To highlight all the new learning we have done in this course, all 30 of us, I have created a Wordle. I have tried to include all the new terminology covered these past 3 weeks:

LIBE 477B Course Concepts

In contrast, here is the Wordle I made the first day, after our introductions:

I have a few videos to sum up my take on ICT in Teacher Librarianship. They are both focused on educational reform and support technology and inquiry, while advocating for teacher presence in education.

What is 21st Century Education? (posted Mar 2012, visited July 2013)

21st Century Education in New Brunswick (posted April 2010, visited July 2013)

Education Edvolution (posted May 2011, visited July 2013)

Thanks to this course, I have now found a reason to use Twitter! At the moment, I have half as many followers as I do followees, and checking my twitter feed at least once a day.

I never realized we are such a communication-needy society! As individuals, we spend more time (and money) engaged in communication technology than most other forms of technology. Communication does not need technology to be successful, but it certainly expands our network. Our need to connect kind of mirrors our need to ‘travel’.

Reflections on my job as a learning leader: literacy expert, collaborator, connector
-I need to connect, share, and create with more teaching tools to boost my ICT skills
-I need to provide collaborative space on my library website (for teachers and students)
-I need to continue to provide literature rich experiences for my students, both individually and classroom wide (Shelfari, Battle of the Books – thanks Lisa!)

Reflections on ICT
Wlkiblogging – Not currently a word, but if it were…. The collective act of many people quickly sharing ideas on blogs, during presentations. This is what we have been doing during LIBE477B 951 presentations via the Blog Forum.

First, about last night:

For comedic and cathardic relief if nothing else, I will share what it is like staying overnight in a sleep clinic. Because of chronic insomnia that began several years ago, I am now so sleep deprived on a somewhat random basis, that my doctor sent me to the sleep clinic to figure out what is wrong.

First observations:
Why are these women (and a guy) sitting next to me in the waiting room with knapsacks and plastic bags. Realization-oh! they are patients like me. And some of them will be my room mates. Good God.
That bed is way too cold, hard and skinny for anyone (let alone an insomniac) to sleep in it.
There are a LOT of wires coming out of the wall.
The hallway chair looks pretty comfortable, I wonder if I can stay up and work on my assignments all night.
I should have brought my earplugs.

Doni at Sleep Clinic July 18, for viewing purposes only – not to be copied or saved to any device, please!

Data Collection:
It took nearly 30 minutes to hook me up with all the electrodes they needed to measure my heart, pulse and breathing rates; eye, leg, and diaphragm movement; and brain activity. It was nearly midnight when I was ready to ‘sleep’. On that stiff, cold plastic lined bed. With strange hospital sounds, and strangers nearby. Watching me. All night long. Needless to say, it took awhile to fall asleep!
End result: I did sleep, albeit off an on, and now there is data for my doctor to analyze. And they supplied earplugs!

About Networking:
I also want to comment on my PLN. I have been in pretty regular communication with my Superintendent (The Culture of Yes blogger, Chris Kennedy) this past year, as he is an adamant supporter of teacher librarians. I was pleasantly surprised when he became a follower of me this past week on Twitter. I sent him a personal message today regarding school reform and the move away from letter grades. And he got back to me within the hour! Twitter is my new friend.

About Future Visions Project:
I am so excited to have something in place to use next year and I can’t wait to collaborate with my district teacher librarians on: How Can Teacher Librarians Support Teachers Using Inquiry?
Moving forward from our Grant Application, I would like to immerse myself in Inquiry research and practice this year so I can better support teachers and students in my school. I would also like to adapt my library website to incorporate the links I have created on inquiry research, projects, and kid-searchable websites.
Somethings that have stayed with me this week, to serve as reminders in the year to come:
Technology is not just a tool; use it as a means to an end rather than an end in itself
ICT is constantly evolving; be open to change and seek opportunities to lead the change in my learning community
seek out and connect with other learning leaders; always be willing to learn a new way to do something, to see an advantage to change

in response to our project: How Can Teacher Librarians Support Teachers with Inquiry Projects.
The research process for this project was both interesting and time consuming. I spent approximately 10 hours reading texts:
Engaging Readers and Writers With Inquiry
The Essential Questions Handbook
The 10 Series Inquiry Club Guide and several accompanying ’10 Series’ books
and, Q Tasks.
These books gave me a deeper understanding of how and why to do Inquiry projects. I designed one Inquiry project for Social Studies: Government to use as a template for future inquiry designs, and also to ‘go through the process’ myself. The plan I cam up with is pretty general, and can be used for the grade 3 or 6 social studies curriculum. The more practice I have with reframing the PLOs into Enduring Understandings, and designing overarching Guiding Questions, the better able I will be to assist the teachers and students as they work through an Inquiry.

My group and I spent several hours discussing the parameters of our project (teacher and student needs regarding Inquiry, directions of our schools plans, technology available in our schools) and the best possible platform to host our links. A few of us decided to place our project on our existing library websites, but this is something I will do in the Fall, after conferring with my district TL team, (who I will be working with on a district Grant proposal) and after getting ‘write’ privileges to my library website.

