Category Archives: Assignments

Assignment 1, LLED 462

Advocacy for Teacher Librarians: Learning Log 4 from Module 12

Leave a comment

Linking ideas for Teacher Librarian advocacy through the modules of LLED 462:

Over the years, there has been great shifts in the level of importance expressed for Teacher Librarians and libraries by the government. Before the BCTF collective agreement and numbers were reinstated, classroom teachers had gotten used to functioning independently and surviving without sufficient support from Teacher Librarians. When I first began as a Teacher Librarian, I quickly realized that classroom teachers were reluctant to work with me and rely on my support because there was a fear that it would be taken away again. Now, I feel like I have gained the trust and respect from classroom teachers as I have built relationships and proven that I have expertise to assist them in innovative learning endeavors in their classrooms. However, I also know that part of my job is to constantly display how essential my job is by continuously advocating for the importance of Teacher Librarians and the Library Learning Commons space to be used correctly. I have also realized that having specific research and data to back-up my claims strengthens my case when I am faced with a challenge. Therefore, I am thankful for this final module and all of the evidence advocating for the continued importance of Teacher Librarians.

In this final module of the course, the following issues were highlighted as areas of concern and reasons why schools cannot do without highly qualified Teacher Librarians and a designated Library Learning Commons.

Without a fully-functioning Library Learning Commons with an adequate number of books per student and a highly qualified Teacher Librarian, students cannot reach their full potential. If children are impoverished, they probably don’t have access to sufficient nourishment let alone books; however, as Stephen Krashen explains, “Access to a library with 500 books or more balances the effect of poverty ” (Krashen, 2020). In addition, a highly qualified Teacher Librarian knows how to aid in pairing individuals with resources to suit their needs even if they don’t know what they are looking for. Having extensive knowledge of the library collection, available resources and patrons makes Teacher Librarians  “Effective readers’ advisers [because they] understand that their success depends on familiarity with a range of books, as well as with their patrons” (Parrott, 2017).  As well, each time the Teacher Librarian “… sees the child, she’ll inquire about the selections, which titles the student enjoyed (or didn’t), further refining understanding of the reader” (Parrott,  2017). Connecting students to books that are of interest to them to promote the love of reading is essential to future success in that “The more people read for pleasure, the higher their literacy scores. Free voluntary reading (silent reading) is associated with higher literacy rate” (Krashen, 2020).  Therefore, Teacher Librarians and sufficient time for the Teacher Librarian in the Library Learning Commons is vital to student success because “The more school librarians per child, the higher the reading score ” (Krashen, 2020). 

Teacher Librarians teach students how to think for themselves by teaching information literacy skills.  Teacher Librarians “… are building on the potential of school libraries to enable students to become informed and engaged citizens and effective contributors to our society and our economy, through the acquisition of life skills, of information literacy strategies, and of dispositions for flexibility, creativity, and innovation” (Oberg, 2014). Teacher Librarians teach student which resources to use to find the information they are searching for and how to combine those facts in order to make informed decisions.

Teacher Librarians address social justice issues. In Hillary Clinton’s speech to the ALA she states, “The third reason why we need libraries is because we need critical thinkers more than ever. …librarians were teaching media literacy…you help learners of all ages sort out truth from fiction and how to build an argument based on rational evidence” (CNN, 2017). She goes on to say “…as Librarians, once again, you have to be on the front lines of one of the most important fights we have ever faced…the fight to defend truth and reason, evidence and facts”(CNN, 2017).  Students need to develop critical literacy skills in order to be able to question their moral beliefs and not necessarily simply follow an individual because they are in a position of power because   “Democracy does not, in fact, depend solely upon the rule of the majority; it depends upon the understanding that the majority should be subject to questions and that minority values and views will be tolerated where they do not cause significant harm” (McLaughlin, 2012). Teacher Librarians expose students to resources and teach them how to navigate information to discern if it is the truth or not. 

Teacher Librarians foster community building. Hillary Clinton also emphasizes “Why we need libraries more than ever because they are places for communities to come together” (CNN, 2017). In a school, the Library Learning Commons and the Teacher Librarian are one of the only places and people that all students visit and they see through each grade. The Library Learning Commons connects all individuals in the school not only through books but also school wide events and initiatives. The Teacher Librarian is fortunate to be able to know all of the students and teachers in the school and see them develop and grow from year to year and this directly relates to my next point.

Teacher Librarians and the Library Learning Commons promotes wellness for patrons.  Many Teacher Librarians feel like they aid in the wellbeing of patrons by providing a safe space with a caring,  individual who they have built a relationship with over the years and connects them with books that make them happy. Unfortunately, this information is purely based on observations so in the article “How Can School Libraries Support Student Wellbeing?”, Merga argues that “There is also a need for more research around libraries as safe spaces to be subject to peer review, as searches of the literature around libraries as safe spaces are more heavily weighted toward anecdotal work rather than research” (Merga, 2020, p.663).  There is research to support that “The regular reading of fiction is associated with the development of prosocial characteristics such as empathy and perspective taking (e.g. Mar et al., 2009), and book reading can be used as both a mental health and social support by adult readers” (Merga, 2020, p.665). Therefore, if a Teacher Librarian is the individual who promotes and connects patrons with books of interest then “School librarians can also support students to engage with literature in meaningful and healing ways” (Merga, 2020, p.665).

Checklist of key issues for advocacy and how I will address these issues:

  • Provide equal access to resources and information. By giving all students access to books and digital tools, no matter their backgrounds or circumstances at home, it provides opportunities for students to see new possibilities for their future. For example, in “The Bookmobile” video, Julie Zammarchi explains that simply having access to books and hearing a librarian explain that “The more you know about something, the less you will fear it”, helped her learn that there was life outside of where she lived and so was able to leave it. Promoting the library and library programs through the school newsletter and a 24/7 online participatory library learning commons will help to inform all patrons of the potential of the Library Learning Commons and provide more opportunities for developing multiple literacies.
  • Continue to promote community building in a space that is safe and inclusive area for all learners. Offering school-wide activities and initiatives through the library connect all of the individuals in the school. For example, events such as D.E.A.R., Battle of the Books, Bookfairs and read-a-thons brings the entire school community together for a common purpose. One aspect that I will be incorporating into my Library Learning Commons space that all patrons will have access to is a makerspace because “Libraries and makerspaces serve the common goal of building community. Communities of interest and practice are brought together and maintained through the design of communal space to promote sociality and collaboration (while also providing spaces for individual work)” (Weisgrau, 2015). By providing a makerspace that has enough open-ended possibility allows all students access at multiple levels. By providing opportunities such as makerspace perfectly positions future-ready learning opportunities because “Proponents of maker spaces argue that such environments address a unique package of complementary 21st century skills and aptitudes such as creativity, innovation, transmedia navigation, visual literacy, and (if based in technology) computational thinking—the kind of skills identified by the Institute of Museum and Library Services in their report on museums, libraries, and 21st century skills (2009)” (Bowler & Champagne, 2016). 
  • Push for collaboration time with classroom teachers: Collaborating with classroom teachers and individuals throughout the school district promotes community and improves students learning because “Improved schools are collaborative in their thinking and practices” (Oberg, 2014). However, classroom teachers need to have specific collaboration time with the Teacher Librarian to co-plan units for optimum success. There needs to be administrator support for this release time and it is my job to advocate for the importance of the release time so that more teachers will be encouraged to work with me. I am thankful for the evidence that “Teachers, teacher-librarians, and principals – learning and working together – support and facilitate improvements in teaching and learning” (Oberg, 2014). Students need to see constant modelling of collaborative behaviours between adults in order to successfully collaborate as well. 
  • Constantly offer and highlight multi-modal texts and ways to express and communicate learning. Students may use digital platforms on a daily basis but that does not mean they are using it responsibly, productively and to its full potential. In addition, most times children use media resources in the same way each time. Without guidance and suggestions from a knowledgeable individual, students tend to communicate ideas in a similar fashion if they don’t know other possibilities.  For example, “The work of Ito et al. (2010) certainly suggests that young people can achieve a level of criticality with regard to their digital creations but that many struggle to do so without the support of adults. Maker spaces, where young people work side-by side with knowledgeable mentors, might be a powerful crucible for developing personal and social awareness with regard to the creation and use of technology” (Bowler & Champagne, 2016, p.119). This is another way that the issue of teaching students information literacy skills helps them to be successful constructivist thinkers by helping them find the tools and resources  to be able to solve problems with innovative solutions.
  • Promoting new ways of learning. Inclusive literacy involves teaching about and touching on all literacies including traditional literacies, media literacy, digital literacy and critical literacy. One way to touch on critical literacy is to practice inquiry-based teaching and learning techniques. Although inquiry-based teaching and learning has been in practice for a while now, many teachers are not sure how to implement the techniques. Therefore, “British Columbia Teacher-Librarians’ long-standing engagement with inquiry-based learning, literacy instruction and information and communication technologies (ICT) potentially positions them to effectively assist classroom teachers and students navigate ongoing shifts in curriculum aims, literacy approaches and technological applications within changing school settings (Robinson, 2011; Ekdahl & Zubke, 2014)” ( Hales and Beaudry, 2018, p.13).  I find teachers at my school need assistance in implementing simple inquiry techniques that tweak the ways they are already teaching to make it inquiry-based. I feel like my expertise as a Teacher librarian can assist uncertain classroom teachers to begin weaving in these techniques because “As the new millennium continues, educators find themselves in need of new literacy practices and instructional approaches that will provide support for students as they navigate the challenges of multimodal texts, digital environments, and new forms of texts, for example, blogs, wikis, text messages, and hypertexts” (Serafini, 2012, p.29). As well, classroom teachers need exposure to new technologies and ways to promote new possibilities for student learning. Therefore, a Teacher Librarian needs to be aware of new research findings and affectively communicate and promote new ideas.
  • Print-based text just as important that ever! Although Teacher Librarians promote the use of new technologies, it is still as important as in the past to promote physical books and adequate physical space. When advocating for the Library Learning Commons and why a physical space is necessary, it is best to have specific evidence and research to back it up. For example, there is always the argument that book will become obsolete because everything is moving to digital platforms. As Teacher Librarians, we feel strongly about the need to maintain print-based books but I feel like I need to have specific evidence to back up my claims in order to be taken seriously. Therefore reading the article “Being a better online reader” gives evidence that “While the backgrounds of the writers varied, a theme began to emerge: the more reading moved online, the less students seemed to understand” (Konnikova, 2014). I found the examples given for why comprehension is less when reading online very compelling such as “On screen, people tended to browse and scan, to look for keywords, and to read in a less linear, more selective fashion. On the page, they tended to concentrate more on following the text”(Konnikova, 2014). Before reading this article, I had heard that information retention is higher when reading print over digital text but I didn’t have any specific evidence to that and now I do. 
  • Conduct my own personal inquiries and collect evidence for continued advocacy for the Library Learning Commons and Teacher Librarians: An inquiry-based research model is an effective method of collecting evidence for advocacy such as was used in the BCTF article ““Renaissance delayed: supporting early career teacher-librarians in British Columbia”. I like the idea of Action Research (AR) as explained as “… teacher-driven education inquiry that acknowledges the practitioner as “knower and agent for educational and social change” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009, p. 8)—in this case, participating BCTLA and BCTF union members” (Hales and Beaudry, 2018, p.4). For example, Merga’s article ” How Can School Libraries Support Student Wellbeing?” concludes that “ Promising findings on how school libraries operate as safe spaces for young people; promote and resource mental health and wellbeing initiatives; and, support and promote bibliotherapeutic practices and reading for pleasure, suggest that these, amongst other areas of relevance, can be useful starting points for furthering this research agenda ” (2020, p.670).  I also believe that the Library Learning Commons  and Teacher Librarians promote student well-being and the only evidence that I have is anecdotal; however, as I stated in relation to promoting print materials, these claims would be better supported with evidence. Therefore, I was contemplating how to collect specific evidence for advocacy and, at the moment, I believe that something such as action research and a specific inquiry would be the most effective for collecting evidence for topics such as fostering student wellness in the Library Learning Commons.

