As discussed previously in my other blog, I decided to create a blog to document my inquiry into making a library blog.  As demonstrated in our class, we learn more when we get to learn from others; no person is an island.  Therefore, I hope this blog, through social interaction, will help me reflect and improve my library blog.  In this blog, I have included some of the blogs I have written for this course and also some new elements I wanted to incorporate as well.  I decided to include a segment called “ICT Experiments.”  As a teacher that is really beginning to use ICT, it would hopefully be beneficial for other teachers to see how I came to use certain resources.  My first blog post is about royalty free photographs.  I talked about my experiences with my two favourite royalty free websites and how they worked for me.  I specifically did not call it a review because I do not feel like I an expert in this area.  I just wanted to show others my experiences.  I am looking forward to bringing others with me on this journey and learning and improving through them.

Here is the link to my blog:

http://wonderdiscoverlearn.wordpress.com/

This is the link for my school library blog:

http://cunlib.wordpress.com/

Thank you Jenny!  I learned a lot through this course and appreciated your patience and guidance.

Where did this journey begin and where has it ended?  I started with a vision of having a school blog.  I think just the idea made me excited.  From my experience in school, whenever you tell students that they are using technology that day, there will always be a greater level of excitement, even if it was just watching a video about almost anything.  To me, having a blog, seemed the “cool” thing for a teacher-librarian would do.  However, as I continued with my project, I realized a blog would just be another use of technology for the sake of technology if I didn’t have vision for its use.

Like many of the students in our class who has used this image from Tina Barseghian’s “Good Read: Technology is a Tool, Not a Learning Outcome”, I wanted to have the “right answers’.

RAISE AWARENESS

For and foremost, I wanted to raise awareness of what the library can offer the school.  I decided to use this balloon theme for the blog because it gave a sense of joy and discovery.  Furthermore, I wanted the blog to project a sense of familiarity as the image looks almost like something about of a picture book.  With regards to linguistic cognitive domain, I wanted to associate something that may be unfamiliar (i.e., the blog) with something familiar (i.e., picture books) to them.

I know that many of the parents and students come in to use the library space before and after school.  Other than looking at books, they might not have had the chance to explore aspects of the library that do not occupy physical space.  Therefore, I decided to introduce the “24 Hour Library” tab on the top of my blog.  In the page, I have included links to my district’s online resources, including databases and some useful links that the school community might want to use at home.  I hope to introduce these online resources in other blog posts so that they have a greater understanding of how to use them.  Furthermore, as they are introduced to students in the school, they will use it at home for their school work.

START CONVERSATIONS

A teacher-librarian’s livelihood at a school is largely dependant on how well he or she serves his or her patrons.  Using his or her professionally judgement, a teacher-librarian should be able to deliver a library program that honours his or her vision.  However, a library program is not viable if it is not serving the patrons.  That is why I feel it is important to allow the patrons to voice their opinions about what they expect from a teacher-librarian and the library.  I decided to create a Wordle type visual to sum up what I value in my job.  Patrons can then add to that conversation to help me better develop as a teacher-librarian in the school.  The same idea works with the “What is your favourite book?” conversation.  Their answers will influence my book buying and hopefully, also start conversations between members of the school community about reading. It is these conversations that I hope will promote reading in our school.

FIND ANSWERS (TO THEIR QUESTIONS)

Inquiry-based learning is at the core of teacher-librarians.  With the move towards personalized learning, we are not responsible for teaching students what to learn any more, but how to learn.  Therefore, I wanted the creation of this blog, not only to be an inquiry project for me, but for the possible users as well.  I want them to wonder how they could contribute to making the blog better.  This will lead to the creation of a feedback form where they could submit comments about the blog.  I created a tab on the top of the blog about inquiry-based learning where I have created a video explaining the concept.  I have also created links to some useful search engines which can start conversations about what is the best search engines for students.  It is their contributions that will make the blog better.

