{"id":123,"date":"2015-10-16T21:17:11","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T21:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pogolives.com\/library\/?p=123"},"modified":"2015-10-16T21:17:11","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T21:17:11","slug":"collaboration-conundrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.pogolives.com\/library\/2015\/10\/16\/collaboration-conundrum\/","title":{"rendered":"Collaboration Conundrum"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the blessings of being an Upper School librarian at Lakeside is that I have the distinct privilege of working with two other librarians \u2013 Heather Hersey, the library director and Julie Nanavati, the lead teacher librarian. Working as a team allows us to get out of the typical library structure where librarians are tied to a space for supervision reasons and spend a significant amount of time in classrooms with students.\u00a0\u00a0 Translation – more teaching and less shushing.\u00a0\u00a0 For example, I recently worked with Bob Henry\u2019s sophomore history classes on their imperialism project inspired by Chimamanda Ngozi Achichie\u2019s Danger of a Single Story<\/a> TED talk.\u00a0\u00a0 I conducted a research workshop on the benefits of both searching and browsing e-books as well as how to find primary sources.\u00a0\u00a0 The lion\u2019s share of the lesson planning was done by the lovely and talented, Heather Hersey, and I was able to put my own spin on it.\u00a0\u00a0 As a library team, our schedules aren\u2019t always synced, and we find that we do a tremendous amount of collaborative planning online. Recently, we realized that we that we are using four different online collaboration tools with significant regularity.\u00a0\u00a0 We wanted to be able to pare these down.\u00a0\u00a0 Less is more, right?\u00a0\u00a0 After some consideration, we decided to continue using all four because each of them met distinctly different needs.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what we are currently using and why:<\/p>\n

OneNote<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

I am a committed evangelist for OneNote<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 For those of you who know me, you may have heard me say, \u201cOneNote<\/em> has changed my life.\u201d I\u2019ve consistently struggled with a system for organizing ideas, notes and files. The search function on my desktop has enabled me to get away with this.\u00a0\u00a0 Until Middle School Librarian and tech guru, Janelle Hagen, introduced me to OneNote<\/em>, my computer always had a messy desktop.\u00a0\u00a0 Whenever I did a presentation, I would gather up all the files and put them in one folder.\u00a0\u00a0 This is the virtual equivalent of cleaning up my untidy home for guests by throwing everything in a closets.\u00a0\u00a0 A good short term fix but not a sustainable solution. OneNote<\/em> is the first tool that has changed this for me.\u00a0\u00a0 It is a virtual backpack, with space for multiple papers, folders, spirals and even separate Trapper Keepers<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 First, OneNote<\/em> is an ideal tool for research conferences because each page is a canvas that allows me to keep a record of our discussion with links, pictures and text and email it to the student afterwards. Secondly, I finally keep meeting notes in one consistent, searchable place.\u00a0\u00a0 Last but not least, multiple users can collaborate on the same notebook making it a perfect place to curate resources.<\/p>\n

I have faced a few challenges with OneNote<\/em>, however.\u00a0\u00a0 If I don\u2019t set the file up online using Microsoft 365<\/em>, the sharing process doesn\u2019t work.\u00a0\u00a0 Also, from time to time the links don\u2019t work when I send them in an email.<\/p>\n

Google Drive<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

Google Drive<\/em> is a cloud storage tool. \u00a0Even though Lakeside wasn\u2019t a Google for Education<\/a><\/em> school when I started using Google Drive<\/em>, I was able to set up an account using my Lakeside email address.\u00a0\u00a0 I highly recommend this option for keeping work and personal accounts separate.\u00a0\u00a0 Hands down, this is the best way for multiple people to collaborate online simultaneously.<\/p>\n

Dropbox<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

Similar to Google Drive<\/em>, Dropbox<\/em> is a cloud file storage tool. This is where we store final drafts of projects, curricular documents and lesson plans.\u00a0\u00a0 It isn\u2019t quite as friendly to multiple people editing at the same time.<\/p>\n

Haiku<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

Haiku Learning<\/em> is Lakeside\u2019s course management system.\u00a0\u00a0 The library team uses this as a place for curriculum mapping and as a record of our work with classes.\u00a0\u00a0 For each major project, we post learning outcomes, lesson plans, dates\/timeline, who we worked with, feedback from teachers, our reflections on improvement for next year and student assessments or surveys.\u00a0\u00a0 Haiku allows users to add content blocks that can include texts, links to files or websites, images, audio\/video or embed the web. It is versatile.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The list above only includes the main tools that we use for general file sharing.\u00a0\u00a0 As a team, we use a variety of other online tools for specific types of collaboration including Prezi<\/a> <\/em>(presentation software), NoodleTools<\/a><\/em> (citation generator) and GoAnimate<\/a><\/em> (video animation) to name a few.\u00a0\u00a0 In the digital age, online collaboration can greatly enhance the ability share ideas as a team.\u00a0\u00a0 Decisions about what tool to use depends on the needs and the purpose of the deliverable.\u00a0\u00a0 Oh and humor me, if you haven\u2019t ever used OneNote<\/em>, check it out\u2026 and get ready to live.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the blessings of being an Upper School librarian at Lakeside is that I have the distinct privilege of working with two other librarians \u2013 Heather Hersey, the library director and Julie Nanavati, the lead teacher librarian. Working as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pogolives.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pogolives.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pogolives.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pogolives.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pogolives.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.pogolives.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124,"href":"http:\/\/www.pogolives.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions\/124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pogolives.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pogolives.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pogolives.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}