In conclusion:

I feel as if many classroom teachers are not used to having a Teacher Librarian at their disposal and therefore do not know how to fully utilize the resource. Each year, I need to promote myself and remind classroom teachers of the endless possibilities of ways that a Teacher Librarian can support them, their students and the school at large. I found this visual from another TL that summarizes the main ways that TLs can support classroom teachers. A poster like this would be beneficial to have displayed by the circulation desk or shared at a professional development day.

In the time we are presently in, I see it as more important that ever to advocate for Teacher Librarians as access to books, reading for pleasure and access to a knowledgeable individual that can connect all parts of the school community with suitable books, resources and other materials that meet their needs, promotes wellness by relieving stress for individuals.

I will continue to advocate for Teacher Librarians not only because it is my “dream job” but because I believe if we can actually achieve the vision that is set up for the Teacher Librarian, it will lead to higher student achievement, more classroom teacher satisfaction and overall school environment.

Works cited:

Bowler, L., & Champagne, R. (2016). Mindful makers: Question prompts to help guide young peoples’ critical technical practices in maker spaces in libraries, museums, and community-based youth organizations. Library and Information Science Research, 38(2), 117-124.  

CNN. (2017). Hilary Clinton full ALA Conference speech [Video]. Retrieved 28 November 2020, from https://youtu.be/S8OEAPSFp4c.

Hales, A.  and Beaudry, L..  (October 2018). “Renaissance delayed: supporting early career teacher-librarians in British Columbia.” BCTF.  Retrieved from: https://bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Publications/ResearchReports/RenaissanceDelayed/2018%20Renaissance%20Delayed-Research%20Report.pdf . 

Konnikova, M. (2014, July 16). Being a better online reader. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/being-a-better-online-reader .

Krashen, S. (2014, January 16). Dr. Stephen Krashen defends libraries at LAUSD Board Meeting [Video]. Retrieved 28 November 2020, from https://youtu.be/JAui0OGfHQY.

McLaughlin, D. (2012). The King of Denmark and the Naked Mole Rat: Teaching Critical Thinking for Social Justice. Edcan.ca. Retrieved 28 November 2020, from https://www.edcan.ca/articles/the-king-of-denmark-and-the-naked-mole-rat-teaching-critical-thinking-for-social-justice/.

Merga, M. (2020). How Can School Libraries Support Student Wellbeing? Evidence and Implications for Further Research, Journal of Library Administration, 60:6, 660-673,Retrieved from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01930826.2020.1773718 .

Mighty Little Librarian. (2020). Top 10 things your librarian do for you [Image]. Retrieved from http://www.mightylittlelibrarian.com/?p=1388.

Oberg, D. (2014). Ignoring the evidence: Another decade of decline for school libraries. Education Canada, 54(3). Retrieved from: http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/ignoring-evidence-another-decade-decline-school-libraries .

Parrott, Kiera.  (August 28, 2017).  Thinking outside the bin: why labeling books by reading level disempowers young readers.  Retrieved from: http://www.slj.com/2017/08/feature-articles/thinking-outside-the-bin-why-labeling-books-by-reading-level-disempowers-young-readers/#_ .

Quote master. (2020). Teacher Librarians [Image]. Retrieved 8 November 2020, from https://www.quotemaster.org/school+librarians.

Weisgrau, Josh.  (2015, September 24). School libraries and makerspaces: can they coexist? Retrieved from:http://www.edutopia.org/blog/school-libraries-makerspaces-coexist-josh-weisgrau.

Zammarchi, Julie. (April 13, 2016). “The Bookmobile.” StoryCorps.  Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11OvHcgh-E.

 

Assignment 3, LLED 462, Themes

StoryMaking: using makerspace to tell stories.

Leave a comment

Rationale:

I am the Teacher Librarian at a K-5 English language Elementary School. I have been in this position for a total of 2.75 years with an 18 month maternity break in the middle. I would like this presentation to be shared with staff at my school to encourage collaboration with the Teacher Librarian and give teachers confidence to try makerspace activities in the library or in their own classroom. The story “making” concept introduces inquiry skills in a non-threatening way and one of my goals in my school is to foster and encourage inquiry-based teaching and learning. In addition, I have heard teachers express their need for more information and guidance for how to incorporate ADST curriculum. Finally, a school and district goal this year is literacy. I really connected with the Story “making” in that for such a simple and easy to implement idea, it meets topics of focus for my school and has the ability to meet curricular topics in multiple areas. Therefore, I have followed the StoryMaking framework quite closely and incorporated other materials from the course, such as multi-modal learning and expression of ideas and how StoryMaking allows for diverse learning opportunities.

Reflection:

For my presentation, I chose to use Canva as I’ve heard good things about it and wanted to try it out. I thought choosing the “presentation” mode would be suitable to present these ideas to staff as I would like to make the ideas clear but not overwhelm teachers with the information. I liked using Canva and also created my blog header with it. I would use it again for other purposes in the future now.

I spent quite a bit of time exploring different digital tools to find ones that I felt were easy to implement for teachers and students to present learning from story “making”. From what I have heard, I thought that Storybird would be a good webtool but didn’t realize that it was a subscription. So, I tried Lark by Storybird as I hear it is free but apparently it is only for iPads and iPhones. We do have iPads at school so it may be a possibility; however, classes mostly use our student devices which are microsoft products. Therefore, I decided to use Storyboard That because our school district uses Microsoft and all students have an account. I am hoping that students will be able to automatically sign-in once they are logged on to our student devices. Book creator seems good because it has the option to log-in with a microsoft account which all students have in our district. Also, if the teacher has an account, the students use the teacher code to connect with the teacher so their books can be easily shared. I noticed that once I downloaded my presentation to insert into my blog, the book from BookCreator is not able to be viewed however it works when I present it in presentation mode in Canva. Therefore, I have inserted a screen capture below with a hyperlink. I have published the book to the public so it should work.

Finally, I have shared this presentation with my principal and she is excited for it to be shared with staff.  As this is a presentation, I fully expect that there will be rich discussion with teachers as I explain StoryMaking and how it can be implemented in the Library Learning Commons with any classes throughout our school.

Works cited:

4 Principles Of Student-centered Learning. TeachThought. (2019). Retrieved 21 November 2020, from https://www.teachthought.com/.

Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies | Building Student Success – BC’s New Curriculum. Curriculum.gov.bc.ca. (2020). Retrieved 14 November 2020, from https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/adst.

Bradshaw, J.,  (2020). Graphic Novels for Kids: The 13 best graphic novel series. Everyday Reading. Retrieved 15 November 2020, from https://everyday-reading.com/graphic-novels-for-kids/.

Canva. (2020). Blog header [Image].

Compton, M., & Thompson, R. (2018). Storymaking: A Maker Movement Approach to Literacy for Early Learners [Ebook]. Redleaf Press.

Davidson, A. (2018). How do Makerspaces heighten student engagement?. Edcan.ca. Retrieved 21 November 2020, from https://www.edcan.ca/articles/makerspaces-heighten-student-engagement/.

Good, S., Araujo, J., Shuster, L., & Meredith, A. (2019). Story Studio: Collaborative Inquiry. Presentation, Burnaby School District.

Media Literacy Fundamentals. MediaSmarts. (2020). Retrieved 21 November 2020, from https://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/general-information/digital-media-literacy-fundamentals/media-literacy-fundamentals.

Moorefield-Lang, H., & Kitzie, V. (2018). Makerspaces for All: Serving Lgbtq Makers in School Libraries. Knowledge Quest, 47(1), 46-50. Retrieved 21 November 2020, from.

Postmodern picturebook list. Literacy Clinic Education. (2013). Retrieved 15 November 2020, from https://literacyclinic.education.gsu.edu/files/2013/10/Postmodern-Picture-Book-List.pdf.

Serafini, F. (2012). Reading multimodal texts in the 21st century. Research In Schools, 19(1), 26-32. Retrieved 15 November 2020, from.

Weisgrau, J. (2015). School libraries and makerspaces: can they coexist? [Blog]. Retrieved 14 November 2020, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/school-libraries-makerspaces-coexist-josh-weisgrau.

UBC. (Winter 2020). ” Learning from Multi-Modal Texts: a look at new literacies.” Module 4 in LLED 462 Canvas Online Classroom.

UBC. (Winter 2020).”Supporting Learners Through the Library: Critical Literacy.” Module 5 in LLED 462 Canvas Online Classroom.

Assignment 1, LLED 462

Online tools for the Teacher Librarian – Learning log 2 from module 6

Link Leave a comment

 

Introduction:

Over my time taking all of the courses for the Diploma in Teacher Librarianship, I have come across a variety of documents, website and webtools that I keep saying I will come back to explore more because I have only had the time to skim them. Symbaloo is one of those tools. I heard of SYMBALOO and found an example of one recently so it has been on my “to-do list” since then. Now, I am glad that I have the opportunity to explore it and create my own.

The process:

The first thing I did was watch the informational video and it was helpful to learn that there are two versions and I did not know about the edu.symbaloo.com. The video gave many good tips and I ended up watching it a few times.

I feel like a webmix would be very useful as a start page on a 24/7 Participatory Learning Commons website. On my Destiny Original homepage, we have a list of helpful links to websites but I have always found it very challenging for the students to look through all the text to find the site needed. I always felt that having a more visual collection of links would be more accessible for K-5 students and have asked for it before but it has not happened. Therefore, I feel like something like Symbaloo is an answer to this problem as it is a collection of weblinks but with more visuals which I feel will be more user-friendly for my patrons. Additionally, I think it would be useful to have separate ones for students, parents and teachers. I like the idea of the “lesson plan” tool in Symbaloo and think it might be a good solution to some challenges for our eBlend teachers in our district.

The kinds of Symbaloo I have decided to create this time contains a variety of webtools to specific areas that are highly used or in need at our school at the moment. The purpose of this webmix will be a quick access tool for students and teachers of high use sites.

In watching the instructional video, it reminded me of many tools that I have been meaning to use or had forgotten about. In addition, it made suggestions for new tools to me or how to find helpful tools in my desired area.

This is what I have added to my webmix and why.

Useful sites that I have been using and will be using more:

Office365 – District-wide for all staff and students.

Destiny homepage for my LLC catalog

Scholastic website has many useful areas

Common Sense Media – lessons for digital citizenship

Cool Math 4 kids – different than it used to be so I felt like we needed new math game sites.

ABCYA – good for our primary students with age-appropriate games in literacy, numeracy, and computer skills.

Starfall – I especially like the literacy tools on this site for early primary.

Kiddle – search engine for kids

Code.org – I find this a very useful site for teaching and applying coding skills for all ages, not sure if I can find one to top it. I did try to find a few others to add to the Symbaloo.

Wonderopolis – good for teaching inquiry skills

Sites/tools I have heard of and wanted to explore more:

Padlet – was suggested to me by an instructor in another course as a possible presentation tool and I looked at it but decided it was not what I needed at the time but think it could be useful for students and teachers.

ReadWriteThink – I have heard of good lesson ideas here.

Vimeo – I would like to play around with the video tools more.

Buncee – heard of this on a facebook group and want to learn more about it.

Voicethread – For making videos for book talks/book trailers or another way to share learning.

Flipgrid – I have heard of other educators using this tool and finding it useful but I haven’t used it myself yet.

New sites/tools to me:

eMaze presentation tool software

StoryboardThat – storyboard app for digital storytelling – I am excited to explore and use this with students.

Explain Everything – whiteboard app – teacher tool

Go formative – looks like a good teacher tool

Brainpop jr. – I like how this site appears to have tools for a variety of subject areas.

I was looking for some new, age appropriate free math sites and typing tools and online drawing sites so that is why I have added a few of those.

Rationale:

Like many other students in the class, in looking at the BC Digital Literacy Framework, I felt very overwhelmed. Although I have begun to teach technology lessons to intermediate students, I’m not sure how students are going to meet all of the outcomes listed in the framework. Also, like many classmates commented, I feel like many teachers are not aware of the framework. Even as the Media/Technology specialist, I only found out about NETS in my 9th course in the program but it seems like the most important aspect because, as the framework states,”The profiles are based on International Society for Technology in Education’s (ISTE) NETS•S standards and a belief that all students must have regular opportunities to use technology to develop skills that encourage personal productivity, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration in the classroom and in daily life”(“Digital Literacy – Province of British Columbia”, 2020). At another staff meeting or professional development day, I would like to ask other teachers if they are familiar with it. 

