Library Grits

Apple ibooks

2012-01-23T10:55:00.005+08:00

Image by Aaron Shmidt Oct. 28. 2006 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License

For those who follow this blog, you may remember my post about textbooks in the school and how they currently present more problems than they answer. Textbooks Limit.

I have just watched this video about the Apple ibook textbooks and, I must say it is a great start toward making textbooks better. The updating capacity, the annotating capacity, the interaction with the information and multimedia all make the textbook experience so much better. I especially like the 'self publishing' part where anyone can publish their own 'text' book using materials that help to support the curriculum wherever in the world they are.

After watching the video I have thought of some further development which could be made based on the capacity I saw in the video.

1. Increase access to include an option for sound notes for those students who struggle with typing or writing but still would like to make notes quickly.

2. Include the capacity for the student and teacher to add in local material into the text book material to include video of local events or locations to give examples of what the text is talking about, making the information and learning more personal.

3. Be able to add live feeds and links to events, newsfeeds, primary documents etc to make the learning deeper and richer with more connections.

4. Make the learning more social, it is still essentially a consumer product - how about a discussion link on relevant topics from within the text of viewpoints on issues or even new discoveries or links to new thinking? What do other students across the world think about this topic? A collective textbook (I suppose similar to Wikipedia) where students collaboratively write the text based on their research? Make everyone a possible expert. Widen the classroom and shrink the world.

Have you had a look at the video? What suggestions could you make to make this medium a truly interactive experience for learning?

Staying Relevent

2012-01-04T19:04:00.005+08:00

I am still enjoying some holidays for the Christmas break, for which I am very grateful One of the jobs I had to do today was to pay my tax. In Hong Kong you pay your yearly tax all at once, you can pay it online, through the post or at the local post office. I normally do all my bill payments online to avoid cues, but for this payment for various reasons I needed to do it in person at the post office. While I was standing in the long line I got to pondering about the post office.

Post offices were set up for the central distribution of mail and parcels across the country and across the world. They date back to BC times, are generally government run, but have had times where their existence has been challenged through private courier companies and reduced use due to the invention of the telephone and internet. They are still here and still play an important role in all communities across the world. The US Postal Service even makes enough money to sponsor a cycling team.

The small local post office I was in had 2 windows open - one for people who wanted to post items, the other for people who wanted to pay bills. The bill paying line was the much longer line and people had many bills to pay. Even though the Post Offices main role is to deliver mail in many different forms, they offer other services such as paying bills, registering for and picking up the $6000HKD grant the HK government has been giving out, buy philatelic items, currency remittance, register for an e-certificate using the HKID card and, they even sell some cute souvenirs. They also have free to use computers to access the internet in the post office. In Australia, the Post Office is the place where you also apply for a passport, buy pre paid phone sim cards and top ups, purchase all types of office needs and even gifts for different holidays. In other parts of the world, banking can be done through the post office.

As I was pondering this in my waiting time, I related it to school and even community libraries. If the postal services had been unwilling to take on new and varied services to meet the needs of their community, they may not still be in existence. They have been through rough times, reinvented themselves and are still an important part of all the communities they serve. And, they are still delivering mail.

The library I manage is a busy place, and we offer the opportunity for our school community to borrow books, it was what the library was set up for. We now provide access to ebooks, cameras, ipads, ipods, kobo's, laminating large poster services, information retrieval, databases, on time access to what the community wants, supporting the curriculum through resources and teaching, along with many other services. If we had resisted moving with the needs of our community because the services strayed away from the books, we may not be very relevant to that community. And, we still lend books.

Looking at the HK Post website I came across their performance pledge, I really like some of their statements, and they could easily be transferred across to a school library situation. I have identified those in italics which are particularly relevant. Text in brackets is my thinking aloud.

HK Post Purpose, Vision, Mission, Values

OUR PURPOSE

Linking People, Delivering Business (Information?)

OUR VISION

To be recognised as an outstanding service organisation
To be recognised worldwide as an outstanding postal service

OUR MISSION

To be a totally committed and valued workforce
To achieve consistently the highest levels of customer satisfaction
To be a viable business with sufficient resources to invest in our future
To anticipate changes and respond proactively

OUR VALUES

To care about our customers and our colleagues
To excel through development, teamwork and innovation

Do you think these 'Purpose, Vision, Mission, Values' could be transferable to a library?

Christmas Cheer thru Upcycling

2011-12-06T19:56:00.004+08:00

It is Christmas, we needed decorations for the library that did not cost much and something the students could do without much mess. Voila! Christmas trees from no longer needed magazines and book club catalogues. Here are a few of the earlier models, our trees have since grown in number and have collected gold dust and tinsel to make the library look very festive. They were all done by the students who had a ball making these at lunchtime. We found the best results came from Geo Kids magazine, and the book catalogues as they had the most colourful printing.

Instructions are here on a new site I have recently discovered Instructables The inspiration came from a nieces handiwork I saw last year - thanks Morgan!

Edu Blog awards Voting is open!

2011-12-06T17:52:00.008+08:00

Library Grits has been nominated for an Edublog award in the best Librarian blog category - thank you for the appreciation, I am glad my rants, ramblings and rackets are helpful to people.

If you would like to vote in the Edublog awards (for this blog or any other) all you need to do is visit this link Edublog Voting. There are many nominations in many categories. It is truly an international mix. These lists are also a great place to find new blogs to follow to learn even more!

Voting closes on 11:59 PM US Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, December the 13th .

Genre: Fantasy into Action

2011-11-26T14:51:00.008+08:00

I have been thinking, ruminating, contemplating about the whole fiction sorted into genres for a long while now, and the more I though about it the more I felt we needed to at least trial it. I kept putting it off because it is one of those labour intensive monster jobs, but last week we set the wheels in motion with the smallest fiction collection of Junior Fiction which caters for the emerging readers.

We first had to decide on the genres we would begin with and came up with Animal stories, Mystery, Action, Fantasy & Magic, Sci-Fi, Sport, Family, School, Friends, Princess, Movies and Scary. We then had to make 'rules' about what would be in each genre - would the Astrosours go into animals or action? Fairy's would go into Fantasy, but what about Fairy Princesses? We made the decision based on what the main thrust of the story was - if it happened to be pigs on an adventure (like the Pigs in Space series) - the story would be an action story rather than a story about animals. We had a few hard choices to make.

We first pulled off 2 genres to start with - Animal stories and Mystery, collected them all, made a space on the shelves, put a sign up to tell the students what this group of books were, and the students were super keen to borrow just from these two collections. This continued for a few days, so we figured it was a better way for the children to choose what they wanted to read. Some even said that it was much easier to find the type of book they wanted to read.

So onto the back end systems to help us keep everything organised. We recruited some parents who were willing to sit at a computer terminal for long periods of time to input the changes into the collection section adding one more line. Instead of just the collection (JF) and the Author suffix, we now have JF (Genre) Author Suffix.

The new spine labels were then printed, along with some small genre stickers. Student Library Assistants helped to replace the spine labels and afix the genre sticker. We then covered the two stickers with adhesive clear plastic to keep it all looking good.

We have managed to complete about half of the collection so far, the whole collection is a giant mess as we work through it.

One of the highlights was when students asked if we have bought a whole lot of new books! Hopefully we will have it all finished by the end of the term in three weeks, then we will monitor how the loaning goes to see if we need to go through the process in other collections.

Above is what our labels looked like before we changed them this week
(we now standardise the levels from the bottom - but are not changing them retrospectively)

Above are the new spine labels with the genre stickers - they seem to lift the books and make them look fresh.

Edublog awards nominations

2011-11-24T20:39:00.005+08:00

From the Edublog Awards Blog : "The purpose of the Edublog awards is promote and demonstrate the educational values of these social media. The best aspects include that it creates a fabulous resource for educators to use for ideas on how social media is used in different contexts, with a range of different learners while creating an invaluable resource of the best-of-the-best on the web!

Write a post with your nominations for the different categories on your own blog (or a website – anywhere public)
Send a link to your nomination post via this form."

Nominations can be made up to Friday 2 December, voting will commence on 3 December until Tuesday 13 December.

Here are my nominations of the blogs and tweeters that I find to be most useful for my own learning (purely selfish reasons!)

Best individual blog: Phil Bradley's weblog Phile keeps me up to date when I don't get a chance to do it myself!

Best individual tweeter: russeltarr russeltarr - this guy must spend all day trawling the internet to share amazing resurces of all kinds!

Best new blog: Teaching the world with team future Julz is a first year teacher (after a career before) this is her blog of reflection her journey of teaching.

Best ed tech / resource sharing blog: Free technology for teachers - wow! I dip into this blog often!

Best librarian / library blog: Too hard! My RSS Reader is full of excellent blogs to follow, all with fabulous ideas... Librarians are go by Stacey Taylor this year has got me thinking in all directions, so for this Stacey I thank you by nominating you!

Best School Administrator blog: Darcy Moore's Blog - I like how Darcy writes, and I even met him in person this year!

Best free web tool : this has got to be join.me - WOW wow wow! I have had conversations in the same city and even across the world using join me to teach / show someone something.

That is all I can muster up for tonight - Good luck to all my nominations and if you have never seen any of these blogs before please do take a peak, you won't be sorry!

Do you have favourites? Share the love ...

The E-reader of our choice

2011-11-19T11:10:00.007+08:00

One of our new Kobos with cover and book ready to be read.

I was of the belief that the school did not need to supply e-readers for our students use as we are a 1:1 laptop school with most of our students having a smart phone of one variety or other, and many having their own e-readers at home. But, I changed my mind after listening to a web cast with Buffy Hamiliton and researched into e-readers and what would meet our specifications if we were to purchase some.

The specifications were that the model had to :
1. be compatible with the Wheeler ebook loaning service (see this previous post)
2. have flexibility to purchase from multiple places (I really don't like the e-reader tied to one bookstore model)
3. have flexibility to host different formats - EPUB, PDF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, MOBI, CBZ, CBR until everything shuffles down to a standard.
4. to look good with ease of use preferably with a touch screen and minimal buttons, light.
5. be of a reasonable cost
5. a bonus would be speech to text, and wifi capabilities.

I have always liked the Kobo, and was leaning that way as it seemed to cover all the above criteria except touch screen and text to voice, but then the Kobo touch was released and I had to look more closely.

This table (put out by kobo) outlines quite neatly what all the popular e-readers offer in terms of capabilities.
And I liked what I saw - especially with regard to the multiple formats and the touch screen. It did not have speech to text.

I put the submission in my budget last year, it was seen as a step forward and approved. In the middle of all this a 'special' came up on Groupon where the school could purchase a Ben-q e-reader, with a digital camera for the same price as one Kobo. Ben-Q is a Taiwanese brand. Energy was diverted to purchase of this machine by others, I was a bit sceptical that it would meet the criteria specified, but was assured that it would.

It didn't and we had 10 of them. Its limitations were that the Wheelers platform was not compatible, it was very securely tied to a Taiwanese Bookstore or Google books through the wifi capability. It was slow to turn pages. It did however have the capability to take an SD card or USD flashdrive, and ignores DRM coding. I was sad.

The IT director saw my sadness and made amends by ordering the original choice - 10 Kobo's. We decided on the black colour to start with to reduce cleaning issues. With the purchase came coupons to buy from the Kobo store. We were still playing with the free trial of the Wheelers platform, so when the Kobos came in we tested that function - it couldn't do it from the device itself, however it is in the works to be functional from the Wheelers end. It was very easy to lend from the laptop and transfer the files across. One criteria met.

I discovered and downloaded Calibre - wow! This is an open source platform to manage your e-books - sort of like itunes for your books. So many functions I cannot tell you them all - just go and check it out. We will be using this platform to manage any purchases we make that will not be loaded onto the Wheelers platform for the interim before they are loaded. (The uploads are done in batches). Calibre is also excellent for easily seeing what is on each device.

After exploring Calibre and exploring its functionality, I went to the Kobo store to spend some our coupons. Each Kobo device needs to be registered to an email address, initially I had 10 different gmail addresses for 10 kobo's, but this was not going to be easily managed. I then registered 5 under one address and 5 under another after Kobo said it would be no problem. I was then able to to purchase books using either the Kobo website or the Kobo Desktop application.

Buying through the website meant I could put it into Calibre immediately and then place it on the device from there. Going through the Kobo Desktop application means that I sync the device as soon as it is plugged it with ALL the books in my Kobo library. Under the one email address I can sync 5 Kobo's with the same books. Did I want this?

I spent a few days just messing with both the e-readers, Calibre, Kobo and Wheelers to see what we could do with each device and the results were pretty good. I am not going to go into all the possibilities here, but I was happy with both readers for different reasons.

Some of the students really wanted a few books that were delayed in getting to us so I spent some of our coupons on the Steve Jobs Biography, Dead until Dawn (Sookie Stackhouse), and Son of Neptune then targeted those students to be be the testers for the Kobo's and the Ben Q readers. So far the feedback has been positive. (I have hogged one of the Kobo's to read Jobs biography and love the e-reader experience!)

We have not yet launched the full service of e-readers to the students with regard to management and circulation, we are still working on the best fit for us and the students. But I do see that we will need more e-readers in the not too distant future.

The Kobo freshly unpacked

Library staff exploring the new devices

We have bought 3 colours of cases - pink, black and white.

The Power of local networks

2011-11-12T10:48:00.018+08:00

Waiting for Trivia, Dianne McKenzie (cc Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License)

Last weekend I had the privilege to be invited to present a workshop at the Shanghai School Librarians Symposium. The symposium was created as a professional learning opportunity for the school librarians in Shanghai and surrounds to share ideas and learn together. We also visited 4 libraries over the weekend, had 2 dinners and lots of laughter.

Shanghai is a big city being the greatest in population in China and the largest city proper in the world with over 23 million living in the city across 6,340.5 km2. It also has two large airports serving it and other smaller ones (source of stats - Wikipedia). The city is made bigger by the ever growing traffic problems. The schools are spread out not only by distance but by time. It can take up to 3 hours to visit a school on the other side of Shanghai on a good day and the road system is great, just not great enough for the masses of people using the roads.

About three years ago many of the school librarians did not know of each other, working in isolation doing the best they could with what they knew, working within a system of government censorship. A few new people moved into Shanghai as school librarians who came from cities that had local networks of librarians. They felt they wanted that to happen in Shanghai as well. Initially a few people met together to get to know each other to share ideas, they would take turns in meeting at different schools. As time went on, more and more people wanted to be involved in the informal network and the small group of people grew into a larger one.

Being somewhat isolated from the mainstream professional learning opportunities (not many speakers visit China, and even less conferences are held there) The Shanghai Librarians group held a symposium in January 2011 where they came up with an agenda of learning opportunities using the skills and expertise of those in their group. They charged a modest fee to cost administrative costs and the symposium happened with a lot of organisation, and was very successful.

Last week was the second symposium organised. 65 people attended from all over Shanghai and an outer city of Suzhou, even some from Beijing came in for the 1 day symposium. Most were school librarians from the many International Schools in China. As a person who was dropped into the group from way down south in Hong Kong, I found the group welcoming and buzzing with ideas on how to make school libraries better places for learning. Throughout the day I became frustrated with the slow and closed internet, many responded that you get used to it and then shared with me how they get frustrated going to conferences where so many great online tools are shared, but they cannot use them due to the government blocking sites deemed dangerous for national security. Sites like twitter, facebook, blogger, and sometimes even Google search is blocked, also scoop it, youtube, and anything the government chooses for that day to be subversive. It gave me a different perspective on what challenges they face on a daily level. Many do have a VPN to subvert closed internet sites, but that is illegal, and some individuals and schools choose not to break the law.

Missing my weekend fix of reading my twitter feed and google blog roll, I found new ways I could access them. I became more creative in my approach to access what I wanted and needed to. Censorship made me cleverer and more conniving.

The symposium was a fun and informal get together of sharing ideas, knowledge and tips. One of the most fun parts was the Librarians trivia challenge where we were placed in groups, and trivial questions asked where we had to pool our cleverness and find the answer in the fastest way possible to then email the answers in. This was frought with possible problems and glitches by relying on the unreliable. But, we did it and it worked. It was made even more fun by the varying speed of the internet and the challenges of blocked sites and search engines.

The weekend was a great coming together of people who shared similar challenges and success, being able to share with like minded people in a similar setting helps to enhance learning and open discussion. Local networks are so enriching to all who contribute and partake of them. I think they often offer more value added learning than the larger conferences.

Credit for this amazing weekend must go to Barbara Boyer, Fiona Collins and Marion Van Engelen who were the inspiration and engines behind this great symposium of sharing. Well done super school librarians!

Do you have a professional local area network that you are an active part of?

The link for the symposium workshop offerings is here Shanghai Symposium

Shanghai Panorama, ©Dianne McKenzie 2011 (taken on an iphone 3G, stitched together by Dermander)

Jack Gantos came to town

2011-11-07T20:47:00.008+08:00

Jack Gantos visited our school today and it was fabulous!

He had students from years 3-11 entranced and engaged, rolling in the aisles laughing at his stories and at the same time learning how to create their own stories using a journal, writing formula and interesting words. They were learning from a true master the art of storytelling.

I had heard about Jack from other international schools - they raved about him. I thought he would be good to visit our school so our contact started 2 years ago with true negotiations and bookings about 18 months ago, we then had all the normal organisational nightmares in between. We shared the costs of Jacks visit to HK with 3 other schools in HK, plus a school in Jakarta.

The sessions were not as long as we would have liked due to restrictions of our timetable, however Jack was available in the library at lunch to chat, answer questions and sign books. More secondary students than primary took up this opportunity and equal number of boys and girls. Even some staff came to chat and buy books.

After his talks and signing time, we had 3 journalism students conduct an interview with Jack. He was very gracious with his time, answered their questions freely about his life occupation. He really enjoyed interacting with all the students. As far as author visits go, Jack was a breeze and I would invite him back in a heart beat and the kids would be just as entranced.

Jack is not just an author who talks about writing. He developed the master's degree program in children's book writing at Emerson College in Boston and taught it. He really knows his stuff and knows how to deliver it.

It was a pleasure to have him in our school, and I am really glad he came because I know he made a difference today.

Photographs 1 & 3 taken by Dianne McKenzie. Photo 2 taken by Connie Leung © Rights reserved on these ones!

Covering the ugly bits

2011-11-01T21:57:00.006+08:00

Continuing on the library renovations theme, it was suggested to us by Kevin Hennah to cover our messy and ugly shelving behind our circulation desk. We had requested the shelves be removed or for doors to be installed, but to no avail, so covers it was. And this is the before and after photos...

The shelving that was usually covered in stuff that did not need to be seen - ugly and very messy. The more space we had - the more mess we had. The essential items have been consolidated into the area below the sight line, and anything non essential was thrown out or moved to another location.

Installing the panels ...

We think the result is pretty good and the response from the school community has been very positive.
We are going to have a few designs created to change around through the year for different events like Chinese New Year, Book Week, and another generic theme. Thankfully these custom made foam panels are very reasonably priced in Hong Kong.

Need an excuse to come to Hong Kong?

2011-10-29T07:46:00.013+08:00

Then attend...

21C Learning Conference will be held Thursday 16 Feb to Saturday 18 February 2012 and they have called for submission of presentations. See here for information. http://21clhk.org/.

The theme is “Leading and Learning in Digital Schools”

I am helping to co-ordinate the library and information literacy strand as I did last year. It is great advocacy to have a strand like this inside a grassroots based digital conference that covers the full spectrum of school education and educators, and, although it was the first year for the strand last year, it was quite a strong strand with many people sharing so many different experiences.

Conferences are for inspiring ideas in others as well as sharing. We do amazing things in our every day work and play times that other people should know about.

Not to take away from what people offer at conferences, we as a profession do need to move slightly away from showing as many of the great resources we use and find in quick succession. This should be a given. We find resources, we share them and other people go "Wow, that is great". Then they ask - "but how can I use them"? I don't know about you, but if I am shown a resource and then have a discussion how it could be used, I am on fire with ideas. Allowing people time to think, discuss and ruminate is imperative for them to learn.

Look at the theme of the workshop - leading and learning - if that isn't custom made for the Library and Information Literacy strand then what is?

What else can school librarians offer in a digitally focused conference that might appeal to more than our cohort? I had a slight brainstorm and came up with the following possibilities to think about...

What are you doing in your every day practice that you could share to keep organised and manage everything?
How are you using ipads in the library or even across the school?
How are you adopting e-readers and e-books?
How are you working with and supporting teachers beyond resourcing?
What excellent tool or app have you used to great success to promote reading?
How are you best using databases?
How do you use the OPAC to help connect students with your resources?
What about your library website, what has worked well?
How have you organised to be part of the digital team at your school?
Do you use twitter? Diigo? Google reader MS word citation tool? Easy Bib? Noodletools? Can you share what you do with them?
Have you looked at the 21st century Librarians manifesto? How are you doing? Can you share your journey? 21st Century Librarians manifesto
What about copyright, creative commons and fair use?
Do you use AR in your school - how and why? and what are the benefits...
How are you promoting second language learning through your library and digital means?
How are you learning yourself through digital means?
How are you using youtube? Are you making video tutorials for your students or finding ones that have already been done?
Have you delved into virtual worlds or learning?
Integrating the creation of book trailers into the curriculum
Your involvement in staff learning - how do you reach other people in your school, how do you break down the walls?
QR code use? Success and failures.
Do you do digital gaming in the library /school? How was it set up?
Do you use social media in the library / school? How? Why?

Judy O'Connell has more suggestions that might prompt some thoughts Hey Jude blog

These are just some ideas - can you think of others?

If you are needing an excuse to come to Hong Kong for a few days and would like to share your experiences of leading and learning, please visit the the conference page.

Registration will open on November 15th at the same link for people who are not presenting.

Global Connections

2011-10-15T21:35:00.005+08:00

Photo by Xeni Jardin CC Inside One Wilshire http://www.flickr.com/photos/xeni/397163659/

There has been a lot going on at the library over the past weeks, which I will share with you gradually. One of the events has been connecting personally with people I knew online first.

Mal Lee has been an active participant in the OZTL_NET listserve for many years. He is someone I have admired from afar for his work in making digital literacy come alive in Australian schools through IWB, BYOD etc. He has written many books and papers on the subject which I have read. He emailed me one day and asked if he could visit our school while he was on a holiday in Hong Kong. Of course he could! It was great to spend a couple of hours with him and his partner Sue Lowe talking about how our school works and making comparisons and sharing ideas. (I neglected to get a photo!) Mal Lee's Site is here

Darcy Moore I know from twitter. Darcy was preparing a teaching exchange to Denmark with stopovers in many places, which he used Twitter for to get insider and local information. I helped Darcy find accommodation in HK and we arranged to meet at my school where we spent a couple of hours discussing what each others schools are doing for different things and bouncing ideas off each other. Darcy blogged about his visit

Both of theses meetings would not have happened without the connections I have made through digital means - listerves first and now twitter. These tools (plus others) have made the world a smaller place when it comes to participating in dialogue with like minded people, bouncing and sharing ideas, creating together, and collaborating on new ventures. It all makes for a very exciting world and, it is still nice to meet face to face!

