Tag: library

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LIBE 467 – Blog #3

Theme Three: Reference Materials

This theme covered a lot of material that I have not thought about in awhile as a classroom teacher.  Topics such as Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Biographies, Maps and Atlases.  Especially being in a job share where I am not the one covering Social Studies curriculum, I have not thought about these types of resources in awhile.  I am glad that I was able to learn a little more and from different perspectives. 

I am going to discuss some things that stood out to me from our final theme of the course.  The first being the Deep Web.  I see myself as a more technologically sound educator, however, I was not fully aware of the depth of the Deep web.  When doing our readings and research for this Module, I found this infographic which really put the deep web into perspective.

https://visual.ly/community/Infographics/technology/exploring-deep-web-semantic-search

 As stated in this Module, “Some grey literature and other resources lay beneath the radar of search engines, not indexed.  This reinforces the mind-boggling extent of the universe of information because when you search for information on the Internet using a search engine, you only tap the tip of the iceberg (UBC 2021).”  It shows just how much information is missing when we do a simple google search.  It is important that we show our students how much information they can access outside of doing a google search.  I know from personal experience that many of my students feel that Google will have all the answers, which it has many, but it is important that we are showing them how much information is available such as paid subscriptions through the school or district. 

This topic was a perfect lead into our next Module of Full-Text Databases.  This was extremely eye opening for me because I had never thought about using databases with my Elementary students.   I was curious after reading, “Primary Search database of popular children’s magazines, Newspaper Source articles, from national international newspapers, Professional Development Collection journals and magazines for the K-12 community, and ERIC abstracts and full-text reports (Riedling 2019).”  My only experience with data bases if from my personal studies throughout my University career and my Post Baccalaureate studies.  In my mind, resources such as ERIC and EBSCO were only useful for adults.  When I did a quick search on our District Library resources EBSCO was at the top of the list, followed by the elementary version, being Explora.  I did some searching on this database and found that the information was at a readable level and was accompanied by pictures, videos, graphics, and diagrams for more visual learning. 

The last Module that I will discuss is one that can be controversial.  It seems that the discussion of Encyclopedias vs. Wikipedia is a common topic in the Library world.  “Wikipedia, has created a large amount of debate among information scientists, educators and others as format with reliability and validity issues (UBC 2021).”    As mentioned on our discussions for this Module, I feel that we should not be fully discouraging students from using Wikipedia.  I strongly agree that “Wikipedia is the ideal place to start your research and get a global picture of a topic, we recommend that students check the facts that they find in Wikipedia against other sources (Harris 2007).”  I also feel like we should not be banning the use of Wikipedia because this is often the most accessible resources for students.  We know that “…if a child comes home seeking help with a research project, it’s most likely that Mom and Dad will turn to the online encyclopedia.  Even if they do a basic search on Google for single word topics almost always includes a result from Wikipedia (Harris 2007).”  Therefore it is important to educate our students that this can be a great starting point.  It is also why we need to be showing them all the other resources that are available to them. 

I personally find Wikipedia fascinating and learned so much more from this Module.  I knew that Wikipedia could be edited and changed by the public, however, I had no idea that it was comprised of volunteers.  “The idea behind Wikipedia is that it’s self-cleaning.  If someone posts an article or change that includes an error, the community will find the error and fix it (Berinstein 2006).”  I feel that this is also something that we could be sharing with our students about how software communities work and where they could eventually move to with coding.  In doing more research about Wikipedia I watched Jimmy Wales discuss the birth of Wikipedia and his ‘rag tag’ crew.  Some of the highlights from this talk were that Wikipedia is closely monitored with RSS fees and most garbage is often found right away and deleted (Wales 2005). 

Even though Wikipedia is comprised of volunteers, Wales points out that, “People who volunteer to write an Encyclopedia for fun, must be some pretty smart people (Wales 2005).”  So, I feel like I have a little soft spot when it comes to Wikipedia.  It gets a lot of flak, however, it’s quite an amazing platform.  I also do not think that it should be compared to an Encyclopedia.  Both resources are very different, even if they have the same intention of sharing information with the public. 

