500 Hats

retrieved from: http://500hats.edublogs.org/

      I cannot agree more that teacher librarians are looked to for everything from evaluating and acquiring new resources to developing new skills.  I like Barbara Braxton’s blog on the 500 Hats of a TL, as our role is certainly becoming quite varied!   My favourite way to share what I learn with colleagues is through collaboration with them IN their classroom.  I get to connect and learn with students.  It also allows me to share the new technology or learning strategy with a teacher as they learn to use it, which I hope gives them the confidence to be able to try it on their own the next time.  If lucky they may even collaborate with another teacher and the ripple effect will take over!  We have a technology crew (District Technology Innovation Coordinators) in our district with each having a family of schools that they connect with, introduce new technology to, and help with guidance and expertise.  They, thankfully, see the value in a TL position and like to train us with new technology with hopes we can go back and share with everyone. 

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

Last year they gave every TL a set of microbits for their school, if we attended the workshop on how to use them!  I have placed an emphasis on building teacher relationships the past 4 years plus getting to know the needs of my learning community and I hope this helps me be able to share out these kind of new ideas.

      As far as my admin goes, mine is energetic, supportive, and forward thinking.  We ran into each other at our last pro-d day where we were at an innovative education conference.  We spent our whole lunch hour bubbling with excitement about plans for the school with our newly acquired ideas.  I am not sure I will be able to keep up with her, but together we share, plan, and support new ideas and our visions for the school.

      To be honest, I think I have more I need to be doing than I am actually doing to be more responsive to the needs of my fellow educators, staff, and parents.  I do think a library website with lists of tools and links to resources and teaching ideas would help meet professional development of staff.  Having it all organized in one easy to find place would at least give staff an idea of what is out there!  Videos on how to incorporate technology into their class would give them inspiration I hope.  I like this quote from 7 Reasons Why Digital Literacy is Important for Teachers: Digital literacy doesn’t require that teachers become experts, but it does require that they understand the digital tools that can unlock their deeper teaching potential.   Although I have emphasized mutual respect and trust with colleagues in the past, this year I can spend more time helping teachers on HOW to use resources with the redesigned curriculum and help teachers’ exploration of curriculum topics and competencies.  I think it is important to gain input from staff in regards to areas we need to explore further.  I have always wanted to get a library committee together that would include staff, parents, and students to create a solid vision for our space and to discuss areas requiring improvement or change.

      I have done well at weeding the student library collection but not the teacher resources.  This week’s assignment has me thinking about how I could handle this.  I am thinking I will put on display teacher resources at a staff meeting.  When it is my turn to share I can remind teacher to browse the resources and ask them which they use and then discard those that no one is using.  Once that is weeded we can then look to see what areas we would like to see broadened.   I came across Anna Crosland’s great idea to get books circulating.  I could do this with teacher resources and our regular collection:

 

Retrieved from: https://twitter.com/crosland_a

      To continue to be responsive to the needs of my educational community, I plan to carry on being receptive and available to teachers’ needs, continue to model my own personal inquiry and improve and share my own teaching skills.  I will continue to bring in experts or skype with them where my expertise cease.  I’d like to follow the Working with Colleagues, A Guide for ICT Mentors as it states that a TL is to provide colleagues with training, support, and advice, and collaborate with them as they move towards more effectively integrating ICT into their teaching and learning (2002, P.14).  Okay, so this article dates itself with the older model computers on the front cover, but some great nuggets of advice in the write up like how to assess the needs and interest of teachers and setting personal action plans.  One other piece of advice I took from it was to start small and build on success (2002, p.23), as you can start to feel overwhelmed with so much one is trying to do! 

      In addition to starting small, I think it is important to work at the comfort level of each colleague.  Edutopia has some good ideas on how I can work with teachers with the tools they have or are willing to use.  For example if you only have one computer in a room, I can offer a bite size option such as: starting a collaborative blog, curate resources, build a google site to house class content, or record screencasts for providing onscreen instruction.  

retrieved from:
http://500hats.edublogs.org/

Finally, we have revived our TL LSA and this means we have the opportunity to share with each other, but also a chance to start a TL mentor ship program to work together with newer TLs.