New Door

2011-10-10T08:35:00.004+08:00

A quick post to show you our new entry to the library. Amazing the difference a bit of vinyl makes.

The product being sold

2011-09-29T15:16:00.009+08:00

(I tried to find the original source of the above cartoon, but alas I could not, if someone can help me with this, that would be great. it has been reposted numerous time and it does not have any credits attached.)

Last week I had the pleasure to teach 2 lessons to year 7 about their digital tattoo in conjunction with their unit on "Identity - who am I?" in English.

I had them search me to find what they could, I explained that I have had an online presence for a long time and I would be interested to see what they found. They found my blog, my twitter account, my locked down Facebook page, a few photo's. They collected this data and put it together and basically came up with general and common information about me. The most information they found was what was supplied on our schools website.

They then Googled themselves and found far more information than they expected. They found blogs they created in year 6 that were supposed to have private settings, they found images on flickr that their friends of families had taken and tagged while on holidays, they found information their own parents had put on the internet, and they found too much information on the school website and in the online newsletters. They were shocked that their digital tattoo had been created without their knowledge and consent. Many went home and talked about their findings with their parents, who then also Googled themselves and also were shocked at what they found about themselves.

Other issues we talked about was how Google tracks their every search and customises the search results for them. We all did the same search and then compared search results - they were again astonished at the differences between their results page. I then explained how mobile phones worked with sim cards and GPS, we watched the videos Digital dossier and Think before you post.

The next lesson we focused on Information privacy, watching and discussing the brilliant 2 minute video on it from Brain POP. Then discussed how if you are not going to give random people in the street your information and photo's (or even get undressed in front of them) - why would do it on the internet? We also watched this very clever video on Digital Citizenship to stimulate discussion on the types of behaviour required to be a good digital citizen. And finally we looked at bullying video Talent Show.

We discussed how when you sign up for free stuff - like Facebook, Neopets, etc that your information is sold to advertisers and spam generators. They exclaimed how unfair it all was, and we then had a discussion about reading the terms of agreement ('but they are so long and boring miss", "intentionally I replied - "and have you noticed they are also always written in capital letters as that is the hardest font to read?")

At the end of it all (I felt we were rushed a bit to cover what we did) I asked one of the students what was the main idea was of what I was trying to help them learn his reply "Think before you post, you don't need to share everything with everyone". Just what I needed to hear!

After a few days from these lessons the discussion continued in class and I believe the students of these classes will be taking their complaint about the school sharing so much information through the website and newsletter to the student council which will then be presented to the Principal as a pressing issue. They will be preparing a formal complaint using their best communication skills in writing - nothing like authentic action to make them use language better!

Revamping returns

2011-09-21T19:01:00.012+08:00

This week was the unveiling of our new returns boxes.

There was a bit of story behind this - we needed to change our returns box from the old book cover, covered perspex box that was falling to bits. We had commissioned some students to make it as a labour of love in the Tech department, they took about 10 months of love to finish it.

We then had 2 white boxes that were not very good looking, and had a rough surface that would not make it easy to cover, paint or whatever. Our new library assistant is a graphic designer (employed for this reason and to focus specifically on the creative changes we needed to make.)

She was scouring the internet trying to find some images to use on the boxes that were not copyright protected. It was pretty tough, but then we found a few that were similar to this. and decided we would take our own photographs of students in the school to put on our boxes. We had them printed on Photographic sticker paper (cheap as chips and fast production in HK) and stuck them on the sides and top.

This is the result ....

The box for the secondary area....

The box for the Primary school area ...

The response has been amazing - in all cases large crowds formed to inspect the boxes as they came out of class for lunch. Some of the primary students danced around the box, the secondary students physically moved the box to get a better look. They all have responded very positively to the boxes - even the models were excited how it all came out!

Now to just get the many overdues placed in the boxes!

You will also notice on the top of both of the boxes we have our Library logo quite large and prominently stuck!

We also hung our Roald Dahl banner (9m x 1.5m) in the library while we wait for the walls to be painted ready for the vinyl designs. The photo also shows our latest shelves to have their tops removed and the collection weeded.

So a busy week all round in the redesign of the library project.

All photographs taken by Dianne McKenzie licensed under creative commons sharealike.

Taking our tops off

2011-09-18T11:27:00.007+08:00

Shelf tops that is!

Last week I needed some physical exertion so started on the process of removing the dust covers from the shelves and rearranging to include more front facing shelving.

I started with the magazines, moving these from one space to another to make room for our ever expanding senior fiction section.

Once the magazines had been moved we then took the dust covers off the shelving, and wow, what a difference! Kevin Hennah had suggested taking the dust covers off for most of our shelves, but not these ones. The books look so much better without the dust covers hiding them. We then put in some front facing shelves and moved some of the senior fiction books onto them.

The next section was the main senior fiction which was overflowing, by taking the dust covers off we were able to move the shelving up and add another row without making it look overcrowded with shelving. We now have more front facing shelves and the books are easier to see and get to.

Happy with these results I then had the photocopier moved a and a large desk moved to a different location which opens the space up more and allows the fiction to be a unbroken section.

Then it was the fiction collections turn, again we took off the dust covers, moved the shelves, put in another row and added front facing shelves.

We then moved to the junior fiction section and experimented with the shelving there and did a massive weed at the same time.

The students reactions were funny, they walked in and said we had changed stuff, but could not figure out what it was. Some exclaimed that the library looked 'shinier'. Some of the students mentioned that the library looked less messy. One student said - what happened? the library looks 'bland'(we have taken out much of the colour we had in the library in preparation for other colour and personality touches). Taking the dust covers off certainly allowed the light onto the books, and opened the library up while at the same time allowing the books to sell themselves better.

The dustcovers also did not keep the dust off the shelves and books - the shelves were filthy!

I am now a convert - no more dust covers in our library. I am going to remove them all. I will have to slow down now though as I have run out of extra and front facing shelves until i order some more.

See below for some of the before and after pics ... (click on them to see a larger size)

Library Makeover

2011-09-10T21:39:00.008+08:00

Photo of Discovery College Library taken by Dianne McKenzie, modified using http://tiltshiftmaker.com/.

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a Kevin Hennah workshop on reinventing the school library. It was a whole day workshop with over one thousand slides of ideas and successful reinventions.

Kevin then had a full day consultation in our library where he walked around with me, discussing what changes we could make regarding signage, displays and making the library sleek and a cool space for the students to hang out. As we have a new library, there was not much requirement for new shelving and big ticket items.

Kevin has a couple of favourite items that he advocates - get rid of paper signage and displays, use vinyl custom designs stickers where possible, remove the dust covers from shelves, and use interesting colours, textures and fabrics in the library furniture and as many front facing books as you can get into the library, using mainly slat wall.

He is coming from a corporate background where he has spent many years working with companies like 'The Body Shop' to make their stores better and to sell more. His ideas were great, and we will be adopting some of them in our library, particularly the slat wall (if we can find a supplier in HK that will sell us less than 200 pieces). Many of his ideas were permanent changes, with limited opportunities for change for current event celebrations like Mid Autumn festival, Roald Dahl's birthday etc. so, I will be taking his ideas, but trying to make sure we still have the flexibility for fun and educational displays to the space which the students love.

Kevin left us with many ideas, and one of the biggest hurdles would be having the creative abilities to turn these ideas into actual changes to the library, and thankfully we have just employed someone who is working with us 2 days a week purely as a creative assistant to help us with displays - both physical and digital. She is a graphic designer who has worked in advertising. After only two days she has thought of ideas to complement Kevin's to transform the space, the first of these is to transform the returns box we have outside the library on the ground floor.

Printing is dirt cheap and extremely good quality in Hong Kong with a variety of mediums to choose from, so we will be taking advantage of this to create vinyl stickers, foam board covers and large banners to move away from the paper displays. I will be posting before and after photos so you can share the journey.

I am also collecting images for inspiration of the transformation on Pinterest - a tool which I am loving!

E-Books - the decision has been made

2011-08-27T07:33:00.006+08:00

Photo from kandinski's flickr photo stream, licensed under Creative Commons. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hiperactivo/2865276894/lightbox/

There may be a flurry of posts from me this week as I extend my thinking and knowledge in different ways. I will keep them short!

I have been seriously considering e-books over the past 12 months, in particular the platforms. I really did not want to shell out loads of money for Overdrive, but I thought I had no alternative. I explored and found all other products wanting when held up against it. So, decided I needed to go down that track. Tried to contact them, being in HK there was a time zone difference, so called at 4am my time to talk to someone, did not get to talk to anyone who was willing to talk, in a nut shell they were not interested in doing business in South East Asia - we got that message loud and clear. But things happen for a reason!

I kept exploring (and trying to contact Overdrive), and was looking at open source platforms, local Hong Kong created platforms when I chanced upon a tweet by @crgalvin CarmelG who mentioned Wheelers who are based in New Zealand.

I checked out their page, filled out the contact us form, someone wrote back to me pretty quickly, made an appointment to call me, and the next day we chatted for about 60 minutes about his product. He was knowledgeable, listened to my questions, helped me to understand some of the legal issues with ebooks, and although had not considered the international market as a potential market for their company, was willing to make adjustments to make it possible - and soon. Wow - customer service!

Wheelers is catering to the school library market, which means their product is affordable, they supply records through SCIS and the platform can be accessed through the library OPAC AND the website - hoorah! We can also add other documents to the platform such as student work, Gutenberg texts and other ebooks we purchase through non excrypted means (not amazon purchases). If we decide we do not want to use their platform any more, we still own the books, but we need to transfer them to another DRM platform to retain access. Wheelers has everything I was looking for in an ebook platform at an affordable price.

We also bought 10 Taiwanese made ebook readers (BenQ K60 NReader) in the past week to support the learning development team students and subscribed to Audible. I am excited, and really can't wait to move into this extra service for the library in our highly digitised school environment.

Today I am off to a Kevin Hennah workshop - so will probably post about that this week as well!

The learning never stops!

Planning for the new year

2011-08-21T17:07:00.004+08:00

"Discovery College Library Plan" created using Mindcreator on the ipad. Creative Commons. Sharealike, Copy with attribution, no commercial without giving me some of the proceeds!

First week back at school always brings new challenges and a fresh look at what we plan to do. Last year we made loads of plans, and managed to completed most of the goals we set for ourselves, as well as completing a few more not planned for as the opportunity arose.

Above is the outline of our plans for the library and library programme for this academic year. (Click on it to enlarge it) I will create a more detailed written plan based on these headings with more information, dates, and specific procedures for completing the goals. These plans will then become the basis of performance management criteria for the library staff.

This planning outline goes on the wall of our workroom, and we check it about twice a month to see where we are at, what has been completed and what needs more work. The paper plan at the end of the year is a mess with comments, arrows, dates, crossings out and additions. It is also a great start to creating an annual report when you can look back on the achievements, and of course very rewarding to see what has been done in amongst the chaos. I save all the plans from each year, so when we are feeling despondent, I get them out and we see how far we have come.

Also in the next few weeks we have arranged for a personal consultation with Kevin Hennah to visit our library and hopefully give us some more ideas on how we can improve the physical environment. We will be adding some more plans to the plan!

Crisis Management

2011-08-14T21:26:00.003+08:00

Just letting you know that I am still here, but am in crisis management mode right now with moving house, school starting up again and other normal stuff, the blogging needs to come lower down the priority list for a bit.

Check out some of the other great blogs I have in my blog roll on the left, or even some past posts I have done. If you want to you can check out the raw data from the survey I conducted here School Librarians PD survey

I am drafting some observations from the results - both of the questions asked and the answers. Stay tuned.

Professional Development in the School Librarian world

2011-07-30T08:26:00.006+08:00

I was given a link to eSurveyspro as an alternate to Zoomerang and I thought I would test it out by creating a survey to collect data from school librarians worldwide on their preferred professional development options. If you would like to participate in this survey, you can visit the link here School Librarian Professional development survey. It will close on August 7 at midnight GMT.

I am not affiliated with any company, this is for my interest as I launch into professional development for librarians in the IB world. I will be publishing the results on this blog. The survey is completely anonymous - not even IP addresses will be collected. Would love to have as many people to participate as possible to test surveyspro, so please send the link onto others who are in the field.

I will also do a post on conceptual learning for the library shortly.

Pushing my limits

2011-07-22T13:00:00.011+08:00

The above photo is one I took of PTIS Campus (Chiang Mai, Thailand) last week while attending an IB Workshop leaders training. The serenity of the location kept us grounded as our learning and comfort zones were pushed beyond anything we could imagine. I have never experienced anything quite like it in my life. We were so focused and so intensely immersed in the training for so long (nearly 5 days). No sessions were optional, and 110% was expected in all activities. There was no slacking off during the workshops from 8:30 - 4:30 each day. But, I have come out of the experience feeling stronger as an educator with a much deeper understanding of the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme and philosophy as well my learning and teaching styles and educational philosophy.

What did I learn that I will apply to my school life?
The following will mainly apply to IB schools, however, the concepts behind the following would apply to any school librarian working under any curriculum.

1. That a school needs to embrace the IB programme completely to really reap the benefits. The IB philosophy, standards and practises need to be a part of the school policy making, discipline, mission statement, action plans etc as well as in the curriculum. In the library I need to re-examine our mission statement, practices, collections, teaching strategies to ensure they align with these important parts of the IB. This is something that all school libraries need to do for any curriculum that is followed.

2. The learner profiles are at the heart of ALL the programs and is the mission statement of the IB. Everything is connected to the learner profiles even in the Middle Years & Diploma Program. They also need to be reflected in the documentation, essential agreements, policies etc. They are an exceptional collection of attributes that cover pretty much every action of humans. I have a much deeper appreciation for them. I need to ensure that my administrative and teaching behavior reflects these profiles and look at how they can be incorporated into the library program without just being meaningless signs. They are actions.

3. In the IB documents, the role of the library is both mandated and supported, and I need to be using these documents much more in my planning, collaboration and teaching of the curriculum. I need to be supporting teachers to use these documents as well, especially those new to the IB.

4. I had reinforced to me that teaching concepts results in much better learning than teaching content. Content will go out of date, concepts do not. I need to look at my own programme and align it with the teaching of skills to learn concepts. What are the concepts (or enduring understandings) we as librarians need to focus on? (I think this will be next weeks post).

5. Learning through inquiry takes time, and unless we as teachers are thrust into the inquiry mode of learning by external forces we really cannot fully appreciate all the factors that come into play when trying to learn through inquiry. Do not rush the students, they need time to get it in their heads what is required, they need to make sense of what they are doing before they begin inquiring. They need some background information to form questions, they need access to information to make sure they are arriving at the right answers, they need to know what the outcome needs to be - what are they trying to learn?

If they are working in groups - do they know how to negotiate, is one person assuming the leadership role without group consenus, are they auditing that they are covering all the bases? Are they staying on track? Do they actually know what they are supposed to be doing? Are they all actually interested in what they are inquiring into? Did they all get their first choice? Who decided what groups they would be in?

So many variables that come into play. Authentic inquiry cannot be rushed and needs to have good scaffolding to enhance the process. If there is not enough time to finish the unit - reduce the learning expectations to the main enduring understandings.

6. I have a much deeper appreciation for the MYP, PYP and DP coordinators at our school and with this new understanding I have I feel committed to support them in whatever capacity they need me to help them. I am now on the same page, and feel compelled to help others 'see the light!'

7. One of the main things I learned from the training was how much I did not know. I am now working through my action plan in reading all the applicable IB documents with the library glasses on trying to make adjustments to what I am doing along the IB lines. I am also looking at the documents with an eye to what is happening in our school as a whole and how this could be adjusted. I am looking at the documents with my teacher hat on, trying to absorb and make sense what it means to be an authentic IB teacher. I am realigning my practice and thinking to the philosophy that our school has embraced in the IB.

8. Another main learning point for me is that as a TL in a school, I need to know and be familiar with all school curriculum, planning and assessment documentation to be truly effective and proactive as a collaborating member of staff.

So, I have three weeks left of holidays, part of the time will be reflecting on practice, policies and programme and adjusting where required. I look forward to the journey, and I hope I become a better educator out of it!

Textbooks limit

2011-07-07T15:51:00.008+08:00

Image by Patrick Correia http://www.flickr.com/photos/ender/517900257/in/photostream/Licensed under Creative Commons.

This is a post that I have stewing about for a while and I will say up front - I dislike textbooks and I believe they have outlived their usefulness, and as we move toward the e-books and the cry for for e-textbooks to lighten the students load, I say lets abandon them altogether for the following reasons:

Textbooks were created by the publishing industry in response to an acknowledged shortage of decent information before the internet and extensive publishing made information so easy to gather - a textbook had all the information you needed to cover the curriculum in one place. This reason no longer stands up, we have an abundance of information, textbooks enable students and teachers to be non critical users of information.

Who is writing the textbook? What information have they not included? Why have they included the information they have? Is there a bias or an agenda behind the language or inclusions? Are these questions even asked? In recent years it has been found that a number of countries have excluded or whitewashed important historic events in their history and social studies texts - China and the Tianamen Massacre, Japan and the actions of their armies during World War II, Germany and the Holocaust. Textbooks previously and still are used as a way to indoctrinate the young into a certain way of thinking. What is included in textbooks and how it is written are taken as truths. If only the textbook is used in learning students are not given the opportunity to see all perspectives, opinions or to find and study primary sources or to even be given an opportunity to form their own opinion of the events or information contained within. Textbooks limit thinking.

Textbooks are created to help students pass tests by including strategic information required for the tests that are created based on the textbooks which are based on the standard curriculum. Textbooks are created to support an outdated mode of teaching and learning and assessment. Textbooks ensure students remain working at the lowest rung of blooms taxonomy - where is the comparison, evaluation and synthesis of this information? Where is the inquiry, questioning, consolidation, rumination, forming of opinions based on multiple perspectives? Textbooks limit learning.

When 'all the information you need' is in one place - what is the motivation to learn how to search and gather, make sense of, select and reject what is required? Textbooks have all the interesting research and hard work done for the student. How can informed decisions be made when only one source of information is taken in account? How can students learn discernment of information? How can they learn that good research takes time and skill? When we leave school there is no textbook on life with all the answers in one place, we do our students a disservice by sticking with textbooks to teach. Textbooks limit information literacy.

Textbooks are out of date as soon as they are published. Things change so fast in this world, how can we really base teaching on something that is stagnant and difficult to update. Textbooks limit the understanding of a dynamically changing world and how to find current information.

Textbooks are expensive and thwart the free market. In Hong Kong the local education system is based on textbooks recommended by the Education Department, and every year parents are compelled to spend thousands of dollars on these texts, and because they are required to purchase them, the publishers can charge what they like for them. We need to remember textbook publishers are in the business of making money, not educating children. Textbooks limit freedom to information through their pricing, and limit the free market.

Once students purchase these expensive texts, teachers are then obligated to use them in their teaching, limiting the time available to explore different information or points of view or even go off topic a bit to explore something new and exciting that was not in the textbook, or even, gosh, localising the curriculum to make it more meaningful. In many cases the need to 'finish working through the textbook' during the school year to ensure all information has been covered occurs with little regard to the learning styles, needs and interests of the students. Textbooks can become a crutch to teaching. Textbooks can limit good teaching practise and spontaneous learning.

So, if we expunged textbooks what would we use? How could we teach without a textbook to support the learning? My ideal world would be where students set the agenda and the curriculum of what they wanted to learn possibly within a wider framework of a national curriculum of 'topics'. Teachers spend an awful lot of time planning the curriculum without really consulting the students what is it they are interested in. We assume there is knowledge that everyone must know in order to be a good student, person, citizen etc. This goes against the pedagogy that students are individuals with individual learning styles, interests and needs.

But, we have national curriculums that specify what children need to learn, so we must at the moment work with this. How about the teachers help the students learn how to research, evaluate and synthesise their own information about a topic? Creating their own 'textbooks' (I would suggest this should be retitled collections) on a topic they can share with each other? They can then evaluate each others collections and see if there is bias, authenticity, currency, and reliability in amongst it. They could discuss what and how they found, and how they feel about it, they could from their findings justify their own opinions, They would own the information and knowledge they have discovered, and more meaningful learning would occur. This does take more time, and may mean that less content is covered through the year, but the skills that students learn will outlast any quantitative information they may have to learn, and take the learning to a much higher, quality level.

Turning textbooks into digital form does not make them better, it only makes them lighter and harder to burn.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

Some readings and research on this topic;

Researching the Ideological and Political Role of the History Textbook -
Issues and Methods
http://www.heirnet.org/IJHLTR/journal1/Crawforded-kw.PDF

Textbook : a bit of background information
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textbook

Hong Kong Schools Prepare for Mainland Revisions, New York Times, 1997.
http://www.nytimes.com/specials/hongkong/archive/0403hong-kong-schools.html

The Centrality of Textbooks in Teachers Work: Perceptions and Use of Textbooks in a Hong Kong Primary School
http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/research/journals/taper/pdf/200712/young.pdf

Annual Report 2010-11

2011-07-01T17:27:00.011+08:00

Image from Paul Grzegorzek's Thriller and Crime Fiction World

"There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. Yet that will be the beginning." Louis L'Amour

The DC Annual Report is finished for this year, but the work has just begun!

Although they take a huge amount of time to collate getting all the right statistics and information, I learn so much from them in finding out if we met our goals we set at the beginning of the year, what our strengths are and where we can improve. It is also a great way to be accountable for what we do and how we do it. For more reasons to do an annual report check out a couple of previous posts on this very subject.
2009 - 10 Annual report
Importance of creating an annual report

This year I felt we were not able to fully reach our potential in services and support due to a number of uncontrollable events that happened during the year that sent us spending energy and time in crisis control rather than being proactive in supporting the students and staff of our school. Hopefully these major crisis have been averted and avoided for next year and we can get on with doing our job. However, we still managed to implement some great initiatives and do some great work, so the annual report has given us back some confidence that we still did OK!

So - here is the link to our annual report mounted on Issuu for your reading pleasure. I have set it so it can be downloaded for offline reading in pdf format. I also have placed it on Library Grits wiki for those whose internet connection is not too quick. Enjoy and let me know what you think!

