I know that I know a lot more than I did when I first began this course, and I feel better equipped to help students and other teachers. I no longer see reference materials (well, most of them anyways) as stuffy and boring. They can be colourful and appealing, drawing the reader in and making them thirst for more of the same. I am excited about resources like World Book online, and have promoted this resource to other teachers. I plan to continue to explore reference resources, and will definitely be better able to guide students and teachers to a wider variety of reference materials.

I know that there is plentiful material to guide me along the learning journey. I have learned about specific resources and in addition, I have learned how to more efficiently access new material. I guess that means I have better learned how to better learn. Learning how to learn is not just for the young. It’s for all ages, and yes, you can teach an “older” dog new tricks!

I also know that when it comes to collaboration and introducing newness, the aim is to influence, not change people. Self-awareness and understanding of one`s own response and reaction to change is paramount. Self-awareness breeds empathy. Without that leadership becomes ego-based and does not foster collaborative relationships. Change is a process, not an event, and learning, especially internalization of learning, lead to change. I love this connection of basic psychology to library work!

I wonder about….well, a LOT of things, because I love to learn. One thing I wonder about is technology, and how it will continue to influence teaching and learning. Some classrooms no longer have even a white board in them – it’s been replaced by a projector and/or a smartboard. (How will they manage in a power failure, I wonder?) While I agree that embracing and integrating learning technology in a world of iPods, iPads and the like is imperative, not optional, I have concerns making classrooms utterly dependent on it. That said, I do feel much better prepared to explore and utilize digital resources than I did three months ago. And I have an important role to play in teaching the skills to manage technology and information.

I also wonder how teacher-librarians can reach out beyond the core subject areas and teachers. How about an interesting inquiry project for art, food or tech ed? Some of these students are in danger of being left behind because academics are not their strength, and are at risk of graduating with underdeveloped information literacy skills. I think it is important to build relationships with teachers of these subject areas, with a goal of bring their classes into the library and computer lab to explore some interesting and “cool” resources. Since I have first-hand experience teaching home economics, perhaps I can offer that unique link as a teacher librarian.

Knowing, wondering, learning – it’s a cycle that, in an iDeal world, spins throughout the life cycle.

And so it goes: iKnow iWonder iLearn. Embedded in this is: inquire, create and reflect, applying this process repeatedly across subject and time. For inquiry, I think Leonardo DaVinci had the right idea when he reportedly said  “Let curiosity be your guide”. A creative act synthesizes raw materials into something new. The raw materials generate i-D-ahs! followed by concrete creation . Reflection is a me-search quest as we search within to sort what we know, what we wonder, and what we still need to learn. Me-search can therefore lead to more research. Like I said, so the journey goes!

There has been much discussion about databases and their functionality and ease of access. I too find EBSCO host to be the go-to database, and have used from the UBC library web site as well as the Burnaby Public Library. I am becoming more efficient at narrowing my searches, but I still have a ways to go in this learning curve. I recognize that progress with this skill will improve my ability to teach it to classes who are using the school library to conduct research.

March 28

My maternal grandmother (the one I was closest to and who died 31 years ago), was born 100 years ago today. One century has passed since her birth. This occurred to me as I drove to work this morning. After spending the day working in a middle school library, where students worked at computers completing the final touches to an inquiry project I find myself reflecting on how incredibly the world has changed in that century, and especially how communication and learning has evolved. Now we expect instant information at our fingertips. We process our words at computers instead of typewriters. There is more information available a few keystrokes away than we can possibly absorb. No wonder our brains are changing and attention spans are supposedly shortening!

I also spent much of today exploring digital resources, mostly one available through the Coquitlam school district as well as links I followed from those resources. Truly, the vastness of the internet universe is mind-boggling! I spent quite a bit of time reading a blog by the IT go-to person for the district. His blog purports to connect technology and teaching. I also found a list of blogs in a district email from one of the secondary school librarians – yikes, even more blogs to check out.!. I suppose I could list mine there as well, but I don’t think I’m quite ready for the big screen….