What I found most useful in the framework is the suggested lessons for specific grade/age levels. For example, the lesson ideas for grades 3-5 such as ” Produce a media-rich digital story about a significant local event based on first-person interviews” and “Use digital-imaging technology to modify or create works of art for use in a digital presentation” and then connecting these activities to the competencies. The lesson suggestions seem simple enough to do and meet several competencies at once.

The way that the Symbaloo webmix meets digital and media literacies is in that “… kids need to develop skills and habits of media literacy. These skills include being able to access media on a basic level, to analyze it in a critical way based on certain key concepts, to evaluate it based on that analysis and, finally, to produce media oneself. This process of learning media literacy skills is media education” (“Media Literacy Fundamentals”, 2020). The tools that I have included in my webmix gives options of different tools for similar skills and I have noticed the best way to find out if a tool is useful is to get students to try it and they let me know if it is user-friendly for them and helps them to improve their skills in the desired area. So, they are given the opportunity to access, analyze and evaluate a variety of media tools.

Another aspect that can be covered in using the different types of websites is to teach students to be aware of how to maneuver sites when the site asks for log-ins or for upgrades to the program. Teaching students to read carefully before just clicking on OK: “For example, youth cannot fully understand why online services want to collect their personal information without exploring the commercial considerations of those services, a traditional concern of media literacy”(“The Intersection of Digital and Media Literacy”, 2020). Some of the tools ask for a log-in or ask if you want to upgrade but, if you read carefully, you can still use the site without taking extra steps. 

I like how our module notes point out:

“Where students need the teacher librarian the most is, to help them:

  • to think critically and to let them know when they are thinking critically;
  • to articulate and justify their use of digital information (Why did you include this?, What message are you trying to convey? Who is your audience? Why did you choose this tool?);
  • to model and scaffold the ethical use of information and behaviour in digital environments;
  • to provide discussion around students’ digital identities and provide opportunity to develop those identities” (UBC, 2020).

I agree that these are some of the most important aspects of the job in teaching students to properly use and decipher a variety of print and digital media. It is our job to expose students to educational tools even if they seems to be “digital natives” they are in need of guidance to be productive and responsible media users. 

Reflection:

Overall, I had the most fun exploring and playing with the different web tools that I am less familiar with and finding new ones in areas of need. I have split the Symbaloo into sections of math, typing, coding, presentation tools, art, reading, digital citizenship and teacher tools. After I felt like it was completed, I realized that I should have included more science tools but I think I will probably end up making separate webmixes for different subject areas.

Additionally, I had some unforeseen challenges such as I wanted to add Powtoon to my webmix and I tried to add the tile a few times but the link from the tile would not work. It kept saying the website doesn’t exist but it does. I tired it a few different ways but I could not get it to work! As well, I thought it would be easy to embed the Symbaloo into my UBC blog but it did not embed so that it why it is linked instead.

Overall, I feel like this is a useful tool that I am looking forward to trying with students and I enjoyed having the opportunity to explore new webtools. I feel like the webtools I have carefully chosen will enhance students’ digital and media literacies by exposing them to a variety of tools that gives them the opportunity to make choices about tools that work for them but all educational focusing on specific skills.

Works cited:

Digital Literacy – Province of British Columbia. Www2.gov.bc.ca. (2020). Retrieved from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/teach/teaching-tools/digital-literacy.

Media Literacy Fundamentals. MediaSmarts. (2020). Retrieved 17 October 2020, from https://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/general-information/digital-media-literacy-fundamentals/media-literacy-fundamentals.

The Intersection of Digital and Media Literacy. MediaSmarts. (2020). Retrieved 17 October 2020, from https://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/general-information/digital-media-literacy-fundamentals/intersection-digital-media-literacy.

UBC. “Supporting Learners Through the Library – Digital and Media Literacy”. Module 6 in LLED 462 Canvas online classroom, Winter 2020.

LIBE 477

Reflection: LIBE 477

Leave a comment

In beginning this course I felt like I had some good background in ICT skills. In reading Why School? I felt like I had heard much of what was articulated by Richardson and I felt good about creating a blog. Once I started really researching and establishing more PLNs, I felt like my head was swimming with all the new information and ideas I was accumulating.

In many of my blog posts I comment that I have explored the resource but there’s so much more that I need to look at more closely later! This is how I feel about this entire course, I have accumulated so many more ideas and contacts that I lost track of where I was getting the information! For example, I can’t remember who said they created a document to file all of their new resources and I commented that I should be doing that but I didn’t and I should have! In creating my final vision project, I looked back on my blog posts and I went back to the blogs from my group members to find the ideas that I thought I liked but it may not have been the most efficient tactic.

One of the biggest take-aways from this course will be the establishment of PLNs. The contacts I have made in this course I would like to maintain because I feel like everyone has great ideas; even if there are similar activities, it is good to get another TLs spin on it. I used many ideas from the new PLNs I am a part of in my final vision project.

Although I already had a Twitter account, I find I am using it more and have found a more specific purpose for it.

As well, I have joined a lot of Facebook groups where I am getting so  many ideas! Pretty sure a member of my blog group gave me the first facebook group to join. These are groups I have joined so far and I saw one more suggestion today:

  • The School Librarian’s Workshop
  • Teachers teaching with tech
  • Future Ready Librarians

In addition, I appreciate that one of the inquiry blogs focused on World Libraries and Global Literacy. I have really wanted to teach students how to make positive global impacts and connections so this was a good motivator for me.

In relation to my Final Vision Project, I seem to do this quite a lot but I have a problem getting these grandiose ideas, which are pretty stellar, but they take a lot of time and effort! I did it again with my idea of creating a Participatory Virtual Learning Commons as my final vision project! There were so many ideas and aspects I wanted to include that it was very time consuming but, as I said, this is one reason I had not done it already. I included quite a few of them but there are still more I want to include; this will definitely be a “live document”.

Ultimately, although I felt like I had a good base for my ICT skills, I feel like I’ve got so many more to explore, experiment with and share with staff and students. As I said in Reading Review A, “so many ideas, so little time”! I feel like I have even more now but that is great because as Teacher Librarians, I feel like we need to be ready with any resource at any time in any area, so the more the better!

References:

Needpix. (2020). Star Abstract Colorful Free Photo [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.needpix.com/photo/1120778/star-abstract-colorful-fireworks-rocket-banner-header-new-years-day-new-years-eve

LIBE 477

Participatory Virtual Learning Commons: Vision for the Future in LIBE 477

4 Comments

OCEAN GROVE PARTICIPATORY VIRTUAL LEARNING COMMONS

For my final vision project, I thought I would create a Virtual Learning Commons. I have wanted to develop one since my second year as a Teacher Librarian, got a blog set up through my district and found I did not appreciate the format; it was not user friendly for me , I could not get the sections to work as I wanted them to and therefore felt it was too time consuming so I stopped using it.

In beginning this course, I identified developing a Virtual Learning Commons as one of my key interests and throughout the course, it seemed like I was getting more and more ideas for aspects I wanted to include in my ideal Virtual Learning Commons. Therefore, I concluded that creating my own Virtual Learning Commons was the right choice.

For a previous blog post, I came across The Virtual Learning Commons website and it suggested a Participatory Virtual Learning Commons which I really like the idea of. One of my goals is also to create a culture of collaboration and I feel like it could be supported through a Participatory Virtual Learning Commons. I decided to develop a site with GoogleSites because on this website there was a free template that uses Google. I like the ideas that this template suggests and as teachers we always say “why recreate the wheel”? Plus, not only is it a template but it has so many ideas to include in the Virtual Learning Commons that can be integrated and used in the Physical Learning Commons. Some of the ideas I already knew about and some are great ideas that are new to me that I feel my students would find useful as well like Storybird. I also felt like I could add the ideas that I accumulated from the course into the existing pages in addition to adding my own.

The idea behind my Participatory Virtual Learning Commons is for it to be a place where teachers, students and parents can go for ideas and resources that can be completed online but also have some options for offline activities. Many activities I have included can be completed independently by students and they can construct their own meaning. This connect with points made in Why School: “ The emphasis shifts from content mastery to learning mastery. That means students have more ownership over their own learning, using their access to knowledge and teachers to create their own unique paths to the outcomes we, and they, deem important” (Richardson, p.276).

On my site, I feel I have touched on all of the areas identified on NETS, which I shared in Reading Review B.

 

By formulating the site in the way I have, it is promoting 21st literacy skills, as mentioned in “Why School?”, by encouraging collaboration between all members of the school community and allowing students to explore, create and problem solve. I have done this by  including ways for the entire school community to contribute to the site and the library as well as see themselves represented on the site. The following explains the pages I have included and what each page contains and why I have chosen those aspects.

 

Pages included:

Home Page:

On this page, I want it to grab the user’s attention and have interactive activities. There is an announcement banner, a quick activity idea, a student survey and I would like to add pictures as the year goes on.

Discovery Center:

The website template explains this as a place where students can learn on their own. I left the explanation at the top of this page because it gives some good ideas of what else to add to the page. I would like to re-word the explanation to make it more student-friendly but I really like the concept of the discovery center. It has a lot to do with inquiry but also some more ideas for independent learning.

I thought this was a good place to add information on Inquiry. Inquiry is one of my key areas of interest that I identified. I have added some ideas like question creation, how to find the answers and the inquiry process but I could not find links that I like for students so I will still work on that.  I did add the graphic for Inquiry Island because I like how it portrays inquiry like a journey and it is more exciting that a chart, table or graph. I also added a document I made in May for students to carry out their own inquiry.

In addition, this is a good area to add links to some coding resources. I have added links to code.org and scratch.

New ideas to me that I will keep on the page and would like to explore more are Symbaloo, Storybird and Virtual Makerspace. I wanted to keep the videos that were already included here because they are actually videos that I would choose to show students to brainstorm ideas for personal inquiry projects. There is more I would like to do with this page but at the moment I am leaving it “under construction”.

In this area I would also like to share creations that students have made in order to generate some ideas for others.

Fun with Literacy :

This is an area where I can promote ways to create a reading culture throughout the school. There is a combination of ways to read individually and communally as well as different activities that can be completed online or offline. Included on this page are links for:

  • District Learning Commons
  • OG Library Catalog
  • Public Library
  • Links to eBooks and audiobooks
  • Suggest a book – I got this idea from John Weldon Elementary School Learning Commons
  • What are you reading? – book recommendations – I chose the following as sites that are safe for students.
    – Biblionasium – this connects with Destiny and we are a Destiny district so this would be great to teach students how to use, they just use their Destiny log-in! It appears that it would need to be added to Destiny as a separate purchase, my district does not have it yet; however, this may be a good way to use the library budget this year as we probably need more online resources. I am going to have to explore this in more detail and talk to the other TLs and District TL. I feel like this would be a good lesson that I could teach in classrooms using our digital devices.
    –Scholastic:Share What You’re Reading – this is a free resource and Scholastic is a well-known product. I think this would be good because students could potentially discover books that we do not have in our library and possibly connect with more peers in other areas.
  • Reader of the month – Thanks Tracey W. for the ideas! I would like to start with some teachers and then have students afterwards. I think there could be at least a couple a month or maybe one teacher and one student each  month. I don’t have one on the site yet but I would like to have one (maybe mine) for September and I would do something like the example Tracey shared from this school: Roosevelt Library Learning Center.
  • STEM stories – I apologize, I do not remember who I got this idea from but thanks! I have included a link to STEM story ideas on Scholastic if people are looking for different ideas. I have also included some specific stories with read aloud from YouTube with a specific activity idea attached for easy access; there is one for primary and one for intermediate but of course people could use both! I chose these specific videos from YouTube because they are short and only show the book, no people.  I think I will change up the specific activities each month.
  • Reading Challenges – Read-a-thon – I just added my reading challenge from 2019 to show what I would include, I would update it for the coming year.
  • Book club offerings – this is something that I identified in my “Reading Culture” blog post as something I have not done before but would like to. In that post I said that I would try to identify some students that might like to participate. On my site, I have left it as a “contact me” if interested and I figure maybe groups of friends would arrange to be in a group or if individuals are interested, I can find them a group to be a part of or pair up interested individuals.
  • Virtual Author visit information – this is another aspect that I identified I would like to do more of. At the moment this is something I would like to look into more so it is a “coming sometime this year” section.
  • Battle of the Books information – this is a district-wide initiative and we usually start by sharing the books and information in November for students to begin thinking about if they would like to participate or not.

