Lisa's LIBE 477B 951 Summer 2013

SharePoint has been the thorn in my side for the last couple of days.  I have spent a copious amount of time trying to get my vision into reality on my SharePoint website and it is driving me crazy!  As the official way to do all things in my school district, I am trying to tow the party line and give it a fair shot.  In all honesty, I do not have a lot of experience with building websites so I am not really sure if it is me or if it is SharePoint.

The first thing that I tried to do was to add a Pearltree of websites that explain what Inquiry Based Learning is.  In didn’t think that this worked, even though on my screen in did because I had someone else test it out yesterday and my Pearltree didn’t up.  Thankfully when Jenny tried today it worked on her computer…perhaps I did something right.

The second thing that I tried to do was put a “shelf” from Shelfari up with 5 books that were recommended reading.  Somehow, only one book would transfer onto my shelf…weird.  So I changed from the shelf widget to a widget that just produced a list with pictures of the books.  Not quite what I was going for aesthetically but it is there in some form.  So, I guess I did something sort of right.

Then I tried to embed a YouTube video onto a page and again, it showed and even played on my editing page but when I went to publish…gone, vanished into thin air.  So here is the video I tried to embed.

I actually would have liked to put another one or two up or perhaps even a video of Inquiry Based Learning in progress as out school but will have to figure this out still…this step, fail!

I have also added a blog page to the inquiry portion of my webpage.  I hope that this will be a way to share ideas, input, feedback, links, or just a way to connect about this topic first at a school based level before I look to connecting at a district or broader level.  Since I am not at the school every day, I would like this to be a way for people to contact me if they have a question about a project or an idea or whatever others would like to post.  The blog is up and I have posted a few things.  The next step is to figure out how to give other people permission to post and I do not know how to do that.

The next step for me is once school is back in session, to talk to the tech. people and see if they can help me tweak this part of the website so that my vision and my reality actually do match up.  I live in hope that this is a possibility!

Here we are at final project time and in the space of three hours today, I have changed my mind three times about the platform on which I want to share my information about inquiry based teaching and learning.  I originally wanted to create a forum on SharePoint because I wanted to share with my staff and my school district staff about inquiry based teaching and had hoped that creating a forum would create a support network for this style of teaching.  SharePoint is our go to program for email, school calendar, messages and district sharing.  I figured that perhaps since we all will be checking SharePoint all the time, this would be the logical place to house a forum so it doesn’t become just one more place to look.

Then I thought, one of my favourite things about being here in Vancouver is being able to network with all these teachers from different districts.  Why would I limit my discussion to just my district?  I want to know what others in the province think about this topic.  Doni introduced me to Yammer and then I though, great, this is going to be my platform to link with other TL’s and teachers interested in Inquiry Based teaching and learning.  But this forum is really just a blog type format and I can’t seem to organize my links, video’s thoughts and ideas in an aesthetically pleasing way that makes me happy.

Then I thought Weebley.  I know that it is prettier than the SharePoint sites we have in our district.  But this is yet another place to link to from my website as I can’t have it come up from my schools website and really, this is about making information accessible and is several steps really the most accessible way to share information.  I don’t want it to become a “Where’s Waldo” hunt.

So now I have gone back to the Project Based Learning button on my school’s homepage.  This is basically just one link and fundamentally useless but my Principal has put it on there.  So then I asked myself, should I improve this link or should it’s home really be on the library website and this button on the main page could link to the library website.  Thus providing more useful information about Inquiry Based teaching and learning as well as possibly drumming up more views and support of the library website.  So as of right this minute, it think I will be adding and Inquiry section to the library website.  I fear that I still won’t have the aesthetics that I desire due to the SharePoint website restriction that engulf the school website but I hope that I will be able to add the information is a useful and practical way…now off to give it a try.

After the shock of the first week (my head was spinning a bit) and thinking that we were going to be spending the next three weeks frantically signing up for everything available on the internet, I feel much more calm this week.  If nothing else, I feel that I have the confidence to give any kind of technology a try, after all, what is the worst that could happen?  I have a unique opportunity this coming year to teach with another fantastic teacher in the library space at my school.  Her funding is coming from some math and science collaboration funding so all the library duties are still mine but since we are both going to be based out of the library.  I was finally able to synthesize a bit of what I have been taking in in both my classes and this is the copy of the email I sent her yesterday…

I would like to revolutionize the library in some small ways this coming up year.  These new laptops, iPads and that big TV need to be used.  While I think that it is a bit backwards to be planning around the technology (technology should be purchased around need) I do feel compelled to really embrace technology this year.  Here are some of my ideas…

-I would like to try to figure out a way to get book trailers playing on that big TV, on a loop, especially during book exchange times.  Eventually this year I would like to do a project with some classes where they create book trailers for the library books they are reading, a way of encouraging others to read what they thought was good.  Way better than recommendations on a piece of paper.  iMovie could be used for this…

-I would like to work with a class or two and write and illustrate books that could be transferred into book format.  I am pretty sure that we can do this with some scrapbooking software and then get them done in hard cover for not much money (maybe even through Costco, definitely online).  Even if we just do one copy and keep it in the library, or parents could buy a copy if they turn out well.

-I would like to do some inquiry based units this year, kind of like I have done in the past but implementing more technology…web quests, movie presentations, cartooning presentations, animoto…???

-Would love to write a graphic novel with a class…

 -I would like the library laptops to open to the library website rather than the school website and would like to spend some time updating and improving this site

-I think we need to sit down together at some point and outline the services that we can help with this year so that everyone has an idea of what we can offer, help with and support.  I am not always sure that people fully understand what we can offer. 