Reading other blogs reinforces the importance of clarity and purposefulness in one’s writing, as I’ve seen how self-indulgent blogs can become without judicious editing. Just like web pages, blogs lose their appeal and authority if the author gets too long-winded and spinning madly in all directions with information irrelevant to their topic. (Can you say, “too much information?!”) Sure, a blog is a great tool for reflection, but if that’s the purpose, why foist it on the public? A piece of writing published in print form at least has an editor to give it a decent pruning. However a blogger is usually writer, editor and publisher all rolled into one, and that is not necessarily a good thing. So I must be mindful to avoid the wordiness trap.

It’s also important to edit the information that flows my way.Editing the ever-multiplying virtual pages of digital and online resources is essential for time management. Since it will be impossible to remember all the great resources that have come my way via this course, I will create my own personal and professional database to organize and manage the information so that it is retrievable when I need/want it. Otherwise I could get sucked into the vortex of the digital universe and miss out on the concreteness and beauty of everyday life and interactions with real people. My grandmother never had to worry about that. Hers was the library of card catalogs in wooden drawers and real books in a lovely old building. There is something to be said for simplicity!

Databases: My local public library – the Burnaby one – has an incredible collection of full text databases, organized by subject as well as alphabetically. What a wonderful resource! A long-time patron of the Burnaby Public Library, I knew there were databases, but was unaware of just how much information I can access! I plan to use and promote this incredibly rich resource. There is everything from archived city documents, community newspapers, auto repair manuals, consumer reports, legal resources. Many can be accessed remotely from home by logging in with a library card number and password. Just for starters, a patron can:

• Find out the distance between two BC communities – no more trying to “google” this
• Get Stats Canada data (potential use for social studies classes)
• Access Tumblebooks – nice alternate activity for primary students
• Get medical information – for the hypochondriac in your life
• Access a myriad of dictionaries and encyclopedieas on just about any subject or specialty, including some French ones
• Find out how to fix your car – and save a bundle in the process!
• Get legal information
• Download books to an e-reader, iPad, Blackberry, or other device – for free! (Memo to self: I really need to make better use of my Blackberry.)
• Access EBSCO host – great for personal and professional use
• Access the full text of the Consumer Reports Buying guide and magazines – much better than rifling through the dog-eared collection in the periodicals section and maybe finding what I’m after.
• Go Career Cruising
• Access BC building and fire code regulations. Not that I’m handy that way. But others are.

March 27

I explored a new web site that is designed to ease people through the process of creating their own web site, and I plan to try it, perhaps creating a web site for my self-employed woodworker partner so that he can display and market his beautiful, artful creations. (He’s definitely a right-brain artisan/musician!). I discovered the site while exploring links on a school district web site, so I believe it has been vetted by IT personnel, and looks to be a great resource. It also has a blogging option, so that is another area that has increasing appeal.

I also learned about the potential role of games in learning, and how young learners’ brains are actually wired differently, making them much more receptive to the learning potential of games. The site gave lots of examples which I will explore as time permits.

Mapping our world: Geographic resources: The maps I have the most familiarity with are mind maps – I love creating these for planning and studying. “Real” maps are something I have never paid much attention to unless I am consulting them in order to get somewhere by foot or car, and I have quite a collection of them. Now however I am gaining a new appreciation of them. This is partly because of exposure to them through this course, because my oldest daughter is majoring in geography and I like to find great resources for her, and also because good, detailed maps were crucial to a walking holiday I took in 2009. We needed a stack of maps for the journey, along with a compass and a keen eye for waymarkers (see previous post). Ordnance survey maps are incredibly detailed, with country houses marked and named. Even standing stones and other heritage and archeological sites are noted on the maps, enriching the journey immensely.

A “global” issue came up this week in the class discussions. Surprisingly, some schools have few or no globes, and it seems a shame that such a great representation of our earth would be lacking. Every classroom should have one, if for no other reason than to remind us that we are part of something so much larger. I was pleased to discover nine globes displayed on top of the shelves in the middle school library I am working at this week. What a find! I’ve never seen anything like it in any other school library. Some libraries have one globe, but nine! Unheard of. A bonus is that each globe has a barcode affixed to the underside of its base, so it can be signed out just like a book or any other library resource. What a great idea and practice!