Issuu format DC Annual Report

You can also download it here Library Grits wiki

Quotes into Graphics

2011-06-27T12:38:00.006+08:00

Over the past weeks I have come across some fabulous quotes about Librarians which, when I read I had a vision of what they would look like - and recreated the visuals, changing them a bit by placing Teacher Librarians into the mix so I can use them as advocacy posters in our school.

The first quote is

"In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us how to swim."
Linton Weeks(Washington Post article, 13 January 2001, p. C01)

The visualisation;

Second Quote:

I guard your right to privacy
I protect your freedom to read
I support intellectual freedom
I am a librarian

- Cafe Press 2011

Please use as you feel the need.
They can also be accessed through flickr

End of Year fun

2011-06-20T09:34:00.004+08:00

We had a couple of 'Where's Wally' and 'Look Alikes' books which were sadly falling to bits.

We pulled them apart, picked the best pages, laminated them creating a table activity out of the full page spreads.

We then used the discards to create bookmarks from the Where's Wally books - we are going to also this with the Tin Tin books which are also loved to death.

The kids really love them. I got the idea from someone else but can't remember who but thanks ....

The results are in ...

2011-06-15T09:00:00.005+08:00

Last post I mentioned and shared a survey that I conducted with our secondary students. Well the results are in and you can the summary of what I found out from the students on this link to a scribd page. Survey Summary or if scribd is blocked for you you can go to the page on my wiki and look for 2011 Library Survey.

The survey report is an excerpt of the annual report, which will be shared in a few weeks. As in most surveys I do it has created more questions, and there are answers I would like more information or details about, and questions which were not quite right - all part of the evaluation process for next time.

I saved the raw data for each of the year groups in PDF format, combined all the parts using Adobe pro and printed it to give to the Executive in charge of the library. I will also include this data as an appendix to the annual report, alongside the complete database usage reports to give to the school executive and board.

We certainly received some great responses from the students about how we can improve the library experience for them and we will be able to use the data as leverage for change for issues we do not have complete control over.

Asking our customers

2011-06-01T16:18:00.008+08:00

These past few weeks have been frantic as my personal and professional life clashed in a big way. I returned from Istanbul to move house 2 days later where most of our belongings went into storage, and we took up residence in a temporary apartment. We then started renovations two days after that and then book week began - as much as I love bookweek, I certainly was glad when that it was over for this year!

One of the key components of this years action plan was to run a survey on the library services and programme across the school to make sure what we were delivering was 1. what we thought it was delivering, 2. and it was what people wanted. It was also a vehicle to allow customers to have a say in what they wanted with regard to the library services.

I used a free version of zoomerang to create the survey. I have used zoomerang for many years and really love the way it works and shows responses. As it was the free version, I had to make a different survey for each of the year levels, and another one for staff which was slightly different.

You can preview the surveys here :
Staff Survey
Students Survey

One of the key things and the hardest things about conducting a survey is figuring out what it is you want to know and how to ask questions which will give you the information you need. This year we wanted to know how the students and staff used the space, what resources they used the most, what online resources they used, and what they could see as problems and recommendations for improvements to the services.

I also wanted to gather information about the types of e-readers they may already have as we move into the digital book realm next year - a sly way of figuring out how many families have an e-reader and what format delivery is required.

I also wanted to make the survey as easy as possible to do - give ideas of what may be an answer to generate thinking, and then have opportunities for the respondents to give their own ideas.

I emailed the survey to all the students and staff with the access link for the specific questionaire and made it clear that it was their own year group that was being asked for input, and indicated that only the first 100 would be able to input their responses.

I sent the link out two days ago, and have the following responses from the year groups, Yr 10 - 31/60 students , Yr 9 -21/70 students, Yr 8 - 75/90 students, Yr 7 - 54/110 students, the secondary teaching staff - 13/ 29. I will email again to remind them all about the survey this afternoon.

The survey finishes on Monday, so next weeks post will be about analysing the results - stay tuned!

ECISlib2011

2011-05-16T13:37:00.007+08:00

In this last week I have been fortunate enough to be able to attend the ECIS Librarians conference in Istanbul (sorry for the abundant tweets for those who follow me!) This was a fantastic experience and a great learning opportunity, both from the formal presentations and the informal socialising and chats that go on with these conferences.

The conference was truly an international school conference with people from all over the globe attending, most with the IB curriculum, but not all. This was for me the highlight as International Schools face different challenges to the national school libraries, as well as similar challenges. It allowed me to pick the brains of people I had met through twitter and also those who are working hard in their schools on great things but have not been shown how to share what they are doing (we showed them..). There are great things happening all over the world in International Schools. I met some wonderful people who were fun to be with and who I will endeavour to stay in contact with across the miles. If you are in an International School I suggest you put this conference in your planner for three years away, it is the conference you need to attend.

So all this money and time off school - what will I take home?

I will take home a greater enthusiasm for having students create their own book trailers, thanks to Tara Etheridge (@bookchica) from Bangkok, and I even know which unit of inquiry we can embed it in next year.
I learned about join.me a screen sharing app from @BisLibrary, Cyril Compeyron - the French Librarian working in Berlin. He also showed me how QRcodes can link to anything - not just a website, and shared how he created a qr code treasure hunt. He also showed me Joomla and We spent a lot of time bouncing our brains off each other getting excited about geeky stuff. We even did a co-presentation on QR codes with 15mins notice, after meeting 10mins before in Joyce Valenza's smackdown (people thought we had rehearsed it and that we worked together in normal life ... that was funny)
I learned that Alan Gibbons is a fantastic public speaker/ author/ library & reading advocate and I will be asking him to visit our school so our parents, teachers and students can hear what he has to say...(in that order)
I learned what I needed to know about Overdrive from an international users perspective rather than a vendors perspective - this was extremely useful. Thanks Marjorie Schreier and her team from Zurich International School for sharing. I will be taking this information back to HK to share with others there. I also tweeted wildly throughout the session so you can have a look there for the notes.
I met and learned and was challenged by Joyce Valenza and Doug Johnson - this was just great, they are such personable people with so much to share.
I had confirmed that no matter what you are doing in a school, it is something different to what others are doing, and you need to share it at conferences or through blogs or on twitter - it does not matter what it is - someone will learn something from you.
I had confirmed that school librarians are passionate about improving how they work, that they want to be better at their job, they know they make a difference to learning, they just want help to figure out how to do it in this sifting landscape.

I took so much more away that I cannot continue as the post will be extremely long, it was totally worth it and I will go home with new ways of doing things, and also with an affirmation that what we are doing with our library programme is on the right track, but needs constant evaluation to stay there. A brilliant conference - I think it was the best I have ever attended. Well done to the organising committee and to ENKA schools for hosting us.

If you want to see some of the tweets from about 5 consistent and avid tweeters throughout the conference- search for #ecislib2011.People were using twitter as a place to take notes, so you get to share in the conference.

PS- You must visit Istanbul if you get a chance - what an incredible, friendly, vibrant, clean, modern city.

The image is one I took of one of the many statues of children playing, reading etc adorning the grounds of the ENKA schools. Just a beautiful addition to school grounds.

Fingers in many pies

2011-05-09T20:20:00.005+08:00

"Fingers in many pies" Image used with permission from Nick Stephens. Found on Flickr

Today was one of those days where I was spread very thin across all the areas I am involved in the school on our student free teacher training day - let me give you a run down of what happened.

Started the day networking in the staff room before heading in to meet an appointment with the Principal to show him how to update the wiki I created for new staff, discuss our end year social event and to discuss the library budget.

It was then a whole secondary staff meeting to find out about student awards, and then a discussion about how moodle is being used across the secondary school. Down to the accounts department and partner on the social committee to discuss the big event, I then had to write emails to finalise the end of year social event and to catch up with some students doing the personal project via email.

Break time then, more networking, then it was time to show the library staff how to use Audacity and itunes to change cassette recordings into digital recordings. While they were playing and learning the process, I created a how to guide for future reference.

I had lunch at my desk while I caught up on emails from different people, then had a short staff meeting with the library staff to discuss book week events and preparations that needed to be made.

After this I had a meeting with the Digital and Information Literacy team to reflect, re-evaluate and continue to develop our across school curriculum.

Then met the MYP co-ordinator to discuss a workshop on writing bibliographies for the year 10's I developed resources for but will not be able to attend due to being in Istanbul for ECIS librarians conference. Finalised the resources for the workshop.

I then finished the work day by putting our new shipment of books into their shelf locations ready for cataloguing.

At home this evening I will need to work on an MYP Personal Project training workshop. So, across the day I managed to work on every area I am part of in the school.

A pretty busy day all round!

The best way to ask

2011-04-30T09:45:00.008+08:00

Not sure why I am currently reflecting on the 2002 Malaysian IASL conference so much, however I am going to share something I learned from Dr. Blanche Woolls at a pre-conferencw workshop titled "The best way to ask". Blanche has published "Grant Proposal Writing: A Handbook for School Library Media Specialists" 1986. (ISBN: 0313244405 / 0-313-24440-5) among other publications.

This was about advocacy and getting what you want from the system. It was about applying for funds, staffing, resources and getting what you need.

The first thing that was discussed was why don't we ask for what we want? Children ask and expect to be given... they know what to ask, how to ask and who to ask (Santa?). We usually do not ask because we are fearful of being rejected. Rejection is just another way of saying try again another way at another time.

The discussion then turned to how often we meet with our line managers and discuss what is happening in the library? (seems to be a constant theme), Blanch suggested that we have a brief outline or report of the previous month to give to the line manager outlining developments and problems or challenges that you encountered since the last meeting as a hard copy of the meeting discussion. Her reasoning was that people do not know your challenges unless you tell them, and if it is in writing, then they have a record and you can refer back to it. In this day of email, it could be an email follow up, or if you do not have a chance to meet regularly, a short summary could be submitted regularly.

An annual report is also imperative to help with your case.

If you have a paper trail of successes and challenges recorded, it allows for acknowledgment of the problems and successes and the long term record is noted. It also allows for a relationship to be built up.

The next part of her workshop was submitting a proposal to ask what you want and the steps in writing the proposal.

1st : Know what you want and why you want it. Is it a solution to a problem that you have had for a while? Has this problem been recorded earlier? How will changing things improve the situation? Will it lead to other problems or needs? Have you done any action research to document your cause? Do you need a survey? Counting heads? What data do you need and how will you get it?

2nd: Plan the proposal - there are a number of items that need to be included -
The problem / need, the solution, the cost, the benefits, long term cost, planning for implementation, how it will be implemented, who is involved, time line, deadlines if required, alternate options.

3rd: Write the proposal using business report styling and language. You may also want to present it in a different way such as a video, or presentation, but always have a written one as the follow up for the recipient.

4th : Timing is everything - submit it early in the week, early in the term or year, or at budget time the year before and submit personally to the right person. Who is the right person? That will be dependent on your school situation. A word of caution, if you need to ask the Parent body for money make sure you pass it by your line manager or Principal first - they do not like to be surprised in open forums!

Template idea: (Extracted from U.S.-Israel Science & Technology
Foundation : Tips on How to Write a Proposal
Executive Summary:The executive summary is a concise description of the project covering objectives, need, methodology, and dissemination plans. It should identify the expected outcomes of the project.
Need: Well-documented description of the problem to be addressed and why it is important. (need more staff? If you have volunteers come in do you log their hours? Document as much as you can) Has it been done before? Research what others are doing along the same lines and their results. Review and cite the research that has been conducted in this area.
Objectives: Indicate the expected outcomes of the project, preferably in measurable terms. What will be the result of these changes? In a school the argument is best addressed to the improved learning opportunities that will occur, a good tip is to also align it with a whole school goal for the year, or school mission statement etc. Make it pertinent.
Methods:This is the plan of action for how the objectives will be achieved.
Evaluation: Describes the means by which the grantee will know if the project has accomplished its objectives.
Timetable: Describe how long (days, months) specific tasks or components of the project.
Budget: Show the detailed annual and overall cost of the project will take.
I would also put in alternate solutions that have been considered and briefly explain why they would not be as effective, to show that you have thought this proposal through.

Some of the other considerations Blanche indicated that will help you in your cause are:
1. Be a good example of an information professional in every situation, at home, at work at meetings, at social events...
2. Love your library and be proud of your profession. Make sure YOU believe in the worth of your library and your services. Make sure you believe you should be telling others about it.
3. Know that you need to ask
4. Know that you are willing to ask
5. Know what you need to ask for and have supporting evidence for your request.

Another place to find a some ideas for what to cover in your proposal is here The Canadian Association There are many others that can be found online with a bit of searching.

An extract of a chapter on proposal writing can be found from the "The whole school library handbook" By Blanche Woolls, David V. Loertscher can be found on Google Books

On return to our school after the conference my then colleague Andrea Walker and I submitted a number of proposals for changes to the program, for staffing, and for funding and they were all approved. Empowering to say the least. I have since used the same method in applying for increased staffing, equipment, and professional development. I have not been successful in all my bids, but in most cases I have been.

Getting what you need or want takes time and planning - think long term, and think it through thoroughly ensuring you have all the data you need to make a compelling case.

Principals want solutions to problems, not to just be aware of the problems. If you have a problem, figure out the solution you want and how to achieve it, write a proposal to request it and you might just be surprised at the results. Otherwise, the solution that others come up with may not be quite what you expect or need.

Influence is ...

2011-04-21T13:18:00.007+08:00

I am in the middle of the dubious pleasure of having to pack my house up to move out for some serious renovations, and in doing so I have thrown a lot out, and come across things that had been placed somewhere and forgotten about.

One of this hidden treasures was a handout that Suzette Boyd produced for the IASL Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2002 (way before conference material was put online for access later). This was my first conference as a TL, first IASL conference, first time presenting at a conference, and first international conference. What myself and my then colleague Andrea Walker learned at this conference helped us to change the way we worked in the school we were at, and, to achieve quite a few milestones in our library programme.

Suzette ran a workshop on "Power is not a dirty word" using Gary Hartzell's book "Building Influence for the school librarian" (Linworth Press. 1994) as the basis for her workshop. I did purchased the book after the workshop, and it has also been a huge influence on how I think and work at all the schools I have worked in. Suzette has also published her own work on building influence in a school The Connected Library If you are new to the school library scene, or need some help in figuring out how to get what you need, I suggest you find yourselves copies of these books and read them.

I am going to recreate here some of the questions from the 2002 workshop and Hartzell's book for your ponderings....warning they do require some deep thinking ....

1. Who influences you? Select three people who influence you not because of their authority over you, but because you like what they offer, you listen to them and admire them because of their personal characteristics or attributes. Can you name 5 characteristics about these people that together explain their ability to have influence with you?

Of these characteristics you have identified, how many do you think you have?

2. Who do you influence in the work space? Why? How do you know this? What characteristics do you have that make others want to be influenced by you?

3. How do you demonstrate influence as a teacher librarian within and outside your school?

4. Are their parts of your library program of services that the school community is indifferent to? If yes how do you know this?

5. What strategies have you put in place to ensure there is a minimum of indifference toward the library in your school?

6. What is your most effective sphere of influence outside the library and within the school?

7. Have you ever written an article for publication in a non-library journal, or presented at a non-library conference?

8. Do you take part in school politics / decisions? If so, are you comfortable with this? Are you in a leadership position in the school, outside of the library?

9. What tactics have you used to try to influence the behaviour of teachers? How successful were you?

10. If you had more influence in the school, what would be different?

11. What do you do to become personally visible at school?

12. What do you do that takes you out of the library role? Do you volunteer for things that may not be what you usually do?

13. What have you done to capture the support of parents?

The Principal
1. Do you believe the principal is aware of the real nature of your job?

2. What sort of feedback do you get from your Principal?

3. Do you have regularly scheduled meetings with your Principal?

4. How does the Principal support the library?

5. What strategies do you use when seeking support from your Principal?

Can you think of an occasion or incident when through your influence as a Teacher-Librarian, something changed, an innovation was introduced, or a problem was solved for the whole school community? If yes, how did you do it? If no, why not?

Can you increase your profile in the school to make yourself indispensable?
If you leave, will there will be huge hole left that will be hard to fill on a personal and professional level??

Finding these questions again has allowed me to pause and reflect on what, where and how I could improve. I wrote brief notes on the handout which include "need a well planned strategy", "ask forgiveness not permission", "be a risk taker" and "I have been appointed to implement change and this is part of my strategy". All very powerful statements on their own.

I also stumbled up this website The Nine spheres of influence which has a nice breakdown of the spheres that we can work in to increase influence with attached guidance on how this can be achieved. I think the spheres of expertise, coaching, relationships, vision and positive reinforcement are something that everyone in this field can be doing without trying too hard. Then you are only left with charisma, persuasion, authority and punishment - hopefully the last one won't be required.

There is also a quite amazing visual mindmap of how to become a person of influence. It has many verbs on action that can be taken, with very practical advice in the website IQ Matrix blog (you may want to explore this site for more amazing mindmaps).

Your School Library recently held an online conference on Evidence and Image, you can access the papers and conference discussion for $50USD. Gary Hartzell was one of the presenters along with Stephen Krashen, Keith Curry Lance, Buffy Hamilton, Carolyn Foote plus many others.

Having influence as a School Librarian makes a huge difference to what you can achieve, if you have a vision and influence, people will join you to help you achieve it if they believe in you and what you are doing.

"Influence: What you think you have until you try to use it." Welsh, Joan

Sigh ... back to packing boxes now to see what other gems I can find.

Reader beware

2011-04-19T10:07:00.004+08:00

Picture from 怀墨

As news unfolds about Greg Mortenson on 60 minutes and his alleged misrepresentation of himself and his story of "Three cups of tea" in Afghanistan, it brings to mind the book "Honor lost : love and death in modern-day Jordan" and how it was discovered that this 'true' story was a fabrication. Also, the book "A Million Little Pieces," by James Frey that was hailed publicly by Oprah as one of the most tragic lives and one of those books that could not be put down, was also found to be a work of extreme embellishment and fiction. There have been others that faced similar controversy, including "A Child called it" and its sequels.

Mortensons' story is used in our school as part of the 'Power of One' unit of inquiry with the year 5's, along with John Wood's "Room to Read" journey. It is extensively referred to in our secondary community service programme as how one person with a good idea can make a difference if they follow through with action. Mortenson's story is a good one, and one that is inspiring, so why are there parts of it that have been allegedly made up and, if this is case - who did add the fiction? Was it Mortenson? Was it the publisher? Does it matter?

I have been teaching evaluating information this year to years 7-10. Part of what I teach the students is that printed books generally go through editing and evaluation before they are published. All the checks and balances have been done by editors and researchers, so we can usually rely on the authenticity of the printed non-fiction word, whereas internet publishing does not go through so many checks, so we need to be the ones who check authenticity and accuracy after the publishing.

This latest controversy is a very sad state of affairs for not only publishers who do not perform the checks and balances, but for all of us who have read these books in the belief they were true, because the people we trusted told us they were.

We need to remember that the publishers are in the business of selling books, the more amazing story, the more books will sell, the more money will be made. We cannot seem to trust them with the research of autobiographies or biographies to check their authenticity and we need to rely on other agencies who have their own agenda such as 60 minutes, to try to keep the publishers honest. However, remember too that they have their own agenda - the more sensation - the more exposure, the more money.

As educators it has become even more urgent and important for us to be helping those under our charge to be critical thinkers, to question and to be aware of possible bias, agendas, lies. They need to approach everything with a little bit of wariness and discrimination.

I don't know what will happen with the allegations against Mortenson's story, I hope it is found to be as true as it can be, not only for the charities he has created and the people he helps, but so faith can be restored in the publishing industry and so young (and old) people can trust again.

QR codes are go....

2011-04-10T09:20:00.011+08:00

I have been thinking alot about QR codes for a while now, and how we could apply them in our library to start with, and then widen their use across campus. I wanted it to be something meaningful, that students would want to connect to, rather than just a fun or novelty thing to do that was cool without much substance.

I was checking reading age on some new books that had arrived, on the CMIS Evaluation website (which by the way is the most amazing database of childrens books esp for YA). As I was checking the information I thought that it would be interesting to make some QR codes that linked to the CMIS database reviews for each of the books. I opened a QR code generator randomly found on the internet Kaywa, placed the URL in the required space and generated a QR code. I then copied the QR code onto a word processing document and did the same for another 10 or so books and printed them off.

I then reflected on what I had created and if it was really what I wanted. I wanted students to have access to more than one review, preferably by their peers. I was racking my brain as to how to create such a beast without having to create a website for every book we have and then students having go to yet another place to review.

A light bulb went off in my head as I realised that we were already doing this in the form of Goodreads, which I have been encouraging the secondary students to use as a reading log. Now I had real purpose in my quest for creating QR codes to link with books.

I went back to the books I had already done, redid the QR codes to have a link to the individual book pages on Goodreads, copied and pasted them onto a word processing page and printed them out. Now what to do with them?

I wanted them to be attached to these new books, but the codes I had made were too large to place on the outside of the book, so I then had to find how small they could be to still be useful and work, but large enough to be noticed. Using my iphone QR reader i-nigma 4 I checked various sizes and found that about 2.5cm squared was just the right size to place on the back of a book. We then cut them out and glued the codes onto the books in the bottom left hand corner on the back of the book, ready for cataloging and covering.

Linking the QR codes to Goodreads will allow the students to see the book description and reviews and when they have finished, to scan the QR code and enter their own review, making the process of keeping a reading log so much easier.

The process is somewhat labour intensive, as you need to go to Goodreads, search the book title, copy the URL, open the QR generator window, paste the URL, copy the QR code image, open a word processor window, paste the QR code image. Continue until all the books have been processed in this way, print off the page or codes, cut out the code (we could print them straight onto stickers) and paste it onto the back of the book. Is it sustainable? Will the response / interest of the students be enough to warrant the effort? We will be doing a pilot with about 40 books to start with, and see where it goes.

We are going to start launching an education campaign on QR codes next week - where I will make the QR codes I created larger, place make them into a 'New book' display, without the titles or covers. This should raise some questions, inquiry and get them interested. For book week we are planning to create a QR code treasure hunt, along with some other QR marketing activities. Many of our students have smart phones or itouches, so this should be a fun way of helping them to understand QR codes and what they do.

Now I have found one useful purpose for the QR codes, my imagination will just go wild building on this.

Check out the Daring Librarian's Comic Tutorial on QR codes

QR Codes uses in libraries A long list of how libraries are using QR codes.

Here some other places to see how QR codes are being used in education...

40 Interesting ways to use QR codes in the classroom - led by Tom Barrett

QR Codes InEducation a livebinder collection by Steven Anderson

From ISTE

This is the QR directing you to the Goodreads site of this book ... what is the title??

How are you using QR codes in your library?

