Volume 2, Issue 1 , January 2019

SOCIEDAD ESCUELA KARL C. PARRISH

Word Clouds 2

Digital Footprints 3

Your Mobile Library 4

Lite Corner 4

Inside this issue:

Learning about the technology is nothing but

an essential by-product; the

real issue is the TASK not the

tool, not software or hardware.

Headware is the key!

-Ian Jukes

THE NEWSLETTER FROM BURTON B. FOX LIBRARY

1. It’s beautiful. Admit

it. Our library, lying in

the heart of our

campus, is equivalent

to being the living

room of KCP. So if you

feel a need for a

change of scenery,

bring your class to the

library! Have your

students learn their

lesson in an aesthetically

pleasing setting. Payoffs? For

decades, research has

concluded that when their

surroundings are pleasant,

people feel better about

themselves. Students who

have better attitudes usually

learn more and work harder.

2. Our Research Library Lab. It goes beyond the

regular computer lab. When your students need to

find information for any research project and they

use our computer lab, you could ask us to guide

them in their efforts. So, besides the computer, you

also get human help that will target them towards

the “deep web” and away from their customary

Google-Wikipedia searches.

3. Audio / Visual

Production Room. We

are just taking off in this area,

but we do offer students and

teachers the setting to experi-

ment with the production

and editing of video and

audio using our iMac. Free

tutorials and guides are

included.

4. Our collection of books. It is growing younger

by the minute! We have great new books coming in

throughout the school year. These books are either

award winners or are chosen thanks to your input in

Destiny’s “Make a Wish” list. (By the way, have you

inputted your wishes for the following school year?)

Some are virtual but many populate our library

shelves. They are begging to be

perused by enthusiastic

readers!

5. Techie stuff. All the Turning Point clickers and

Mimio Interactive Whiteboard cases are now ready

to be checked out in the library. As an extra service,

besides giving you the sets, we will offer you person-

alized assistance in setting up the devices and pre-

paring your lessons. around these

tools.

KCP’s Burton B. Fox Library is evolving as a 21st

century information, media, and

educational technology center. Instead of con-

sidering it as a simple repository of books,

we invite you to visualize your school

library as a 21st century laboratory for learning

and creating; a place where the greatest

asset is the human presence!

So, please, come on down!

P A G E 2 I N F O R M A T I O N , M E D I A

Word Clouds How could we use word clouds with our students? Check out the following lesson

ideas proposed by Jonathan Wylie, and originally published in the

Bright Hub Education Website. Word clouds can be used at almost every grade le-

vel and have become a popular 21st century tool for students to find main ideas! Note: Although this educator only mentions Wordle, keep in mind that there are other “word

cloud” generators that are equally good and available for free on the Internet.

1. Personal Narratives: Write, or copy and paste, a personal narrative into Wordle. Students

will be able to see what is important to their peers from the words that are produced from the

Wordle word clouds. Compare the words that are used most often by boys, or girls, by age

group, or by class/grade level. These Wordle lessons make great displays outside a class-

room.

2. Famous Speeches: Enter the text of a famous historical speech into Wordle. Analyze

the results by looking at the most commonly used words, or even the words that are

not used. What does this tell us about the orator and their intentions? Go to http://

www.historyplace.com/speeches/previous.htm or http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html for a list of historical

speeches you may want to get started with.

3. Create a Wordle Gift: Mother's Day, Father's Day, Grandparent's Day, or even Teacher Appreciation Day, can all be celebrated with

Wordle. Input your favorite adjectives for your chosen person, generate the word cloud, and add it to a greeting card, poster, calendar, or

whatever else you choose. Remember, Wordle clouds can be downloaded as JPEGs or PNGs if you take a screenshot of your word

cloud and save it to your computer by pressing command+shift+4 on a Mac, or trying the Windows 7 Snipping Tool.

4. Classroom Polls: Instead of your traditional bar graph or pictograph, try using Wordle to organize your data. What is the your class’

favorite color? Have all students take turns at entering their favorite color in to Wordle and generate the resulting cloud. Bigger words =

more popular colors. Repeat with ice cream flavors, pets, family members, etc.