I found another video that would be very helpful to show other educators and students.  It shows how students should be using Wikipedia and discusses that “Used properly, Wikipedia is an invaluable resource, especially as a launching pad for evaluating online information.” 

This final Module was very fluid, and I thought each topic tied perfectly into the next.  A lot of the information is highly applicable and gave me a greater insight into the Library reference collection.  As a classroom teacher wishing to work in the Learning Commons, I feel grateful that I am learning all this information beforehand, rather than being a fish out of water and trying to figure it out as I go. 

Works Cited:

Berinstein, P. (2006). Wikipedia and Britannica: The Kid’s All Right (And So’s the Old Man). Searcher 14(3), 16-26.

Harris, C. (2007). Can we make peace with Wikipedia? School Library Journal, 53(6), 26.

Riedling, A. M., & Houston, C. (2019). Reference skills for the school librarian: Tools and tips (4th ed.). Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Stanford History Education Group. (2020, January 23). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzcjS1aDojA

The University of British Columbia. (2021).  LIBE 467: Information Services I. Vancouver, BC: UBC.

Wales, J. (2005, July). Retrieved April 02, 2021, from https://www.ted.com/talks/jimmy_wales_the_birth_of_wikipedia/up-next?language=en

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LLED 462 – Learning Curation #2 (Module 2)

A Recipe for a School Library as a place of Literacy and Learning

This is the second time that I have come across ‘PowToon’ in my LIBE Diploma courses.  When I was first introduced to it in the summer, I was hot spotting my phone at my summer house, so my Wi-Fi connection was spotty and was not the best space to be learning a new online tool.  I was drawn to this type of presentation that one of my classmates had shown and I had made a mental note to try it in the future, so here I am now.  I am so glad that this tool had crossed my path again and that I would have the time to explore it. 

I can hammer out a PowerPoint quite quickly, as I have had a lot of practice, however, I found this a lot more challenging than any PowerPoint that I had ever created.  I used a lot of the pre-made ‘scenes’ as each one is quite complex and reminded me of a simpler version of scratch, but still involves a lot of moving pieces to make each scene look seamless.  I also did not complete my PowToon in the four-day trial period of the Pro version so there are watermarks on this presentation since I did not want to get rid of the work that I had done.  I also decided to video my entire screen to show my staff that this was created in a way that is similar to a PowerPoint, that way it still looks familiar to them.  

I feel like I could take this example and post it to our school Teams Library Channel to show two things:

  1. How the Library is evolving to the Student Library Learning Commons
  2. A new tool that they could use for teaching or allowing their students to explore this platform for presenting their inquiries. 

I chose to show my recipe as a PowToon to follow along with the theme of the Library Learning Commons and being a lifelong learner.  I have included several quotes from our reading to back up my ‘recipe’ for the library as a place of literacy and learning.  This is a platform that I have never used before and stumbled along to get a finished product (It took me WAY longer than I thought it would!).  I feel that this is such an important philosophy to take on as a Teacher-Librarian and a Teacher.  We are not ‘all-knowing’ and are constantly learning new things if we chose to.  TL’s and teachers can become complacent if they have been at the same school and been in the same position for many years, however, we are learning that this is not the way that we should be teaching.  We need to foster inquiry and encourage critical thinking with our students. 

It is also important to recognize that the Library Learning Commons (LLC) should be a place where students feel safe and have a strong connection with the Teacher Librarian.  As educators we know that “Successful learning communities require cultivation, and … a lot of time to forging relationships with students and helping them connect with each other (Kelley & Miller, 2013, p. 89).”  I feel my recipe shows that a trickle-down affect of all the staff working together should show that the school community is strong and that students should feel comfortable in the LLC. 

I hope that my PowToon shares the message that for the Library Learning Commons to be the hub of the school and a place of literacy and learning, there needs to be a lot of support in place.  The transition will not happen over night and it will take time, along with a lot of help from others.  This is not a job that should be done alone by the Teacher Librarian.  This is truly a community project which involves everyone trying to achieve the same goal.  