Postscript
: I have learned in the past 24 hours that Goodreads has its own iphone app and scanner where you can scan the isbn barcode and it takes you to the Goodreads page.It can be purchased for 99cents. (13 April 2011)

Taking on new roles - a cautionary tale

2011-03-27T16:43:00.005+08:00

Picture by Kevin Omara from designVerb

I have just had an extremely busy 2 weeks (so what else is new you ask) being immersed in my additonal role as Personal Project (PP) co-ordinator at our school, very probably at the expense of my real job of Head of Library and MYP TL.

This PP role is something I volunteered to do - without extra pay or time (would be interested to see how they could give me more than 24 hours in a day) as part of my approach to learning about the MYP curriculum, immersion and being seen as something other than just 'the librarian' at school. (I know it should be enough - but going beyond the normal role gives people a different perspective of the skills and expertise you have).

The Personal Project Co-ordinator role is exciting, it is challenging and it has given me great opportunities to have fabulous conversations with the students and will also allow me to help to direct them to appropriate information sources and help them in an authentic manner with their research. The role also involves a lot of record keeping, creative problem solving, consulting and of course time. It also means a lot of chasing up of students who are not doing what they need to be doing to stay on track.

It has also allowed me to reflect on my organisation and communication as I am co-ordinating 40 staff, 80 students plus interested parents. I have no problem organising large events, (organise an international Wiggles concert for 5,000 children? no problem - did it three times) and completing large problems within time frames (set up a library from scratch in 23 days - again challenging overwhelming, but completed on time and and to a realistic working standard), so co-ordinating this many people and projects is not at all daunting and planning the whole thing backwards is what I consider an enjoyable, dynamic challenge. My problem is the micro organisation - the paperwork, the checks, the letters home, the small stuff.

This role is an opportunity for me to really get that sorted in my repertoire of skills. I hate the time the small stuff takes. When students don't hand things in by the deadline, or teachers and students don't follow the instructions I find that this messes my planning and I need to make allowances for this in my schedule, put the brakes on my plans and I have to reassess what comes next. The Personal Project is also a curriculum subject, so keeping records of lateness, students having problems etc is paramount. Sigh....learning curve coming up.

On reflecting on the past two weeks, I became very tunnel visioned on the plan and task, constantly thinking about the plans, the possible interruptions, problems and possible solutions. My thoughts were completely focused on the project and nothing else fitted in my head. I know I have not been able to make any major decisions regarding the library and even home - everything has been put on hold until I was through a specific phase of the planning. I am through the tunnel now (until next time) and this blog post is testimony to that. Phew.

Does any one else work like this?

A week of positive

2011-03-19T11:32:00.004+08:00

Picture from The Bridgemaker

Last week I had a couple of choice experiences that I would like to share ...

On Tuesday my PYP partner in Teacher Librarianship crime and I ran a workshop on "Beyond Google" for parents at our school across all grades. We had about 23 parents register and we went through the search strategies that are being taught to the students - using Google tools like wonderwheel, timeline, related searches, setting filters,and using the advanced search option to filter reading levels, specific sites etc. We then explored the library website, connecting to our Netvibes pages that are under continuous development, and what the students can access from these sites. We also went into the password restricted subscription zone and showed how to access the Britannica online, Global reference centre, Gale Databases and everything else there. The workshop was only 90 minutes, and we did end up rushing at the end, however, the parents went away overwhelmed and better armed to help their children with their research.

The presentation was uploaded to slideshare and sent out before the workshop, and all of the participants had looked at it before the workshop and will use it as a reminder as they help their children. We have since had requests to repeat the session by parents who were unable to make the first session, so we will do that again in a few weeks. One of the best things that happened during this workshop was the Principal was showing some CIS WASC reps through the school and came across us running this workshop .... nice timing...;-)

I was also in the classroom working with year 7 on evaluating websites and deconstructing URL's before they plunge into research on environmental issues. This was all the teacher requested. I then volunteered to come in to support the searching phase in the following lessons, and in the very next lesson there was a point where the teacher requested the student bookmark the web sites they found, I then remembered they had used Diigo in year 6 as part of their exhibition, and piped up that they could use Diigo to do this. Some did not have accounts as they were new to the school so I took those students out and helped them set up the account and a list, then came back into the classroom to support the others. The teacher now wants me to teach her through teaching the next class on using Diigo. Just shows what just in time learning can lead to and how being in the classrooms is essential to making a difference.

Thursday I held a learning session for a few interested staff on the benefits of twitter for professional development, they all have accounts now and are giving it a go, and I hope they will find it as useful a tool as I have over the years. We also have a teacher willing to give a Yammer a go in their classroom as a trial. These informal and voluntary learning sessions will continue to the end of the year on different topics - Diigo, Blogs and Blog readers etc...

Then the literacy group met very late on Friday afternoon to come up with a plan to explicitly teach different literacy skills within the MYP curriculum - this is part of the snowball effect I wrote about here.

So although a very busy week, lots of good stuff happening. I love my job!

Blogging on the back burner

2011-03-12T17:55:00.002+08:00

Just letting all know I am still in the land of the living, have not had a chance to do a post in last couple of weeks due to travel, camps, training new staff and general busyness - so much for prioritising ....

Will be back next week...

Crazy week of overcommitment

2011-02-20T08:18:00.011+08:00

These past few days have been amongst the most intense and crazy times at my work that I have experienced. I had so much going on that had deadlines to meet that I was working totally toward meeting these deadlines - sacrificing sleep, blogging, eating, socialising and relaxation. Not quite sure how it all happened to fall in the same week, or why I thought that I could manage attending and presenting at a 3 day conference (most of it held outside school time), running a personal project planning day with student guides and scaffolding activities to develop, go on a two day camp in the middle, have a bus load of people visit our library, with an Eric Clapton concert thrown in for good measure - all to fall within in 6 days. I am writing this post in bed, with still more commitments to plan for - a talk in church this afternoon and an hour presentation for the personal project tomorrow to plan, but the heat is off. I can relax a bit.

On Monday morning I was quite stressed in looking toward what the week was looking like, however I went on a 2 day camp with our year 10's to a little village in HK called Tai O. It is quite a remote village, renowned for being constructed on the river bank with stilt houses - see the photos below. In this village live 2,000 people, with just over 50% being over 70 years of age, with about 80% of the population illiterate, the youngest being aboutmid 30's. Yes, illiterate in the 21st century, in Hong Kong with one of the highest literacy rates in the world. Most of these people grew up in a time when the British government did not fund schooling for local people and, the role of the children was to help the family with the fishing, as a result, they did not get much schooling. Their parents too were illiterate and saw no requirement for their children to learn these skills.

Going to the village is like stepping back in time, we did have remote access to the internet, however, it felt like we were intruding by using it. These people lead a simple life with many things being done in the old way. Many of the younger generation have left the village to find a life in the city, the primary school has 70 students, the high school has 300 students, but only 40 of these come from the village itself. They have left behind an aging population. The people of Tai O rarely leave the village, maybe once or twice a year to visit family or to see medical specialists.

The pace was slower, the shops closed at 5pm, restaurants 7:30pm, (for anyone who has visited HK the city closes about 1am - some parts 6am). The streets were deadly quiet at 8pm. No vehicular traffic can move through the village - only boats, bikes and pedestrians. The homes are close together and built of wood and sheet metal, as you walk past you can hear quiet conversations being carried on within. Our students needed to be considerate, quiet and asleep by 10pm, otherwise the police would be called. The people in the village looked after each other, their families had known each other for generations. Wherever we were we heard greetings and neighborly chats going on.

During the 2 days we were exposed to traditional crafts the older folk use to earn a living - salted egg making, fishing net weaving, shrimp fishing and hand line fishing. The students were aghast that a man will work for 5 hours to make a fishing net, and then sell it for $10HKD - about $1.30US. They at the age of 14 understand that time is money, and $10 for 5 hours work is something foreign to them when they have between 10-100 times that in their wallet on a normal day. Their lunch costs 3 times that.

Even though taking 2 days out of a horrendous schedule in the week, going on the trip helped me to relax totally, get my life into perspective and stop stressing about the small stuff. Lesson learned - simplify my life and stop over committing.

By the way, the 21CLHK conference was excellent too, Stephen Heppell and David Warlick were on fire and helped to re-ignite us. See their keynotes here. Warning - there is 4 hours of footage and you will want to watch it all.

From one of the tweets by Jplaman : Conferences are (still) necessary. Recharge batteries, make f2f connections that sustain us when we go back home.

This is the panel I was on with Stephen Heppell & Joe Butler (ICT Teacher in HK) on "How can school libraries embrace the new technologies in schools to support students and staff -mobile technologies such as ebooks, social media, web 2.0 etc? What are the challenges and potential successes?" It of course went off topic with a lot of fun comments and banter between us. Stephen said a couple of great things about libraries
"Librarians Under promise and over deliver... librarians lead the charge"
"'The Library is the heart of the school...' "
"the library is a spiritual place within the school with a bit of a crazy person running it..."
Go here for more stuff on his work with libraries Heppell on Libraries

A bit of a mixed post this week - but the week was a bit mixed!

Photos taken by Dianne McKenzie, February 2011 on a Panasonic Lumix Gf2 - the coolest camera around at the moment!

Short Cut Cataloguing

2011-02-06T16:41:00.007+08:00

I have been on a short break from work over the past week due to the Chinese New Year holidays, which has given me some to catch up on home chores and do some other work related jobs which included updating some of my resources from the past.

A few years ago I presented at an IASL conference in Malaysia (2002) on "fast and furious cataloging for the overworked and underutilized school librarian." I hadn't given it much thought over the past few years as I was in a position where I personally did not need to be doing cataloging. I showed my staff the things I had found and they were using them, and I thought that by now most people knew what they were doing in the cataloging area. Katie Day encouraged me to update and republish it, having never got around to it. But, over the past couple of weeks through conversations with people, and through posts to listserves I am on, it has again come to my attention there are still school librarians who are spending too much time doing original cataloging - due probably only because no one has shown them the short cuts.

So this post is basically a link to the updated and checked version of the same presentation I did oh so long ago on tools you can be using to reduce your original cataloging figures. An experienced university librarian once told me in 2001 that any library should not be doing more than 5% original cataloging - I am sure that figure could be reduced with the access we have to records now.

So, if you are still plugging away trying to input too many records into your system individually, I hope these tips and resources will be able to help you. If you have already got yourself sorted, it may be worth a visit to see if there is anything that you use that I have missed, and if so, please let me know and I will add it. The link is to a Google site I created Short Cut Cataloging

Let me know what you think - helpful or not? other points to consider? Suggestions ...

Just as a disclaimer - I have no connection with any companies linked or mentioned, I found them through searching and added them as a resource to help others. I do not want to be held responsible for anything beyond posting the links!

Snowballing

2011-02-02T21:21:00.007+08:00

Snowball by Redjar Licensed under Creative Commons

A couple of weeks ago I posted about an email I sent to staff regarding information literacy skills that I had identified as missing in many of our students and needing immediate attention and how a few teachers had approached me about it. Unexpected Results

Well, last week, I met with one of the head of departments, we had a brainstorm session about the possibilities of how we could help to work on rectifying the situation with our year 10's as a priority. We then decided we needed to enlist more help to make it more interdisciplinary and meaningful, we then invited another head of department, the MYP co-ordinator and some other year 10 teachers to a brief meeting to discuss our options of action.

This led to an action plan for the year 10's for the short term, and then with a wider picture for the rest of the school for next year and years beyond that. It then went to a curriculum leaders meeting, where all leaders were informed of the possible plan and invited to come on board to be part of it - mapping, planning, teaching, scheduling information literacy so that content is taught through these skills, rather than skills through content. All are keen and we are moving forward in the short term to upskill the year 10's and then plan for longer development across the school. It will become a priority for Professional Development, and curriculum meetings in how information literacy can be integrated most effectively vertically and horizontally in the secondary school.

Exciting times and all from one little email ....

Hive of activity

2011-01-23T15:56:00.003+08:00

This week has been a hive of activity in our library.

We had students using the library as a setting for the films they were making, we had a meeting of the local School Librarians Association and we hosted an exhibition by Year 8's on the real Hong Kong Experience which was a culmination of their unit of studying the HK Chinese culture. The exhibition was part of there summative assessment, and was also used to bring their parents to show their exhibit during their student led conferences.

I worked with the teachers on this unit from the very early planning stages through to assisting with assessment. We were looking at parts of HK culture from the contexts of social, political, economic, geographical, historical, aesthetics, values and beliefs where each student was in a group looking at a specific aspect of HK culture such as dance, fashion, films, entertainment etc being quite specific within these topics - dance would be Lion dancing in HK, entertainment would be Chinese Opera and so on.

Being part of the assessment process allowed me to see a few areas where the students need a lot of work including creating good questions, extracting and using information that is relevant to what they want to know to answer their question, their inability to transfer skills they have learned in one subject to another situation - this was highlighted through their poor bibliographies. They had only just learned how to create a bibliography in science a mere 3 weeks prior. It showed to me that once is not enough, that every teacher must be a teacher of information literacy. That is must be explicitly taught in every subject by every teacher all the time - not just me doing one off lessons and that is the end of it. Everyone needs to take responsibility for it and this has lead me to realise I need to more proactively upskilling the teachers to be confident and aware enough to embed these skills into everything they do. It has changed my focus a little, now I need to make a plan to make it happen.

This unit has allowed me to really see inside what goes on, what is being taught and how. Having the exhibition in the library created a merging of the library space with the classroom and I would like to do more of it. Having the exhibit for the student led conferences helped to showcase the library as being a part of the curriculum, and gave many parents the opportunity to visit the library for the first time. The exhibit required books and magazines to be removed from some shelves, and furniture rearranged, but it was all totally worth the incovenience to be a libratory. Thanks to Joyce Valenza for that word!

Connections

2011-01-19T16:16:00.002+08:00

During the last week my heart has been broken by the loss of my dear sister-in-law to an aggressive cancer. Her name was Dazzling Deb and she was a bright star who certainly dazzled everyone with her bigger than Everest personality and extraordinary ability to love all and make everyone she met feel extremely special. To her the saying “strangers are friends you hadn’t met yet” was the code she lived by. She was vivacious, bubbly and amazing. She turned 55 seven weeks ago.

This is not a blog about her and the terrible loss to our lives though, this entry is about my observation of the use of social networks and the internet to spread the news and as a catharsis for those left behind grieving.

Her husband through his work has a vast network of friends across the world, he posted the news of her death onto his Facebook page as his status update. Within hours he had over 200 comments and expressions of condolence from his friends. Dazzling’s Facebook page was filled with messages to her from people expressing their love and sadness at her death. People also posted onto their own pages as status updates their sadness at the loss with photographs of Deb. They opened their privacy settings so that friends of friends (Friends of Deb) could mourn with them. They were sharing their loss and mourning with Deb’s friends, people they had never met, but with whom they had a connection in this amazing woman.

The funeral was set for Friday afternoon, only 3 days after she left this mortal world, and only 52 hours after the arrangements were made, the information was again placed on her husbands Facebook page. One of the instructions was that NO BLACK was to be worn, everyone had to wear the most colourful clothes they owned. This information was again republished on friends of friends pages. We Googled Dazzling Deb’s funeral and 4 hits came up within 24 hours of the announcement on various websites around the world.

The program was created and emailed to the printers within 24 hours of the funeral, and was printed and ready to go for pick up at 9am in the morning of the service.

The service was set for a 3:30pm gathering for a 4pm start. Many people were there at 3pm and they kept coming until there was standing room only at 3:15, they overflowed from the chapel to the outside annexes, and by the time the service began there were over 500 people attending - with no one wearing black and all dressed extremely bright and cheerfully and, many having had traveled from all over Australia, New Zealand and further afield. All of these people had been informed the news and arrangements mainly through Facebook and the use of other online connections.

The wake continued until 6am the next morning and the whole event was a celebration of her life as she would have liked it. She had time to pre plan and set specific instructions of who was to do what at the service, what she would be wearing and even down to the menu at the wake. She had previously published this on a family wiki page we had set up to ensure in the event of an untimely departure, her wishes (and others in the family) would be known. This also made it incredibly easy to arrange the funeral and we did not need to guess or assume what she would have wanted.

This whole event to me was an amazing testimony of how connected we really are to others through the online world, and how not only important it has become, but also how we use it as the main means of communication and for making things happen. I recently saw the movie 'The Social Network', and although the story of Mark Zuckerberg does not put him in a good light, he has certainly changed the way people of all ages connect with each other across the world in such a short amount of time, (and probably in no way ever envisinaged in his Harvard days) In this instance, it certainly allowed for “those willing to mourn with those that mourn and comfort those who stand in need of comfort” (Mosiah 18:9).

Will miss Dazzling forever....

IPads and little people

2011-01-10T19:46:00.000+08:00

Over the past couple of weeks I have had the opportunity to share my iPad with some little people - two year olds and it has been quite interesting watching them learn how to use it and what they figure out to do on it.

The first time was in a long plane ride where I had an active 2 year old sitting next to me that was not mine. I introduced the iPad to him when he started screaming from fatigue to see if it would shut him up - it did and he was quite interested in it. I unfortunately did not have enough young games that he could manage, so we stuck with ' jot and Miss Spiders tea party ebook. It took about 20 minutes for him to figure out the touch technology properly (don't lean on the screen, single finger touch) as this was quite hard to learn due to its uniqueness to him.

Once he had that mastered, he then very quickly figured about the drag and pointing to make things happen. He enjoyed jot and the magic his finger made as it crossed the screen. I found I still had to be very hands on in the interaction he had. The device certainly not a babysitter at this age, but it achieved the goal of settling him down and tiring him out enough for sleeping.

The second two year also had problems learning how to use the interface, but once she had it figured out she moved along very quickly in learning how to navigate and what the big button at the bottom of the screen did. She was engaged with some of the games I had, however, I still found many of them too advanced in the thinking and fine motor skills for this age group. It was also a very hands on session for me ensuring she didn't accidently press the upgrade button on the 'lite' games I had installed. The buttons I am sure, are all very strategically placed on the games to be accidently pressed.

So this limited experience of introducing an iPad to two year olds was an interesting exercise in seeing what skills need to be learned for such a device, and, I am not sure if it would be useful for this age group as a learning tool, but they were certainly engaged and enchanted with the device and the apps I introduced them to. So maybe with the right apps it could be useful - that will be the next experiment!

The way of the Dodo ...

2011-01-01T15:58:00.009+08:00

Happy New Year to all and sundry, 2011 is a year that I know for one will hold big decisions for me, that my heart will be broken at least once due to the loss of a loved one who is currently terminally ill, and a year that will hold some more unexpected surprises - some better than others, but always surprising. I love New Years Day for this reason, it is full of newness for some new adventures.

One of the tasks I undertook on this first day of the New Year was to de-clutter my home work space, to be brutal in my flinging out of stuff I no longer needed, wanted or could find a reason to keep and, I was brutal. As I was examining things that were no longer required to be filling up space in my home I started thinking about things that I really no longer need due to having a smart phone, iPad and other digital devices, these were some of the things that I have discarded today ....

Address books - I kept one, the most recent one, just in case ... but really I don't need it, everything is on my phone.

Wall Calendars - I no longer have need of these, I love the pretty pictures they hold, so will look at how I can customise my ical to be pretty.

Paper Diaries - no longer used or needed - out they went.

Cheque Books - haven't used one in years, internet banking works for me.

Notepads - I use my iphone alot for lists and reminders - but I still couldn't bear to part with the new ones, however, I may not buy as many in the future, and use up the cute ones I have left for special notes, and reminders I need to be in my face constantly.

Business Card holders - all the information I need from business cards I have on my digital devices, maybe even business cards will disappear with the 'Bump' style apps becoming more popular.

DVD-R and CD-R's - these will eventually also go the way of the floppy disk, I need to make sure I transfer the contents I have of home movies etc onto our HUGE external hard disks.

I also threw out a bunch of printed articles I kept regarding Library stuff - I decided that whatever was in them was way too old now and I can get better stuff from what people are blogging about and online databases.

I have been thinking a lot about this extinction of everyday things recently as our HK Records store downsized by half, obviously itunes and downloading of movies and TV series from the internet has taken over some or most of their sales. Other things which I see will eventually disappear for me are :

Paper copies of magazines - being able to download and read them from my ipad works better for me.

Non fiction books in print - I really see these things disappearing sooner rather than later, except maybe for the very young ones - but what would more engaging an interactive book or a print one?

Fiction books in Print - this will happen as e-readers become more mainstream.

Christmas cards? Greeting cards? Hand written letters? Facebook and ecards seem to be taking over, setting up personal web sites and blogs is a more constant way to keep connected.

Printed Photos sitting in boxes or photo albums, or even photo frames - I love to look at my digital photo frames and the screen saver on my TV that has every digital photo randomly appear along with some nice surprises and memories.

What about board games? Families gather round the wii or xbox now in preference to the monopoly board.

A couple of things I am looking forward to going digital is those printed statements from the banks, electricity companies, water boards and any one else who wants my money - send me an email telling me how much I owe and I might just pay it sooner.

Now if dust would go digital....

What can you think of that will or has already disappeared for you?

Picture of Dodo from David Reilly.com

Unexpected results

2010-12-19T13:47:00.004+08:00

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to teach 12 classes from years 7-9 how to use bibme.org and how to access a number of the databases we subscribe to, all part of the curriculum and part of embedding on an as need to know basis we work on at school. While doing this (besides becoming quite sick of teaching the same thing over and over 3 x a day for a week), I also discovered what information literacies we are not explicitly teaching the students because we just have not had an opportunity due to time, need or understanding of what is being missed.

I identified 7 skills that I thought were imperative and urgent to be explicity taught to all of our secondary students and sent out the following email to our secondary staff :

After doing some intensive work with students in years 7,8,9 over the past weeks on Bibliographies and using the right resources for the right information for Science, I have been able to identify a couple of basic skills / knowledge that needs to be explicitly taught to the whole of secondary as there are holes, and would like like some help in integrating these into curriculum.

1. Website and resource evaluation - The CRAP test
2. Diigo (for organisation of bookmarks and information and using groups to finding information - a very useful and powerful tool for teachers as well)
3. Advanced Database use (needs to be for a unit that requires current or controversial information or points of view)
4. Notetaking - the students were keen to learn to do this properly when I mentioned
5. OPAC - accessing their own records, reserving, etc.
6. Smart Google searching (they are going to use it anyway...)
7. Using creative commons for image / music etc resources to be reused in their assignments.

There are others, but these are the main ones for now so we can move forward onto higher level stuff. I am happy to help out in anyway, and would really like to to be involved in either helping you to get these basics into the curriculum, or to teach it myself using some of your lesson time, (as long or as short as you like) or to just support you when it is taught in the lesson as an extra body in the room.