5. Compare and Contrast: Use Wordle as a compare and contrast tool. Compare and contrast the word clouds of two or more students'

writing, famous speeches, song lyrics, news reports, book reviews or whatever else you may need to compare in your classroom

studies.

6. Student Profiles: I have done this with PowerPoint before, but recently saw someone do the same with Wordle lessons. Have all

students in your class write a few positive adjectives about each of their classmates anonymously. Compile all the papers, input the ad-

jectives for each student into Wordle, and generate a student profile word cloud to give back to the student. Children always enjoy this

positive feedback exercise and it can be a great end-of-year activity to take home from the last day of school.

7. Current Affairs Analysis: Copy and paste a news story into Wordle. What could the story have been about? Can you guess what the

headline would have been? Where could have it taken place? These questions and others make this a worthy discussion exercise.

8. Wordle Word Walls: Brighten up your word walls with this fun idea. Students can brainstorm synonyms, antonyms, or definitions for

their list of vocabulary words. Add your word clouds to your existing word wall work to help stimulate those higher thinking skills in your

students. Keep a tally of the targeted vocabulary words that the children use in speech on a daily ba-

sis, and them to a Wordle cloud to show which are used most often.

9. Unit Review/Preview Posters: Students can create KWL charts on what they would like to learn

and find out about a given topic. Alternatively, create word clouds at the end of a unit to summarize the

key learning points or vocabulary from a given topic.

10. Historical Document Analysis: Have you ever wondered what the Magna Carta or Declaration of

Independence would look like when pasted into Wordle? Try it and see. There will be lots of talking

points from the resulting word cloud. What do you predict you will see? What themes can you identify?

How does the word cloud fit in with the historical context of the document?

Wordle Declaration of Indepence

Cloud

P A G E 3

DIGITAL

FOOTPRINTS

When Arabella was born, Christie Lu Stout, the

famous CNN reporter, rushed to create an account for

her baby on a famed social media site. She

explained that, as a child being born in the

second decade of the 21st century, it would

never be too soon to foster her offspring’s web

identity. On the other hand, due to the

continuous stream of news concerning rejec-

tions by colleges due to inappropriate web identities, we

often see teens—who have built quite a “distinctive” virtual

persona—frantically scamper to purge their virtual walls

and albums before they turn in their first college

application, all but obliterating their web existence.

Although it is important to constantly remind our

students about the disadvantages of posting inappropriate

material on the Web, how often do we encourage our

students to do the contrary? Think

about how many school projects,

papers, and presentations a typical

student has produced by the time

he or she reaches the age of 18.

Many of these productions are of

academic worth and could

potentially contribute to an

impressive e-portfolio worthy of

publication. This in turn could

scaffold a solid digital footprint. Yet

how many opportunities have we

offered our students to use their

creations in order to develop a positive digital footprint?

It is an undeniable reality that the digital footprint of a

student is becoming, in many cases, paramount to scores

obtained on standardized tests like ICFES and SATs when it

comes to college applications. Recent surveys show that

now over a quarter of college admission offices scrutinize

the digital footprints of their applicants (up from just 6% at

the start of the millennium!) These trends irrefutably give

evidence that student time invested in molding an

academically-inclined e-profile is an endeavor well-worth

pursuing.

So how can we, the educators, help our students to con-

struct a solid digital footprint?

Become aware and plan.

Ask your students what their digital footprint looks like.

Have students search themselves not only using

Google, but specific people-search

engines. Let them evaluate their

reality but offer them venues to

dream up how they would want

their stamps to look like and what

steps they should take to make that vision become

a reality. (Great search engines

for this exercise: Pipl and 123

People).

Create.

Before assigning certain work to students, let them

know that what they write, what they create,

might be viewed by an audience larger than just

you the teacher. Depending on the nature of an

assignment, students can respond quite

enthusiastically if they know that their work will

mean more than just a simple grade and that it will

adopt permanency on the Internet. The library can

offer specific workshops for students on resource

evaluation, the ethical use of information, effective

scripting, and innovative tools for creating and

presenting, that could help our students excel in

creating work that can be posted on the Web with

positive results. (We’ll happily work on these issues

while you monitor content. Together, imagine

how we can advance student

work!)