Reflection

I am excited about starting conversations with my school community using my blog.  However, I am still feeling anxious about whether these dialogues will really start.  Will I feel defeated and resort to old habits if the blog is not successful?  What is success for me with regards to this blog?  How realistic should my goals be?  Will these goals evolve with time?  I am sure, like every entrepreneur that first markets their product, their is a period of total uneasiness.  What if the product doesn’t sell? What am I going to do?

Sometimes these thoughts weigh on my mind, especially since the future of teacher-librarians as a professional is at a crossroads right now.  I feel like I have to work hard because what if my job no longer exists as an entity anymore.   However, I am comforted by the thought that I would have hopefully tried my best.  I do not know the origin of this quote, but it deftly explains my feelings about my future as a teacher-librarian.

Life is like a camera. Just focus on what’s important, capture the good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don’t turn out – take another shot.

In the midst of working on my school library blog, I realized that it was important to focus on the process.  Creating a blog is an ever evolving process.  It is continually shaped by its readers and the writer of the blog.  With this in mind, I found one of the struggles I had with creating my blog was I was not able to get input on the usability of the blog till the beginning of the year.  Therefore, since the direction of my blog was based on the readers, it was difficult to move forth without any feedback.  For example, as I created my page for the 24 hour library, which included links of the school’s online resources, it was difficult to determine how to much include because I did not know the extent of their background knowledge with regards to this topic.  I did not want to include too much information and resources in case this topic was unfamiliar to them. Including too much on this page might distract them from using the website if it became too complicated.  Since my school community consisted mostly of ESL learners, I wanted to include links through visuals. I decided to keep the text at a bare minimum.

At this of point creating my blog, I felt like I reached I standstill in what to add next.  After a discussion with Jenny, maybe it was time to stop focusing all my attention on what I needed to add to the blog.  Instead, like artists do, it was time to step and reflect on what I have created.  This pushed me to create a blog documenting my journey of using ICT in my library.  To be honest, I have considered starting a blog many times in my life.  I thought it would a nice way to document and record my life.  It would has be a good platform to share and learn from others.  However, the fears of exposing all my vulnerabilities have always stopped me.  I felt inspired once again to re-think this idea because it would be an excellent platform to share my learning and become a better teacher-librarian through input from other professionals and readers of the blog.  This point was clearly demonstrated in how much my vision for my library has evolved since I began this class.  With the knowledge imparted from our class, I feel so much more confident with my choices as a teacher-librarian in the future.  Sometimes, it was definitely a humbling experience to listen to my classmates but it was also comforting to have them as a support system as well.  You never know where your life will take you.  This class has really motivated me to continue pushing me forward in my journey to becoming a better teacher-librarian.

http://youtu.be/Pjn6YkCY2yA

• organizational tool that I think might be useful for teachers-librarians because there are some aspects to the job, from buying books to collaborative teaching
• it is like carrying file cabinet of all your post-its and files with you wherever you go
• you can access it from a desktop computer, tablet or smartphone and they can be all synced to each other
• place you can save everything into notes, this could include checklists, URLs, articles, photos, random thoughts and pdfs

Through my library blog, I hope to facilitate conversations about how technology can be used in a school setting.  I hope that through using my blog they can develop their own uses for ICT and learn through using.  For example, their navigation of my blog might spark an interest for them to start a blog, give them some ideas about how they want to format their blog, or even bring them to a new site.

With regards to technology, here are some of the aspects that I considered while making my blog.

Blogging Platform

I have decided to host my site using WordPress.  Before I settled down to using WordPress, I looked at some our blogging websites, like Weebly. There are obvious advantages and disadvantages to each website and it would be difficult to say at this point whether I have made the right choice.  Being relatively new at blogging, I feel like at some point, you just have to dive in and start experimenting.  It is easy to get bogged down by the fact that you have to create a perfect product before you publish anything. I feel that learning is always a process and you only get better through experimentation and constructive criticism.  Having said that, I feel that I decided to choose WordPress because it was a platform I was familiar with from taking this course.  It also supported static pages which would useful for basic information about the library and blog pages which would be useful for promoting ongoing events in the library.  Lastly, I did not have to pay for some important features, like privacy settings, which is a bonus.