Parent & Teacher Zone:

In my inquiry post #3 on professional development offerings from the TL, I found this template for the Participatory Virtual Learning Commons. I really like how it says that “If they help build it, they will use it”. In addition, I really like the idea of a place to share professional collection resources that teachers can peruse at their leisure, as shared by Jacquie B.

Links to resources for teachers:

  • Copyright – with using online forums for teaching, teachers are curious about what they can do/share online with their classes, especially the rules around read-alouds with classes online.
  • Digital Citizenship – I wanted to link to some ready resources for teachers on internet safety and citizenship because that is what I found I needed when teaching online.
  • Inquiry – I wanted to add some resources on inquiry for teachers because I would like to create a culture of inquiry-based teaching and learning at my school. The documents that I chose to include are some easy ideas to start with such as practicing recognizing good questions, acknowledging knowledge building with an easy lesson and some simple changes that can be made to common units to make them more inquiry-based.

Links for parents:

  • Digital Citizenship – I thought I should include some resources for parents on this subject so that they also have some tools and knowledge about proper etiquette and use for their children.

Way to share documents/readings that teachers found useful:
This is the place I thought could be the online professional literature exchange. There would also be a physical professional literature exchange in the LLC itself.

Discussion board: participants can email to obtain a link to be able to contribute to the discussion board. I am picturing that it will mostly be teachers and a few parents,  maybe from PAC. This is where people can ask questions, write comments or share information or links to useful sites/articles etc.

Twitter feed: I wanted to include a Twitter feed so that I can post any new updates to the website and that will hopefully increase the use of the website itself.

Book/resource request form: Like on the “Fun with Literacy” page, I have included a way for teachers/parents to request any professional literature that they would like to see in the library. Again, this is a way for the school community to feel like they are contributors to the LLC.

At the end of this page I also added an infographic on ways a TL can help because I feel like sometimes people don’t really realize what all of the different parts of our jobs entail. By adding this, it is my hopes that it will encourage more collaboration and individuals asking for my assistance.

Project Zone:

In this area, again, the template makes some great suggestions on how to make it collaborative. It says, ” The idea of this portal in the VLC is that two heads are better than one; meaning that collaborative planning, construction, execution, and assessment by classroom teachers and adult specialists (including outside experts) is superior to the efforts of a single and isolated teacher in the classroom or teacher librarian isolated in the library Learning Commons”. I love this idea because it is one of my favourite things and always one of my goals to collaborate, co-teach and work with different classes throughout the school on varying projects and units.

Three features are recommended for this “room:”

  • Current projects between the learning commons staff and classroom teachers.
  • An archive of completed projects as a track record for monthly or annual reports.
  • A section devoted to the teaching of Personal Learning Environments for both students and adults in the school.

So, since there are not any collaborative projects happening at the moment, this page is definitely UNDER CONSTRUCTION and COMING SOON!

Global literacy:

I wanted to include a page on global literacy because I always wanted to find and teach ways for my school and LLC to contribute globally. So, it was a great opportunity to be able to do some research on this topic through this course to be pushed to find out more. In the past few years, I have been trying to think of ways that our school can do some fundraisers for world organizations and it seems obvious that it should be something to develop global literacy.

To start, on this page I am just going to include some Canadian organizations that contribute to global literacy. As well, I will post a “stay tuned” for fundraising for global initiative area. I would like to organize something from our school that incorporates some research by the students into global literacy and organizations so that they can take ownership of the contributions but I’m not sure what form that will take yet.

Online Safety:

Digital Citizenship and Media Literacy was also one of my key areas of interest that I identified at the beginning of this course. I feel that it is such an important topic for students to be taught from the beginning of the year with information at their grade level. I find that the grade 4/5 level is very important to reinforce these ideas in many different ways throughout the year as they are the age where they are beginning to use many online forums more independently but they don’t necessarily have enough common sense to navigate online without guidance.

I was debating what to name this section as I want it to make sense to students and parents. On first glance, I don’t think that parents and students would understand what Digital Citizenship or Media Literacy might mean. On the page, I will give a definition and explain why it is important and what to do on the page.

The site I have used for all of my resources is Common Sense Media. In my research, I found that this site has the most appealing lessons and videos. I have added some lessons for students to check out at first plus a link to the Digital Passport. I will change the lessons every month or so to keep students coming back.

How I will share this site:

Like I said earlier, I have wanted to create a Virtual Learning Commons for a long time but felt like it has always been out of reach with time constraints. I feel like a Participatory Virtual Learning Commons will be even more purposeful than simply a Virtual Learning Commons and by having more contributors, I feel like it will also motivate me to update the website. I would like to share this site on our school website and through our school newsletter so that parents and students will be aware of its existence. I would also use my designated time during a staff meeting to highlight specific areas of the site that I think that teachers would find useful such as the Teacher Zone and even some specific ready-made lessons that I have identified. Simply giving teachers the link will not be enough, I will need to show them exactly what I think they would find useful. In addition, I will use library times to teach students specific aspects of the site. This will also meet my goal of having lessons that can be taught anywhere in the school depending on how I will be teaching this fall. Finally, if we do remote learning again, I feel like students will be able to do many of the activities and be able to explore this site independently.

References:

Adobe Stock Images. (2020). See+you+soon [Image]. Retrieved from https://stock.adobe.com/ca/search?k=%22see+you+soon%22

Common Sense Media. (2020). The Power of Words [Video]. Retrieved from https://d1pmarobgdhgjx.cloudfront.net/education/PowerOfWords_NewBumper.mp4

Copyright & Creativity : K-12 Teaching Resources on Copyright and Fair Use. (2020). Retrieved 11 August 2020, from https://www.copyrightandcreativity.org/

Copyright Guidelines for Teachers. (2020). Retrieved 11 August 2020, from https://teachbc.bctf.ca/docs/CopyrightGuidelinesForTeachers.pdf

Essential Digital Citizenship Lessons for the Coronavirus Pandemic | Common Sense Education. (2020). Retrieved 16 July 2020, from https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/essential-digital-citizenship-lessons-for-the-coronavirus-pandemic

If I Built a House read aloud. (2020). [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXW89Pc8B7I

Images by pixabay

ISTE Standards for Students | ISTE. (2020). Retrieved 19 July 2020, from https://www.iste.org/standards/for-students

Mighty Little Librarian. (2020). Top 10 things your librarian do for you [Image]. Retrieved from http://www.mightylittlelibrarian.com/?p=1388

Mrs. St.Germain Reads. (2020). Perfect Square [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRqL7GUaavc

Natural Beach Livign. (2020). 25 day reading challenge [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.naturalbeachliving.com/reading-challenge-for-kids/

Reviews for what your kids want to watch (before they watch it) | Common Sense Media. (2020). Retrieved 11 August 2020, from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/

Richardson, W. (2012). Why School?: How Education Must Change When Learning and Information Are Everywhere (Kindle Single) . TED Conferences. Kindle Edition.

The Virtual Learning Commons – learningcommons. (2020). Retrieved 2 August 2020, from http://www.schoollearningcommons.info/the-virtual-learning-commons

TemplateVLC Elementary. (2020). Retrieved 2 August 2020, from https://sites.google.com/site/templatevlcelementary/

Top 10 Read Alouds for Elementary STEM. (2020). Retrieved 12 August 2020, from https://teachoutsidethebox.com/2018/01/top-10-read-alouds-elementary-stem/

Under the stairs entertainment. (2020). Coming soon [Image]. Retrieved from http://underthestairsent.com/coming-soon

Inquiry Post #4, Inquiry Posts, LIBE 477

Developing World Libraries and the impact of mobile devices: Inquiry Blog #4

4 Comments

Let’s set the stage:

For the first part of my career, I was a high school English teacher,  mostly grade 10 and 11. At first it was easy to have a “no cell phone” policy but it kept getting harder and I felt like I was wasting too much energy policing cell phones use. I actually had a conversation with a neighbour the other day who told me she was a high school English teacher and ended up retiring because of cell phones, pretty sad! Cell phone use isn’t what encouraged me to change my career path; however, in my last couple of years teaching high school, I changed me approach. Instead of having an overarching “no cell phones” use, when the class began I told them that part of having a cell phone and being successful in the world is knowing how to use a cell phone responsibly. In English class for me it meant, not using it when I was talking, only using it for things such as online dictionary/thesaurus and possibly using it once the classroom work was complete. Maybe it was all in my head, but I felt like once I set out these parameters, students were actually more respectful and I didn’t have as many issues. My last year in high school was 2014, so I’m sure a lot has changed and there are many productive ways to incorporate cell phone use in the English classroom.

In my current situation, I am a TL at a K-5 elementary school so students don’t really bring their own devices. For most classes, the biggest issue is reminding students about safe handling of devices so they don’t damage them. At my school, we dismantled the computer lab last year and replaced it with two class sets of laptops on carts. When I began as the TL, I advocated for trying to slowly accumulate iPads, getting about 5 new ones a year, but it does seem like technology is changing so rapidly that the ones we purchased when I started (three years ago) seem old. In addition, our district has a fairly strict policy for iPad use and taken on downloading all the apps so the school cannot download our own; if we want particular apps, we have to ask our IT department and it is often a painful wait for the request to go through. Up until now, these are the only devices we use at our school.

The concepts of World Libraries and mobile devices in libraries are a bit out of my comfort zone. I kept adding to my post with ideas I was finding, some which that did not “pan out” but I got some ideas from; therefore, this post is more “stream of consciousness” as I worked through it.

Libraries in Developing Nations:

To begin, I think that for libraries in developing nations to rely on weeded book from developed nations is really unfair. The books are weeded because they are out-of-date, damaged or unpopular so that doesn’t change if they are given to another library. Students in developing countries have enough educational challenges without being given out-of-date reading materials but to be honest, I did not know ways that developing nations obtain books or the best ways for books to be delivered to libraries in developing nations.

The American Library Association has a list of organizations that ship new books to developing countries. It is interesting that at the top of this page it basically says exactly what I say above about out-dated, damaged books.

There is a more global list from UNESCO with contacts for donation agencies for books and computers.

Maybe I wasn’t using the correct wording but I only found one Canadian agency: Canadian Organization for Development through Education (CODE). CODE appears to really only accept monetary donations, not donations of books themselves because they use the money for more than just books; it is also used for providing aspects such as educator training. There are opportunities for schools to fund raise and that might be a good organization to highlight one year at my school. What seems good about CODE is they advocate for getting books to developing nations, seems like mostly Africa, that are “culturally relevant” and “…stack library and school shelves with colorful and engaging children’s books that are appropriate for different reading levels, written in languages that children understand, and that reflect their local realities”(CODE, Literacy Programs).

Librarians Without Borders (LWB) seems like a really interesting library project in developing nations based out of Canada.

It appears that they sponsor two programs at the moment, one in Guatemala and one in Ghana. In reading about the program in Guatemala, it speaks to the fact that they collaborate with local agencies. The site states that, “The focus of this collaboration is on development and operation of a school and community library” (LWB, About, Guatemala Program). This organization helps to set up training for a Librarian position, implement a lending system, and instruction for information literacy. To obtain books for the libraries, books are bought through donations and it says they will “…selectively accept donations of new or gently used Spanish language books in at-need genres and reading levels”(LWB, Programs, Support). There wasn’t anything I could find that discussed the use of a digital library or mobile devices; however, librarians can volunteer to travel to one of the areas to visit and help with these programs! Maybe one year….

