team+26

**Team 26** **Awesome Authors!** **Researching, Glogging, and Persuading** **Overview** Students research the life of an author whose books interest them, create an online multimedia poster, using Glogster, and include their Glog in a oral presentation designed to persuade classmates to read literary works by this author. In preparation for this presentation students research online databases and author websites, collaborate on Google Docs, and complete a bibliography using EasyBib, an online citation tool. **[|Curriculum Plan]** **Awesome Author Wiki** **This is the students' meeting place**  **where they can find the resources they need to complete their project.**  **When the projects are finished, their glogs will be linked to this wiki.** **Sample Glog** media type="custom" key="10048243"

from **Joanne O'Keefe,** **Library Media Specialist, Collins Middle School,** **Salem, MA** After working with my team during the summer Institute, I returned to my school and resumed my work on behalf of our learning community. In addition to my day-to-day responsibilities, I enrolled in and completed the Verizon Thinkfinity Trainer course. This two-month program just ended this week - yesterday, in fact! Because so much of my energy was devoted to this course, I wish to offer both a lesson plan and a teacher training plan that I created as part of the course's requirements. I plan to use both - I will carry out the research lesson with grade 8 students in early January, and will begin to teach small teams (5-8) of teachers throughout our school about the wealth of content/information and resources that Thinkfinity and its content providers offer in mid-January, and continuing throughout the spring. I'll be very grateful for any comments or suggestions!