Theme

I decided to use this balloon theme from WordPress as my theme.  I liked that balloons give the impression of discovery, joy, and are uplifting. These are essentially qualities that I would like those that visit my blog to feel.  It is also the vision I have for my library.  Moreover, I liked how this theme gave a more “cartoonish” feel, which most elementary school children can associate with.  Parents might also feel more comfortable with a website that gave off a more welcoming atmosphere.

Inquiry-Based Learning

As I mentioned above, I wanted to create a blog that facilitated conversations about the use of ICT in learning.  Therefore, I created several blog posts showing how I have used ICT to deliver the my vision for my library.  I chose to use three different formats, including a straightforward written posts, visual, and a multimedia presentation.  I thought this would give the users an overview of what they could use ICT for.

As ICT is changing how we are interacting with our world, I find it particularly hard to pinpoint exactly the role of a teacher-librarian.  I think it is not dedicated by my own vision for the library, but by the users as well (i.e., there would be no need for my position if I had no users). Therefore, I decided to pose the question of “What is a Teacher-Librarian?” on my blog.  I decided to create a visual with words using Tagxedo to illustrate my vision of a teacher-librarian.  The visitors to my blog can then evaluate my choice of words and also add to my Tagxedo. Each month, I hope to create a new Tagxedo with the words I get in the comments.  Hopefully, seeing that their comments contribute to a real-life example will motivate them to contribute to the blog as well.

Cunningham Library Blog

Create your own mind maps at MindMeister

In our class, we have been talking about the importance of why we use ICT in our teaching.  I decided to use the MindMeister mapping resource to create a map showing all the possible users and the motivating factors behind their use of my blog.  As I am a visual learner, I really found this mind map particularly useful in giving me an overview of what I needed to do to make this blog successful.  Successful meaning that it would be a platform where we could start conversations between school community members about learning in the 21st century.  What role do they want the teacher-librarian to have in the school?  I want to facilitate this discussion where normative practice in schools will be evolving with the digital age. Especially with teachers, as discussed in class, we will become “irrelevant” if we do not evolve.  Furthermore, the statement that Jenny made in class about teachers becoming a niche like vinyl records really hit home.  This is not another passing trend in teaching.  This is a revolution that has permeated our society and we can no longer choose to stand still bystanders.

After creating the mind map, it gave me a greater sense of direction for my blog.  However, in another sense, it completely overwhelmed with how much ground I needed to cover if I were to possibly meet the needs of all the users.  First and foremost, I realized that these were presumptions I had about my possible audience.  When I begin to work in my school, many of these presumptions may be refuted as well.  Secondly, since it would be a too arduous task to reach all possible readers, I think it will important to focus on the immediate school community (i.e., the staff and students) first because they are the ones I interact with everyday.  Their contributions and usage of the school blog will indirectly effect those not in the immediate school environment too.  For example, a student may show their parents the books I have been purchasing for the school and this may encourage them to comment on the blog as well.  Lastly, I realized that usability and consideration of the linguistic cognitive domain will be huge factors in reaching all members of the school community. This will be especially relevant as the school has a high ESL population. Overall, I think this mind map will help drive start my blog and will continue to evolve as I work with the school community in the future.

Initially, when I read that we were going to focus on design considerations, I thought we would just be thinking about the visual elements of the blog (e.g., colour, pictures, and format).  Of course, these are important to the visual appeal of a blog.  However, after searching the Internet, I found that it was simply the process of working together to come up with the components to learn how to design something better (i.e., designing through learning).  After getting into my topic inquiry group to discuss how we were all going to approach our project, I discovered the power of working collaboratively and importance of social interaction.  No wonder teacher-librarians talk so much during gatherings!