And, Please let me know if you are already doing it, for what year level.

Thanks for your help in this, it will help the students learn better and produce better work.

I had a few responses from staff asking me what OPAC and creative commons meant and was able to answer those. I also had a few requests to run classes for the staff on all those skills (which I will be doing next term) however, the best responses were from teachers I have not worked with yet in the elective subjects such as Art, Economics and Design Technology. Planning is now underway for some class time to directly target and integrate the skills I outlined in the email.

So, this was an unexpected but wonderful result of a simple email that specified what I wanted to do, identified a few skills that needed to be covered (without overwhelming anyone) with a bit of luck thrown in that people were interested at that moment they read the email. Have a go ... you might be surprised at the results.

Edublog Awards

2010-12-12T22:51:00.005+08:00

Just found out that Library Grits has been shortlisted for the 2010 Edublog awards, it is an honor just to be nominated so thank you! The nomination page is also a fantastic place to start to collect more blogs on your Google reader for learning...

http://edublogawards.com/2010awards/best-librarian-library-edublog-2010/

Stay young - Teach!

2010-12-12T14:08:00.007+08:00

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a small Christmas party with my husband and some of his work colleagues, I did not know anyone except the host and my husband, so it was a good night to meet new people. Just to set the scene here ....these people were about my age - some older, a few younger, and none of them were in the education sector saving for having had children go through school. All had children in their late teens and early twenties and all were expatriates. Most were in the aviation industry, a few were not, none were teachers except me and the large majority were men (4 women to about 20 males)

The evening grew later and there were a handful of people left and the conversation turned to social networking - starting off with Facebook. Discussion was about how good it was for their children to keep in touch with friends who had left, this then led to 'being friends' with their kids to know that they are doing and how some of the teenagers wouldn't allow it, I mentioned that maybe the family dog could have an account and be the teenagers friend rather than Mum or Dad. (idea gleaned from Warren Apel at ECIS forum)They then mentioned how they didn't like it at staff parties when people took their photo and tagged them on Facebook, "what if I don't want to be tagged?", and how people from all over the place can see what I was doing etc. I jumped in and mentioned how you can untag yourself, and have privacy settings that restricts who can see what, and maybe they could talk to their colleagues about this, and how they do not want to be tagged in photos - asserting their own digital rights. The "oldies" thought this was a novel and good idea and were surprised that they could untag themselves. When I mentioned they should also Google themselves to see what is actually on the internet about them - they were surprised that this could be done and would come up with results. I am sure some went home and did it.

The conversation led onto twitter and what a waste of a time that was. I again piped up and mentioned that it actually wasn't if you had a purpose to using twitter, that many educators used it as a tool for sharing resources and best practise, they still were not convinced, but I had planted a seed of another perspective.

Second life then came up and the comments about it were quite funny, and again they were surprised when I mentioned I use it for professional development, and how the British Health service was using it to help those who were housebound to connect and have a social life. It was all too much for some of them, they were also surprised that I knew so much and and I actually used these 'things'. When I mentioned that I also blogged, have various wiki's and actively monitor my online presence - their eyes glazed over, and not from alcohol.

I left the party feeling thankful to work in the education sector, and particularly as a Teacher Librarian as I do believe TL's in many and most cases are the leaders in moving schools forward in their thinking and practises in social media. I am also glad to be kept on my toes and in the loop just even to keep young, and not be fearful of the changes going on in the world. These men were extremely intelligent, many commanding or teaching others to use some of the most expensive, sophisticated equipment in the world, and had trouble keeping up with what their young adult children were up to online, or even how to protect themselves from unwanted tags.

I do believe this is not uncommon in this age group outside of education, and I had never noticed it before because I usually mix with educators. Maybe a catch phrase should be "Stay young - Teach!"

Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/clip/teecher.html

Conferences are fab!

2010-11-23T21:20:00.007+08:00

Just recently Doug Johnson posted a blog post on why face to face conferences may be in decline. I have just travelled half way across the world to a face to face conference, much to my personal expense, time off school, and fatigue and it was all totally worth it.

It was my first general educators conference - the ECIS Teachers conference - open to all educators who are members of the European Council of International Schools. There were over 1700 attendees with 240 sessions in 2 1/2 days on all sorts of things education.

I have always focused on attending and presenting at conferences that I have training and expertise in. This conference gave me ideas and insights that I did not have before, conversations with people who had different roles in their schools to what I do in mine, and I learned so much.

I love attending real time and face to face conferences for the following reasons:

I am focused on my learning - I am there to learn, interact and network with people - nothing else will get in the way of that when I am away from my normal environment. I find that online learning is always interrupted with life and more pressing demands of work and home unless I make it the first priority - it never is made a priority.

I find that listening and watching people present allows me to understand them a little better. I can also follow up with their ideas, new ways of doing things or just to mine their heads of information and thoughts they have over a drink, breakfast, lunch, coffee, dinner etc. Face to Face conferences allow me to connect on a personal level with people that is more than reading their blog, or online presentation.

Conferences give me space to think about what I am learning. I try to always write up what I came away with in terms of learning, new thoughts for progression in what I do at work, and, how I can help others. Taking notes is imperative for this, and now that I have an ipad with soundnote, the presentations I attended can be revisited very quickly and easily.

I find out about people that I may not have any idea about before and want to follow their thinking. Bill Rankin from Abilene Christian University was one such person at the ECIS conference. Great thinking there and someone I probably would not have even thought about following as his expertise is in Middle English literature,Medieval theology and heretical movements, Medieval pedagogy, Literary theory medieval pedagogies and educational practice. However, the way he presents and thinks brings his knowledge of the past into the now - gripping stuff and someone I would not have known about if I had not been at a conference where I could meet him and hear his presentations.

I also get to meet people that I only know through their online work - this last Conference I had the pleasure to meet Kathy Schrock and to learn from her. I also had the opportunity to converse with her and later exchange emails about common interests.

I also get to reconnect with people that I have met before through work, previous conferences and twitter connections. Always good to reconnect.

I also get to meet new people I want to follow on Twitter through their tweets about certain things going on at the conference, I could tell we had connections and became followers of each other.

I took my daughter to this conference as she just recently completed her B. Ed. She said she came away with more practical ideas in working with students from the conference sessions than she had in the 4 years of formal training and she is now a conference junkie.

I could not have hoped for anything more ;-)

What do you get out of face to face conferences? Why is meeting in person still important to you?

Making learning Fun

2010-11-14T09:27:00.005+08:00

Tomorrow we have a big day at school with Robyn Treyvaud, founder of Cybersafe kids http://www.cybersafekids.com.au/ from Australia. Our digital literacy co-ordinator has been co-ordinating the event with all secondary students participating in a full day of workshops on 4 different themes - 1. Managing Reputations and Relationships online, 2. To Post or not to post, 3. Being safe and secure, 4. Ethics, Plagiarism and Copyright. Robyn will also be leading a staff workshop on similar themes after school.

I am running the workshop on Ethics, Plagiarism and Copyright. This past week I have spent an inordinate amount of time creating a board game for our secondary students to play which will hopefully help them learn more about plagiarism in all its forms, copyright infringement, creative commons and fair use. It is a really dry topic, so I am hoping the students do enjoy the game and find out more about this important but quite "boring for 11- 14 yr olds" subject. We have an 80 minute slot to delve into ethics and fair play with regard to copyright. Not only will we playing the game but looking at well known plagiarism cases that have led to loss of reputation and money, as well as current cases. We will also be challenging their use of downloaded and illegal copying of digital resources. The enduring understanding is if someone creates an original work, they should be rewarded and credited for it.

These workshops will help to support some of the affective domain concepts we have embedded across the digital and information literacy curriculum, help to launch our schools new Academic Honesty policy, and to educate the teachers at the same time of what is the right thing to do.

I will post pictures of the workshop, and if the game is successful I will share it too!

Ethics image from Virginia tech Brian Tissue

Little Miss Busy

2010-11-07T22:25:00.000+08:00

Things have been totally crazy busy at work lately, many units to co plan, excursions to co plan and attend, sports days, lessons to co teach, resources to make, as well as MYP Authorisation (which was quite good - with sensible questions being asked of the MYP Teacher Librarian (Me)), visitors, training, philosophy statements to co write, ethics workshops to plan, and, I have a presentation in two weeks at the ECIS teachers conference in Nice, France, which must be perfect. I also have done a bit more weeding, written a brief report on what the library has been up to for the first part of this term, put my hand up to help co-ordinate a Library strand of a conference coming up in February in Hong Kong. I am also having to write documents and plan for the personal project programme which will be kicking off in January. Plus, all the other things one does when ensuring the library runs smoothly.

So, I have not got any reflections other than priorities are important, not wasting time is also important - and making time to relax is the most important!

Describing my Job

2010-10-26T22:18:00.003+08:00

Over the weekend I had a chance to attend an IB Librarians Continuum workshop at which I met some fab new people with great ideas and to discuss some of the challenges and successes with have with our jobs. I rarely attend these workshops with expectations, and I never come away disappointed with the learning, networking and recharging they offer.

One of the points Gary Green, one of our workshop leaders, made is that we need to make our job descriptions more specific and illustrative of what we actually do. We need to write the descriptors ourselves according to our vision, practicalities and what we would like to do and be. So I had a go over the past few days and tweeked what I had as a JD using Joyce Valenza's Manifesto as a guide.

You can see the newly created job description below on scribd
MYP TL JD draft

... I would also be interested to hear what you think - have I missed anything that should be in there?

Candy Adams had a column on Exhibitor Online http://bit.ly/bkHTIg which has a great quote
"My dad had a favorite saying: “If you don’t toot your own horn, there isn’t anyone else who’s going to toot it for you.” So get your tooter ready and start upgrading your job description."

The role is too big!

2010-10-19T23:38:00.007+08:00

I have spent the last week trying to get my head around what the Teacher Librarian does and why they impact so positively on learning and I am really struggling - not with figuring it all out, but struggling with the depth and breadth of the role and bringing it into a succinct persuasive argument that is not 100 pages long.

I created the above Wordle by inserting Joyce Valenza's Manifesto (I changed the word 'you' with 'Teacher Librarian'} along with a few other pages of notes I had taken along the way. I like that the words information, students, reading, learning, learners are among the biggest words in the wordle, and although this is not 20 pages long, it certainly gives a feel for what the Teacher Librarian role is all about. (Click on the image to make it larger or here is the link to it - Wordle)

Below is another Wordle by RB Skerricks which has a different set of words which reflect the human side of what we do, I like both the Wordles and I think I will be using both as part of the submission I need to do.

Taking a spin

2010-10-14T07:50:00.003+08:00

Image from http://i50.tinypic.com/157n5a0.jpg I could not find anymore details on who the photographer was.

Sorry for the late blog post this week, and I am not even sure this one will be particularly inspiring or reflective either - more a plea for help....

This week I am learning about the importance of Principals and how their support and understanding of the role of the library and teacher librarians affects decisions they make that deal with staffing, budget and anything else they have control over.

This week I need to create a powerful, persuasive document pulling in all my understandings, experience, knowledge of research, job descriptions, anecdotal evidence and proof that having a teacher Librarian at every level of the IB programme throughout the school affects learning in a positive way, and, is essential for student achievement across all levels.

I need to argue why the PYP TL needs to remain in the position, and why no one else is able to do any parts of her job as effectively. I need to argue that it is not just curriculum support of information literacy and inquiry that they are involved and has expertise in - that having a knowledgeable representative in the library program is essential for the progress of all programmes across the school, that by the removal of such a position will slow the progress we have been making toward having a 21st century curriculum and 21 Century skilled students with the library being a major support. I need to argue how Teacher Librarians affect student learning in a meaningful and significant way ....

So, excuse me if I need to redirect my energy and thinking toward this aim, and not be able to share my latest learnings on this blog, but my professional life and mindset has taken on a path similar to the graphic at the top of this post.

Any helps on action, references, documents, research that can be passed my way would be appreciated, we actually do not have much strong school based evidence as the current PYP TL has only been in the job 8 weeks....

Weeding the collection

2010-10-02T21:17:00.009+08:00

In the last week I spent a few hours weeding the Junior Non Fiction collection as we were running out of space. I was not intentionally planning to weed - I was just planning to re-organise the section as many of the shelves were jam packed so much that books could not be easily moved in or out.

While I was re-organising I found a few books that needed to go, and then I found a few more and then I was immersed in the job. Overall I think I removed between 100 - 150 books - some we had multiple copies that were not required, some covered a curriculum that we no longer covered (and would not have been of interest to the young ones anyway), there were also some that were just old and others that were in pretty poor condition.

When we moved into our new campus 2 years ago we had inherited a number of titles from a number of other schools and from our original campus. We had to re-catalogue everything and part of this process was to weed out many titles before we spent time and money on them reprocessing them for the new library. I had not evaluated this collection since then, so it was time to relook any way.

And, I am glad I did! In amongst it all were these gems ....

"You and your bones" was published 39years ago and "Race to the moon" 30 years ago and are just nasty, thankfully they were the only two I found this old.

I am going to keep them as examples of what needs to be removed from libraries and as tools / examples for using current information - but they will not be kept in the main library collection!

When I began my career in Teacher Librarianship, I had to really think hard about weeding and do alot of reading about it - not only the process of pulling books out, but also the disposal of the books. I was always taught that books were precious and that we needed to take care of them, throwing them out was not something you would do. I clearly remember in year 4 our Principal / Teacher brought in a box ful of weeded books from our school library and we were instructed to rip them to pieces. I tried to hide some, but couldn't save them and was crying as we did the deed - some students relished the job.

I have since got over the sentimentality of books and see them as a product with a limited shelf life, particularly in regards to a school library. Some of the books we pulled are current and good condition, they are just duplicates and will be given a new home somewhere else in the school. Many will be thrown out as they are no good to be passed onto anyone, and others will be given new roles as readers, performance poetry packs and some as readers, but this redefining has created more work.

The added bonus is that we now have more room for new books and the section looks so much better!

The following link has a list of great resources regarding weeding the collection
http://aless.wikispaces.com/Weeding

Getting noses into books

2010-09-25T17:47:00.006+08:00

One of the best parts of my job is getting books into young peoples hands, and getting their noses into those books.

I really like helping the students find a new author, series, or genre to read and be excited about, and I love it even more when they come back and ask if there are more like it.

To able to do this requires three factors :-

1. Knowing the collection almost inside out, this can be achieved by
a. being personally involved in the selection of what is included,
b. reading as much of the collection and being aware of what the books are about,
c. knowing what is being borrowed and read by others,
d. talking to the readers about the books they are reading,
e. for those books not read by me, I need to be reading reviews and the blurbs on the books to know the basic plot, characters, genre and possible interest.

2. Knowing the students :-
a. by being familiar with their past reading - genre, reading level, interests ...
b. if the above is not possible (knowing every students reading habits is quite a task in a school of over 900 students) I try to find out by asking the student questions - what was the last book you read you enjoyed? What do you like to read about? Animals? Spies? People? Relationships? Action, Fiction? Non-fiction? etc ...
c. asking - do you like reading? this gives me an idea of the level of reading and if they need a high interest book to hook them

3. Being a salesperson :-
Once I have a few ideas on which books to offer, I then need to sell at least one of these books to the student, I do this by
a. firstly selecting a range (5-6) of books that I am familiar with and preferably ones I have read, along with some that I know of that I am not so familiar with that fit the profile from all the above questions.
b. selecting books of various thicknesses, with different font sizes and various authors.
c. offering a brief synopsis of one sentence about the books along with offering the book to the student,
d. giving the student some time to look at the cover (note publishers: these are judged harshly), measure up the contents - font size, thickness of the book, type of paper, illustrations, physical size of the book, hard or soft cover, condition of the book (brown or yellowing pages, damaged covers, etc are also judged harshly - however all this is overlooked if they are extremely interested in trying the book, and, I do weed if I find ones that are in bad condition!)

Once this is done, I suggest they take some more time to look again at the three they are most interested in from the process above, and hopefully they will pick one, maybe two or even three to try.

There are however those students who ask for help to find a book and then reject all suggestions and ideas and anything that I offer them and go off and find something on their own. Last week I had one year 3 girl tell me after my best efforts that she "had read everything in the library". I think she meant she had read everything she wanted to read that was in the library. She eventually left with a handful of cook books. I will remember that for next time!

Image from http://www.earthlingsmusic.net/ReadingShow.htm

Challenging times

2010-09-19T20:16:00.004+08:00

We have had our first book challenge of the year, and the first one ever to go through the entire process - that is, the challengee was not going to be placated with nice words or moving the book to another section - they wanted it removed from the library along with every other book by the same author and they were happy to fill out the two page form (which most balk at) so we have gone through with it.

The reason behind the challenge was that it is VERY dangerous as within its pages unhealthy eating practises / attitudes were referred to which could influence young female minds to participate in dieting and unhealthy eating attitudes possibly leading to eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia".

The book is "Escape from year Eight" by Anna and Mary Pershall and the offensive sentences were quoted with page numbers (7 references in total for a 240 page book to eating, food, obesity ). The book also addressed bullying, wild deer hunting, moving to a different country, friendship and treatment of indigenous cultures. The 'eating' and food was not a major issue - just referred to in passing conversation, thoughts, narration, and when read in context were part of the characters thinking and mother's actions. In my, and others minds, there are greater issues dealt with in the book.

The background as to why this book has been challenged is that the challengee is a young person (17yrs) who has just lost a friend to anorexia. My perspective is that she is extremely sensitive to the world around her right now and looking for answers, and trying to take action to prevent others from following the same path. All excellent motivations, but it did get me thinking - how powerful is the written word to push someone over the edge?

We use books as healers, therapy, and catharsis in bibliotherapy as well as for information and understanding, so could a few indirect references to food / eating/ dieting/ obesity in one book contribute to someone to develop an eating disorder? or is it contributing to a total of lifetime exposures - such as through advertising, movies, home environment, friends?

Along the same vein we have books in the library that include violence, gore, sex, spies, drug taking, all as persistent and major themes of the story - will these move young people to take these actions further? If we considered every story (especially young adult fiction) as a potential to push someone into participating in dangerous behaviour or thinking, we would have nothing left on the shelves.

There are many indicators and factors that lead young (and older) people to do dangerous things, it is not just exposure, even though it may contribute at some point. Other factors are also in play, but, we cannot have every student who wants to borrow a book undergo a psychological test every time. The reader needs to take some responsibility for their reaction and action to certain things in books. Research has shown that young people who read about dangerous behaviours and the consequences in fiction are more likely to avoid it in real life or use it to make better decisions when they are exposed to it. The science of fiction

I had a quick look for research on if fiction can influence behaviour either positively or negatively but didn't find too much either way so, if you know of any, could you let me know about it.

"I am a part of everything that I have read." ~ John Kieran

Image from Frederic Lord Leighton

How much is enough?

2010-09-11T13:50:00.006+08:00

Most of this week I spent working out and allocating this years budget and looking at what the plans are and what we can achieve with what we have been allocated compared to what we hoped to have been allocated and achieved.

As part of an international IB school, and a supportive school principal we do have a generous budget, and I am aware that some schools across the world are closing their libraries, and others have their budgets slashed in these troubling economic times, and others are allocated very little, and some schools never had a school library so this is not a whinge session, rather a reflection on how much money is really enough for a school library to offer the full range of services to help move their students into 21st century learning.

Some of the questions that I have been thinking about ...
How many paper books do we need to purchase? Fiction AND / OR Non fiction? Replacements? New?
Online databases - how many are enough? which are the best value for money?
Where can we access similar data for a lower price or even free (use of public libraries?) Is the access easy?
What about audio and e-books - best practise - how much do I need to spend on these? How will they be delivered? What is the format?
Magazines - what is a realistic number to cater for student interests and curriculum support?
Professional Resources that have a wide scope in application across the school - how many do we need?
Author visits and authors in residence - I know these make a difference to students, however they are getting more expensive, what are we paying for?
The library operating system - is it value for money? does it deliver?
Other library services we use, these all add up, what is essential and what are luxury items.
Value added library services - self check out, displays, computer terminals and support, atmosphere, displays etc.

If you could have as much money as you could nominate to not only maintain your library at the current level, but to move it forward into 21st Century what would that figure be?

The figure I came up with was $65,000USD for a K-13 IB International school (where we need to ship everything in) that is growing by 150 students a year, to reach a population of 1400. I certainly did not get as much as $65,000.

What would be your ideal figure?

Picture from http://bit.ly/cbTG5w

Surprised and Honoured ...

2010-09-06T20:47:00.003+08:00

Just found this post by Doug Johnson in my google reader this evening Thought leaders in school libraryland

Wow - what a list, and I am amazed I am on it with all those other people who I turn to for inspiration and education! The shoes just got bigger .... Thanks Doug...

One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.

2010-09-05T21:06:00.001+08:00

Last week our new library assistant who has never worked in a library before observed about working in a library "There is a lot that is done in libraries that is not noticed, but, if it isn't done, then it is noticed straight away."

Ain't this the truth?

I spent much of my time last week doing administration - resubscribing to databases, periodicals and newspapers, locating requested resources, prioritising cataloguing, checking statements, ordering, training new staff, ensuring links for our databases were all working, working on updating the website, prioritising tasks for the new year etc etc. Everything that would have been noticed if it had not been done, but no-one except me will notice that it has been done, or how long it took to do.....

No wonder libraries are under appreciated - so much that is done is unknown to the public or adminstrators view. How could we change this to make what we do more visible? Not do it?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Title quote is from Marie Curie (1867 - 1934), Letter to her brother

Image taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/shovellingson/4240568512/in/photostream/

Managing the team

2010-08-22T07:08:00.005+08:00

It was the first two weeks back for the students after a long summer holiday, and the first week of learning. It is always a crazy week for us, but you just get on with it and do as much as possible in between the interactions and interruptions.

I managed to update the yearly plan for the library (this is mainly concerned with the library rather than curriculum support) and gave the draft to the library team - comments were "Oh this is so horrible - too much to do!" and the new TL who hasn't been a TL before expressed "I knew that alot was going on - but to see it like this really brings it home how much work is done behind the scenes to make it all work"

You can see it here on a mindomo map - there are many similarities to last years plan as we are still working on some of the developments.

Now that I am the manager for a team of five, I am concerned about managing well and ensuring that everyone feels part of a team and that goals are achieved, and, my management style brings out the best in people. I listened to Ulla de Stricker podcast from The SirsiDynix Institute on "Workplace Culture, Building positive and productive staff relations". Ulla made a number of points about effective management styles specifically related to libraries.

Some of the questions that resonated with me were :

"How can I foster an environment where the team members look forward to coming to work every day?