Mobile devices in libraries:

The article from our course suggested reading list under “Mobile Learning Resources”, “Turning on Mobile Learning:Global Themes” was very informative and contained a lot of interesting information pertaining to mobile uses in education in both developing and developed countries. I knew that mobile phones are more readily accessible in Africa than most of us think only because I had family members travel to Africa a few years ago. A fact from the article that surprised  me was, “Currently, over 70% of mobile subscriptions worldwide come from the developing world, and thanks to rapidly declining prices, powerful mobile handsets previously available only to wealthy individuals are increasingly within reach of the poor” (6).  In addition, ““Access to robust mobile networks is nearly universal: 90% of the world‘s population and an impressive 80% of the population living in rural areas are blanketed by a mobile network. This means that learners who might not have access to high–quality education or even schools often do have working mobile phones”(6) . The article advocates for the use of mobile phones in education in all nations as ““…several countries and companies have recently made a push to develop high–digital quality resources and educational materials optimized for mobile devices” (7). I obviously found this article interesting and helpful and don’t want to quote the entire thing but it makes a lot of sense that globally, mobile networks are more accessible worldwide that we think. This article was also written in 2012 so I would assume that the access and use of mobile devices and networks are more prevalent worldwide now.

In my search for how to develop global libraries, it seems like for many, the answer to getting current literature into the hands of students in developing countries is through digital means. Although I did not find as much back-up information for the organization in the following video, I feel like it encompasses many of the ideas that I was finding for other organizations in support of digital libraries.

As the video explains, it is a catalog of e-books that can be accessed through any digital device. It says it is a non-profit organization based out of Australia that sets up the digital catalog and delivers devices to students in developing countries. I tried to look up the Library for All website,libraryforall.org , but my computer told me it was an unsafe connection because the site’s security code had just expired. I could, however, connect to the Facebook page.  There is a mobile app available that I downloaded on my phone but I had trouble actually accessing the e-books.

This reminded me about all of the other companies that offer a catalog of e-books such as, Epic: Kids’Books, Audio Books, Videos & eBooks, which I could also download an app for. I wonder if these are available worldwide? I was thinking they probably are.

Where do I go from here?

So I’m not opposed to mobile devices in libraries, but like other ICT, students still need to be taught digital citizenship and media literacy skills in conjunction with use no matter the country.

In my current situation, one thing I am wondering is the feasibility of asking for donations of old cell phone that families may have hanging around home once they get an upgrade from the cell phone company. I know that cell phones still have Wi-Fi capabilities even when disconnected from phone services. That means that cell phones can still be used to access the internet for research purposes, download apps and take pictures and videos. In addition, because they are no longer connected to phone services, it would avoid safety issues connected with text messages and phone calls.  I wonder if anyone has tried to do this yet? I have a feeling there might be similar issues through our district as with iPads which I would need to check into.

Finally, it has always been in the back of my mind to look for ways that I can support global libraries; book donations have come up at my TL meetings in the past but nobody really had any suggestions. This assignment was good for giving me an opportunity to look into how I, my school and students can make a difference globally.

References:

Literacy Programs | CODE. (2020). Retrieved 5 August 2020, from https://code.ngo/approach/literacy-programs/

IntoConnection. (2015). Getting Kids To Read in Developing Countries With E-books [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jWECWnGgTw

Librarians Without Borders. (2020). Retrieved 4 August 2020, from http://lwb-online.org/

Pikist. (2020). mobile phone, smartphone, hand, particles, wave, color, colorful, lines, pattern, abstract, design [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.pikist.com/free-photo-sqefd

West, M. (2012). Turning on mobile learning: global themes. UNESCO Working Paper Series On Mobile Learning. Retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000216451

Inquiry Post #3, Inquiry Posts, LIBE 477

Collaborating and co-teaching; working with and leading colleagues: Inquiry Blog Post #3

7 Comments

How to share new learning with my wider educational community.

As a Teacher Librarian, I love the fact that I get to interact with everyone in the entire school. Most of my collaborative planning for co-teaching happens “on the fly” in conversations I have with classroom teachers. Through these conversations, I have built relationships and learned what each needs, wants and prefers. It took my first year of being a TL to build the trust of my colleagues in that they know they can rely on me and know I am capable. It is strange that the TL is one of the only positions where building relationships with the entire staff is a must! Now that I feel established at my school and solidified relationships, I can really start to make changes.

Start slow:

Many teachers are still getting used to the idea of having a TL available to them more often. There was a such a long time where the position was so limited that many TLs worked at multiple schools and only had time for book exchanges, maintaining the collection and maybe a few lessons squeezed in. So, teachers got used to doing it all on their own and so are out of practice with collaborative teaching. In addition, when I started as a TL, it was the big push to transition to a Learning Commons model. Therefore, classroom teachers needed time and information about what this change means. I think many still don’t understand also because the transition is still happening in many instances. I think many teachers are worried that they will get used to co-teaching and collaborating and then have it taken away again. I had one teacher tell me that she got discouraged from being let down by making plans and then, for example, someone gets sick so the teacher feels they have to do it alone again. In this instance, I worked really hard to build this person’s trust in proving that I am reliable and now we do collaborate and co-teach.

Put yourself out there:

  • Join leadership committees: I have been part of the Professional Development committee, Staff committee, and volunteered to be the staff technology specialist.
  • Staff meetings: In each staff meeting, the Library is on the agenda to speak, I use this time to not only speak about what activities the library is hosting but also to remind the staff of the kinds of services I offer and constantly highlight collaborative services.
  • Meeting with the administration: I believe it is important to advocate for the what is best for the LLC, the school and teachers. At times, even though it is not my specific position, I feel I am speaking on behalf of teachers mostly because I end up talking to everyone in the school. The following document I accessed through the Canadian School Libraries and think it will come in handy in support of Administrators should be involved in the LLC:

Leading the Way with the Library Learning Commons:Examples of administrative leadership to transform school libraries in Canada to 21st century learning commons centres

“Principals as Leaders: “At the school level, the principal is key in establishing and encouraging working partnerships among staff and students. The principal must provide the climate for co-operation, experimentation and growth. The Learning Commons has great potential, but only when everyone participates.” Together for Learning (Ontario School Library Association, 2010, p. 40). This chart makes connections between the Ontario Ministry of Education’s Leadership Framework and how the learning commons approach described in Together for Learning builds leadership capacity.”

The chart that is referred to above gives a great outline for leadership expectations for TLs and Administrators through the LLC.

Know your audience:

I try to advocate for technology use but I know there are many teachers that don’t feel comfortable or want to avoid screen time because they feel like students get enough at home. It is my belief that we as teachers are doing students a disservice if we avoid technology altogether but I cannot force a teacher to use technology with their class. As well, it would be nice if students throughout the school all received the same skills. Therefore, if teachers are hesitant, I make subtle suggestions, at inadvertent times, until I hit on one they feel comfortable with. For example, I have suggested splitting classes in half where I work with one half on technology and the teacher works on another activity with the other half and then we switch.

This article, Introduce Little Ones to Coding, Screen-Free, with KUBO | Tech Review by  Jessica Ralli, found at School Library Journal reminded me of the different coding activities that are screen-free. Although I am not familiar with KUBO, it sounds a lot like the other coding toys, that I also have access to through my district. This is another activity that might be best in small groups or as centers. It also made me think of physical coding activities that use the child’s body to work through coding skills. So if a teacher wants to avoid screen time with students, there are other ways to sneak the skills in.

At other times, I’ve told teachers that I am offering a program for a particular grade. For example, I informed grade 4/5 teachers that I organized Coding Quest with a guest expert to help out and told them the time it was happening and they all showed up.

Professional Development Strategies:

So far, I have mostly shared my professional development strategies to a few individuals at a time. For example, I think of one or two teachers who may be open and willing to try a new technique because it might fit with a unit I know they teach or fits with their style of teaching. However, it might be time to get out of my comfort zone and the comfort zone of some of the teachers at my school and make some changes!

I like the suggested strategies in the following article to ease into providing professional development to my wider community:

Building Inquiry Understanding with Classroom Colleagues.

Article by KRISTIN FONTICHIARO

One of my key interests and a goal as a Teacher Librarian is to implement a school-wide culture of inquiry-based teaching and learning. At my particular school, this is a big challenge as I find many teachers are reluctant to try this strategy either because they feel they don’t know how to do it or they are a bit stuck in their ways. This article has some good suggestions on how a Teacher Librarian can lead a professional development workshop on inquiry-based teaching and learning in a gentle, non-judgmental way. The author  calls it “Nudging Towards Inquiry”.

What I like about this article is that it gives specific strategies to use and incorporates digital technologies. It even gives a rough outline of how the workshop(s) could go. She explains that this could be done in short “lessons” in a series of staff meetings or one workshop on a professional development day.

Fontichiaro makes this important point: ” Do not use actual lesson
plans from the local school or district; few people are truly
comfortable having their work evaluated or poked by others.
(Even asking teachers to do a search for a “good” inquiry
lesson plan in their content area could backfire, because their
selection might be criticized by others. The school librarian
providing a neutral example will eliminate any finger-pointing among faculty.) Pushing back on a third-party lesson plan selected in
advance by the school librarian—and possibly even printed
with no identification—saves problematic reactions” (p.50).

Suggestions like this are good for a staff like mine and I definitely don’t want to be the person who offend anyone; I think that is a reason why I have been reluctant to offer official professional development.

How can I evolve and adapt the access to the “Professional Collection” to be more responsive to the personalized needs of the educators, staff, admin, parents, and other members of our educational community?

When I started at my current library, the Professional Collection was stored in a locked storage room on a high shelf; there were only a few current selections with most being very out-of-date. In beginning to remove the items from the catalog, I realized that most of the barcodes had been reassigned which means those resources were removed a long time ago so I’m  not sure why they were still hanging around! Once properly disposing of those items, there were not many left over. I moved the professional collection out of the back storage and into a closed cupboard with signage on the front so that it was easier for teachers to access but not for students. I then asked for staff recommendations for professional literature but didn’t get much feedback. In talking with another colleague, it seems like teachers just bought their own copies and then kept them stashed away, our question then was, why not share? So, I like the idea that a classmate in this course shared about having a professional literature exchange for teachers through the library. I understand why some people think that the idea of “The Professional Collection” may be out-of-date but I believe it often comes in handy as a starting point in some kinds of lesson planning.

My staff has also tried a professional reading book club that took place after school. It was fairly successful with many teachers involved. This was through the professional development committee; however, I was thinking of offering it this year with the professional development that I am interested in: Launch: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student by John Spencer and A.J. Juliani (grade level K-12) and Inquiry-Based Early Learning Environments: Creating, Supporting, and Collaborating by Susan Stacey (grade level K-3) (that I shared in the reading review A).

Since I am getting more online professional resources, networks and connections, these are things I can share with the wider school community. I would like to do this through a Virtual Learning Commons, I just need to create it first! I have tried to create one before but the format that was offered through my district was not user friendly for me. I want the Virtual Learning Commons to be used by all members of my school community so not only will I share resources for students but for teachers and parents as well such as including a Twitter feed and posting educational articles. For example, I would like to have a link to some sort of “Guidelines for creating good essential questions for inquiry”. In addition, some way for parents and teachers to give me suggestions or comments would be beneficial as well.

THE VIRTUAL LEARNING COMMONS:
This site has some good suggestions for creating a Virtual Learning Commons. I like how it suggests that it be a Participatory Virtual Learning Commons where students and teachers give input into what it contains because “if they help build it, they will use it!”.
It also give different templates for how to design a Virtual Learning Commons for different school levels so I looked at the template for elementary. It give good suggestions for elements, links and tabs to include.

 

Plans for implementation in the coming year:

A large goal of mine in offering professional development is encouraging more teachers to collaborate with me.

Currently at my school, we are not given release time for collaborative planning which makes it difficult to carry out collaborative lessons. Therefore, in the coming year, I will be advocating to my administration for more collaboration time with teachers.

My challenge for next year will be offering specific professional development workshops whether on a pro-d day or a short series in staff meetings.

Finally, I plan to develop a Virtual Learning Commons whether that be a blog or website.

References:

Coding Quest | The Learning Partnership. (2020). Retrieved 2 August 2020, from https://www.thelearningpartnership.ca/programs/coding-quest

FONTICHIARO, K. (2015). Building Inquiry Understanding with Classroom Colleagues. School Library Monthly, 31(5), 49–51.