Before today, I had pretty much decided to create a blog using Weebly. From the summative presentations, it seemed like the best choice for a school blog.  It seemed easy to use, you could create static and scroll though pages, and students could create their own pages on the blog as well.  However, we started to discuss how we would design our blogs with regards to privacy of student content.  How would we post photos of student work on the blog to share with parents without sharing it with the whole world as well?  What kind of permissions do we need from parents with regards to posting their child’s work on a blog?  Who should we give access to the blog?  Who can comment on the blog?  A few of us who had already begun to sign up for a Weebly account suddenly stopped and began to reflect on the vision for our blog.  Ultimately, we realized that our vision would dictate the kind of privacy settings we would have for our blog.

This whole process allowed me to reflect on why people created blogs.  It is a form of social media.  It is place where people gather to socialize.  The person who creates this place is responsible for keeping it a safe and inclusive environment where others feel comfortable to contribute and interact with each other.  I realized this was an important task if I wanted this blog, like the library, to be the hub of learning in the school.  We started to research the privacy setting available to us on the different blogging platforms.  It turned out that Weebly didn’t allow for password protection of pages unless you purchased a pro subscription.  Wordpress allowed many more security features for free.  As an educator with very little funding, a free service is always an asset.  Furthermore, WordPress has a Canadian site which will help put to ease some staff and parent’s reservations with regards to having students content kept in other countries.  As a whole, I realized the importance of reflecting throughout the process of creation instead of just charging ahead with pure enthusiasm as my guide.

The term “inquiry based learning” is used frequently in all teacher-librarian courses at UBC.  We learn that it is an essential role of the 21st century teacher-librarian to facilitate students in finding answers to real-life problems.  However, when a term is used outside the university classroom, I find that I develop even deeper understanding of how I can use it in my teaching.  Through our topic inquiry this week, I really understood the process of inquiry learning and the passion that one can bring to a topic with real-life implications.  It made me think how I could explain the importance of this type of learning to my new school community in a way that would be easy to understand.

Learning can happen anywhere.  For me, it happened while I was looking for a place to eat the other night.  I have been trying to find the best pizza place in the Vancouver for the last year.  Suddenly, it occurred to me that I was doing inquiry based learning using ICT.  I am using BCTF’s “The Points of Inquiry” as the framework for this inquiry.   The quest for the best pizza started with me “wondering” if I could find pizza similar to the kind I had in Italy.  Italian food and eating are being both passions of mine. This led me “investigate” this real-life problem using a variety of sources, including ICT.  I looked up the word “pizza” using restaurant recommendation apps (e.g., Foursquare and Yelp) to locate and read reviews of possible pizza restaurants I wanted to try.  At the restaurant, I “constructed” my assessment of the pizza based on the criteria I used for previous pizza restaurants.  I then “expressed” my opinion to my others and “reflected” on where it stood in my ranking for best the pizza in the Vancouver.  Then, the process began again when I visited the next pizza restaurant.

Having gone through this week’s inquiry on the various aspects of creating a school library blog, I realized an important role the blog will play is supporting the vision I had as teacher-librarian in the school. Facing a school that had only begun to use ICT in inquiry-based learning, I had to get my message through in a simple and understandable way. This idea particularly resonated with me as I was listening to my fellow classmates reflect in their summative presentations today the importance of getting others to not get caught up in the novelty of the ICT devices. Instead, as Michelle stated in her presentation, we needed to focus on the “why” of using in ICT devices in the classroom.  As the example of the best pizza inquiry indicated, inquiry-based learning happens all the time in everyday life.  As discussed in class, focusing on the linguistic cognitive domain, I needed to use their “methods to understand my methods.”  An idea I have for making inquiry-based learning using ICT easier to understand is to use a real-life example (i.e., best pizza inquiry) using some form of ICT (i.e., iMovie).  This could be then be included in a blog post about my role in the library.