What can I do to make everyone feel …
–respected
–appreciated
–useful
–proud

She offers some excellent actions to achieve the above four points which I will be working with the team. Ulla also emphasises constant analysis and communication by the manager on how well we are achieving the four points.

She also outlines what matters to the team members which are .....

•Feeling understood and cared about
•Being recognized for what I do
•Feeling safe & knowing help is available if I need it
•Being at ease with co-workers
•Having fun

I recommend anyone who is in a team leader role in or outside of libraries to listen or read Ulla de Stricklands presentation available through the links I have provided through this post. It is well worth the time.

The podcast is available through iTunes on the Syrsidynix Institute's channel along with some other excellent podcasts from library professionals.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/sirsidynix-institute/id151078331

The slideshow to accompany the podcast is available here http://www.destricker.com/files/VeracruzLib_WkplceCulture.doc

and the written document is available for download here
http://www.destricker.com/pdf/HealthyInfoCulture.pdf

Making plans for the new year

2010-08-14T18:17:00.006+08:00

Next Monday is the start of the new term and year at our school.
I do like the new year - it is time for a fresh start and time to look at what we wanted to achieve last year, revisit those things that did not get accomplished and look if we can improve on what we did achieve, and then create a new road map for the new year with new priorities and ideas.

Out of a staff of five in the library, we have one new assistant and a new Teacher Librarian for the PYP, so one of the big priorities will be training and familiarisation with the peculiarities of our environment, and of course learning to work together as team - figuring out strengths, weaknesses and professional development for all. I will also have to remember that I now have another TL to pass ideas across and discuss options with, it will be a learning curve for everyone!

In management of the library this year will be a consolidation of all the systems we have set up previously, so we can move forward with enhancements and refinements. I have a long list of items that need attention - most involve integrated access of digital resources with the introduction this year of Moodle as a cross school learning platform, integrating databases with the OPAC, redesigning the library website, enhancing the OPAC with digital resources, and finally to clean the catalogue up after a comprehensive stocktake plus so much more!

With regard to curriculum support I will be able to focus on the Secondary programme and collaborate with the staff and students from all the curriculum areas helping to embed information and digital literacies across the curriculum and be more effective in meeting their needs. The primary programme will also have more support, so hopefully everyone in the school will also be happy and learn so much more!

Last year I created a mindomo mind map, printed it out and put it on the wall of the office where everyone could see it. It was very large and comprehensive, and served as a reminder of where we were going and what our priorities were for the different areas.
I think I will do the same again as it was so effective to keep us on track - next post I will post the updated plans.

Skills for life??

2010-08-08T15:37:00.008+08:00

In the past week I have had the pleasure of attending my two sons parent teacher interviews, overall the comments were positive and productive as much as 5 minute slots will allow but there were a couple of things that got me thinking.

A number of the teachers said things like ...
"He knows the content, he just has to be able to write a good essay to show it in his writing"
"We are really trying to get the content finished - then we will get onto the skills of how to write an effective essay and short responses so he will do well in the external exams"
"Hopefully we will have enough time at the end of the content before the exams to go over the skills required to write the essay in the style required"

My thinking was - should skills come before content, content before skills or, should they be taught in tandem? My feeling is that they should be taught in tandem - there should not be separation if the requirement is to write an effective essay to include sufficient content. Both areas are as important as the other.

I brought this up with my husband and he mentioned from a non educators point of view "Why do they need to know how to write essays? How many occupations require essays to be written as part of the job description or role?" And, thinking about it - why do we need to know how to write an effective essay? Is it for university courses? Then the universities have determined what skills should be taught in school ...

Essay writing does allow you to organise your thoughts, arguments and clarify opinion, however, is it really necessary to learn how to write a good essay to do this? How many occupations do you know that require essay writing? Off the top of my head journalists, lawyers maybe, people who are publishing research and other commentaries, bloggers? Is essay writing really a life skill that should have as much emphasis on assessment as it does in exams and assignments? If a student knows the reasons behind why, where and how, why should they penalised if they cannot write it in an effective essay especially in the current climate of differentiation in education.

The current external examination process my sons are sitting certainly benefit those who can write a good essay but discriminates against those who can't. Why should this be the case? Thoughts???

A new role, new responsibilities

2010-07-29T13:02:00.003+08:00

With reshuffling going in the library this year and new staff coming in to lift the load somewhat, I have put my hand up and been accepted as the MYP Personal Project Co-ordinator. I sort of had an understanding of what was required but I am person who needs to know stuff, and lots of it before leaping into anything huge that involves other people and puts my reputation on the line, so, I did some research, found a lot of different resources, spent a number of hours thinking and putting pieces together. I learned how to use dropbox and have the many resources stored there for easy retrieval, and also used diigo for those resources that were web based (there is a way to link the two, but I have not found it yet).

I then put my thoughts into words and colours and came up with the following document using pages that will help me to plan, collaborate and move forward. MYP PP Co-ordinator role.

I am a visual learner and colours are important, hence the colour coding and I like checkboxes to keep me on track. I discovered crocodoc from twitter and really like the way you can leave notes, scribble and add text to the document without affecting the original. I also used crocodoc to organise the library borrowing slots this year - I just placed the blank PDF timetable on crocodoc and the teachers filled in their preferred times.

The MYP PP co-ordinator role document will be looked at by our MYP Co-ordinator and Principal of Secondary to see if it needs modification as we prepare our first group to undergo the personal project. If you think or know of anything else that should be there - please add a comment or text, I would appreciate the input.

Stocktake - why we did it.

2010-07-20T20:17:00.005+08:00

Over these summer holidays the Library Assistants at Discovery College have been undertaking a library stocktake. This has been the first stocktake completed since the school started as Bauhinia in 2002, and then reborn into a new school - Discovery College in 2008. We inherited many resources and bad records from the old school when it was open and have been working on correcting records and re classifying, relabelling, and weeding the collection for the past two years. The stocktake took about 3 weeks and over 21,000 resources were scanned.

The aim of the stocktake :
* To reduce the amount of overdue loans by scanning all resources in the library effectively to clean up the returns which were a major problem.
* To identify the amount of loss.
* Identify resources that had incorrect records and fix them.

Results :
* We have about 700 resources missing from the collection. (3.3% loss rate - apparently an 'acceptable' loss is 4%, good to see we are under that especially seeing we hadn't done one before)
* A number of resources needed their records fixed.
* About 100 resources had the status of overdue, but then were scanned and became available - or returned.

Benefits to us?
* We know that the 500+ resources that are currently on loan and overdue have not been returned. (makes it hard to fall for the puppy eyes "but I returned it"....when we know they haven't)
* We can work on replacing the missing items if we need to.
* We can work on deleting the records of those resources we will not be replacing.
* We can work on making the records in the OPAC consistent and correct.
* We have a true reflection of the collection.
* The collection is shelved in order. It is nice to have everything in its place at least once a year.

Why do a stocktake?
I found a couple of well written articles on the reasons behind a stocktake (see below for the links). Both have some excellent points on why a stocktake should be undertaken. Some of the main points are here -

The Library Stocktake :
* provides an accurate record of library resources held is required for purposes of accountability.
* provides information on the resource collection so that it may support the achievement of student outcomes within the school, and assists with planning for future collection development
* provides a check on the library holdings and assists library staff in identifying missing items.
* ensures that items are labelled correctly and housed in the appropriate collection, which assists accessibility.
* ensures that at least once a year everything is in its right place.
* ensures that the database reflects the actual collection.

I will be writing a formal report about the stocktake, highlighting where most of the losses are and what we believe is causing the loss and ideas for reducing further loss. Being able to use the statistics in this way is productive.

I know at least one librarian who prides themselves in having never conducted a stocktake in their professional life. I think stocktakes are important in making sure everything is sorted, we will probably do another major stocktake in two years just to see how we are faring with those losses!

Do you do stocktake? Why or why not? How often do you do them? Are there any other excellent articles on why stocktake is important? Please share!

Secret Library Business part 1. Renate Beilharz, SCIS Connections Issue 62, 2007
Taking stock Barbara Braxton

Listen Up

2010-07-14T12:31:00.003+08:00

One of my most favourite things to do is to scuba dive. I left learning to do it late in life due to lack of money, time and any other excuse that got thrown my way but now I am trying to make up for lost time.

This week in my holidays I am undergoing the PADI Advanced Open Water dive course and I am finding it a bit tough. When diving there is a bunch of safety factors you need to remember which after a while becomes second nature, you also need to remember how to put your equipment together, which again, becomes automatic after a while.

When learning more advanced stuff about diving, there is reading to do and then discussion on the content with the instructor - not too difficult. What I am finding really tough is when we do the dive brief for the dive we are about to do and he tells me about 40 things I need to remember - the multiple activities he wants me to do, how to do it, things to remember, problems that may occur etc etc ... the problem with this is I am a notetaker and a question asker - neither of which can be utilised under water.

Underwater there is limited communication through sign language, and it is not conducive for questioning. I can take a slate with me to write underwater, and he is now using one to help me remember what we need to do in what order - he writes on it before we go in and then shows me the next item to do for the test. But, we are under water for about an hour and there is no eraser .... the slate is full.

As a learner I am finding it hard to keep up even with this differentiation. This got me thinking about what we do with students at school - verbal instructions are used much of the time. Now I admit I have a have a diminishing short term memory (I like to think because I have crammed so much in there over the years) and am finding it difficult to follow multiple instructions for something I am really, really interested in.

Young people have sharp minds, but still I think they would find it hard going to follow multiple instructions in something they may not be quite as interested in. "You were not listening" may be the answer they receive when they ask a question about what they have just been told..... maybe they were listening - just taking a longer time to process it, and then the next instruction came through and that was completely missed.

This small (and quite stressful) experience of mine has confirmed with me that differentiation is required, written prompts are required and visuals are required when instructions are being given. And time - time to process, to think, to ask questions will also help. And allow them to take notes too might help....

Annual report time

2010-07-07T06:27:00.006+08:00

It has been almost a month since I posted - the end of the school year gets so busy, busy, busy!

I have a couple of things to share but will do them one post at a time over a few days - the first one - the annual report for my school library which was completed early June but I did not get a chance to post it.

Last year I did an annual report for the first time and posted about the impact it had and 10 reasons why you should do one. See here for that post - Annual Report 1

This year I watched in awe Buffy Hamilton's annual report - and was inspired, but knew I just did not have the time left in the year to compile such a whiz bang digital report. Buffy's written report is here, and her digital animoto report is here. . I did have a look through the written report and gleaned a few ideas of how I could improve my report from last year.

I also love the web.me site report that was developed by Amy King at Medford Junior Library.

I also read Joyce Valenza's annual report for Springfield Township High School and again, incorporated some of her inclusions into the report I created.

Our report was created using pages on the mac then loaded onto issuu to give a magazine style feel. The link is here - Discovery College Annual Report

Already I have seen an impact that will benefit the library and decisions I can make next year. The school had some extra money that hadn't been spent at the end of the year - it was allocated to the library thus increasing our funding for the year by 10% (not included in the budgeting statistics). Our electronic databases are here to stay, and will be given blessings to increase in number to cater for our growing school and different curriculum needs. All because I was able to produce the statistics to show they were being used often and well.

So if you are still thinking about doing an annual report I suggest you do it, even if the year is ended - what a great way to start the year! Over the holidays I am going to give making an electronic version a go as we will be opening the year with a new 40" display monitor in the library and having a reflection on last year will be a great start to our digital display.

2011 Annual Report is here

Databases are like Scuba diving ....

2010-06-12T17:25:00.009+08:00

At the beginning of the time I was at my current school I included online encyclopedias and databases into the budget, they were taken out by the powers that be with a statement along the lines of "these are not worth the money as no one uses them." Beginning of this academic year I included them in the budget again, and made a case for a trial - if they were not used enough to warrant spending the money, then I wouldn't ask for them again for a few years.

So the stakes were high to make sure they were used. We subscribed to Encyclopedia Britannica online, which also included Global Reference Centre (Britannica in Chinese, Korean, French, Japanese - our main mother tongue groups), Gale Infotrac and Brainpop.

About halfway through the year I had a call from Britannica wanting to use our schools name as an exemplar user of Britannica - we apparently had the highest statistics in the Asia Pacific region. I quickly passed this onto the powers that be.

In the past few weeks I have been completing the library annual report (next weeks post) and been collating the statistics for many, many things including the online resources, and, I am happy to announce, that I do believe we have got our moneys worth from them in our first year!

The current exchange rate is 1 USD = 7.8 HKD

It was also good to see the off campus usage statistics were much higher than the at school use, evidence that the students are not only remembering how to access the online resources after they have been instructed in how to do it, but feel the resources are worth their time after school to use them rather than 'googling' their keywords.

These resources have been introduced a few times through the year to different year groups in different subjects to help them with specific assignments. It is interesting to note that the Infotrac statistics for May were much higher than the other months. This surge reflects that I was involved in teaching year 7 how to use the databases to help them specifically for research on current environmental issues for geography, and year 9, stem cell research in science. It was also the second time these students had been formally introduced to the online resources.

This is evidence that online resources need to be taught in context, they need to have the support of the classroom teachers, repeat instruction is useful and the students need to want to access them because they see the value in using them.

Next year we will be working on greater value for money, and hopefully, we will be increasing our online resources.

Fair Use is really fair!

2010-06-01T22:38:00.005+08:00

Todays blog post is a plug for a brilliant book and resource to help you understand fair use.

Just yesterday I received the book "Copyright Clarity" by Renee Hobbs and have nearly finished it.

I would highly recommend anyone who wants to free up their classroom and school for real creativity to get it into their hands and read it all the way through, then run a workshop on it.

It explains things very well, and is a pleasant read and blows away all the cobwebs and misinformation that is out there.

There is also a slideshare to go along with the book

There is a preview on Google books

I will now be going back to my prezi of the previous post and changing ALOT of it!

With Fair use and creative commons - the sky is the limit for what you and your students can do.

Important conversations

2010-05-22T12:35:00.007+08:00

Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeblogs/3020135605/

Last week I had the responsibility to create a trial presentation on Copyright, Fair Use, Public Domain and Creative Commons to stimulate conversation amongst the teaching staff to help them understand what is allowed and what is not, and what is the best way to reduce copyright infringement.

I spent a considerable amount of time researching "fair use" as this is very grey area, and found to my surprise that a lot more is allowed than previously understood. The copyright owners have used fear to blindside us into trembling when we use resources in education, however, if a resource is legitimately acquired, there are many uses under the umbrella of education.

The conversation we had with the two teachers that came (one a visual arts teacher) was stimulating and useful, and I think they went away feeling a little more confident about their rights as users of information, but what was most rewarding was that I was able to explain and show them the new Creative Commons and how finding resources that could legitimately be used without fear.

They were surprised about the advanced searches on both Google and Flickr which allow searches for different levels of licensing, and they were also interested in how copyright holders can take control over who and how people use their creations.

Our school has just created an Academic Honesty policy, and so this conversation will continue next school year as we as educators try to model and teach what Academic Honesty is and also move toward our students as producers of creations rather than just users, implementing the creative commons to their own works as both users and producers.

The Prezi I compiled and created is embedded below. It is not comprehensive explanation of copyright, fair use and Creative commons, it is a conversation starter. We stopped between each slide and discussed what we learned, how it affects us and how we should model it. I have also ordered the book "Copyright Clarity: How Fair Use Supports Digital Learning" by Renee Hobbs to help me understand more.

Teaching all the time....

2010-05-18T18:02:00.003+08:00

This past week has been incredibly busy as many PYP and MYP classes 'need' my expertise in database and bibliographic tools. One of my aims is to empower all the teachers to know how to access these tools and to use them at a high standard so I only ever need to 'teach' it once or twice to a class each year, and as classes move through the school, they use these tools as regularly as if they would use Google or any other favourite tool. The teachers would also become experts in the use of these databases.

I would really like to get onto other things to be teaching - teaching about database use is pretty dry stuff, even if you have an authentic reason to use it at that time of learning. I want to get into collaborative projects and finding meaningful ways to incorporate other amazing tools within the curriculum and co-teach rather than be 'the teacher'. So, for this to happen all the teachers need to be up to speed on the databases and the basic stuff I am currently teaching, it needs to be part of their everyday lives and what they talk about with their students, the teachers need to be models and have a good understanding, and treat them as tools, encouraging and expecting their use. These tools need to be embedded into the curriculum and used everyday. They should not be anything special that is taught by anyone special, otherwise they end up being too special to use.

So, one of my goals next year is to make the database use as common as the Google search amongst all secondary students and staff. Now, just have to think of some strategies to accomplish this!

Learning all the time

2010-05-10T18:00:00.004+08:00

Image from http://moving4word.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/working_together_teamwork_puzzle_concept1.jpg

Just a quick post on how my journey as a learner continues.

We are going through the processes of the year 6's creating an exhibition as a culmination of their learning in their unit on organisations. Part of this process is for the staff and students involved to learn how to use Moodle and diigo, both of which will be rolled out as our intranet and data collection tools next year across the whole school. This process has confirmed to me that there is nothing like an authentic learning experience and requirement to really drive learning, particularly mine. This is especially true when I am supposed to be a mentor for the teachers who are mentors for the students. I am supposed to be ahead of the game on how to use these tools. I am also going into the classrooms as an extra pair of hands to help the students with any problems they may have, and we end up exploring and learning together as we try to find the best use of the tools.

All great stuff as it gives me a chance to model how learning occurs even in adults and by working together to solve a problem, we can all learn better.

It has been a productive week of learning.

Information literacy is the basis for all learning

2010-05-01T09:17:00.005+08:00

These past few weeks I have had to do some soul searching regarding information literacy. I have had a few lively discussions regarding what it is with people who did not see it with the same eyes that I do and I have been part of a professional development team leading a workshop on the topic. I have spent a considerable amount of time in the past 10 years researching it, reading about, teaching it, living it, so when I am challenged it is a good thing as I can re-evaluate where I am and my understanding.

It all came to a head last week when I read the futurelab document "Digital literacies across the curriculum" which is an interesting and useful document, however something in this document caused me to take my ponderings a step further. The authors have labelled literacies or skills that I have always perceived of as being information literacy based as "digital literacy".

Some of the information literacies that are being repackaged as digital literacies include the steps defining, finding, evaluating, creating, communicating.

The handbook explores a number of themes such as :
"the ability to find and select information"
"critical thinking and evaluating"
"cultural and social understanding"

I don't want to keep information literacy as a separate entity, or get possesive about the terminology, but these skills are not exclusively digital literacy based. In this document and curriculum they are skills to be learned using digital tools.

The bee in my bonnet is coming from my belief that information literacy is the basis of all learning - doesn't matter if you have tools or not. A child in a developing country can still learn to "find and select information" without using any digital tools, or any tools for that matter - so why is it labelled as being an exclusive digital literacy skill in this document?

We need to look at learning in a broader context - what is it and how does it happen?
We learn through processing information - whether it be through print, music, movie, sounds, life experiences, movement etc. It is information. The information is still information until we process it and transform it into knowledge that we can use later in different situations. Knowing how to find, select, evaluate, think about, transform and use it to improve, learn, present, act on information are the basic skills for learning anything in any domain at any time of your life.

I have created a graphic / visualisation of how I believe Information literacy is the basis of learning in all domains. If you can have a look at it and comment if you think it does or does not illustrate how information literacy is the basis of all learning. It is my understanding of information literacy and is a work in progress, so I will be revisiting it often with your comments and my new understandings in mind.
This link will take you to the pdf document Information Literacy as I understand it.

Censoring the OPAC

2010-04-24T06:39:00.004+08:00

I am usually pretty open about what is put into our school library - I try not to censor too much. I do have a few rules to help me in my decisions which include not including pornography or support magazines that have soft porn advertising, PG DVD's are not lent to students in the elementary school without parental permission, and we do not hold "R" rated DVD's. The books that are included in the senior collection may include swear words and 'undesirable' behaviour, these are only available to the seniors to access but need to have literary merit to be included in the collection. Our art books have pictures in them that are well worn from being looked at - Renoir and his ladies along with some others being the favourites. Graphic novels are examined and restricted based on depictions of the female form and activities of the characters (ie violence, sexual depictions) I am in a K-12 school so need to be careful of what the young ones have access to, without restricting access to information and literary experiences for the older ones. I need to 'protect' the young ones from exposure and allow some access for the older ones. It is a balancing act.

We also have some secondary students who deem the non fiction title 'Sex 101' along with other factual resources on the human body as inappropriate for our library and hide them among the furniture or shelves so others can't access them. They will come to me with pictures from National Geographic showing indigenous people in their natural surrounds topless, and ask me to rip the page out as it should not be in the school library. This leads to discussions on censorship and appropriateness.

So this is the scene of the latest event in the library ... a year 3 boy trying out his newly learned word "F#@*", typed it into the OPAC with his teacher about a metre away. Normal naughty behaviour for a boy of this age, they used to use the dictionary before computers. It wouldn't have normally been an issue - he would have typed the word in and found no results. End of experiment. However, he did get a result ... there is a play at the very senior level called "Shopping and F%&*ing" which the drama dept have in their collection and is in the OPAC, as all teaching resources in the school are catalogued. The teacher glanced across to see what was causing the giggling and strange sounds and was shocked at what they were looking at. She cross examined the boy as to how he achieved such a result and he was open about how he got to it. He then got into trouble for trying such things, and I got the email about the resource.

How this got put on the system with a title like this? The library assistants have English as a second language and so are not aware of the seriousness of such a word in a school library, we download records from other sources and they work feverishly through the long list of items to be catalogued. I do not check every record that is entered, and I do not handle orders from other departments. So it slipped through and has lay dormant in the OPAC for about 12 months.

So what to do? The problem is now that because a result came up and other students saw this, it will spread through the junior school like wildfire, all having a go to see if it is real, it will then get back to the parents and we will have a major problem about the types of resources that are being held at the school and what we are exposing their children to etc etc... We could withdraw the resource from the catalogue but then that defeats the purpose of ensuring we have a record of what is in the school.

I made the decision to change the F word in the OPAC to something that means the same thing but is not as offensive and certainly not as controversial or as easily searched. The title is now "Shopping and fornication". It still can be found through searching for 'shopping', and the playwrights name, but the word fornication probably will not be in the vocabulary of a primary aged student. Hopefully this will be a win win situation for everyone.

What would you have done?

Mother knows best .... not all the time.

2010-04-22T07:39:00.008+08:00

I recently had a conversation with a 10 year old that went something like this ...

Student "I need to find an autobiography"
Me "Ok, who would you like to know more about - a sportsman, a scientist, a politician or a celebrity?"
Student "It doesn't matter, I just need an autobiography"
Me "Is it for a school project or reading?"
Student "No, my mum wants me to read autobiographies, she said I read too much fiction, that fiction is a waste of time, and I should read more autobiographies"
Me "Does your mum read autobiographies?"
Student "No, she doesn't read anything"

Hmmm - the mum lost credibility with me on two counts in the conversation, but I helped the young man find an autobiography to take home, and then immediately wrote a piece for the school newsletter on why reading fiction is good for you, hoping that this particular parent would read it.