Leading the Way with the Library Learning Commons – Canadian School Libraries. (2020). Retrieved 30 July 2020, from https://www.canadianschoollibraries.ca/leading-the-way/

Pikrepo: Royalty-free HD learning photos. (2020). Person writing learning lessons post [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.pikrepo.com/fphft/person-writing-learning-lessons-post

Ralli, J. (2018). Introduce Little Ones to Coding, Screen-Free, with KUBO | Tech Review. Retrieved 30 July 2020, from https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=introduce-little-ones-to-coding,-screen-free-with-kubo-tech-review

The Virtual Learning Commons – learningcommons. (2020). Retrieved 2 August 2020, from http://www.schoollearningcommons.info/the-virtual-learning-commons

TemplateVLC Elementary. (2020). Retrieved 2 August 2020, from https://sites.google.com/site/templatevlcelementary/

Inquiry Post #2, Inquiry Posts, LIBE 477

Developing and maintaining ICT Skills as a Teacher-Librarian: Inquiry Blog Post #2

7 Comments

Ways I can continue to develop my skills, pedagogy and professional development.

When it comes to any professional development, I usually go with workshops that are being offered, possibly what colleagues are suggesting or, lately, much of my professional development has been through these courses for the Diploma in Teacher Librarianship.

It is challenging to stay current when you’re not taking courses and it’s fairly easy to fall into stagnant routines. In beginning to think about this topic, I admit that it was a bit more challenging than I thought it would be. So, I started with browsing our course reading, didn’t really find what I was looking for and then thought I should look for a video that might encompass some simple thoughts. I came across this video by Anita Brooks-Kirkland:

I was hoping for a video that was a little more current but I like this one because not only does she advocate for TLs being Technology Leaders, she also gives reasons why teaching with technology is intrinsic at this time. The best piece of advice she gives is “…being open and adaptable are perhaps the most important competencies and the reason why there’s never been a better time to be a Teacher Librarian”. I agree with this statement and have always believed that as a teacher in general and more so as a TL, the most important skill is to be flexible because when teachers become too stringent in routines and “stick with what has worked in the past”, that is counterproductive to improving professionally.

In the video she also mentions the article she wrote, “Becoming Teacher Librarian 2.0”, which contains links to blogs about school library programs and blogs about “the wider world of libraries”. Since this is an older article, some of the blogs are out-of-date but others are still current. I actually started getting lost in the “blog world” for a bit and read quite a bit of interesting/fun  view points. Although the video and article are older than I would like, I feel like the advice is still relevant; ideas such as, being engaged in collaborative communities helps us to model collaborative learning that we want our students to achieve and “… If we wait for the book to be written that answers these [technology] questions for us, we will be too late”. We won’t know all of the answers until we try suggested techniques.

Strategies, tools, resources and networks I can implement to maintain my explorations and development.

Colleagues:

What has been helpful in the past to help me with developing my skills, pedagogy and professional development has been colleagues throughout the district.

In beginning as a TL, it was the other TLs in my school district that were, and still are, my mentors. In our monthly meetings, everyone shares what activities they have been working on in their LLCs and any new initiatives they have heard about. In addition, TLs will email each other to ask for advice or book recommendations and we have taken to calling the group “The Great Brain”.

Our District Teacher Librarian is especially good at introducing new techniques, technologies and resources and then offering professional development workshops. For example, before my maternity leave (a year and a half ago), we had a pro-d workshop on various coding resources. We set up stations to explore technologies such as spheros, bee bots and code-a-pillar, amoung others. Our District Teacher Librarian is a great resource in general; I feel like I can ask her for help in almost anything and she has at least a suggestion.

In addition, for a while we had a District Technology Specialist that made rounds to all of the schools to introduce new technologies and helpful tools. It was really great when he visited my school and I jumped at any opportunity for him to help me out. I find you really need to reach out to those people initially so that they know you are interested in learning more because they don’t really know unless you make the connection. In addition, in situations like this, it is best to prove that you can be flexible or these people might not feel comfortable “popping in”. Once I made the initial contact, making it known that I was really interested in learning more, he would always come to me first to show off new tools. Unfortunately, the position did not continue, like so many of those do, but I will definitely take advantage of those kinds of experts in the future. In addition, even though he has gone back to being a classroom teacher, now that I have that contact, I’m sure I can ask him any questions that I have even if he is no longer in that specific position.

Exploring and experimenting:

I think that part of developing my own skills back in own library environment is trying out new strategies that I have heard of. In the exploration, as I find out what is working and what’s not, I conduct further research to improve the strategy or tweak it so it works for me and my school environment. This also relates to what Brook-Kirkland argues; you can’t wait for the technique to be perfect in order to try it, there may not always be a book outlining an exact way to carry out a technology lesson. I flush out which teachers in the school want to collaborate and try some new strategies, technologies or units. This is the best way to figure out if it is an effective, worthwhile strategy to share with other teachers.

Government resources:

A good resource to regularly check is the Province of British Columbia website. Government resources in general should be reviewed because it aligns educational expectations throughout our province and country and it has to stay current.  At this point in time the Digital Literacy Framework is a useful tool. I like the examples of suggested learning activities to promote digital literacy for different grade levels. In the grade 3-5 suggestions, there are a few I would like to try that would be quite simple to implement. Such as, “Produce a media-rich digital story about a significant local event based on first-person interviews. (C, T, RI, CI)”. I like how this idea is cross-curricular.

School Library Journal:

It seems like any time I type a question concerning the library into a search engine, the answer is provided by the School Library Journal. Oftentimes there is an article that answers my question and offers specific strategies. In addition, it provides more useful resources including links to blogs. It also has up-to-date news stories so TLs can see the current focus items. There are even articles and blogs that focus on professional development. Of course, a big focus for everyone these days is “Pandemic Resources”. This article/blog post, “AASL resources to address the challenges (and expressing your professional voice in reopening)”, I found within the SLJ helps with concerns that I have in returning as a TL after a year-and-a-half absence. I have the experience of teaching as a classroom teacher implementing pandemic safety guidelines but it will be much different as a TL.

Some ways educators and professionals are connecting and sharing their learning.

As I started searching, I realize that I already know many places that provide connections for shared learning with other educators and professionals.

BCTLA:

A really useful local resource is the BCTLA. Through the website, there are so many facets that can be constantly used to maintain professional development as a TL. There is even a professional development section of the website in addition to other helpful aspects such as a Twitter feed with other TLs sharing (I even saw a tweet from our professor!). Like I have already said, since I was teaching grade 4/5 from January until June, I feel a bit out-of-the-loop concerning LCC procedures for COVID-19, I found the article BCTLA COVID LLC Re-Opening especially helpful.
One thing I have been putting off but know I should do is to Become A Member. I was procrastinating about this because until now, I was not completely secure in my TL position but I am now so it is a goal of mine for the fall.

LM_Net:

A resource that was introduced to me through another library course is LM_Net. LM_Net stands for Library Media Network which is a listserv for School Librarians to ask questions and share information. In the course where I heard of this, the professor suggested that we subscribe to the “Digest” email which is more a summary of the main posts/questions and then it limits the number of emails. If you are interested in one of the topics, you can click on that post to read more in order to help or see what other TLs are suggesting.

A Facebook group that was mentioned in an LM_Net post, The School Librarian’s Workshop, which I added to my Facebook just recently, is serving to be quite interesting and handy. I tend to be more of a Facebook than a Twitter user, so I see those posts more often. Other TLs are asking questions and opinions on many topics and the responses are helpful to me as well. In the past few days, there has been good book recommendations for specific topics and needs.  There are even book suggestions for books that are new to me that I am going to investigate.

LibGuides:

LibGuides Community This site, like others I have already mentioned, has many options to explore topics of interest and see what other professionals are doing. What I like about this site is that other librarians at all levels of education have contributed to curated collections on specific topics.

LibraryThing:

I subscribe to LibraryThing, which I also found through another class and it’s free to become a member. Again, so many useful aspects to this site that it can be a bit overwhelming. I don’t remember where or when I heard about this site but I haven’t really had the chance to explore it too much until now. There are options to subscribe to blogs and there is a “Talk” section. Once you log-on, you can make your own lists, like a personal mini-catalog, for book and blogs. In the “discover” list, I clicked on “books” and explored the “early reviewers”which seems very interesting. Apparently, you can sign up to review books but you have to get in at the right time. I did look through the list of July books and it appears to have a good selection for different age groups.

What I can do to maintain connections and networks, to further develop my knowledge, experience and skills.

Once I have completed my library courses, it might be more challenging to maintain the level of professional development techniques that I have been obtaining. In addition, I have so many ideas that I want to try that I have learned through these courses that I intend to try, which might take a while.

Maintaining connections with individuals from the wider TL community, such as the contacts I have made through the UBC courses, will be helpful to have individuals I can ask opinions of. I can do this by keeping the connections made through Twitter and checking in on what others are doing.

In addition, subscribing to more Library Blogs or email newsletters that provide notifications when there is something new helps remind me to take a closer look every once in a while. For example, a blog that I found that I liked the set-up of for possibly my own LLC blog is this one: https://annacrosland.edublogs.org/. I also like the kinds of activities she features.

The trick for me will be to actually remember to continuously check these sites to see what is new. I will have more time to do this once I have finished my courses!

Conclusions:

Up until now, I have felt like the less experienced individual so I could passively pick and choose the professional development that was relevant to me. From this point on, I know as a TL, I am in a Leadership position and I will need to be the one who advocates for which professional development staff should carry out. Therefore, to stay current, I will need to stay connected to a wider community.

References:

BC Teacher-Librarians’ Association. (2020). Retrieved 25 July 2020, from https://bctla.ca/

Brooks Kirkland, A. (2007). Becoming Teacher-Librarian 2.0. Partnership: The Canadian Journal Of Library And Information Practice And Research, 2(1). doi: 10.21083/partnership.v2i1.280

Crosland, A. (2020). annacrosland.edublogs. Retrieved 29 July 2020, from https://annacrosland.edublogs.org/

Digital Literacy – Province of British Columbia. (2020). Retrieved 25 July 2020, from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/teach/teaching-tools/digital-literacy

Fearful Soul. (2020). Facebook Cover Photos [Image]. Retrieved from https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7b/39/50/7b395072c468efcff1f7df439709d4f5.jpg

LibGuides Community. (2020). Retrieved 29 July 2020, from https://community.libguides.com/

LibraryThing | Catalog your books online. (2020). Retrieved 29 July 2020, from https://www.librarything.com/home

LM_NET (Library Media Network). (2020). Retrieved 25 July 2020, from http://www.lm-net.info/

Teacher-Librarian 2.0: The TL as Technology Leader. (2015). [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ble-dbvEerg

 

 

Inquiry Posts, LIBE 477

Creating a Reading Culture: Inquiry Blog post #1

7 Comments

How is reading culture fostered in my school?

I feel like many aspects of creating a reading culture are small everyday items such as making an inviting space where students want to read as well as making books visible and interesting through displays and bulletin boards. It is also through library times in talking about books freely  where students can witness an adult’s enthusiasm for books. The shelving of books in my Library Learning Commons (LLC) has been adapted to ease access and browsing for students through categorizing and genrefying. I’ve also given older students responsibilities in the library so they take ownership and pride in the space and books. I’ve tried book recommendations in several forms. Additionally, students give me book recommendations, I follow-through and get the book. Also, for the older students, I have made library passes so book exchanges can be done when they need or they can come to the library to work or read quietly if there is space available. There is a lot that I already do, big and small, through the LLC, but there is always more that I want to do whether it’s in the back of my mind or something I have not heard of yet.

Current programs that foster a culture of reading at my school:

Several of the programs utilized at my school are actually District-wide. We have a very active group of Teacher-Librarians who meet every month to make sure that our LLCs are fairly aligned in what is offered and promoted; we share good books that we have found and organize activities.

