After our discussion today, two things became clear to me:
1. I need to apply for an Innovation Grant for a Teacher Librarian Inquiry project
2. I need to dialogue with my superintendent (email, tweet) about other districts who are not reporting letter grades this year (the discussion for this will follow in a subsequent post)
First, I went to our district website and found the grant application for a Learning Team. Several TLs in my district are interested in forming a Learning Team for the 2013/14 school year to : explore ways in which Teacher Librarians can lead/assist teachers and students in Inquiry Projects. My goal for the end of this week is to fill out the application form on behalf of our TL group, and send it to the others for editing. When this is done, I will submit it to the Grant Committee.
After filling out an application, we need to commit to the following:
1. Attend a Facilitators’ Workshop
2. Collect baseline data
3. Work over the course of the year on a key question
4. Assess progress and plan for “Next Steps”
5. Attend six meetings annually to facilitate, plan, explore, and share inquiry focused projects (maintain minutes of these meetings for submission at project’s end)
6. Answer the Questions:
How is this project Innovative?
Who was involved in the project?
What happened as the project unfolded?
How does this fit with school/district/professional goals?
Many of our schools have a goal to teach with Inquiry next year; TLs should be supporting teachers and students as we take on this goal. An Innovation Grant will support us in this endeavor by providing release time (up to $3500 per team). Along with our passion and talents for 21st Century teaching and learning, this support time will help our team achieve our goal. I believe it it through projects such as this that we will continue to define and support the role of teacher librarians as learning leaders in schools.
Reflection:
I consider this time in education to be revolutionary:
we have new understandings about brain research and how we learn
we have the technological ability to research and present information on anything
we have a right to use our knowledge and advances to learn and teach better
we are in the position to lead an educational change
we have an obligation to use our knowledge to make the world a better place
Source: www.sd45.bc.ca
The Innovation Grant sounds very exciting. It actually sounds like a research project, for which you will receive support and funding to implement. That is very exciting! It is good to see innovation is being supported. These Innovation Grants could be a way to bridge the gap between aspirations to use ICT innovatively and the realities of insufficient ICT resources in the schools. Does the Innovation Grant specify the innovative use of technology? Or other forms of learning innovation?