Tag: collaboration

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The end of LIBE 477B

Trying to balance my life, one day at a time. Embrace the chaos and enjoy the small moments. Be present and watch the movie of your life.

Whelp, this is it!  To say that this has been a whirlwind in an understatement.  I feel like this has been a long six weeks, yet it has flown by in a sense as well.  I have to say that when we began this course I was a little taken aback by the amount of freedom that we had in our own Inquiries and areas of interest.  Especially since I was taking another UBC course that was extremely structured with a ton of required readings.  Now, I think that this course is such a powerful way of learning and I am so thankful that we were able to research our areas of interest. 

I know that coming from a tech background I have attended workshops that were great, however, I already knew a lot of the content and I honestly thought that I may have been able to deliver it to the audience in a way that may be more applicable, because to be honest, when I looked around the room it was evident that most people were either disinterested or in the same boat that I was in.  I was a little weary that this course would be similar, yet I was pleasantly surprised!  It was so amazing to look further into my own areas of interest and be able to apply some of my findings to my teaching practice. 

I think that the biggest take away from this course is the PLN that has been created through our Blog posts and following each other on social media.  I have thoroughly enjoyed learning from my peers in this course and finding out more about them as people and educators.  I am really hoping that this will kickstart my active involvement in educational social media.

I really enjoyed completing the final project.  It was reminiscent of preparing for presentations, which is something that makes me nervous and anxious about, however, once I am finished I feel like I have accomplished so much and have improved my presentations skills every time.  I miss this aspect of working with my peers and I am hoping that there is a school  out there looking for a TL that is enthusiastic about teaching staff about tech gadgets.  I know that I have made a step in the right direction by furthering my education yet again and I hope that this will help me reach my goal. 

I leave this course with so much hope and wonder about the future of the Library and our education system in general.  This pandemic has been filled with its ups and downs but I do feel like it has brought a little bit of light to the state of our education system.  I am hoping the next time we try to negotiate for small class sizes, increased wages and more funding in general, the public will be behind us this time. 

Hopefully I will keep up with my blog as it was my vision when I started this website a couple years ago.  The content will change, but I love getting my thoughts out and these blog posts have almost been therapeutic.  I leave you with this powerful video that was presented to me at the end of my other UBC course, it’s too good not to share to others that will appreciate it.  Let’s shift our thinking, move forward into the 21st century and guide our fellow staff members to join that journey with you.  We have been told to lead by example, so as staff we all need to be moving forward as a unit and learning together. 

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LIBE 477B – My vision or rant? Take it how it is!

My vision – Sorry if it’s a little long, as mentioned I am used to giving long presentations and like to talk a lot, as most teachers do (I apologize for the title slide! I just noticed the rawness of it now!).

When thinking about my vision project I was a little stuck.  I was not quite sure how I wanted to portray my vision for the Library Learning commons and/or learning in the 21st century.  I have been inspired throughout this course through our readings and different sources that I have found on my own, yet I was still unsure about how I wanted to move forward with this project.  I have a passion for educating other teachers so I wanted to approach this final vision project with other teachers in mind and use concrete examples from my own experience and through the texts and sources that I have found throughout this course. 

I was presented with one video from my other UBC course that was my beginning inspiration for what I wanted to see as the future of the LLC.  Throughout this course I have discussed the shift of the LLC and how I want to expand my social media presence and use social media as CPD.  I think that my current school may be shifting towards this type of model after our library had been weeded through and we had a change in admin in February.  I feel that with new leadership we are going to be moving forward with how Education needs to shift.  Our new administrator is active on social media and is up to date on Ed Tech pedagogy.  I feel that this support is so important when it comes to shifting the LLC or being supported in 21st learning practices.  I had talked in previous blog posts how I got shut down a lot when it came to moving forward, however, I feel under new leadership this is going to change.  Even though I am not the TL at my school, my goal for next year is to work closely with the TL at my site and help her move forward with media curation in the library.  When I was working part time at the district we shared an office and she was always eager to learn and try new things.  I know that she does her best to stay current, so I feel that with some guidance we can work together to shift the Library space to the LLC. 

My vision project evolved into some things that I am passionate about and wish to see as we move forward in education.  Most of the things that I am passionate about are moving forward with technology and using these tools and resources to their greatest capacity.  Again, as I mentioned before I have tried to highlight many of these tools in education to my fellow colleagues and it took a global pandemic and shift to remote learning to get them on board.  There is a big positive from all this, in that they have expressed that they will continue to use these platforms moving forward because of the ease of use, tracking and student engagement that they saw during remote learning. 

What I also noticed while working with teachers across our district is that is may not necessarily be access or skills, but it’s just what our job is evolving into, which does not naturally allow us to grow as educators.  As mentioned earlier, we are faced by obstacles and some teachers will try to overcome those obstacles and some will just let it go and move on.  My vision is a little bit about teacher empowerment and what I feel needs to be done in order to move forward with anything in our careers, however, a lot of the times we are stopped dead in our tracks and unfortunately sometimes things cannot be done. 

It’s actually kind of fitting that we get yet another update from Mr. Fleming about the return to school.  What I really want teachers to focus on my vision is my final point of keeping life balanced, because we are not superheroes and we cannot do it all with ease and grace.  Sometimes we are going to seem like we’re falling flat on our face (like I was last week trying to figure out how I was going to complete two final projects!) and that is ok.  Take a breather, go on a walk, pet your dog and take some time to be you.  Ultimately the better we take care of ourselves, the better people we will be to those around us.