Works Cited:

Create Awesome Videos Yourself. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.powtoon.com/

Canadian Library Association. (2014). Leading learning: Standards of practice for school library learning commons in Canada. Ottawa: ON

Dickinson, G. (2004). Budgeting: As Easy as 1-2-3. Library Media Connection, 22(6), 14-17.

Hayes, T. (2014) Library to learning commons. Retrieved from https://www.edcan.ca/articles/library-to-learning-commons/

Kelley, S., & Miller, D. (2013) Reading in the wild: The book whisper’s keys to cultivating lifelong reading habits. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. p.88-128  

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LLED 462: Librarians as educational leaders: Learning Curation

The essential question that I have chosen for my learning curation is:

How can I inspire my colleagues and students as a Teacher Librarian?

Over the last few years, I have found myself in an ever-changing state about my career.  There is no hesitation that I want to stay in education, however, even in my ‘short’ career of just over 10 years I have seen the tasks and stresses of a classroom teacher increase (especially in our current world state) and I honestly do not know how much longer I would be able to stay in a positive mental state if I keep on this path. 

In 2017, I was presented with an opportunity that gave me a new insight on my career path.  There was a posting for a ‘Technology Support Teacher’ within our district and the job description sounded very intriguing.  I reluctantly applied, thinking it would be great for people to start recognizing my name.  Well, to my surprise I got an interview and was granted the position.  This is where my new outlook on my career started.  I absolutely loved this position because it combined so many things that I loved about being a teacher:  a lot of collaboration with my team, meeting and working with staff all over the district (teachers, Teacher Librarian’s (TL), Vice-Principal’s, and Principals), discovering new technology and troubleshooting how to introduce this into a classroom and lastly, working with students all over the district.  Just over a year after started this position we were blessed with our son and I started a year long Mat Leave at the beginning of 2019.  My district position was only a 2-year role, so my return to work was a very shocking one and then led into a global pandemic. 

While on Mat Leave, I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do with my career moving forward.  I loved my role with the district and was trying to think of ways that I could have a similar job.  I had many callouts to Teacher Librarian’s across our district that were just being introduced into transitioning the ‘Library’ to the ‘Student Library Learning Commons.’  This made me think that this is a path that would be right for me.  I love helping others (as we all do as teachers), however, I have always been drawn to working with my peers as well.  When I learn something new, I want to share this knowledge with others, usually to make their life easier.  As a classroom teacher in an Elementary setting, it is hard to have collaboration and connection with colleagues.  We all have different prep blocks and not everyone takes their lunch break to have short discussions in the staff room. 

I am hoping that with a change in position I will be able to inspire others again.  When I was in my district role, the title itself gave some leverage to the information that I was sharing.  I am keeping up with leadership opportunities, such as instructing at upcoming District Pro-D sessions, but I am hoping that this course will give me some more insight on different resources and tools that are exciting and may be of interest to others.  By sharing information and collaborating, I am hoping that I can be a leader in my school or district once I find myself in a TL position. 

The transition from the Library to the Learning Commons has made me think that I can be a leader if I am a TL.  We have learned that, “The role and impact of the teacher-librarian can be synthesized quite simply: teacher-librarians impact student learning and achievement by forming strong and positive relationships with members of the school community, especially the school principal; by collaborating with classroom colleagues to plan, develop and assess independent learning abilities in students; by fostering a recreational reading culture in the building; and by providing informal staff development opportunities (CLA, 2014, p.21).”  As I mentioned before, I hope to inspire by leading others through collaboration and staff development. 

The other way that I wish to inspire others is to continue to learn and grow.  I feel like this is the message that I am getting from all my coursework towards my TL Diploma.  We need to be life-long learners and continue to grow to inspire others to do the same.  I feel like the most powerful way to inspire my peers is to continue this education journey that I am on and keep learning, even once my TL Diploma is complete.  Strive to learn at least one or two new things a month and then share this new knowledge with my fellow staff and students. 

(Couros, 2018)

I came across this TED Talk while researching for my essential question and I feel like Drew (2010) has really nailed it on the head.  My goal is to create those ‘lollipop’ moments in life and really appreciate them.  You do not know the power that your own positivity or wisdom can have on a person. 