D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything And Read) is a District-wide initiative from the BCTLA. We do this in October and it is a day that we try to involve a larger community, inviting parents to come at the end of the day to read with their children. In the past few years, I have tried to plan this as a bit of an event, having a P.J. day and during D.E.A.R. students can read with students from other classes throughout the school; we put mats out in the gym and the library is fully available. It is a fun time and I like how it gets students mingling with others in a positive way. This year, I have been thinking how it can be adjusted; it could still be P.J. day but we cannot invite parents and students will have to stay in their own classes. Maybe I can read to the entire school on the P.A. or over Zoom or a similar program?

All of the school in our district also celebrate Family literacy week. We try to do activities that fit with the yearly theme. One of the most successful events has been the school-wide games day. We put out mats in the gym and have a different game on each mat. Teachers sign-up throughout the day with a buddy class and students play board games for 30 minutes. It is a really good community-building activity and it’s great to see the older students helping the younger ones.

Battle of the Books is another event sponsored by our District Teacher Librarians. It is for grades 3-5 and there is a selection of 5 books for each grade level. For each grade level, students make teams, read all of the novels, make a team poster, cheer and costume. Teams “battle” by answering recall questions from the selected books. We have a school battle (all student from the school in each grade level), zone battle (teams from 3 different schools that won the school battle) and then a district battle with winners of the zone battles. Each year, the Teacher Librarians discuss if this is something we want to continue as the questions do not require “higher-level” thinking and possibly the competitive aspect turn some students off but we keep doing it. I think it will continue because it encourages students to read high quality books that they may not normally choose and gets some of the “competitive types” to read more when they normally wouldn’t. As well, it is good for students to go to other schools and interact with students from those schools.

Each year the library also hosts a Scholastic Book Fair. This is an event that students look forward to and remember. It gets them excited to read new books, especially when there’s a new Diary of a Wimpy Kid or something like that. I try to make it quite an event by having a raffle, following the yearly theme by decorating the library and dressing up. I show the Book Fair trailers at library times the week before to expose the students to new books that they may not be familiar with. All students come for a browsing time before anybody can buy anything so they all feel like they have an equal chance. I usually have the Book Fair during student-led conference days so that parents can come with their children throughout the day.

For the past two years we have also had a school-wide read-a-thon. The most successful year we tried to make it a really big deal! We had a kick-off assembly where we challenged the students to read a certain number of minutes collectively and if they met the goal the Principle and Vice Principle would dye their hair pink. Throughout the month students were given a paper log to add to a beaver dam we had displayed in the hallway each time the read 100 minutes. By the end of the month, the logs were spilling out of the bulletin board and on the wall down the hallway. Needless to say, the students met their goal and got to witness the pink hair dying. It was pretty exciting!The next year, we tried again but the promotion was lacking so it was like it didn’t even happen. This past spring, another teacher did her own read-a-thon where she added dog bones to a bowl on her class website for students to see. I could also add something like this to a Library Learning Commons blog.

In addition to the larger activities and events, I try to constantly promote literature, books and reading to students. I find if books are “featured”, students tend to choose them more. An idea I got from a professional development workshop from another attendee was “Mo-vember” where Mo Willems books are featured. I read a different book Mo book for each library time and although we have many of his books, I could barely keep them in the library. I noticed my own daughter (who attends the same school) who was in grade 1 at the time, started reading more independently because of it. Once the month was over, the circulation of these books went down as well. For this coming year, I would like to come up with more ideas like this one to feature different kinds of books or authors.

New tools, strategies and resources to encourage and support a school-wide reading program

Author visits:

I know this is not necessarily a “new tool, strategy or resource” per se but I would really like to have more author visits in some shape or form. Just one time since becoming a TL, I have organized an author visit. It was fun because we studied the book before the author visit so that all students were familiar with the book. I would like to organize more author visits but I’m not sure the best avenue to take. I heard that it is best to ask authors to visit when there is some sort of conference close by. Since I live on Vancouver Island, it has been suggested to try to ask presenters from the Vancouver Island Children’s Bookfest.  Even if I could have a virtual author visit it would be cool. I heard of Authors Who Skype for free and have looked at the website in the past and at the time I found it very overwhelming because of all the authors listed with many I had not heard of before. In my search this time I found this site https://www.smore.com/1mzu1-authors-who-skype-free. I think this will come in handy because this person has already made a list of her favourites. I followed the link for Kate Messner because I thought I recognized the name and I do know her books, yippee! (Side note, some of you may be disappointed in me as a TL for not connecting her name with her books right away but I’ve always been bad at remembering author’s names, I remember book titles like crazy but for some reason the author’s names don’t always stick! This is something I need to get better at!).
This might be a good year to try to organize more virtual author visits. I am always up for more suggestions about how to do this if anyone knows more resources for virtual author visits, or if you have organized any before, how did it go?

One School, One Book:

https://readtothem.org/programs/one-school-one-book/

A strategy I would like to try is “One School, One Book” where the entire school reads one story and then plans activities that relate to particular aspects of the book. I heard of this strategy at a professional development workshop at the Superconference a couple of years ago and just haven’t had a chance to try it out because it would need school-wide buy-in and preparation. The workshop facilitator who I heard of this strategy from simply gave an outline of what it entails and did not tell me about the website; I didn’t know about the website until writing this blog post and decided to do an internet search! The website doesn’t give quite as much information about the structure of the program (I think they want you to buy the entire program) but I have been thinking about how I would organize it.

For example, I was thinking about using a book like Wonder because it has multiple “off-shoots” of the text. So, intermediate classes might read the full novel and primary classes might read the picture book version We’re All Wonders:

And then if students are still interested in reading more there is also

365 Days of Wonder: Mr. Browne's Book of Precepts

365 Days of Wonder: Mr. Browne’s Book of Precepts

My library currently has all of these books and multiple copies of the novel. Upon looking at Amazon for images, I also saw a few more books in the Wonder series that we do not have yet.

I’m sure there are other books that would work for this idea, this one came to mind because of the picture book/novel combo and related readings (this was not the original example from the pro-d either, I think it was Harry Potter).

Connected activities could be making book trailers, with iMovie or a green screen app, to share within classes, at an assembly and/or on a library blog! There could also be school-wide activities or stations where students can participate in activities similar to some that happen in the novel such as a Science fair or “nature camp”. The other nice thing about Wonder is that it teaches kindness so there could also be “random acts of kindness” activities or challenges for a determined amount of time.

The interesting part of the website is that it looks like books can be purchased for each child at the school. It may be a bit costly but in discussion in June, some colleagues and I were talking about how the library budget may need to be “reconfigured” this coming year to accommodate changes in school routines. I pointed out that the yearly library budget is allocated to support the needs of the students in that current year, therefore if students are not able to check out print materials as easily as before and online resources will be used more, maybe the library budget should be invested in those. So, if I am re-allocating this year’s library budget away from print materials I would usually buy to keep in the library, maybe there would be enough money to buy a book for every child to have, depending on how much it would cost.

Book Club:

Again, not a new strategy but one I have yet to try is forming a student book club. I know other TLs in my district have book clubs in their LLC but it is mostly in the middle schools.

I feel like students who love to read but may not like the competitive aspects of Battle of the Books would enjoy something like a book club to share their interest with others. Even though I believe students would enjoy a book club, I am tentative to start one because I wonder how much of an investment in time it would be and if it would be popular so I thought I would get a bit of help with ideas. The School Library Journal has this article: How to Run a Successful Kids Book Club  by Heather Booth and it did have some good tips.

Booth suggests to:

  • Start small – a book club can run with a few interested students
  • Find a partner – possibly combine two kinds of clubs? Booth’s example was a Science Book Club.
  • Be an opportunist – if a couple of students are interested in reading the same book, start discussions.
  • Go multimedia – choosing books that also have movies may entice more members.
  • Lead by letting go – let students choose the book and be there to follow-up to encourage more discussion; however, it’s also OK when some students want to come but don’t want to talk.
  • Focus on the end goal – it’s often about more than just the book, it’s also about students finding their voice.

In addition, some of my take-aways from this article are little things like having snacks and games that may connect with the book. Also, if the discussion is slow to start, having a survey or an ice-breaker-type activity may help. Fun follow-up activities like using a green-screen photo-booth may motivate participation as well. So, this coming year, I think I will start some conversations with students that may be interested in starting a book club and see where it takes us. This may also be something that could be carried out as remote learning.

Conclusion:

No matter what, I think that effective programs that foster reading culture need promotion and a way to make it exciting and fun for students.

In my internet exploration, I found this list: 25 Ways to Build Your School’s Reading Culture.  It was reassuring to read this list as I feel that I do all of these and more. In addition, the activities I am considering are also mentioned on the list.

I really love having a busy library where individuals from the entire school community are involved and I’m always interested in finding more ways to do that.

References:

365 Days of Wonder: Mr. Browne’s Book of Precepts 365 Days of Wonder: Mr. Browne’s Book of Precepts. (2020). [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.ca/365-Days-Wonder-Brownes-Precepts/dp/0553499041/ref=sr_1_13?crid=2EKLVI9GGYRL1&dchild=1&keywords=wonder+book+r.j.+palacio&qid=1595367027&sprefix=wonder+book%2Caps%2C227&sr=8-13

Authors who Skype Free!!. (2020). Retrieved 23 July 2020, from https://www.smore.com/1mzu1-authors-who-skype-free

Barrett, L. (2020). 25 Ways to Build Your School’s Reading Culture – WeAreTeachers. Retrieved 24 July 2020, from https://www.weareteachers.com/build-reading-culture/

BC Teacher-Librarians’ Association. (2020). Retrieved 23 July 2020, from https://bctla.ca/

Booth, H. (2018). How To Run a Successful Kids Book Club. Retrieved 24 July 2020, from https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=run-successful-kids-book-club

Kate Messner. (2020). Retrieved 23 July 2020, from https://www.katemessner.com/

Pixabay. (2020). Banner-header-book-shelf-books [Image]. Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/illustrations/banner-header-book-shelf-books-1559400/

Read To Them. (2020). Retrieved 21 July 2020, from https://readtothem.org/programs/one-school-one-book/

We’re All Wonders. (2020). [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=we+are+all+wonders&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Wonder. (2020). [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=wonder+book+r.j.+palacio&crid=2EKLVI9GGYRL1&sprefix=wonder+book%2Caps%2C227&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-o-p_5_11

Assignment 1, LIBE 477

Resource Exploration for Teaching with Digital Technology-Reading Review B

2 Comments

Introduction:

From the key words I identified from Reading Review A, I felt like the concept that should take priority is Digital Citizenship. Digital Citizenship is the first thing I want to teach students in the fall because students cannot really progress productively with other aspects of digital technology unless they know how to use technology responsibly. I want to find new resources that make learning Digital Citizenship fun and meaningful to students in the hopes that they will understand the importance of it. However, I have such an interest in Inquiry-based teaching and learning I found it difficult not to gravitate towards new inquiry lesson ideas. Therefore, the resources I found are a combination of  Digital Citizenship and Inquiry-based resources.

Resource 1:

International Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education
Editors: Joke Voogt, Gerald Knezek. Springer International Handbooks on Education, Volume 20 2008

This is a very information-rich document that could be a little overwhelming upon the first look as just the Table of Contents is 21 pages long. I chose to look at this document from the course resources because the title seemed more specific to what I thought I was looking for. At first, I was looking for ideas for teaching Digital Citizenship but found I was more drawn to the sections that related to inquiry.

The sections of this document that I found most useful gave suggested lesson ideas, websites and teaching documents that I feel I could use right away with students of my target age level (grades 4/5, ages 8-10). The following sections of the document are where I focused:

3.2 Interactive Learning Environments: Review of an Old Construct with a New Critical Twist (p. 231)
Mark Brown 

In this section, Brown explains “Mind Tools for Inquiry” as ways to teach students skills needed to perform successful individual inquiry. I agree that most students are missing the background knowledge, skills and digital literacy necessary to be productive on-line learners.  Therefore,  I constantly seek simple lesson ideas for students to start practicing the fundamental inquiry skills. For example, “The use of mind tools for inquiry might involve students conducting critical internet-based investigations” (p. 243).  I like the suggestions that students “… could use the Web to research a genuine problem or controversial issue and then publish their findings for a wider audience” (p. 243). By doing some searching online, students practice digital literacy in that “Conflicting information from a variety of sources will require students to determine which ones are not only factual, but also trustworthy. Thus, the emphasis is on knowing as opposed to the acquisition of factual knowledge” (p. 243). This relates to Richardson’s point about how school should be changing in that students should be taught how to properly find information from trustworthy sources. I find this to be one of the biggest challenges in students conducting internet research because they usually just choose the first result instead of looking at the title and source of the information to see which one really suits their needs.