Below is a piece from Ali Hale which I adapted from the original in some parts by shortening the text for space in the newsletter (hopefully without detracting anything from the original). These 8 reasons were the thrust and inspiration for the direction of the complete article I inserted in the newsletter which included these 8 reasons.

Eight reasons why reading fiction is good for you
Reading Fiction is good for you - here are eight reasons why ..

More Creative Thinking - Reading fiction gets you thinking creatively as it may just give you ideas you can apply in other areas of your life.
Being "Well Read" - Being able to chat casually with people about recent reads, hot topics in literature can be great at cementing a great first impression. Many fiction titles are based on real events, so you can learn about people, events and situations whilst enjoying yourself - this also helps you be well read.
Enhance Your Vocabulary Being able to write well also makes you look intelligent and capable - and reading widely will help to enhance your vocabulary.
Enjoy Your Commute or Lunch Hour - Books are wonderfully portable and will withstand a lot of wear-and-tear and allow you to escape the real world for a short time to refresh your mind.
The Ultimate Escape - Feeling stressed, moody, miserable or lonely? Getting into a great novel is my sure-fire cure for any of these. It's amazing how quickly you forget about what's bothering you, as your mind is filled with intriguing characters and an exciting plot.
Cheap or Free - Books are a cheaper form of entertainment compared to other forms of entertainment - especially if you borrow from a library.
Active Relaxation - reading is an active form of relaxation. Your mind is engaged with the story, busily translating those little black marks on the page into letters, then into mental images.
New Insights - Self-Development - Finally, reading fiction can be a gateway to new insights about the world - and about yourself. Perhaps you'll meet a character in fiction who's uncomfortably similar to you; and you'll recognize the solution to a flaw you'd never quite admitted you had. Maybe stories of courage against all the odds will inspire you. Reading literature from other countries, or "classics" from decades or centuries ago, can help you to see new things in life: the similarities and differences between your day-to-day life and that described in the novel can encourage you to think about different ways to live.

Adapted and extracted whole from Eight Reasons to Read Fiction by Ali Hale. http://www.dumblittleman.com/2009/07/eight-reasons-to-read-fiction.html

Can you think of any more reasons why reading fiction is good for you?

The book is not dead, just bad quality

2010-04-11T21:00:00.005+08:00

I just a wonderful week in Vietnam, and spent a few days in a seaside city which was fabulous. Part of the routine of going to places like Vietnam is that there are so many people trying to sell you so many things you don't need or want.

We were persistently harassed by vendors trying to sell us books - they had a box on the back of their bike and really gave it a good go to sell you their wares. We were sitting in a local pho cafe when the gentleman in the photo approached us with his box of books. I had a look through the titles and saw two that took my fancy - both on the history of Vietnam and the American war.

I asked for the asking price - it was way above the RRP printed on the cover, I mentioned this and the price dropped a bit, but not enough. I then mentioned something about them being 2nd hand and being in pretty good condition - "No, no they are new". I continued the haggling and got the two books for a price I was happy to pay.

Later that night I opened the book to start reading it and it was a photocopied edition! Buyer beware! This was the first time I had encountered such thing (DVD's yes - books no).

It appears this a huge racket in Vietnam especially around the 'tourist' spots on the coast. Upon further inspection of other book vendors the next day, I noticed the titles were all the same. They obviously figured out which books were the most popular and photocopied them. The covers were brilliant copies, and the paper was much better than normal book paper, but the print and photographs were obviously less than excellent.

So there you go - the book is not dead, but the authors and publishers are missing out big time on their cut of the creation. Not sure I learned much more than to check what I am buying much more carefully in these parts of the world.

Life is stranger than Young Adult fiction

2010-04-02T14:50:00.006+08:00

I have been on holidays for a few days and have had the opportunity to read a selection of young adult titles from our secondary library collection.

I really love reading YA fiction - it is raw, meaty, and the characters are so tender and real for the most part. I love teenagers, so I love reading about them and the decisions the characters make and how these decisions change them for better or for worse.

I make it a practice to read from our library selection just so when a student comes in looking for something I can say - "I read this, it was about...., and maybe you would like to give it a go". It only takes one reader to cause a stampede. This what happened with the Louise Rennison, Robert Muchamore, Andy McNab and James Patterson titles. All of which are now in hot demand that we have multiple copies of each and still a reserve list. All from a simple recommedation from me.

I particularly like Australian YA fiction. My favourite Australian authors are Maureen McCarthy, David McRobbie, Scott Monk, Glynn Parry and now Kirsty Eager. All of these authors write about relationships and identity issues, some of my favourite things. And, they hit the issues hard, with no apologies for possibly offending anyone. They deal with the issues in a real and sensitive way. and give me some food for thought after I have finished.

I recently had a discussion with a mum about YA content - she was asking why the Genre had so many big issues like premartial sex and pregnancy, drug abuse, relationship issues with parents, lovers and friends, identity crisis, suicide, bullying, divorce, depression, death, as it made her uncomfortable allowing her children to read it. I mentioned that these issues are based on real life and research has found that teens who read about the heavy issues either have the knowledge to avoid the problems (like drug abuse) or are able to lean on what they have read to help them through a crisis.

An article featured in New Scientist in the 25 June 2008 edition p.42-44, "The Science of Fiction" by Keith Oatley where research was described and developed based on the hypothesis that 'If people's skills as pilots improve when they spend time in a flight simulator, so people's social skills should improve when they spend time reading fiction.'

The article is an interesting read and is worth following up, the conclusion is that "fiction can be likened to a simulation that runs on the software of our minds. And it is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life."

Which is why the YA genre needs to be raw, meaty and true to life - because life is like that and the young people who read the stories have the advantage of being able to weigh up the myriad of interacting instances in the fiction - so if they have to confront it in real life, they may be better prepared to deal with it.

I am amazed at what others are able to achieve...

2010-03-29T07:21:00.002+08:00

Last week I spent a considerable amount of time researching how to set up a self checkout system for our students. We have the module on Oliver, we have smart cards and we have a 3M security system with RFID tage in all the resources, as well as a deactivation pad, so we have everything we need to get it going. We will be piloting it next term after the Easter break.

Some of the comments I have received have been "Do you think you can trust the students to do the right thing?". I am sure we can trust them as much as we can trust them now, and there will be 'supervisors' to start with. We will only be doing check out with the system.

While undergoing this research I asked another Teacher Librarian in an elementary school about the set up self checkout in their school. She replied with all the standard information of how it is set up but then continued to tell me that the students not only self checkout, they also self checkin the resources, and then, shelved them in the right places! Their age will depend on what they reshelve. All students reshelve their fiction returns, Non fiction may only be shelved if they are comfortable shelving it - otherwise they leave it in a box for the year 5 monitors to reshelve. They are a school of about 500 students from year 1-6, they have one TL and one assistant.

Years 1-3 have 15mins borrowing time in "library time" whereas 4-6 need to come at break times to borrow.

This was a wow moment for me - for our library, shelving and circulation take up so much of the Library assistants time - between 25-50% of their daily tasks. (Based on an activity log we did over 2 weeks). We have a very loose student helper program, where they help with circulation at lunch times, but they do not do shelving.

Having students do their own checkout, checkin AND shelving would allow so much more of the Library assistants time to be directed in other areas. It also opens up some questions - What would it take to get the students to such a level of competency? What would the benefits be to the students? For us? What would the downsides be?

What would it take? Total commitment on behalf of the staff to teach the students how to do not only the checkin and out (the easy part) but to take responsibility to reshelve the resources in the right place. To ingrain in the students to be principled enough to do it properly. I would start with one year group and work down - or work up - the little ones are probably better learners, and would be more enthusiastic, and if the older ones see them doing it, then they would want to do it as well.

What would the benefits be to the students? Confidence in using the library, a greater understanding of how the systems work for them, they would be exposed to more options for reading as they reshelve, a greater independence and possibly a greater ownership of the library - it would become their library.

Benefits for us? Less time on circulation and shelving if it was done properly.

The downsides? This would need a lot of time, consistency and total commitment to implement and ensure the students are doing what they need to be doing properly. In the beginning I can see many resources not being shelved properly, nor being returned properly.

Overall I do think the positives outweigh the short term negatives and may be something to commit to next year when we have a PYP TL and an MYP TL. All the staff need to be on board - including classroom teachers.

What do you think? Do you have a similar programme in your library - please share how you manage it if you do!

Thanks to Annette for inspiring me to think broader and give the students opportunities to grow and be more independent!

Learning authentically...

2010-03-21T15:12:00.007+08:00

Bob Wilkins - Professional Storyteller from the UK
Darren Shan - Author from Ireland.

Last week was a busy week - we had a professional storyteller in to tell stories to year 1 and year 4 to support their "How we express ourselves through stories" units, I took a small group of students to listen to Darren Shan talk about his books, and I went on camp for 4 days with year 8.

I am going to elaborate a little on the camp and life skills for these young people.

The camp was geared around helping the students learn new skills and become a little more independent and confident in their own abilities. There were numerous activities undertaken to reach these goals - a 14km trek to sleep in a tent which they had to put up, prepare their own camp food and then back everything up and return. Other activities included some fun stuff like dragon boat racing, kayaking and canadian canoeing, orienteering. There was also the cooking activity which I was part of.

In HK many families have what is termed a "live in domestic helper" who does all the household chores. This means that many children do not need to clean up after themselves, cook food, wash dishes or do much for themselves and this makes for an interesting independent cooking activity.

Each camp evening a group of 25 students were divided into 7 groups, and given some ingredients from which they were to make a meal for themselves and 3-4 of their friends. They had to eat the food they cooked as there were no extras. The teaching staff were on hand to help with guidance, safety and to answer questions, but they were not to cook for the students. The groups had 10 minutes to plan what ingredients they were going to use, and how they were going to cook it. They had a one pot, a gas cooker, a foil tray, a wooden spoon, one cutting board and one sharp knife as their cooking utensils. We were outside. We had about 90minutes to produce something edible.

This activity was quite interesting for all concerned - some of the questions and comments

"I have never cooked for other people before"
"How much food do we need for 8 people?"
"Has anyone cooked before? I have only seen someone else do it"
"We have to wash our own plates?"
"That isn't my mess"
"How do you use this?" (a can opener)
"Have you got a band aid miss - I cut myself"

A couple of learning points came out of this :

12 year olds are quite capable of creating something edible when given the challenge, with very little input from adults other than providing the ingredients.

12 year olds are very capable of collaborating and working harmoniously together on something very important such as food.

12 year olds are capable of washing up and cleaning up their own mess with a lot of direction from adults (after 4 days they were quite proficient at it)

12 year olds can learn that you need to cook meat longer than vegetables and some vegetables take longer to cook than others. Pasta takes ages to cook if you do not have a really hot flame and tastes disgusting if over cooked or left in the water too long. They also learned that cooking actually takes a long time to prepare, and it just doesn't magically appear on the table.

!2 year olds really enjoy making food for others!

12 year olds will not complain about the food on camp if their friends cook it!

It was a great inquiry activity and the kids learned so much more than if we had given them directions on how to do it. No one went hungry, there were no real disasters, and there was no food thrown away due to being inedible.

So - the moral of the story - give the kids a go - they will rise above your expectations if you give them authentic opportunities!

A full and busy week

2010-03-13T09:31:00.006+08:00

This week was extremely busy with professional development, author visits, meetings with key people for development of the library, social event planning and of course working with students. This post is a reflection on a few of these events....

Last blog post I mentioned that I had been keeping tabs on where my days go in terms of the type of activity I am involved in. I passed the two pieces of documentation to my line manager for his interest. His comment was - "WOW, you really cover all the bases, and you are working with so many staff and then to add the students on top of that. You are really proactive in what you are doing." So, I submitted for some more funding for library development and it is being seriously considered, and, I am definitely continuing with the activity logs if it has such an effect.

I took 7 students to see Derek Landy as part of the HK Literary Festival. These were die hard Skulduggery fans, and I really enjoyed taking such a small group out. I chose not to take an entire year group out for a number of reasons and just advertised a few spaces for voluntary participation. With such a small group the students were able to spend some time after the talk with Derek as we didn't have to rush off for buses etc and it was all very manageable and personable. The student reviews were "That was so great", "He is so funny", "This school is great for taking such a small group of us to see him, my last school would not have done that". I was also quite impressed with one of the students who video recorded the entire talk on her iphone - integratng technology into her everyday life! So, although we took alot of time out of school, it was a fabulous and memorable event for the seven students who went.

I also had a full day out of school learning about moodle and what is possible. I now have another self training schedule to undergo to get myself up to speed!

Next week we have a professional story teller coming in to support year 1 and 4 units of inquiry on Monday, Tuesday I take 17 students to see Darren Shan and then head off for camp with year 8's! My role is certainly diverse, but I wouldn't have it any other way!

Where do I go through the day?

2010-03-06T09:55:00.015+08:00

Image Copyright by Martin Liebermann / zeitspuren http://www.martin-liebermann.de from Flickr

Used with permission on 29 July 2011.

Last blog post I mentioned how I was going to track my activity through each school day for a week, well, I managed to do it and have produced a spreadsheet and pie chart to accompany it and make sense of it all.

The resulting pie chart is here ....

For a full picture of what the different categories include, the full file is here ... Activity Logs Look for 'Statistics of log' - a PDF file. I have also included on that wiki page the template I used and how the finished log looked - I chose to write notes about what the activity was for my own interest, but I also think it gives a bit more meat to the types of activities. The notations meant that I had to re-enter the times on another spreadsheet, but that didn't take very long.

We had a major problem to sort out with regard to student printing issues this week, and looking back, the negotiations dealing with this took up a large part of the time as did the upcoming camp I am involved in. However, what was pleasing in the week was the times of "teaching" and "working with students" combined was greater than any other category - over 25% and this was a quiet week for this activity.

I thought the time to complete the log would be intrusive and overwhelming, but I found it manageable as long as I had it open on my computer all day, and entered the data as soon as possible. I would also revisit it at the end of each day to make sure it was complete. The times are closest to how long it took - probably a little bit more generous than actual, but then I usually tend to underestimate how long something does or should take to complete, and need to consider movement to and from places as well.

The activity was worthwhile doing, I am going to do another one next week to get a bigger picture, and may extend it to the end of the term. I also created a template with our library assistants. I did not get their results at the end of Friday, so we will look at it as a team on Monday at our fortnightly meeting to see where their time is being spent.

I am going to pass these documents onto my line manager for his interest and education of how I spend my days.

I recommend you have a go - the template I have provided is in word format so you can download it and modify it to your own needs. Thanks again to Scott for inspiring me to have a go!

PS. Since posting I have realised there is nothing about sitting around reading books all day ....

Toothpaste and Bananas

2010-02-28T21:14:00.006+08:00

Last week I attended a meeting of School Librarians in English Speaking schools in HK. (ALESS) One of our colleagues, Scott Eder gave a short presentation on "Are bananas and toothpaste taking over my library?" where he talked about for many of the things in his life he is a creature of habit - like squeezing toothpaste and peeling a bananas - he does it the same every time just because it is a learned behaviour.

He went on to question us - is what we do in our school library toothpaste and bananas? Do we think about what we are doing on a daily basis - are they actions of routine and habits or are we thinking about why we are doing them and the way we do them?

It was a great informal discussion on how to evaluate our library programs - how we spend our time, who we work with and what we prioritise. He suggested we do a quick evaluation or checklist at the end of the day on how we spent the time. He gave out a form that has a number of "activities" - working with students, collaboration with teachers, curriculum support, tech support / troubleshooting, library administration, Library operations, professional development,school committees, curriculum resourcing & other. He checks off what he spent the day doing, and where possible how much time was spent on each activity. He says it takes about 5 minutes but gives him a lot of information.

So this week, I am going to try this to see where my days actually go. Will let you know how it goes next time!

2010-02-14T21:34:00.004+08:00

This week our library team was trained in the use of the RFID devices and technology that was installed in our library 18 months ago when it was built.

Each resource has an electronic tag, and we have security gates to let us know if the resources have or have not been desensitised or borrowed. We have just been working with this basic part of the technology, mainly because the vendor had a representative who was not interested in customer service - he wouldn't answer his phone, or emails or do anything. To get any service I had to complain to his line manager - this had to happen a number of times. Not surprisingly he was replaced, and thankfully the new guy on the block is proactive in helping us to get the most out of this very expensive technology.

We were shown how to do stocktake and shelf check with the handheld device, which not only records what it is scanning, but indicates if the book has not been returned correctly, and the order it should be on the shelf. It also finds lost books - you type in the barcode number and scan the shelves and it will locate resources that are missing in action! All this was quite easy to learn, (we now have a manual too!) and will be integrated into what we do regularly - we can check the shelves once a month to find incorrectly returned books. (Some students still, after many pleas, feel it is their duty to return books to the shelves, and only when they get an overdue notice do they tell us they have returned it!)

The new guy on the block also gave me a bill for 'maintenance and servicing'- it was equivalent to 10% of the total cost of the system - which was equivalent to about 20% of the annual library budget. I told him I wasn't going to pay for this 'insurance' when the system was basically static and docile, and if it does break, there is no way the cost of repair would come even close to the cost of the insurance, especially over a few years. He was a bit surprised that I wasn't prepared to hand over that much money. If the company needed that much for maintenance and service then the product is not worth purchasing and I would prefer to get resources into the hands of students than have to pay for ongoing technology insurance.

So now I look forward to moving forward in using this technology to improve management of the resources, and not paying the service fee!

I am also on a weeks holiday ... and for once I did not bring any work home to do ...

An Extraordinary Author

2010-02-06T14:39:00.008+08:00

Last week we had Deborah Ellis visit our school and speak to students in years 6,7,8,9. Deborah is the author of The Breadwinner (aka Parvanna), Parvanna's journey, and Mud City among 17 other titles.

Her talent is to write about children in situations that children should not be part of - where their basic rights are stripped, and where they are having to do things for survival that even adults would not want to be a part of. The issues she writes about include children in war, refugee camps, orphans from hiv/aids, leprosy and child slave labour in the production of drugs and other commodities.

She was different to most other authors we have had visit in that she uses her craft to bring awareness of the plight of children across the world, and as such she wasn't so much speaking about her books. The focus was on choices the students can make in life to be better human beings and to use their life advantages to help others. The students were deeply moved as she read excerpts from her book of interviews, and told of the people she met while researching for her books - in jails, refugee camps, and through living with the people who are in the situations she writes about. The royalties from some of her books go back to helping the people in the regions the books are about.

We had 4 sessions with Deborah, and I invited some of the executive to come in and listen. They were extremely impressed with what she is doing, and this visit will not just stay as another literature event, but will be used across the curriculum and school to enhance the community and service projects we are planning.

As an added bonus, the students were very keen to read her stories after the visit. I would highly recommend her to any school wanting an author visit that will make an impact. She is not just an incredible author, she is an inspirational human being.

This is an interesting article about her.
http://www.umanitoba.ca/cm/profiles/ellis.html

And another
http://www.quillandquire.com/authors/profile.cfm?article_id=6395

Evaluating for Authorisation - Rant!

2010-01-30T19:11:00.006+08:00

Our school is in the midst of being authorised by the IBO. This is fairly stringent evaluation of the programs and curriculum being run by the school to ensure it is meeting the IBO standards. It is pretty thorough in all areas except two - Library and Digital literacies. I am going to focus on the Library aspect in this post, but I think alot of what happens there also relates to the ICT and digital literacies evaluation.

As authorisation approaches I am handed papers to fill out to find out what the collection is comprised of - the list goes like this; Fiction, Non Fiction, Reference, CD ROMS, in language A (english for us) and Language B (Chinese). And then a question : What are the library / resources centre loan arrangements?. That is it. That is the paperwork for authorisation for the library for the PYP. For the MYP it was pretty much the same - asking about numbers on the collection citing outdated technology and access policy for the students. The actual interview was conducted by someone who had very little idea on what he was looking for to see if the library was supporting the program. The questions he asked were so superficial, and just not really trying to find out what the guts of what I do are. (I lay this problem at the feet of the IBO not the interveiwer) (I will not go into detail how I had a 35 minute interview time slot that was shared with the digital literacies co-ordinator..). I am feeling somewhat insulted that more attention is not paid to how the library is supporting learning in practical and meaningful ways beyond collection development and borrowing rules.

This got me thinking - if I was in charge of finding out if a school library was a good one, what would I be asking to see and be explained.... the following is what I have come up with. They are in order of how they spilled from my brain ...

I would examine :
1. the collection development policy, discuss with the TL how the resources are selected, and if there are challenges - what happens. I would also ask about censorship.
2. the diary of the librarian / teacher librarian to see what has been and is being scheduled in regard to collaborative teaching, flexible or fixed scheduling.
3. The information literacy policy and discuss how it translates into real learning experiences.
4. the plan for the library - term, yearly and long term.
5. the annual report from the previous years.
6. the online resources available and how the are marketed in the school - also see the usage statistics for the previous months and year.
7. Borrowing statistics, and trends.
8. The OPAC - how easy is it for users, what features does it have. How are the records?
9. The role description of the L/TL - discuss what is happening in reality.
10.The credentials of the librarian / Teacher librarian - where they were trained, how long ago, current professional development, personal learning network.
11. What extra programs does the library offer - author visits, book week - how are these rationalised amd supported and how do they support the school and library mission statement?
12. The types of resources on offer - age, condition, variety, internationalism, languages, currency, appropriatness, - does it include visual, audio, print, electronic, digital, online?
13. The library mission statement and philosophy.
14. The budget and how it is being spent.
15. Minutes of library staff meetings.
16. Policy and procedures manual.

I would interview
1. other teachers about the library and how it supports them and the curriculum.
2. students about their feelings about the library, what they like about it.
3. The L/TL and let them tell me what they do best. Ask them about what else they do in the school. What would they like to see happen in the library if they had unlimited money and staff? What are the problems / barriers they encounter?
4. The Principal and ask them what is going on with the library programme. How does he/she support the program?

I would observe
1. The lunchtime crowd - what are they doing?
2. How the library is organised - easy to find resources? displays? signage? posters? noticeboards? How is the collection organised, discuss how independent the students are in locating their requirements? Height of the shelves, disabled access etc Access to the resources including library hours & borrowing.
3. ICT in the library - who is using it, and how?
4. How the Library staff reacts/works with the students.
5, How the Library staff reacts / works with other school staff.

