Future Vision – A Functional Library Homepage

      The weeks of exploration from this course that got my mind directed towards my “aha” future vision project was week 6 and on.  It began with me wanting to expand my own PLN, but a major focus for my vision project stems from week 7 as to how I will best support and be responsive to the personalized needs of the educators, staff, admin, parents, and other members of my educational community.  I am hoping to create a library learning commons homepage with links to resources, videos, and my own professional blog as a way to share out the technology and resources our school has available, taking into account the varied abilities and experience levels to accommodate all within my learning community.  My current homepage is a basic, standard school district one.

Coldstream Elementary School current library homepage

 I know that my long term vision is greater than what I will be able to accomplish in the next three weeks and it will be an ongoing project.  In order for my homepage to be responsive to my learning community it will need to continuously evolve anyway.  It has been on my mind to do something with my library homepage and now this is my opportunity to get going on it and with a specific purpose and direction.  A few weeks ago my future vision project in my mind was to make videos of the various makerspacers (microbits, osmos, spheros, etc )

retrieved from:
  https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/getting-started-with-the-microbit 

available in our school for my staff as the audience.  I still want to do this, but that may be farther down the road.  First I have decided I need some other basics on my library webpage to service more than just staff.  From this course, I have certainly come to understand the value of sharing out my ideas and resources, as I ‘steal’ others’ ideas from pinterest to tweetsso I best share, too!  I know there will be value in my vision project in that all members of my school community will benefit from it eventually, including me.  I doubt my library webpage will help others country wide, but perhaps within our district it will spark feedback from my fellow TLs and help my page evolve and become even more useful.  Perhaps fellow TLs in our district will make their library webpages a useful resource to their learning community, as well.

      I know that my first step is to contact our district website person to allow me access to the site.  I need to find out what I can and cannot do according to our district guidelines.  I have started exploring other TL library webpages this week to get a better sense of what I want my actual final project to look like.  I did note that some TLs have almost nothing on their school library homepage, but a link that connects me to their well-designed blog or site.  I am assuming they don’t have the access to do so on the school homepage.  I will explore some more sites, but so far I have gained some insight about my format likes and dislikes.  I like the sites that are simple in layout. 

I did check out Aaron’s ParklandSecondary School site and love the simplicity of an image/title that leads to many resources on one topic.  I have liked tweets from Anna Crosland so searched to find her new school library site thinking it would be a good one to model mine after.  Her school, which is called Ecole Martha Currie, library website is a standard district one.   It gives a link to her edublog, which is personalized to better meet her learning community needs.  What I like about her site is the display of student work.  Kids and parents must love that and me, as a fellow TL, love to be able to steal cool ideas.  Anna, like Aaron, has clear titles linked to resources clearly laid out.  I also checked out a local TL who is always a step ahead of the rest of us here in Vernon with great programs in his library, Mark Bendall of Vernon Secondary School .  I liked his links for students like note taking and citations.  I think I’d like information like that on my site, as it’d be helpful for my students. A neat upcoming idea Bendall is working on is online book chats, which is an online space for students to recommend books or argue which book is better.  One idea I’d like to steal from Black MountainElementary learning commons webpage is how they created links to author webpages.  My students could be exploring the books, games, and blogs of their favourite authors. 

Stacey Manoin of Mar Jok Elementary has awesome clear tabs that pull down to a plethora of resources for students to parents, plus has highlights of upcoming author visits and virtual field trips.

      I have lots of ideas, but where to start!  I know I want clear labels with an easy to navigate site.  I want to target my whole learning community to have everyone coming to the library homepage.  I hope to include the learning happenings through pictures or videos, have digital resources for staff, parents and students.  A little more planning and sometime investigating web design are my next steps….for now!

References

Bendall, M. (2018). VSS Library - Vernon Secondary School. Retrieved from http://www.sd22.bc.ca/school/vss/Programs/library/Pages/default.aspx

Crosland, A. (2018). Anna Crosland TL | Anna Crosland TL. Retrieved from http://annacrosland.edublogs.org/

Learning Commons - Black Mountain Elementary. (2018). Retrieved from http://www.bme.sd23.bc.ca/Programs/lc/Pages/default.aspx

Library - Ecole Martha Currie Elementary. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.surreyschools.ca/schools/marthacurrie/Library/Pages/default.aspx

Manoin, S. (2018). Stacey Manoin. Retrieved from https://staceymanoin.weebly.com/

Mueller, A. (2018). Course: Learning Commons. Retrieved from https://parkland.sd63.bc.ca/course/view.php?id=274