Our project will be delivered to staff and students via links on our website under the following categories:
Overview
Background and Theory
Examples of Inquiry Projects
Kids Websites for Inquiry Research
Reading and Writing Inquiry Club
Each category has links to web-based resources as well as books we have in our libraries. It is our feeling that teachers will find this organization of information relevant and easy to access. Because this project is the basis of the Grant our district TLs have applied for, the information and organization I have laid out may change. We want our district websites to have a common feel, with common tabs for teachers and students to access. Our feeling is that teachers will be accessing these links primarily, but in the event that students or parents want to check them out, we wanted to make our transference of information transparent, and the language accessible to everyone in our community.
I am looking forward to the final stages of developing this project with my district TLs!

For this project, our group (Harj, Karen, Lisa, Doni) is working on the topic: How Teacher Librarians Can Support Teachers in Inquiry Projects. We came up with a few questions to focus us on our pursuit.

How do we come up with the Guiding Questions? (and enduring understandings/significant concepts, final project, backwards plan)
How do we create scaffolding sheets, assessment rubrics?
How do we use technology/apps in our inquiry projects?
What are the parameters/limitations within our school?
What curricular subjects are we going to focus on?
What is the IB learner profile?
How do we advertise/present our knowledge to teachers?
How do we advertise to our students?

Based on our goals, we found some websites to help teachers understand and plan inquiry units:

Calgary Science School
www.IBO.org
http://pbl-online.org

…and some books:

Wilhelm, Jeff. Engaging Readers and Writers with Inquiry, Scholastic, 2007.
Why are School Buses Yellow?

…as well as some research based sites for students to use (thanks Kate!):

Sweet Search
DOGO News
Wonderopolis
BibMe

At least two of us are still planning to modify our library website by providing tabs that direct teachers and learners to Inquiry Research and Inquiry Projects. Since our school community already uses our library website to search for books and online references, we wanted these links on Inquiry to be readily accessible on this platform.

Chartwell Elementary School has almost a 2:1 student /device ratio (when the laptops and iPads are all working and wireless is running smoothly!). With this technologically rich environment, we want ICT skills to be embedded in our Inquiry projects. Notwithstanding, we value hands-on tools and apparatus in research too – such as the rocks and minerals inquiry project we did last year that saw our students analyzing and testing hand samples against identification booklets.

I envision the teachers (and I) using laptop projectors and the Internet to show students how to begin researching their topics. The students will then use laptops in both the classroom and the library for their research. We may use blogs or email for students to share ideas and collaborate with a larger community base, for part of their inquiry (parent leads, community topic experts, other blogs, etc). Laptop projectors will also be used for students to present their work.

In terms of Considering the Learners for this project, I am identifying the parameters of a K-7 public school with BC core curriculum. Our school is a Unicef-chartered Rights Respecting School, with a strong Virtues program. We also cater to several dozen cultures and languages. We are located in an economically wealthy district, with strong technological support from both the district and families. In our school of 243 students, we have 2 iPad carts , 3 laptop carts, and 2 laptop projection stations. There are also short-throw projectors in the 3 grade 6/7 classrooms. This technological equipment is in constant use, and as teacher librarian, my role is largely becoming one of supporting teachers in digital literacy and research skills.

Inquiry has been a buzz word in our district for the past few years, with 3 of our schools (out of 14) moving to IB programming – primary and middle years programs (PYP and MYP). Our district considers itself the ‘premier place for learning’, and has carved a place for itself among schools that are locally and internationally competitive. Perhaps this is because of the affluence of the district, or because there are several Privates Schools in the area to compete with the 7223 students that currently attend our schools (as of May 2012)*.

• School District 45 Achievement Contract:

Considering the recent research to support inquiry based learning, our district and school goals, which specifically outline inquiry learning, and our technological resources to support digital literacy, this project of How Can Teacher Librarians Support Teachers and Learners is a timely one. I envision my learners gaining deeper understandings, interest and confidence in their learning while working on an inquiry project with a learning group, and a teacher ‘guide on the side’.

After the past couple of weeks in this course, I now have more web based tools and recommended blogs than I know what to do with! I have been busy curating websites, videos, and blog posts on MindMeister, Pearltrees, Storify and Live Binder It, building my Personal Learning Network with Twitter and Yammer, and really trying to find a balance between learning and sharing/research and creating.

Thankfully, we are encouraged to work in a group for this Vision Project as I (usually) always learn better in a group. Our group’s focus is on How Can Teacher Librarians Support Teachers and Students in the Inquiry Process? At this stage of planning, I am really trying to narrow down a platform in which to present my project, to best advertise my role to teachers in my school. I am considering what they will be most comfortable with using, what will they see as a viable go-to resource, and be able to implement in their classrooms. The thing I keep coming back to is my role has to be seen as necessary, beneficial, and straightforward. Our district is embracing inquiry in our school plan this year, and teachers are encouraged to use inquiry strategies at all schools. But, it has to be seen as something that saves time and is easy to do, and that is where my role comes in.

After conferring with our group, most of us have decided to go with using our own library website as the platform, and providing links to various inquiry based resources. Our thinking was that teachers and students are (or should be) used to going to our library site to research the OPAC and online databases such as World Book, and so putting a our links there (to show theory and examples of inquiry based learning) would make sense. Also, I would like to make this information shared among the 10 elementary schools in my district as the we are applying for an Innovation Grant to find and implement How Can Teacher Librarians Support Inquiry in Schools?

I’m also thinking that providing a collaboration space on our district site (email distribution list, Yammer, or collaboration group) will be helpful for us TLs to share resources, and post assessment rubrics or other things that are ‘in process’. Teachers can form part of this group as they wish, so to keep the conversations transparent and resources relevant.