References

7 Reasons Why Digital Literacy is Important for Teachers. (2018). Retrieved from https://rossieronline.usc.edu/blog/teacher-digital-literacy/

(2002). Retrieved from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/kindergarten-to-grade-12/teach/pdfs/curriculum/appliedskills/mentors.pdf

Braxton, B. (2018). 500 Hats | 500 Hats. Retrieved from http://500hats.edublogs.org/500-hats/

Crosland, A. (2018). Anna Crosland (@crosland_a) on Twitter. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/crosland_a

How to Integrate Technology | Edutopia. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/technology-integration-guide-implementation

Here's My Scoop

       I have been taking library courses at UBC one at a time over the past 4 years; all the while I have been in the same school library.  This has worked out well for my own personal learning, as inspiring ideas and changes get implemented as I learn about them.  It isn’t just the actual learning in the courses, but some ideas presented in them that have become part of my practice and some ideas have become springboards for the exploration of new learning. It helps being new as a TL, as the learning curve is steep and quick and you can’t help but start to network and learn!  Also, it helps that the TL position itself is changing from that old school “shushing” librarian.

Retrieved from:
https://www.pinterest.ca/suziholler/shhh/?lp=true

One way I started supporting my own learning since becoming a TL is through collaboration with colleagues.  Every different teacher I work with results in a change in my personal learning.  I am slowly gaining the collaboration confidence of more and more teachers on my staff as time goes by and plan to have this continue for myself, fellow staff, and our learning community.  I may have mentioned previously that I am part of a TL inquiry group that began when we were all taking courses to become librarians.  We naturally were drawn together because of our coursework, but were able to make library plans and make change through the acquisition of an inquiry grant through our school district.  We started on a journey to change our libraries to library learning commons.  This small group of four (Others are joining us this year.  We are year 3 – yippee!) have all made great progress in our own libraries, with ourselves, have started a TL LSA, and advocated at the board level for TLs.  Our vision evolves as we implement changes.  We have new goals for this year plus long term visions and are happy to be making connections with neighbouring districts and with fellow TLs (our LSA coming alive has helped with this) within our district, which has proven to be great networking.

      There are a couple of areas I hope to improve on which will help my personal learning.  First, I have started working at ways to efficiently curate resources both for my use, fellow colleague use, and student use.  It gets overwhelming with the plethora of ideas and resources out there and to keep on top of it all in an organized way will help me use them more and be able to share them out.  I started using Scoop.it! ,

Retrieved from:https://www.scoop.it/media-kit

but I admit I have neglected it.  With my goal of having my whole school doing an inquiry project on one topic, I hope to get my Scoop.it active again.  Another area deserving some attention for me is my school library website.  I want it to be a way to share out student learning.  I think it will help connect me to my learning community, from parents to students.  Although the sharing of successful teaching experiences does not automatically guarantee effective learning and teaching, it helps to develop a knowledge base for teaching that is more applicable to real educational settings (So, Pow, and Hung, 2009, p. 775).  Ideally in my perfect world with spare time my teaching blog could be linked from the library page and yes…gasp…maybe even an active twitter account!  Yang (p.11, 2009) speaks of how blogs allow people to exchange information without space and time constraints, to broaden their knowledge, and to meet personal needs and interests at the same time.  A more interactive website is a win-win for everyone.  One day my curated resources will be linked to the page, in addition other social network options would be good links to add.  I have a couple of people in the district which would be good support for web design and the site has potential to keep me growing in my own learning and definitely is a way to share out! 

References

Scoop.it - Content Curation Tool | Scoop.it. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.scoop.it/

So, W.W.m., Pow, J.W.c. & Hung, V.H.k. (2009). The Interactive Use of a Video Database in Teacher Education: Creating a Knowledge Base for Teaching through a Learning Community. Computers & Education, 53(3), 775-786.

Yang, S.-H. (2009). Using blogs to enhance critical reflection and community of practice. Educational Technology & Society, 12(2), 11-21.