-Insignia has some cool features I think, like we can link it to the website and it will highlight our newly catalogued books…very cool.  Looking forward to learning more about it in September

-I would also like to see if I can connect a blog to a SharePoint website so that students (and teachers) could make book recommendations directly to the library website rather than on little pieces of paper  

-I would kind of like to push us past PowerPoint this year if we can.  If I have learned one thing these two weeks, it is that I am not so bad with technology and all you have to do is give it a try:)

What do you think?  (Overwhelming….yes.  Good to have high hopes….YES!)

My project next week will help flesh out the inquiry based teaching and learning aspect of my “to do” list for the coming year.  I am particularly excited to be working with this other teacher as the library position is so isolating in a school, I am the only one who does what I do.  I look forward to implementing ideas and bouncing ideas off this other teacher as I think that with support and collaboration I have an even greater chance of success.  For the first time since beginning this class, I was actually able to put into words a technology vision for the upcoming year.  Yay!

Is there a connection between World Libraries and Inquiry based teaching and learning?  For sure!  Many times, our inquiry is to look at other cultures or areas of expertise where we are not the experts.  What better way to find the answers to these questions than to go right to the source.  We had a good discussion in our little group about websites where you can connect with schools around the world.  What better way to learn about a different culture than to talk to a student in that country?  We also talked about a longer lasting relationship where our students become pen pals with another class and actually begin to build connections around the world.   Another option would be to Skype with experts.  Sure, not as good as having the person come to the classroom, but I am wondering if there would be an inclination for people to agree to Skype, or perhaps even just respond to a well informed email if a class were to make a request.

We also felt that world libraries could perhaps provide more up to date information than we may have access to in our school library.  Let’s be honest, no one in a school library really has the budget to be completely comprehensive and current in all areas of the curriculum.  Further to this, perhaps a good web quest could be a link between the question at hand and the larger world.  We also thought that perhaps our experience in world libraries could help form our inquiry questions rather than only answer our inquiry questions.

Lastly, we were hoping that our libraries could also become a virtual learning commons, a part of the world libraries.  This would be a place that our teachers could come to link to topics and resources as well as for our students.  Perhaps we could also become a resource for others who are interested in what we are doing in the classroom, or to inform their studies about school and libraries in Canada.  If we all share our information and our resources to the best of our abilities, then I think we are all contributing to the idea of world libraries at a grassroots level.

Here is the thing…I am finding that this topic is so broad that I could spend a very long time learning all there is to know about this topic.  So, I am beginning to think that the best thing to do would be to create some sort of resource that is easy to be shared and easy for others to have input on where I would organize all these resources into one central location and provide a forum where a group of us could share on this topic.  After class today, Doni and I sat for  a couple of hours and explored a variety of way to organize this information.  I have not been a huge fan of any of the mind mapping sites that I have visited thus far in this course.  Pearltrees didn’t give me the look I want and MindMeister again is just not as clean cut as I would like.  I really liked the look of Popplet but found that when I put links into the web, they weren’t active, so what is the point.  I then found a site called bubbl.us which seemed to be the aesthetic that I was looking for.  However, when I went to share with someone else, I found I couldn’t.  I think this site has great potential for what I would like to do but at six dollars a month, I think that is too steep a cost.  True, it is not too much for one site but as we are exploring a variety of these sites, I can see how monthly subscriptions could get pricey for a schools worth of subscriptions.

Doni then showed my Yammer which is a space she uses to collaborate with other TL’s in her district.  It seems to function in a similar way that First Class used to work in my district and I think SharePoint will work in a similar way.  From what seem to see, this may be compatible with SharePoint.  While I am not sure that the storage of my brainstorming ideas will be aesthetically what I had hoped, I have high hopes that this forum will be easy to access and provide a place for discussion among TL’s as well as classroom teachers in my district interested in Project or Inquiry Based Learning.  I look forward to exploring this platform further in the next several days.

We heard a lot of big words today, institutional isomorphism, sociocultural homeostasis and conservative dynamicism.  Really what does this all mean?  Well, I am not sure I know the clear answer to this but this is what I do know.  I am an active part of an institution, a dynamic institution in that the individual characters are always changing, however the roles tend to remain the same.  this institution encompasses teachers, students, parents, administrators and all others that participate in the daily lives of our schools.  I know that there tends to three different camps of teachers in our schools. There are the teachers that will find any excuse and reason possible to never touch technology in their classrooms.  There are teachers who use every opportunity to embrace technology and use it to enhance what they are doing in the classrooms not just directed to students, but involving students in an active way.  There are also teachers who, as Larry Cuban states, “hugged the middle” and used technology in their lessons without transforming how they teach.  (You can read his blog here http://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/dynamic-conservatism-and-stability-in-teaching/)  I would argue that the vast majority of teachers fall into that last category.  Many teachers have been presented with technology and have begrudgingly begun using it in their lessons but have simply transferred their lessons from overhead to Powerpoint to Smartboard and are not using the technology beyond a glorified presentation tool.

As the teacher librarian in my school it is my job to be the one to buck the trend and be on the cutting edge of facilitating the use of technology with my students.  How do I do this?  By not being the teacher who says don’t even try because the internet will fail.  By not being the teacher who sits in the staffroom and complains of a failed lesson if something doesn’t go right and then just give up trying.  I need to be the one who is designing learning explorations that embrace technology.  I need to be the one to advocate to my principal, my district and my province for the support needed to teach what is being asked of me to teach.  How do I do this?  Well, I am not sure.  I think that in my case. my first conversation will be with my principal who is quite on board with any technology ideas as long as you can show that the technology will actually be used.  I look forward to this conversation and by the end of this course, I suspect I will have a long list of points to present and questions to ask.