Time to Write, Time to Think

I’ve been doing plenty of thinking recently, but not a lot of writing.
Driving to and from work, putting away books, doing housework – these all help the thinking processes, beacuse they are times when I am free to reflect. It is making the time to write that is hard… this post is a case in point – it has been in the drafts folder for two weeks! (there are others in there too, explaining how it comes to be two months since my last published post!)

Recent thoughts have centred on boys’ reading, information literacy, ICT competencies, integrating the library with the classroom curriculum, fluidity, flexibility…

All of these will come into play during the upcoming Your School Library Online Conference – I am presenting a paper on how I seek to introduce and implement web2.0 techonologies in my school library program.

I sat down this week and used Webspiration to help me organise my thoughts; I really like using mind-mapping tools to create order out of the swirling mess of ideas and information that races around inside my skull when I’m trying to pull a project together. As a high school and uni student I used to plan out assignments with lots of different coloured pens, as a classroom teacher I used to write each activity or section on the board in a different colour, giving both me and my students an easy way to describe progress “has everyone finished the blue? Who’s up to the purple already?”. I love having a colourfuI, visually informative way of organising ideas, thoughts and information.

Planning my presentation

It’s quite a while since I joyfully discovered Inspiration and Kidspiration software, and was completely charmed by the way even struggling students could produce a clear diagram of the life cycle of a duck (for instance), unhindered by the difficulties they had with handwriting. Now we have Webspiration, which is in beta release and currently free, and I am dazzled all over again! So far I have not tried the collaborative facility, where you can invite other people to work on your document, but I have tried the web-publishing, which worked quite well. I foresee some collaborative mind-mapping fun in my future, and definitely in my teaching!

Loquacious am I

I sent an email to my boss the other day, which I began by writing ‘Treat this as me thinking out loud’… I was contemplating why I felt it so necessary to write out my thoughts and email them to someone who is so very very busy – I know she wants my input and ideas, and is always happy to discuss new things/old things, but why did I need to send those ideas that way?

I’ve decided that it is a symptom of my personal thinking processes, as is my well-deserved reputation for being rather talkative. I tend to collect lots of information and ideas on a topic and float them around in my head, and then work out my understanding and analysis and new ideas by putting it all into words. The words aren’t there in fully formed sentences in my head – the act of fitting the right words to the shapes of my thoughts helps me to define my conclusions to myself.

This can be somewhat unfortunate for the poor soul enduring yet another ear-bashing as I work out how best to deal with student X or to fix problem Y.

Do you know what is odd about this habit of mine? I can’t use a diary as my sounding board. I need the feeling of speaking to another person – I need that bounce-back of someone else’s rephrasing or reply.

This learning style may be helpful in being a reflective teacher who thinks about their own practice, but what about in the classroom? Now I have to think about how to prevent my personal preference for oodles of verbiage from interfering with my student’s boyish preference for direct and specific instruction that gets to the point and gives them a clear goal with no distracting tangential asides.

The long haul begins….

Making connections in the school

I’ve just come home from a Parent Information Night, where I played both the TL and the parent roles. My son has begun year 4 at my school, so I needed to hear about the way things are structured, what the expectations are and so on.

As the Teacher Librarian, I spoke to the assembled group of parents to explain the role of the library as both centre for reading and as promoter of information literacy skills. I explained our opening hours, the resources available for the boys, our philosophy of matching the book to the boy, our efforts to encourage the boys to expand their reading into new areas, my availability to talk to parents, and that the first answer on Google is not always the best.

I felt very pleased when my colleague told me that I spoke well, for which I can partly thank the ‘get over it’ attitude I developed towards potentially embarrassing situations after being an exchange student – having mortified myself in Japanese in front of 1500 students during a school speech competition, there really isn’t much more to be afraid of. However, most of my confidence came from a belief in the value of my role – I make a difference in my students’ lives by helping them discover the solace and escape and joy of reading, and by helping them to know how to find out what they need as they need it, so that they can be confident in their own ability to tackle unknown situations, because they know that all it takes is a little thought and sifting and the answers will become clear.

I love my job.

More conferring

the Transforming School Libraries e-conference is chugging right along, and I am enjoying skimming through the presentations to choose those most relevant to my situation, and then read/listen/view more carefully and follow the discussions. It has been fascinating to see the use -for instance- of Voicethread, because not only can you add typed or audio comments, but the comments play in order, and you can also ‘write’ on the image when commenting.

I am bringing the deputy head in on Thursday to give her an overview of what I am exploring, and to bounce ideas around regarding what we see the library providing to the school.

I’ll have to keep this brief, as there have been too many late nights and early mornings, and I do not wish to frighten small children tomorrow ;P

Web it, web it good…

Which is a dreadful pun on some half-remembered song from the 80’s, but I just couldn’t resist!! You see, I am participating in an online conference Your School Library – Transforming School Libraries, which goes live tomorrow night (or possibly early Saturday morning once I work out the timezone issues) for about 9 days.

The main theme is how we can delve into the world of web2.0 and beyond to connect and evolve the traditional work of school libraries with the new interactive techonologies available online. So far I have viewed/listened to a presentation on Voicethread, downloaded a PowerPoint from the conference site (my internet was too dodgy to cope with streamed content today), am downloading another ppt from Slideshare, and am hoping for some vodcasts (fingers crossed!!). There is a conference blog, discussion forums (I’m a moderator for one of them – exciting!), chat room, networking tools, participant profiles, and so many possibilities for “walking the talk”!!! I have yet to add a profile pic or fill out my professional details. There appear to be 149 members, I just noticed a new ppt called ‘giggleit’ and there’s a button there for creating ‘web meetings’ – what more could a click-happy TL want?

Aside from all that, I am madly pulling my head together as we launch into Term 1, with a number of changes to The Way Things Are Done, eg a new group-work, collaborative, integrated approach to library time for years 5 and 6, with three teachers here for those lessons!!! Can you imagine???

For now, however, it is time to go home, be a parent, talk to hubby, veg a little in front of the gogglebox, and maybe send a few emails:>

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