Author: Kate

I am a Teacher Librarian in an independent school in Hobart, Tasmania.

The Big Flip

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Our library was redesigned a few years ago, and I don’t think the TL had much say in how everything turned out. Some things are really annoying but unchangeable, like the TL office being a long way from the door and hidden behind a pillar, or most of the bookshelves being built-in, or the fact that there is only power and network cabling in two areas, for about a dozen computers total.

I have been watching the way that classes use or try to use the library since I started here in late April, and I have decided to flip the fiction and non-fiction collections over, to avoid some of the problems we had had when classes tried to share the library.

Until now, the non-fiction was up near the door, and the fiction was at the ‘quieter’ end with soft chairs etc. the difficulty was that half of the computers are at the far end of the room, past the quiet reading area, so students coming in to do research would be a distraction for those trying to read for English lessons.

My mini-makeover will create a distinct fiction and reading area near the front of the room, with book display space right where students walk in, and will put the tables and chairs in the centre of a research area, surrounded by the non-fiction collection and having the two groups of desktop computers at either end. As we have laptops available, and will be having netbooks too next year, it will be possible for a whole class to sit together, comfortably, using computers and books to research.

That’s the plan. We’ll see how it works :>

 

I really must blog more often

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I have many many different things to say about being a Teacher Librarian, but squeezing the time into my day to compose the prose can be a mite difficult, to say the least! For want of some other organisational technique, why don’t I talk about two very different projects I have undertaken this year – the link between them being different sessions I attended at the joint CBCA-Tas and ASLA-Tas conference here in Hobart earlier this year.

Let’s start with a fabulous activity I tried with two Year 8 English classes.

Book Trailers

We had Dr Susan La Marca as a keynote speaker, and also as a speaker on the second day, talking about integrating technology to enhance learning and teaching. The activity which really caught my imagination was a way of making movie-trailer-style reviews of books – Book Trailers. Dr La Marca said that she had had this idea when she a new book being promoted on a publisher’s website, and so she had tried it with her students with great success.

I took this idea to some of the teachers who bring their classes to the library for Silent Reading during English lessons, and offered to set up and run the technology side of it. One of the Yr 8 teachers was interested, so we ran it with his two classes. I set up a wiki on the school library website, with different pages outlining the task, the tools, and the assessment criteria. The aims for this activity were to:

  • Provide a mulitmedia alternative to a written or oral book report
  • Encourage students to plan, draft and edit a project
  • Introduce students to issues of copyright on images and sound files available on the internet
  • Introduce students to alternative search engines such as flickrCC
  • Reinforce the referencing message
  • Emphasise the role of the library in providing information literacy skills as well as leisure reading materials

I created a sample book trailer to demonstrate what we were after, and led the students through the assessment checklist rating my example. When we were sure that the students had understood the task, we let the students get on with it.

Over the next two to three weeks, the students were really focussed and motivated – they worked hard on their projects, frequently previewing and editing their work; they asked lots of questions, and sought help to identify copyrighted and copyright-free images. Toward the end it was clear that some students needed more help with time-management; they hadn’t quite completed their book trailers, or hadn’t added sound, but that is one of those minor tweaks that will be used to improve the activity next time.

When the students had to hand in and share their work, it was great to see the effort that had gone into matching images to events/plots/characters, to see the connections that students had made between the ‘feel’ of a story and what kind of music/soundtrack could evoke that feel. I missed the sharing session of the second class, and afterwards a couple of the boys came to see me to say that they had really enjoyed the task, and that it was interesting to see what other boys had made for different books.

I have two of the students’ final book trailers, and will be collecting some more to share on the school intranet (once the boys have inserted a copyright notice on the last screen). I am thrilled with the students’ enthusiasm and engagement, and am very keen to run it again next year, with a few minor adjustments to achieve an even higher rate of completion.

 

 

 

Thinking About School Libraries at a National Level

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Monday morning always starts with a trawl through the emails, and lots of tabs open as I check to see which links are worth saving. This morning there were two particular emails that were interesting enough individually, but putting them together has really got my brain worked up.

First, this article in the School Library Journal about three mothers from Spokane who decided that they could not ignore the slashing of funding for school libraries and did something about it. And note this paragraph:

“The trio’s timing was near perfect. The Washington state legislature had recently created a joint task force to identify key deficiencies in the state’s basic education program that might require new ways to fund them. Redefining basic education in the state was long overdue—the last time was in 1977, way before technology entered the educational landscape. So the moms put all their energies into persuading the task force to include library services under the new, expanded definition of basic education—a move that, if adopted by the legislature, would all but ensure permanent funding for media centers.”