Speaking of geographical resources, I also discovered that the BBC has some geographic resources such as country profiles. Again, who knew?!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/country_profiles/default.stm

March 12

Yesterday I watched and was inspired by some of the videos I found linked to the Vista website. These videos were about the learning commons and libraries. What resonated the most was:

• Because individuals learn differently and at different rates, a learning commons allows for responding to students’ unique needs
• I loved the way librarians were described as learning coaches and knowledge brokers. While all teachers fit this description, I think teacher-librarians do it best, as they facilitate it at a school-wide level.
• The learning commons allows people to connect to the world and their own passions, and allows students to shape their own learning.
• The learning commons facilitates an inquiry based approach to learning and to life.

I think my “default” learning style is as an independent learner, so initially I was not really sold on the concept of the learning commons. The videos I watched have shifted my thinking on this issue, however. While the videos do have a certain marketing or promotional tone (which tends to make me wary of the product), I certainly do see that there is much value in a collaborative approach, even if one sometimes just uses it for bouncing ideas around. Shaping the school library as a learning commons is a worthy mission – perhaps much more important and useful than attempting to remember specific data about specific resources found therein.

March 4

Every day offers something new to learn, and this week was no exception. I’ve learned some useful tidbits of information that will help me assist students and other teachers, such as:

• The fact that geographical info includes demographic data – who knew? I’ve never paid much attention to geography unless I’m actually on a hike or trying to locate something on a map or plan a route. Now, not only am I starting to take better note of geographical matters, I am becoming quite interested in learning more about geography in general (but it will have to wait until this course is over!)

• Novelist (http://www.ebscohost.com/novelist/about-novelist/about-novelist) appears to be a great resource for information on fiction (something I’m not completely up on, being a mostly non-fiction reader). It tells you the next title in a series – something many students ask about – and provides suggestions for authors who write in similar genres, etc. I think this will be a very useful tool for advising readers, and I wish I’d known about it before. There is a free trial offer which would be a great way to get started with it. Freebies are great!

I agree with my classmates that the proliferation of information, including online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia makes teaching information literacy skills that much more important, as teachers and teacher-librarians will not always be at hand to help people vet resources throughout the lifespan. Students need to acquire sufficient critical thinking skills to evaluate resources independently. Until they possess these cognitive abilities, I think younger students should have adult supervision while accessing the internet for research purposes, and perhaps should be give specific web sites for search purposes.

Wikipedia is a controversial encyclopedic reference source. Kids love it, teachers not so much. But since Wikipedia is an established part of the learning landscape for most students why not put it to good use? One way, as other classmates have mentioned, is to teach students how to use it wisely, for example by using is as part of a learning activity that involves comparing information found there to information found in so-called authoritative encyclopaedias such as World Book. Further, if we want students to avoid sources like Wikipedia we will probably need to guide them to other sources and make those substitute sources easy to access. In teaching as in parenting, sometimes we need to create a diversion or offer guidance in the form of more suitable options.

And then there is the problem, much discussed and debated, of encyclopedias becoming dated soon after purchase. What I wonder about – and this may sound heretical in a course such as this one – is whether the date of the material (e.g. encyclopaedias) is really that important (as long as it is not truly ancient!) to the inquiry process, or whether it is more important that students know how to use the encyclopedia as a research tool. Looking at this another way: Is the research process, especially for younger students, about acquiring and remembering specific facts, or about acquiring information literacy skills and valuing the concept of information literacy itself? Facts are a shallow form of knowledge, easily forgotten, but information literacy is deeper learning that is transferrable from grade to grade and subject to subject, and is built upon as students mature.

So which matter most, product or process? Sure, available research material should be relevant and appealing, and some information on some topics in some fields (technology, medicine, politics etc.) does become outdated more rapidly, necessitating access to reliable online sources for those topics. At university level availability of the most current material it is increasingly important, but a university will at least have the budget to support the kind of academic research materials its population needs. But at the elementary school level, hand-wringing over dates of encyclopedias is a waste of energy.