Publish.

Have students flex their sharing muscles by making

it a custom to post student work on your class

page. You could do this using activities such as

wikis or databases. And do not limit yourself to

mere publication. Allow comments from other fel-

low students to be posted alongside each project.

Carefully construed comments posted on blogs,

wikis and other social media also go a long way in

establishing a virtual reputation! Also, encourage

students to personally store their work digitally.

Once they reach their junior and senior years, they

could take the plunge and publish their academic

accomplishments—with our strict

guidance and supervision—

beyond the walls of your class site.

How? On the Cybrary site you

could find a wide range of pub-

lishing tools that are appropriate

for students.

These are just a few things that we could

do to work positively towards our school wide goal of pro-

ducing ethical global citizens, that are prepared for the

challenges of this digital world.

Together let’s contribute to supporting KCP students

that could proudly display their digital footprints!

I HAVE A WEB

PRESENCE!

I’ve

produced

I think this is the beginning

of a beautiful friendship!

Extension: 925, 926 E-mail: library@kcparrish.edu.co

Evolving into a 21st.Century Information & Media Center

BURTON B. FOX LIBRARY

We’re online!

Library Information &

Media Category

Library Staff:

Myriam Rosado Diana Fernandez

Andrea Tristancho Lidis Martinez

The mission of the Burton B. Fox Library is to provide timely and quality information resources and services to

the KCP community in accordance with the school’s mission, committing to excellence in service and ground-breaking technological leadership.

LITE CORNER RECOMMENDED BOOK OF THE

MONTH

Instructions for downloading and using

these great apps!

EBSCO Host

Choose which databa-ses to search! •Limit results to full text •Sort by relevance or date

•Retrieve full text results in HTML and/or PDF formats •Save results for offline access at a later date •Email results to self or others •Automatically save 25 most recent sear-ches

What you need: Any smartphone or tablet.

1. Download the EBSCOhost app from Google Play or the App Store.

2. Go to the Cybrary. (Remember to log in!)

3. Enter EBSCO HOST. (Copy the USER ID under the EBSCO icon. Paste the USER ID on the EBSCO page that you access by clicking on the icon. Supply the password.)

4. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and you will see a link to EBSCOhost iPhone and Android Applications.

5. Provide your email address and soon you will receive complete instructions.

Destiny Quest

• Search for resources in your library • Submit and read ratings and reviews • Place holds and add items to My List • Discover the Top 10

Most Popular titles and New Books at your library • Maintain lists of books you’re

Now Reading, Want to Read and Have Read • View your Account information including checkouts, holds and

outstanding fines

What you need: iPhone, iPod touch

and iPad with iOS 4.2 or later. Requires

Android 2.1-2.3.7.

1. Download the app from Google Play or the App Store.

2. Authenticate -supply your user-name and password, the same one you use to log into the KCPARRISH network- the first time.

3. You are ready to go!

Follett Digital Reader

• Allows you to down-

load ebooks from our

collection to your device.

What you need: iPhone, iPod touch and iPad with iOS 4.2 or later. Requires

Android 2.1-2.3.7.

1. Download the app from Google Play or the App Store.

2. Enter your Follet Digital Reader URL: http://wbb01864.follettshelf.com. You only have to type in wbb01864 as the rest of the address is typed in for you.

2. Authenticate. Supply your username and password, the same one you use to log into the KCPARRISH network.

3. You are ready to go!

T h e a u t h o r s o f Connecting Teachers, Students, and Standards extend their ideas with practical strategies for teaching English langua-ge learners, students from culturally diverse b a c k g ro u n d s , a n d students with disabilities, within a framework that integrates four major instructional approaches for teaching diverse populations.

CLICK HERE FOR

MORE INFO! Librarian: Knock knock

Student: Who’s there?

Librarian: Winnie

Student: Winnie who?

Librarian: Winnie you going to

bring back that overdue book,

hmmmm?