After finding the definition for “world library”, I realized that it was a library, but just put into a different format, a “digital library.”  This is “a library where the collection and services are in a digital form and/or accessed digitally.” This could be in the form of online databases, world online catalogues, to the more comprehensive view of the entire internet as a digital library. In this sense, I feel that the traditional philosophy of teacher-librarians teaching students to select, find, and evaluate resources has not changed. It is the scope and format of the resources which have changed.  Obviously though, since the size of the world library cannot truly be measured, the dangers and pitfalls that come with it increase exponentially as well.  Furthermore, a new format also means that the user might probably encounter problems never faced before.  Therefore, teaching information literacy is really important job of current teacher-librarians.

Since teaching the students about information literacy is so vital to their life as a student, my school library blog would be an ideal place to start conversations about how to use the world library and the issues we might run into while using it. Ultimately, it would be ideal for all the teachers to commit to a unit about information literacy other than learning some basics during the library orientation at the beginning of the school year. However, since information literacy will be integral to most of the work they do in the library, it should also be interwoven into all their learning using ICT.

Going into a new school, it would be great to get an overview of what they already know about using world libraries. In the beginning, I thought I would provide them some links to some digital libraries and some resources about information literacy. However, after being immersed in how this course was set up, I understand the importance of inquiry based learning. I found the information “sticks” more when you find answers to real life questions that you are interested in. I think it would be worthwhile to start asking some “big questions” about using ICT on my blog. It could be a question as simple as “What is the world library?” As part of my library orientation I could start teaching these research skills by showing them how to get onto my blog and adding their answers to this question onto my blog. A physical format could be also provided on a bulletin board with post-it notes as well, to broaden the scope of people who will see it. I hope these conversations will continue throughout the year and will allow me to know how it has helped their learning of ICT.

Resources

What’s a Digital Library?

For me, I find that theoretical knowledge always imparts more clarity when applied to real life situations.  While I was listening and trying to “soak in” all the theoretical knowledge the last few classes, I thought about how they played out in previous schools I have worked at.  In the last few years, as policies are beginning to show up for the use of ICT, I have felt the normative and coercive forces at play within school communities.  For some of the teachers who use some ICT resources in their personal lives, for the most part, these policies were welcomed because it was already something they were familiar with.  However, for some staff, who did use ICT resources in their personal lives, I get the feeling that they feel somewhat coerced into teaching it.  These policy can create a sense of division within a school.  Now, it seemed like those who might not have wanted to email, for example, suddenly, had no choice but to use some of form of ICT.  In our discussion of institutional isomorphism, I really feel that the teacher-librarian has become a major player in managing and sustaining this evolution of ICT policies from a more coercive practice to a normative one.

From this perspective, I feel that as a teacher-librarian, my job is to develop trust between all members of the school community to embrace this change.  I really connected with the point brought about the “linguistic cognitive domain”, and how we needed to use our language to use their methods to understand our methods.  In turn, this will allow us to develop on the grounds of safe and trusting environment to move forward from.  This idea really resonated with me because I found many teachers do not understand the role of the teacher-librarian as a facilitator of 21st century learning.  I think many of the friction and hesitation between staff members over the adoption of ICT really comes from ignorance.  Even though the government has started to develop policies about the use of ICT, there has not been a lot of support for its adoption in the school environment.  Honestly, if I did not choose to pay and attend these classes at UBC,  I might have the same reservations about ICT and how to deliver it to students as well.

Starting out in a new school in September, I feel that it is important to develop this trust with the school community with regards to the use of ICT.  At the staff meeting, I want to present the staff with my vision for the library, my experiences with ICT, and the role of the teacher-librarian as a ICT facilitator.  I feel that this important because without this understanding, from personal experience, teachers do not know with what mindset to approach teacher-librarians to collaborative on projects. I found that in my previous school that once they understood my role, they felt more comfortable approaching me for projects and ask me to teach them about certain ICT resources.  Furthermore, I think it is also really important to be open to the needs of the school, and not be judgemental about where the school community current state of ICT knowledge is at. With that mindset, I think it allows everyone to develop and grow in a safe environment as learners of 21st century teaching.