BPL SchoolRooms

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BPL SchoolRooms

• Ken PetersonDecember 5, 2006

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What Is SchoolRooms?

• K-12 multi-media online discovery portal
  combines educator-selected, standards-based
  content with student-friendly software
• ILS Independent
• Content Consists of
• 71 Rooms or Subject Guides of content
  correlating to standards
• 1,750 Web page views of content
• 22,500 hand-selected Web sites
• Approx. 5 million Best of Web sites indexed

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The Rooms and Audience Guides

• US History
• World History
• Geography
• Economics
• Government Citizenship
• Study Research
• Technology
• College Careers

• ES, MS, HS Levels
• Dance Music
• Art Theater
• Reading Vocabulary
• Writing
• Speech
• Literature
• American Literature (HS)
• Classic Literature (HS)
• British Literature (HS)
• Math
• Earth Science
• Life Science
• Physical Science
• Scientific Process Inquiry

• Audience Guides
• Librarians Guide
• Educators Guide
• Children Young Adult Literature
• Parents Guide

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How SchoolRooms Began

• Collaboration with INFOhio
• Idea to take the EPS/Rooms platform and build
  portal and resources for K-12 community
• Other partners joined in
• Kent State University SLIS
• Shaker Heights District
• Decision to Build 3 Pilot Rooms at Each Level
• Earth Science
• US History
• Parents Guide

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The Pilot at Shaker Heights

• Pilot occurred in Shaker Heights District near
  Cleveland, OH, for pilot Rooms.
• Usability Studies with Kent State University IAKM
• Two K-4 elementary schools, one 5th 6th grade,
  one middle school, one high school
• Grades 2,4,5,6,8,9,10
• 20 teachers
• 40 classes
• Approximately 700 1000 students
• Parents, Teacher and Librarians / Focus Groups

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Usability SchoolRooms

• Looked at four core areas
• Content
• Navigation
• User Interface Aesthetics
• Searching Resource Access
• Different Perspectives
• One-on-One Observations
• In-Classroom Observations / Teacher Use
• Parent / Child Pair Observations
• Tasked Searches

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Usability SchoolRooms

• Usability Tools
• Screen Captures
• Web Cams
• Think-Aloud
• Observation
• Interviews
• Questionnaires
• Completed Assignments
• Eye-tracking

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Eye Tracking

• Heat map example from Eye-tracking at the home
  level.
• Shows the typical triangle of most popular
  space looked at on Web sites.

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High School

• Elementary

vs.
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What They Learned

• Statistics
• 88 of students said they would use SchoolRooms
  again for homework
• 51 said they preferred it to Google or Yahoo
• Quotes
• This is better than Google because in Google
  you get lots of stuff you dont need. (student)
• SchoolRooms is a great tool for new(er)
  teachers because it provides resources that are
  aligned to the curriculum (teacher)
• SirsiDynix is offering us the opportunity to
  serve our patrons with accurate information that
  meets their immediate needs. The information
  world is rapidly changing. SchoolRooms is the
  first step in the direction of seamless 24x7
  services to patrons. (librarian)

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What They Learned

• What to Improve
• Need K-2 Primary Interface / Break up Elementary
• Re-labeling of some modules and areas
• Refinement of wireframe templates to suit
  different age level / learner needs (ES vs. HS)
• What Worked
• Interactive elements a success
• Teacher / Librarian pairs essential in content
  development
• Easy to navigate

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Building SchoolRooms

• With success of proof of concept / pilot results
  decision made to build out full K-12 curriculum
• Ended up being 71 Rooms
• KSU, INFOhio hand-selected 146 educators
• Best of the Best selected
• Created Teacher / Librarian teams
• Teachers knew content and standards in depth
• Librarians knew where to locate / how to search
  for quality resources

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Building SchoolRooms

• One week training or Bootcamp
• June12th 16th at KSU
• Personas Overview
• Taxonomy Methodology Development
• Sessions on Gathering Creating Content for the
  Web
• Teaser Content Training
• Learning the Builder Tool

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The Taxonomies

• Used SirsiDynix Taxonomy Development Methodology
• Used National Standards
• Used Big 5 Content Standards TX, CA, OH, FL, NY
  (Soon MA too!)
• Scavenger Hunt / User-friendly check

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SchoolRooms Now

• Using SchoolRooms
• City of Boston
• Delaware Sussex School District
• Philadelphia Beacon Charter Schools
• INFOhio
• Shaker Heights District
• Kalida School District

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Future for SchoolRooms

• Fall 2007
• Maintenance of SchoolRooms
• Subscription Content
• Customize / Localize Content or Create Your Own
  Rooms
• Weekly, bi-weekly and monthly updates to teaser
  content and URL validation
• Continuing teacher and librarian contributor
  support
• Content updated according to an Annual Editorial
  Calendar
• Editorial calendar developed by Advisory Group of
  teachers and Librarians

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Example of Editorial Calendar
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Whos Using Us? (Oct 2 31)

• 6, 805 Page Views with an average of 243 per day
• 2, 961 Visits with an average of 105 per day with
  an average visit duration of 8 minutes 31
  seconds.
• 1,039 Visitors
• 741 one time visitors
• 298 visitors who visited more than once
• 7,050 total hits on the site
• Top Visits by State MA, GA, CA, KY, NY
• Top Visits by Country US, CA, AU, NZ, ES
• Top Visits by City Boston, Haverhill, Atlanta,
  Chelmsford, Lexington

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Questions?

• Ken Peterson
• Coordinator of Services to Libraries
• kpeterson_at_bpl.org
• 617-859-2385
• http//bpl.schoolrooms.net