Am I being too tough? I think all of this would take about 90 minutes and give a fairly good overview of the library and how well it is being used in the school. It is a huge facility in the school, a good library has shown to improve student learning, so why are the evaluations so superficial and conducted by people who have no idea - or not given an idea of the standards that should be there and questions that need to be asked?

Is there anything I missed that should be included? How can we improve the standard and authorisation process so we are not passed over by such a superficial and outdated inquest?

Overwhelming Overdues

2010-01-24T14:21:00.006+08:00

We have an average of over 2,000 overdues at any one time. With a student population of 860, and about 90 staff, including support staff this is an average of just over 2 per person. We used to print out the overdue reminders every two weeks (this frequency to conserve paper use) and did not have much response. (We don't charge overdue fees, not sure that would help much either).

This week we activated the overdue email alert in our Library Management system for year 4 and up and sent them out.

The response has been quite dramatic, not only in reducing the overdue numbers, but in opening dialogue between the students. I have received a number of replies to the alert letting me know the resources will be returned soon, or that they have lost the resources and need to pay for them, or thay have already returned them, and we need to recheck the shelves. They have also been asking to be reminded on how to log into their account to renew. This has been the rewarding aspect of the email alert.

So not only are we reducing paper use (and wastage), the emails are timely, we don't need to rely on the teachers to pass on the messages, we are able to send the alerts more frequently, more resources are being returned, have created interest in the OPAC and their personal accounts, and we have opened another avenue of dialogue. The only downside I can see is the reliance on the students to actual reading the email alert, but I think this is something we can influence to create a habit.

Glad we made the effort to import the email addresses, we can only move forward from here! What are strategies you use to get resources back?

Excursions / Field trips are important for learning

2010-01-16T10:26:00.004+08:00

Yesterday I had the pleasure to accompany a year 7 group on a field trip to the Kowloon Walled City Park in Kowloon. I have been working with this group to help them find resources on this very specific part of Hong Kong's history and geography, teaching them about Google advanced search, wonderwheel, timeline and image searches to refine what their keywords and to refine the information they find. This small phenomena of Hong Kong will not appear in databases or mainstream publications. The local paper archives will have it documented, (yet to retrieve them as the site keeps crashing or the images are too small to be read) but the most prolific source of information for background knowledge was wikipedia.

Through their reading the students found out abut the city, the history and the stories behind it. They really were not that engaged with the exercise of finding out about this part of Hong Kong, it was just something else they had to do for school.

They set off with all excited about the half day excursion with their clip boards, questions, cameras and pencils. Upon arrival they couldn't wait to explore, but what happened was pure inquiry learning.

The current site of the Kowloon Walled City is now a park with various exhibitions showcasing what used to be there. They burst through the park gates absorbing and immersing themselves in the site and exhibits. They pressed every button, read every word and took pictures of everything. They were asking questions and we were directing them to look for the answers and then something wonderful happened ... a man who used to visit friends in the Kowloon Walled City was there, and was happy to answer questions the students had, they listened quietly while his answers were translated from Cantonese into English by one of our students, and asked more and more questions as he helped them to understand the conditions and lifestyles of those who lived inside the city, as well overwhelming facts about the city (33,000 people living in 350 buildings on a site of just 6.5 acres) One of our students recognised him from being on television for his exceptional talent of creating paper cuts (a traditional Chinese art) using only his fingers to create. He was happy to demonstrate his talent and we came home with some souvenirs to mount as an exhibition of our day.

After speaking with this primary source, we moved onto the further exhibits - by this time the question booklet had been forgotten, and exploration and photography was the order of the day.

As we were heading toward the buses students had even more questions - "why did they pull it down" "where would the people have gone" plus many more high level questions - they now cared about the city and what happened to it.

One of the assessment exercises is to become a resident of the Kowloon Walled City and to describe your life in the city, the other will be to revisit Wikipedia as a class, evaluate the information there and add to it where possible. I really think the students will be engaged and interested now that they have been immersed.

Transport vs Transform

2010-01-10T14:16:00.004+08:00

I recently attended a Ross Todd seminar where he helped attendees understand the complexities of Guided Inquiry, one of the phrases he used was Students need to go beyond transporting information from one format to another - they need to transform it.

Transporting information is the low level stuff : fact finding, stockpiling the facts - sorting, organising and regrouping it to fulfilling the limited requirements of the assigned project or inquiry'. It requires limited engagement with the information, and certainly does not lead to meaningful learning. Nothing changes.

Transforming information on the other hand is interpreting the data, establishing a personal conclusion and reflections on what it all means, transferring it to a more meaningful context thus, taking ownership and leading to deeper learning. The information is changed according to the needs, understandings and prior knowledge of the student.

The ability for students to do this boils down to the task or curriculum set by the teacher.

Something I have been involved with in the last week was collaborating and co teaching with the PE Health department on an assignment they have set for health. The teachers were exposed to Glogster through an inservice I conducted and were quite impressed. They wanted to implement this into making their assignments more interesting for the students.

So, now we currently have 65 year 9 students working on their own Glogs through http://glogster.edu and they are really motivated with the idea of transforming their understanding into a visual / multi media representation rather than a written one. They are also engaged and encouraged to do well as they can view each others Glogs,and the teachers can see the progress of their work as the week passes.

Interestingly, but not surprising, those who usually struggle with getting assignments in on time, and have difficulty expressing themselves with the written word are really pulling ahead of the rest of the students in terms of the creativity and understanding the capacity of Glogster, and getting the job done. It is great to see this tool being used in such a way, and, hopefully when all is finished, we will be able to share the exemplars with you publicly.

The PE department are the first in the school to adopt Glogster as a tool for assessing learning, and I think that other departments, once they see what is being produced, will take it on board as another tool to put in their box!

So, they too are transformers!

Marketing the possibilities

2010-01-01T19:30:00.006+08:00

In my New Years desk clean up today, I found a hard copy of something I created about a year ago when I had been in my current job about 6 months and wanted to increase the profile of what I could offer as a Teacher Librarian beyond the books and resources.

It took a little while to create - not so much the artistic side but getting the wording right and figuring out what I can and could be contributing to the school with regards to collaborative planning and improving information literacy and learning.

I was a bit shy about it, only gave it to the Team Leaders and a few others with a brief introduction to the role that I would like to play in the school, I only printed off about 12, and was a bit nervous about the reception as I really didn't know the staff very well.

This is what it was ....(click on it to make it larger)

I didn't get an immediate response directly to this marketing campaign, probably because everyone was extremely busy setting up a new school and all that goes with that. But, looking back on the year that has passed and what has been achieved with regard to what I am now doing and how I am involved in the school in collaborative planning, mentoring, coaching, teaching, policy development - in fact everything that was in that marketing brochure plus more, I am well pleased with the progress made beyond the books and resources.

Looking in my calendar to the new term, just in the first week I am booked for a professional development workshop with staff and 7 classes teaching different tools from online encyclopedias, databases and web 2.0 tools from year 3 through to year 9.

I am rarely asked now to 'get together resources' for a unit of inquiry (which I would cringe at every time), I am more likely to be asked when I am free so that I can help the students find their own resources for their units using the OPAC and online databases.

Life is busy, I made it so through marketing of the possibilities I can offer to contribute to the learning going on in the school (starting with this little brochure), and, I would not have it any other way!

Have a great New Year!

What is in a name?

2009-12-13T23:13:00.004+08:00

This week I had an unexpected surprise - my Principal announced that a position for a PYP Teacher Librarian would be created for the new academic year. It was a surprise as I had been told that it wouldn't happen for at least another year. However, through discussions with the PYP and MYP co-ordinators, they took up the case for me and put some pressure on. This has really helped my morale, and now I feel that I can begin to plan ahead for some exciting and meaningful activities and possibilities, rather than just skimming the surface, which seems to be what I am doing now. Jack of all trades, master of none.

Another teacher mentioned she knew a teacher who wanted to apply for the position, I asked if they had library experience or training, the answer was "No, we don't need library experience or knowledge - we need a PYP teacher in that role because you (me) will be doing all the library stuff, the focus has to be on the teaching aspect" I begged to differ, but at the moment I could not come up with any tangible reasons that were satisfactory or meaningful (It was at midnight standing outside a drinking establishment!)

I have been ruminating recently over what the Teacher aspect of the name adds to the Librarian role, and have sort of figured that out (which will be another days ramblings), but now, I am ruminating over what the Librarian aspect adds to the Teacher role. What added value does the "Librarian" have in the role of an effective Teacher Librarian? What are specific aptitudes, attitudes and skills a trained TL has that a classroom teacher does not? What extras do I bring to the collaborating table as a Teacher Librarian?

Anyone? Please offer your two cents worth to help me!

Importance of reading professional journals...

2009-12-06T17:44:00.005+08:00

Just a quick post today about one little incident that happened in the week. I received my most recent copy of "Teacher librarian" a professional journal for those in the field.

I love this journal as it is so practical for Teacher Librarians and has great discussion and information enclosed. One of the articles this edition was about using technology to teach using graphic novels and creating comics as a form of presentation. This was extremely timely as the next unit for our Year 9 Humanities / English will be to study the Holocaust through literature and then create a comic or short graphic novel to demonstrate learning, (along the lines of Maus concept) but the whole concept could be extended to other subjects. I needed to focus on just one department for now.

This article was part 2, so I tracked down part 1, photocopied and created a digital copy of both articles, and passed it onto the teachers concerned - including the Digital Literacies co-ordinator. They were impressed at the quality of the article and have asked to look at the complete journal as well, not only for this issue - but all subsequent issues.

I was also able to extract from the article the extensive number of links to digital graphic novels and comics to add to my growing list of digital books the students can access. Audio/E Books Tab

So from only one article I was able to help another department, inspire them to read a TL journal for their own professional development, and to add to the collection. For these three reasons alone, I am glad I subscribed.

The TL Journal is now trialling an online version where you can have access to back issues, currently it is a free trial for 30 days. I stopped subscribing to this journal due to not working in the field for a few years, I am glad I have been able to resubscribe - I really missed it.

Twitter and what it does for me....

2009-11-29T07:08:00.004+08:00

I have been a member of Twitter for about 18 months, I was introduced to it by Bernie Dodge as he mentioned it in passing in one of his presentations. It was in its early days and I couldn't figure out how it worked or what the purpose was.

6 months after joining I was reintroduced to twitter via a presentation from the Syrsi Dynix Institute podcasts and the person who was explaining it made it sound useful, they also explained how it worked and what they got out of it as a librarian. I was intrigued, went back into my twitter account and started following key people in the area of my interest - School and Teacher Librarianship. The way I found these people was to visit Joyce Valenza's twitter home page and see who was following her, and who she was following. I quickly had about 50 people to follow and sat back and watched for a bit.

I was astounded at the amount I was learning and what I was being directed to in such a short amount of time.

I was introduced to so many things that have allowed me to expand my knowledge, increase my personal contacts and have exposed me to so many resources that have helped me to build relationships with the people I work with, and to expose the students to amazing resources to help their learning. Twitter allows me to connect and learn from people all over the world.

I have had the opportunity to meet with people face to face who I have met on twitter, and had extremely rewarding conversations that are already past the 'small talk' phase as we already know where, and what we are up to in our professional lives.

Twitter is one of the best ongoing professional tools that is available, it continues to keep me up to date with the ongoing discussions, resources, and thoughts on what is going on in my field. I am able to share with others my creations, and immediately receive feedback on what I am creating. I can ask questions and get answers, I can be introduced to new ways of doing things and exciting projects that others are doing in their schools and classrooms and adopt them for our own needs, this can only be advantageous to the students I work with. It is like having a huge faculty to bounce ideas off - but without the headaches of working with so many people!

I have the opportunity to follow conferences, and learn of presenters and educators that are making a huge impact on learning I never knew existed before I had my Personal Learning Network. (PLN)

I am now up to following 165 people, with 135 following me. Twitter is different to list-serves and other email based forums. The people who are connecting with each other are interested what each other have to share. They want to know what you are doing and so immediately it gives you the confidence to share and know that someone will be able to use what you share. The posts are short and to the point - 140 characters does not give you space to waffle. Checking twitter posts does not take a lot of time - what does take the time is following up on what has been shared, but this is all learning, so is an investment. I do not follow people who will waste my time, and I am conscious of what I am posting so as not to waste others time.

In saying that I do follow a few people for fun like authors Robert Muchamore and Neil Gaimen (Neil is a prolific tweeter and quite funny) and Lance Armstrong, who has an amazing life which he shares in his quest to promote his Livestrong charity.

Still not convinced? Someone set up a google doc asking educators to comment on "The Power of Twitter for educators" Have a read of what others think - if you already are on Twittter - add why you continue to be a part of that community.

Twitter is the most important professional learning tool I have access to right now.

A weekend of Professional Development - giving and taking

2009-11-24T08:22:00.002+08:00

Have just had a very full weekend of professional development, both in school and externally. It has been a weekend of thinking, ruminating, contemplating, applying, synthesising and exhaustion.

The first day was our teacher of individual needs helping us to learn about differentiation, and giving us strategies to help those who English is not their mother tongue to have rich learning experiences.

The second day I had the opportunity to run a couple of workshops on "Library services : Beyond the Books" where I helped the staff to learn how to use the OPAC, the databases, the online resources and some of the special features of Google. I used Glogs, etherpad, wallwisher, netvibes and a wiki to extend the learning. The staff were excited about these new tools and the possibilities of creating something wonderful and meaningful for their lessons. One of the teachers said "Wow, you are really good with all this sort of stuff, I will be coming to see you another time". It has probably created more work, but it will be meaningful work - not busy work.

On Monday I had the opportunity to attend a Ross Todd seminar on Guided Inquiry. This was just great, and even better was that the PYP, MYP, And Deputy Principal of my school came along and also thought it was great, so now we are all on the same page with regard to where we need to be heading and possible ways of getting there, and hopefully, we will be able to take what we learned and move forward to create "rich learning experiences" for our students across the school.

Overall a great weekend of learning and sharing, now the challenge is to transfer it into action amongst all the other jobs and commitments one has ... it just needs to become a high priority.

Now off to a 4 day camp with year 6 ... more advocacy ...

Beer and Books

2009-11-15T19:48:00.003+08:00

It is all about advocacy! We had Friday drinks in the library by moving a portable bar with snacks in the conversation area of the secondary space.

It is a nice space, with just enough room to be cozy without being cramped and everyone enjoyed being there, but, the best part was some of the comments from staff ....
"I have never been in this part of the library before, this is great", "I didn't realise you stocked so many cool magazines - I'll have to come back on Monday to check them out".

So even though there was a bit of a mess to clean up, and some of our male staff tried to shelve the beers under the dewey system according to country (funny! - thankfully we found them whilst cleaning up), it was a great PR exercise and got staff into the library and noticing the resources without them knowing what was happening.

Beer and books - what a fun afternoon!

Collaboration in Context

2009-11-07T19:14:00.004+08:00

Last week I had the pleasure to work with a class and a teacher, teaching about the research process and scaffolding their progress through the assignment.

I have created a number of Glogs to support the unit (you can see them here DCLibrary)

I have not had the opportunity to do this at such depth before, with such consistency or with such context. The students are Year 9 and are keen to learn.

What I am finding is that the students are keen to learn how to question, define, keyword, find, evaluate, notetake, select .... they are engaged because they can see how it relates to improving their abilities to achieve higher marks in the current unit. I am really enjoying the experience and is reinforcing to me what I have always known - that teaching and learning these skills must be in context to be truly effective learning.

Even better in all of this was that the teacher recognised the students had a very low level of skills before the unit, they then requested that I be a part of this unit so we could focus on information literacy. We have not put a time line on when I need to finish, so the scaffolding will continue until they are well and truly on their own feet. I am fortunate to be working with a flexible schedule that allows me to go into the class every day. Another interesting aside is that I am only working with half the year 9 classes on this unit, it will be interesting to see how their finished product compares with the other 2 classes to see if I really did make a difference.

Something else that has come out of this unit is I have been using some web 2.0 tools as tools for collaboration and storage of tools - wikis, netvibes, glogster, etherpad and wallwisher so far. Because we have been co teaching, I have not only been teaching the students how to use these tools in context, the teacher has been taking notice too, and it has resulted in other staff coming to ask me about the tools I am using and how to use them. This has now led to a workshop on our CPD day along with other tools of learning.

The students have really responded well to the use of these web 2.0 tools - Glogs are a favourite, and etherpad and wallwisher got the 'cool' approval. So, a busy but great week all round!

Epiphanies all round today...

2009-10-26T18:17:00.005+08:00

Today I had to scramble quickly to retrieve my goods and chattels from my Geocities site before it was sucked into the cyberspace equivalent of a blackhole.

In doing this I had an epiphany - well a few actually.

First epiphany - I am an early adopter of technology. I had my first website in 1999 - 10 years ago, and I had to know html to create a special look for it. Not sure why it took me so long to realise I was an early adopter - I mean we had our first Apple Mac in 1987 (22 years ago - and we did NOT buy shares ;-0) but there you go - I am a slow realiser of what I am doing.

Second Epiphany - I had the pleasure to read some of my old assignments from my M.App.Sc. Course written in 1999 - 2001 that I moved from my Geocities site. Some of the titles include "Managing Websites as resources" and "Appropriate Recreational Use of the Internet in the School Setting". The epiphany is that the problems still exist and people are still struggling with the management of online resources and acceptable use of the internet in school and they are still the same problems. Why after 10 years haven't they been solved?

The third epiphany - I reread my assignment entitled "The Dynamic and Unique Role of the Teacher Librarian" and realised why I am so tired at the end of the work day! The essay is a bit political in that the task was to differentiate between the TL, the School Librarian and the classroom/subject teacher roles, but if you want to have read - it is here The Dynamic and Unique Role of the Teacher Librarian It is pretty comprehensive and long. I am about to lobby for another TL to support the school and students, and I think this may be useful to isolate the different roles I undertake without having to rethink to much to place into a proposal for submission.

Fourth Epiphany? Uni assignments can be useful after all!

(if you want to read the other articles they can be found off this page - it is a bit of mess right now as I literally just dumped it all there in the shortest time)

Collaboration in the corridor

2009-10-19T12:21:00.003+08:00

Last week I received an email regarding a unit of work coming up and questions as to how I could help with regard to helping the students formulate great research questions and finding the information they need. I could have just emailed back and told her, or asked questions for her to answer, I could have just phoned and asked about it, but this would all have taken much longer than speaking to the teacher and working out a plan face to face.

Neither the teacher or I had any time to meet formally before the half term break, but it was urgent to nut out what she required and to come up with a plan for immediately after the break. I grabbed my desk diary and a pen, and met with her as she was walking to Learning Advisory class (roll call) on the way we discussed what prompted her email, what she required and how I could help. In the 10 minutes or so we took to arrive and to stand in the corridor (there was another teacher able to take the class), I had taken notes, written a draft plan of the requirements and briefly outlined what we could achieve and how long it would take. I would get back to her with a more concrete draft on where we would go and we would work on it over the break via email.

If I had not taken the initiative to walk with the teacher concerned at that very moment, I may have lost the chance to work with her as we would have just got too busy. I am now working on the plan for this class and we will continue to communicate over the one week holiday to be ready for the first week back. Moral : - Walking and planning in the corridors can be a very productive use of time!

For this unit I wanted to develop something that was an interactive and interesting scaffold to help them through the research processes. I explored a number of options and gave Glogster a go trying it out to make something interesting for the students to work through and with. Part of the assessment is to make a 6 page webpage and am wondering if they can use Glogster for this - I certainly found it interesting, easy and fun to use.

This is my initial couple of Information literacy Glogster interactive posters - still being tweeked Awesome RQs and Finding Info I have only used a small part of the Glogster capabilities, but I think it will do the trick for this unit.

Active and engaging learning

2009-10-10T05:51:00.005+08:00

This weekend I have had the privilege to attend an IB continuum workshop for school librarians. So far the presenters have been working hard to keep us engaged and the learning has been good, but the best part has been meeting and chatting with people outside the sessions as we discuss problems, solutions and share our knowledge and experiences with each other. Many are from from far away places, and tell the stories of how to develop a “culturally diverse” collection in a country where diversity is not embraced, the problems of working in a for profit school where libraries are seen as bottomless pits of a money sucking vortex’, and the constant dilemma of having not enough space to accommodate the student population in the library.

As much as twitter, facebook, blogging, skype, email, listserves, help to keep us all connected in this maddening busy world, there is nothing like bringing a bunch of school librarians together for an intensive workshop to accelerate the sharing and learning through animated discussion on their solutions to the same problems you have, and share their own dilemmas for a different perspective on a resolution.

Face to face professional development is costly and time consuming but it produces an amazing result in widening your personal network, learning through others and giving you an appreciation for what you have and that you do have something to offer - not just to your school, but to others development as well. It may just be a small comment, or it may be a larger contribution. Professional development is an opportunity for sharing, and we all have something to offer. So, next time you have the opportunity to be with others discussing library stuff - don’t be a leech and just take everyone else’s ideas - make sure you contribute with your own experiences and solutions - it just may make a difference in the life of someone else.

(Image from State Library of NSW http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemLarge.aspx?itemID=304539 - you do need to visit this resource for Historic Photographs / Media / Manuscripts of NSW and Australia - just fabulous! - http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/search/SimpleSearch.aspx)

"I am just a librarian"

2009-10-04T16:55:00.008+08:00

(image from http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/upload/2007/12/diary%20librarian.jpg)

On Friday I had the chance to attend a training workshop (not a very good one - but that is for another post) and part of the workshop was to create something to present using a web 2.0 presentation tool. It was a mixed bag of about 10 participants made up of teachers, teacher librarians and school librarians.

One of the participants was having some problems working out the application and gave the excuse or reason for her inadequacy "I'm just a librarian". I was appalled and told her so (It would not have been PC to smack her across the head for such a comment).

It made me reflect on why School libraries and Librarians get such a bum deal most of the time - it may just be their own fault for having such an attitude of patheticness (such a word?)...

If you are 'just a librarian' you will never approach the principal to tell them what you need, they will certainly not come to you for input and ideas. If you are 'just a librarian' you will get trampled over by teachers and will never be able to say 'no', if you are 'just a librarian' you will never get the rest breaks you are entitled to, nor the budget you require, nor the respect from the children, nor the ability to leave a wake of construction in your path, and as a consequence your library and job may just disappear.

Please, never insult any other school or teacher librarian by using the occupation as reason why you are inadequate in doing something. You "are a librarian" and therefore you are only limited by your own imagination and ability to move forward.

Most librarians are not dim or pathetic, in fact, the ones I know are extremely clever people. So, blame your own self for your own inadequacies and not the career you have chosen.

There, I will get off my soap box now and prepare for another hopefully better workshop later in the week.