The other email concerned the media release by the Hon Julia Gillard “COAG Agrees On New National Education Authority“, wherein we learn that:

“The Council of Australian Governments today agreed to establish a new national education authority that will bring together, for the first time, the functions of curriculum, assessment and reporting at the national level.”

It occurs to me that here is an opportunity for Australia to take a good hard look at what we expect of our education systems, to assess how society, economic issues, global environments and technology have changed and impacted upon education processes and practices, and to create a new approach that values and supports the teaching of a whole range of skills necessary for successful citizenship in our imminent future. School libraries should be a big part of this, although they too must be part of the new approach – the traditional stereotype of an exclusive, dusty place of shushing and fluttering paper pages must give way to the creation of vibrant, inclusive, connected spaces where books are but one of a variety of approaches to teaching and learning, seamlessly integrated according to the specific needs of the user.

 

 

Administrivia

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It is amazing how much time can be spent on the admin details – I spent at least an hour yesterday checking through the new term timetables, sorting out period changes for some English classes and trying to work out how often I will be seeing my various classes this term, what with various camps, athletics carnivals, concerts and speech night preparations (I have been warned to expect the unexpected from late October onwards – apparently rehearsals fall from on high without warning or mercy).

Today’s important-but-fearsomely-monotonous task is stocktaking. There has not been a stocktake in at least six years (I am not enquiring too deeply into the history of this), and there are a lot of errors in the catalogue database. The bar of chocolate at the end of this will be a much more accurate set of records ready for the planned software changeover over the summer. I have decided to call it the Tour de Stocktake, because it will be accomplished over several weeks, in stages, some of which could be called sprints, while others are enormously challenging mountains of items. The first Stage (French accent please) was achieved on Monday, with the scanning of all fiction books present in the infants library. While about 35% were missing, I’m hoping that at least half of those will miraculously reappear when I work my way through the infants classrooms.

Time to unplug my laptop, grab the scanner, blue cable, stocktake folder and mug of tea, and head off to the wilderness – that is, the non-fiction section of the infants library room. If I don’t make it back for morning tea, send out a search party.

 

Dithering

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My apologies to the edublogiverse for taking so long to move from intorductory to post to actual content.

I have been thinking hard about what to blog next, so much so that I have been (metaphorically) oscillating in one place, bouncing around between ideas and thoughts and priorities like one of those virtual ball bearings in a MS Pinball game!! (Have to keep the ICT theme going)

For lack of ideas on how to tackle the deep philosophical issues, why don’t I start with a recent success?

This year I started work in a boys’ school, which is a new environment for me. I am learning about boys’ education, and what kind of fiction tastes boys have a different ages, and I’ve been reading things like Cherub (R. Muchamore) and Contest (M. Reilly) and so on. Promoting reading and a culture of reading is of course one of my goals as a Teacher Librarian, and I am always looking for new ways to do this.

My latest brainwave is to have the boys in Yrs 5 and 6 create Reader Profiles for themselves, using as many useful web2.0 gadgets as I can, and have them saved on the students’ personal intranet pages – this is going to be built up into favourite author lists, favourite books, and hopefully even the occasional book review ::gasp!::

This week’s task is to create a personalised Genre Wordle.

  • We do a fast reminder of what genre is, and then the class collaborate to create a genre list of about 20 headings. Every student saves their own copy of the list. (You could do this as a whole class activity if you can’t access enough computers at once)
  • On the big screen – or on a smartboard – I show the students how to find Wordle, and demonstrate coping and pasting the genre heading list into the text box, and tell them to click on ‘Go’.
  • I then show students how to play with the layout, font and colours, so that they know how to change the image.
  • Then we go back to our genre list, and I show the students what happens if I select my favourite genre and paste it into the genre list another 5 or 6 times, and make a new Wordle.
  • Students then have to try it for themselves, chooosing their favourite genre and putting it into their list multiple times, then choosing their second favourite and putting it in several times, etc. I emphasise that students need to save their Favourite Genres list before going any further.
  • Students now make a new Wordle out of their Favourite Genres list, ending up with a Wordle that puts their favourite genres in beautiful big letters!
  • I show students how to publish their Wordle, emphasising that they should not use their real names because these will be on the internet. We copy the URLs and paste them onto the end of the Favourite Genres Word documents.
  • Next lesson I will show the students how to take a screenshot of their Wordle and paste that into Paint or Word to use in their Reader Profiles.

So far this task is working well, and I hope to build on it by having students share their genre Wordles, and start thinking about why they enjoy particular genres – we may then take the favourite genres and make wordles describing their special characteristics…. the sky is the limit!!

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