3.3 Online Learning Communities in K-12 Settings (p. 249)  
Seng Chee Tan, Lay Hoon Seah, Jennifer Yeo, and David Hung 

At first I wanted to look at this section for “Comparison of the Four Online Learning Communities” (p. 258) but the most useful part of this sections ended up being the suggestion of The Web-Based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) (p. 257). Tan et. al. describe WISE as “a free online environment, where grade 5–12 students can log on to participate in inquiry projects jointly developed by classroom teachers, technologists, natural scientists, and pedagogical researchers” (p. 257). Right away, I liked that it is geared towards my focus age-range so it makes me hopeful that it will be a usable website. In addition, some features of the website are explained:

“1. Cognitive dimension “ It aims to make thinking visible, make science accessible, help students learn from each other, and promote lifelong learning” (p. 257).

“2. Social dimension: Discussion tools such as online asynchronous discussions allow students to interact and learn from each other” (p. 258).

“3. Technological support and infrastructure: In addition to the tools to support social interaction, other tools include Inquiry Map, a step wise procedural guide that serves to scaffold independent students’ inquiry and learning”(p. 258).

The description makes it sound like it would be a useful site that I could use with students so I will review it separately as another resource.

3.5 COMPUTER CONTEXTS FOR SUPPORTING METACOGNITIVE LEARNING  (281). Xiaodong Lin  Florence R. Sullivan

In scanning the document looking for a different section, this graphic caught my eye:

In this graphic, it has many of the same “Steps of Inquiry” that I am familiar with so I read up a bit more on Inquiry Island (http://www.thinkertools.org/Pages/sciwise.html) (White and Frederiksen, 2005). It is explained as “…a science-learning environment that also utilizes a number of design elements to enhance metacognitive understanding including process prompts, model prompts, and collaboration. Inquiry Island is a multiagent environment featuring software advisors related to tasks involved with inquiry, general cognitive, metacognitive, and social aspects of science learning and systems development issues (see Figure 1). (p. 288). This seems like it might be a good way to reinforce the importance of the steps to inquiry and how inquiry is a process that should be followed and skipping steps may result in disappointing results. I did go to look at this site thinking that it might be another good resource but in my explorations of the site it was not obvious how Inquiry Island might work and many of the links that seemed interesting did not work. I still think the graphic is cool and would possibly use it as another visual for students to understand the inquiry process. Maybe by making the steps to inquiry into more of a “journey” students would understand to “follow the path” and avoid skipping to the end.

6.2 Framing IT Use to Enhance Educational Impact on a School-Wide Basis (p. 555).
Peter Twining

What I appreciate about this section is the suggested assessments for ICT because I have found it difficult to concretely assess student learning in this area. I can especially see myself using the “Achievement frameworks” which “… provide a means of ‘measuring’ the quality of learning with ICT” (p. 557). Figure 2 below gives a good idea of simple skills to look for when students use digital technologies.

Overall, I found this a useful document that I would come back to for directing my professional practice.

Resource 2:

WISE (http://www.wise.berkeley.edu/)

I had high hopes for this site as the International Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education explained it as a grade 5-12 resource, it comes from Berkeley and is supported by the National Science Foundation. It is explained as “An Inquiry-based Science Tool” so it would seem to fit with my goals for digital literacy incorporating inquiry-based teaching and learning. Immediately, I was able to register for a free teacher account and start browsing. Upon first glance, I only see units for grades 6 and up so this is a bit disappointing to me; when I registered, there was even an option for Elementary school but maybe Elementary school goes up to grade 7 in many areas. With a teacher account, it seems like there is an option to add a unit to a “class schedule” and in the International Handbook it alluded to the fact that it could be shared with students but it isn’t obvious to me how to do that. In browsing the units, they look good and may have the flexibility to fit with grade 5 curriculum however I think students would need more background knowledge before starting these units. Or, I was thinking the units might be adaptable to fit with Canadian content. In addition, there weren’t as many units to choose from as I thought there would be. There is a “Community built library ” section that  “…contains units that were designed and contributed by WISE community members”(WISE 2020) which is an idea that promotes globalization which I like but again, there were not as many units to choose from as I had hoped .

Overall, this doesn’t seem like an immediately usable resource like I thought it would be. If I were to use it, I would have to do some preparations and adaptations to make it work for my students and situation.

Resource 3:

Common Sense Media for Educators https://www.commonsense.org/education/

Although I looked at some different sites to see if I could find a new site that could be useful, I came back to the Common Sense Media site because it seems to have the most resources that I think students would find the most engaging. With this site as well, I created a free educator account and then could access an assortment of lesson plans in different areas of digital citizenship.

Here are some of the aspects of the site that I like:

  • Variety of lesson plans in many different areas of digital citizenship
  • Grade level choices
  • Interactive activities which include student involvement
  • Engaging age-appropriate videos
  • Options of “quick lessons” and extensions
  • Graphics/slides for visual accompaniment for lessons
  • Acronyms to help students remember important concepts

One lesson I would like to highlight for example is one I found under

Essential Digital Citizenship Lessons for the Coronavirus Pandemic

I was then drawn to the lesson The Power of Words which is supposed to be a grade 3 lesson but it would be useful for grades 4 and 5 as well. Again, there are options for a quick lesson that I find useful because one never knows how much time you will have to teach a lesson as a Teacher Librarian!

Students would find the video engaging although grade 3 students may need some parts read aloud while watching:

This video also introduces that acronym S.T.O.P. that would help students find appropriate ways to deal with online behaviour for themselves and others. This would make sense to students at my school because we also use W.I.T.S. (walk away, ignore, talk it out, seek help) for ways to independently solve in-person conflicts.

There are also interactive activities with accompanying visuals such as this activity that asks students which emoji would fit if “when you walked in, I said to you [in a friendly tone, with a big smile] “Hello!” 

Then students hold up the number of fingers of the corresponding emoji.

I would use this particular lesson first because this is the exact problem I had when I was teaching online; some students think what they say/type is a joke and others take offense and then the situation gets blown out of proportion! As well, I know that situations can get even worse if an individual feels like they are anonymous online and I would hate for any students to get themselves in trouble.

Finally, there seems to be almost an endless assortments of lessons concerning countless aspects of digital citizenship which can be used in succession or stand-alone. I can definitely see myself using this site and lessons in the future.

Resource 4:

Making It Personal: A New Approach to Teaching Digital Citizenship.

 By Alecia Berman-Dry

This periodical discusses using the technique of debate as an approach to teaching digital citizenship for 6th graders. Students come up with different topics or situations relating to digital citizenship and argue their side. For example, “Sixth grader Ryan Martin…argu[ed] that his parents bear no responsibility for his behavior online. Fellow classmate Sophia Kurnot says
that parents should make it their business to manage their children’s online habits, even if it means they have to invade privacy” (p.24). I agree with this author when she states, “As the director of academic technology, I felt that mastering all of the other NETS was not as important as knowing how to use the tools responsibly” (p.24)*. This teacher developed this technique because of the need expressed by parents and the students. By using debate she felt it would ” help
students develop a personal relationship with the issues” (p.24). By making it personal, I think it has more lasting effects on students rather than simply telling students how they should behave. I like how introductory lessons posed thoughtful relevant questions and incorporate actual articles in support. The question example given in the article is “Should a 12-year-old be allowed to have a Facebook page or Instagram account?” (p.24). I think grade 4/5 students would also have strong opinions about questions like this one and enjoy debating. The author expresses that ” Debate allowed us to tap into that desire so students could connect personally with the content” (p.25). As well the author comments that even while focusing on other areas of digital citizenship, teachable moments come up such as a “…student who posted [a] comment admitted that she did not realize what she was doing was cyberbullying, and that allowed us to make a meaningful distinction between the impact insults can have online versus in person” (p. 25). I feel that this is one of the biggest problems that I have encountered with students using social media-like programs where they can interact with others.

Although this technique is geared towards using with 6th graders, I think it could be adapted for grade 4/5 students. There are so many skills that students practice with a technique like this aside from critically thinking about digital citizenship such as supporting their opinions with facts and opinion writing techniques. In addition, students are learning how to “disagree agreeably” and take turns speaking, which is a difficult skill to master even for some adults! I can see using this technique as follow-up to lessons such as the ones found on the Common Sense Media site and then having some of these topics as inquiry.

Resource 5:

ISTE STANDARDS FOR STUDENTS

https://www.iste.org/standards/for-students

In reading the above article, I noticed it was published by ISTE mostly because there was quite a large “advertisement” at the end of the article. This looked important so I decided to check it out.

*I had to look up what NETS is in order to understand which standards Alecia Berman-Dry was referring to in her article. It stands for National Education Technology Standards; it seems like there are technology standards for students and teachers and it is connected to ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). Surprisingly, this is the first time I have ever heard of any of NETS or ISTE! Maybe it’s because it is based in the U.S.?
The graphic below displays the standards for students.

These standards reminded me of the NTCE 21st Century Literacies that Richardson discusses (p.177) and I feel like they could be connected or possibly by meeting these stardards, students could achieve the literacies.

I’m glad that I decided to look into this site because I feel like it is another good resource. Not only does it give the standards but it also gives ideas for ways students can achieve the competencies. This is yet another resource that could take ages to explore and I plan to look more deeply at it. For each standard, there are lists of resources and ways to understand more about each; it also includes  more information on my personal topics of interest such as Digital Citizenship and Knowledge Constructor.

Conclusions:

These resources incorporate two of my key interests of Digital Citizenship and Inquiry-based teaching and learning. The resources I like the best can be adapted to combine teaching Digital Citizenship with Inquiry-based skills.

It seems like all of the lessons I am finding can be carried out in classrooms if the library is not available for student use in the fall; however, if learning returns online again, some of these lessons might be difficult to distribute or need quite a bit of modification.

Even with a quick glance and by skimming these resources I can see myself using them. In addition, as I have addressed, these resources are information-rich and I feel like they could be explored more extensively and find more useful components.

References:

Apple Images. (2020). ISTE-NETS-students [Image]. Retrieved from http://images.apple.com/education/docs/Apple-ISTE-NETS-Students.pdf

Berman-Dry, A. (2013). Making It Personal: A New Approach to Teaching Digital Citizenship. Learning & Leading with Technology, 41(1), 24–26.

Essential Digital Citizenship Lessons for the Coronavirus Pandemic | Common Sense Education. (2020). Retrieved 16 July 2020, from https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/essential-digital-citizenship-lessons-for-the-coronavirus-pandemic

Common Sense Media. (2020). The Power of Words [Video]. Retrieved from https://d1pmarobgdhgjx.cloudfront.net/education/PowerOfWords_NewBumper.mp4

Common Sense Media. (2020). Which emoji fits? [Image]. Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LC3dpRP6mXBZkB8oe3hGMWkJUhunO9e5gU6g8WlUQsk/edit#slide=id.g3da8846a99_1_0

ISTE Standards for Students | ISTE. (2020). Retrieved 19 July 2020, from https://www.iste.org/standards/for-students

Needpix.com. (2020). Header, banner, head, display, dummy, board, face, technology, think, human [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.needpix.com/photo/439241/header-banner-head-display-dummy-board-face-technology-think-human

Richardson, W. (2012). Why School?: How Education Must Change When Learning and Information Are Everywhere (Kindle Single) . TED Conferences. Kindle Edition.

ThinkerTools Research Group. (2020). Inquiry Island [Image]. Retrieved from http://www.thinkertools.org/Pages/sciwise.html

Voogt, J., & Knezec, G. (2008). International handbook of information technology in primary and secondary education. Berlin: Springer.

WISE: Web-based Inquiry Science Environment. (2020). Retrieved 19 July 2020, from https://wise.berkeley.edu/