If the choice is between spending money on a new set of encyclopedias or spending money on education staff to teach research skills, I’d choose the latter any day.

In describing how to conduct reference interviews as part of the research process, Riedling (2000) lists determining the nature, quantity, level, and best format of information a student needs, and emphasizes the importance of encouraging students to use information literacy skills to access that information. She also emphasizes the importance of the relationship between the helper (the t-l) and the helpee (student), even if it is a relationship that has only just begun and only lasts for the few minutes of the interview. I deeply appreciate how she emphasizes good communication skills such as active listening, paraphrasing, awareness of body language, and how she points out how the student’s communication skills may not be as refined. This, once again, acknowledges the affective component of the research and learning processes – yay! Psychology, counselling, emotional intelligence and emotional literacy are huge interests of mine, and I would not want to see emotional literacy trumped by information literacy, as noble and important as the latter is. (In a worst nightmare scenario I imagine a world in which everyone can readily access information but not their emotions!)

I also fully agree that a successful reference interview is one in which the student feels satisfied that the teacher-librarian has given personal attention and accurate info, even if s/he  did not locate suitable or desirable material for the student. In my experience, if I have done all I can to locate something for a student, but still did not find what they wanted, they were fine with it, and went happily on their way or signed  something else out. (Sometimes I think I end up more disappointed than they do!). But it is gratifying to know that they are happy and I have done my best to help them.

What if found lacking (surprisingly so) is that Riedling does not suggest conducting a reference interview or collaborative effort with teachers. There should be no need for, say, 30 students to seek individual assistance from the teacher librarian for a class project they will all be doing. The t-l should, at the very least, have a copy of the assignment instructions and criteria – it is a basic tool to begin with. If the t-l does not have even a basic idea of what the assignment is, s/he cannot prepare adequately and the students are more likely to be short-changed and have a less than ideal research experience.

In my toc work, I find the involvement of the t-l in a collaborative process with any given classroom teacher who brings a class to the library for research varies from school to school. (Here I’m thinking more of secondary students). Some t-l’s are very proactive about getting specific details about research projects and will even spend time looking online for appropriate websites to recommend to students. (I know because I have done this as a library toc.)

Reference:

Riedling, Ann. Reference Skills for the School Library Media Specialist: Tools and Tips. Linworth Publishing Inc., Ohio, 2000.

Wherever you go, there you are.

Are we are learning how to learn how to learn so that we can teach how to learn how to learn? No wonder it sometimes seems complicated! Perhaps a teacher-librarian is a kind of midwife to the inquiry process.

I feel I am grappling with a huge volume of information, in daily life as well as in this course, and this is at times overwhelming. Some of the information is what I think of as raw or pure data. Some folks thrive on this and can readily, even eagerly, absorb and sort it. Others, like me, not so much. Multiple intelligences, personality type (and by definition, brain differences) factor into this. I’m an idea and “big picture” type of person, and dislike having to process a lot of data, so if this course helps me acquire more effective information literacy tools that will be a big help.

One thing that has definitely been reinforced for me is that clarity is crucial to a user-friendly learning process. I get frustrated when acronyms appear again and again, tripping up my thought process. It’s like walking along and suddenly finding an obstacle on the path, or a direction sign written in a foreign language, forcing me to hunt through a guide book to find the translation for a term that could easily have been made clear in the first place.

I experienced this kind of frustration during a long distance walking holiday in Wales a couple of years ago. The route, which had been promoted as “well sign-posted” turned out to be quite confusing in places, often with several route markers on the same post all pointing in different directions (!), or the markers obscured by foliage so that my partner and I would walk right past them and not realize it until we’d walked a couple of miles too far (in pouring rain, thunder and lightning). That was the first (and soggiest) day of the 11-day, 136 mile journey. Other times, out of sheer curiosity (and armed with maps and compass), we’d deliberately veer off the designated route and discover incredible new scenic delights that we would have missed had we remained on track. Still, it’s better to have a choice to veer off than to end up there because of poor directions.

Inquiry too can send us off in the wrong direction and have us looking for new possibilities to answer new questions.