
includes the use of technology to explore and create new ideas, identify trends, and forecast possibilities; and
aims to provide students with an awareness of how technology is used in the real world.

What does a Gr. 4 Media class look like?

Posted on February 24, 2016 by Ms. Boulay

A Grade 4 Media class is similar to a Gr. 3 Media class in that students begin in the Media lab and choose between TTL4 or Dance Mat Typing programs in which to practice and increase their keyboarding skills. During this portion of class, those students who would like to check out a library book that day are able to do so in lieu of keyboard practice. This is a change from their first term Media classes, in which students were in the library as a whole class activity for 20 minutes each class to ensure time for library orientation. By Term 2, most students are reading longer chapter books and do not require a new library book each week. Library loan policy allows students to have up to three (3) library books checked out, each with a 30 day loan period.

The additional time in the Media lab allows for more focus on Information Literacy Skills. With the recent interface partnership between Kids InfoBits and Google Classroom, students have access to content that is reading leveled, from resources not found via a search engine such as Google Search, (magazines, newspapers, encyclopedias, primary sources) giving students meaningful, technology-rich methods for them to evaluate and repackage the information they learn about.

MSLMA Standards

1.8 Gather background information by reading, viewing or listening to a variety of pre-selected and self-selected resources.

1.9	As a class, develop a student driven essential question.

2.10

Explain that there are different types of resources that can be used for different purposes: books, databases, periodicals, pre-selected class websites, reference materials such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauruses, almanacs, etc.

2.13 Web, map, or diagram a main topic with subtopics.

Digital Images and Digital Citzenship

Posted on December 23, 2015 by Ms. Boulay

Fourth grade student, Cameron DiDonato, from Ms. Davis’ class, gave me permission to use his original digital artwork in this blog post. Thank you, Cameron!

In Media classes, students are learning how to use the Google Drawing app. Google Drawing is a great hands-on tool to help students understand how to use images responsibly in their own digital work.

We began the unit by viewing and discussing the Common Sense Media video, Copyright and Fair Use, together in class.

In the past, Google Image search has made it so easy to take images found on the pages of the internet and use them in one’s own digital work.

It can be a difficult concept for all of us, students as well as adults, to know how to use these images with respect to copyright and Fair Use, or even to understand that we have a responsibility to do so!

It is most helpful to educators now that Google has begun to provide the web page addresses of all the images found in its Google Drawing Image search function via embedded links. This feature makes it so much easier for students to locate the creator of the image and how he/she has given permissions for re-use, e.g. Creative Commons license.

Students in Grade 5 have been demonstrating their understanding of the concept of giving credit to the creator of the images they use in their own “Fish in a Tree” Google Drawings. (Fish in a Tree, by Linda Mullaly Hunt, is a book that many classes here at Spofford Pond School, as well as classrooms in Topsfield and Middleton, have read together as a part of the Global Read Aloud project. To read more about this, click here. Our Media projects are an extension to the this ELA project.)

This is the example I created in Google Drawing. I look forward to sharing some students’ Google “Fish in a Tree” Drawings in my next blog post!

Happy Holidays!

Ms. Boulay

MSLM Standard 4c. Ethical Behavior in Information Use

Survey Says! Creating meaningful data with Gr. 6 students

Posted on October 25, 2015 by Ms. Boulay

Google for Education provides its users with many useful digital educational tools for students and teachers.

Students in Gr. 6 Media Classes are creating their own surveys using Google Forms, and then deciding how to successfully share the resulting Google Form surveys with others in order to gather relevant data.

In class, we have been examining and discussing the (3) sharing tools provided to us by Google Classroom.

The email sharing feature is not available to Spofford students at this time, nor is the sharing via Social Media outlets such as Twitter or Facebook.

This left us with the option of sharing the link to our surveys with fellow students in our classes. Although this approach worked for some student surveys responses, some student surveys did not receive sufficient responses (data) to make their surveys meaningful enough for data analysis.

Together, the students and I agreed to try the strategy of sharing all of their surveys only with me, via links, so that I can then aggregate all of their survey links in one Google Doc format, and then share the document with classmates to access and respond to all surveys.

The survey screen shot above was shared with me via a Google Forms Link by Sarah Green.

I am looking forward to reporting out student survey results.

We will all learn more about student preferences for favorite author, genre, sport, pizza toppings, pet dog and more as reported via online survey.

Up next: Critical thinking skill . . . how reliable are surveys? What factors, if any, could influence survey responses?

Yours, in learning together,

Ms. Boulay

Massachusetts Technology Literacy Standard 3.5 Research: Gathering and Using Information. Use online tools to gather and share information collaboratively with other students.

Massachusetts Technology Literacy Standard 3.6 Problem Solving: With teacher direction, use appropriate technology tools (e.g., graphic organizer) to define problems and propose hypotheses.

What is digital citizenship?

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Ms. Boulay

Image from Common Sense Media

Beginning this week in Media classes, all grades will participate in various discussions, activities and instruction in digital literacy and citizenship and will continue to do so throughout the school year.

We will be using some of the educational resources available from Common Sense Media’s Education curriculum. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators

This curriculum is designed to help teachers and parents “empower students to think critically, behave safely, and participate responsibly in our digital world. These 21st-century skills are essential for students to harness the full potential of technology for learning.”

Our students ” . . . today are using the immense power of digital media to explore, connect, create, and learn in ways never before imagined. With this power, young people have extraordinary opportunities, and yet they face potential pitfalls”.

I encourage everyone in the Boxford Schools’ Community to become familiar with this free, standards-aligned resource and learn more about the many resources available that can help all of us learn and grow in the digital age.

Massachusetts Technology Literacy Standard 2. Demonstrate the responsible use of technology and an understanding of ethics and safety issues in using electronic media at home, in school, and in society.