Drew discusses ‘everyday leadership’ and how we need to think about leadership from a different viewpoint.

As a yoga instructor, I have had members come back to me months later repeating something that I had said to them before/during or after a practice and they had claimed that it changed their lives.  They were holding onto something that they should not and finally let it go.  They made more time for themselves because I had taught them that self care is not selfish.  At the time, I was just doing my job as an instructor and had no idea what an impact I would have on my members. 

Moving forward, I hope to continue to inspire others without the intention of doing so by constantly learning and growing as an educator.  Even if I can have an impact on just a few people, I know that I am paying it forward and being a successful leader in education. 

Works Cited: 

Canadian Library Association. (2014). Leading learning: Standards of practice for school library learning commons in Canada. Ottawa: ON

Couros, G. (2018, May 30). 5 Crucial Quotes on Leadership and Why They are Important. Retrieved from https://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/8277

Dudley, D. (2010). Retrieved January 31, 2021, from https://www.ted.com/talks/drew_dudley_everyday_leadership?referrer=playlist-how_leaders_inspire#t-361419

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LIBE 477B – Inquiry 1 – Fostering a Reading Culture

Enjoying reading with my son and teaching him the basics of coding 🙂

When starting to think about this topic of fostering a reading cultures in my school, I know that there are many traditionalists that feel like reading should only be from a paper book.  I think that as technology has evolved, we are slowly moving away from that mindset.  I mean, even for this course we were able to purchase our textbooks on Amazon and read them on a device or print if we felt so inclined. 

Our most recent stint in remote learning also opened a lot of educators eyes to what is available online for our students to access.  I know that many companies were offering free subscriptions and access during this time of remote learning to help out during these strange times, which was greatly appreciated.  I know that having conversations with parents, that they were able to find a whole bunch of resources to keep their child occupied while we were in that limbo phase at the end of March and into April.  In my conversations with parents they were getting a lot of use of virtual field trips found online and a lot of people were using Scholastic Learn at home and Math Prodigy

When I was in my Tech Support role, one of my jobs was researching and suggesting different apps to use in an Elementary setting.  ‘Epic!  Books for Kids‘ was always my number one App that I would suggest and was always well received from both teachers and students.  There are a few things that I love about this App.  I have shown some of my favourites in the video below. 

1. You can use it in a generic sense, without having to ‘set up’ a classroom with students names.  I used to just have grade levels and be logged onto the school iPads and then students could use their grade level to look at different books that I suggested, or they could explore on their own.

2. There are ‘Read-to-me’ books which are in the sense our old ‘reading and listening’ stations that we used to have in classrooms with the cassette tapes or CD’s.  This is a great feature of the app because it highlights the words as it reads, which I think is much more beneficial than just having the book because this way is teaches the student how to track along the words.  There are also audio only (mainly longer chapter books) that can be used for independent book study or helping students who struggle with reading, yet still want to enjoy like everyone else. 

3. There are educational videos that are often related to books that students are reading.  The great thing about this feature is that you can easily toggle this function on and off as an educator.  Personally, I have kept this off for my students when it is reading time so that I know that they are finding a book rather than watching a video.  If we were doing something like research I would turn this function back on.

4. With permission of course, you can set up a class (even use avatar names if you choose) list with names so that you can track the books that students are reading.  You can see how long they spent reading, how many books they have read and also assign books or quizzes to go along with reading. 

During return to school I got to see how much students love this app.  They are able to find books to suit their mood.  My favourite memory of all this was when my students started to ask each other jokes from the books that they had found.  They started to naturally rate each others jokes, which I found hilarious.  It was awesome to hear their discussions.  I could also monitor my students that were still learning at home to see if they were reading. 

My grade 3/4 class reading on Epic! Books for kids during return to school in June 2020

I also noticed that the students who were in class were able to read for much longer periods of time than they had during our traditional ‘D.E.A.R.’ time.  From January to March I used to have to put up a timer on our Smartboard for 15min so that students were aware and could see ‘how much longer’ we HAD to read.  Often times if I felt like this time was not being used for its purpose I would start the timer over, or add a few minutes.  When we returned to school in June my students would be reading for 20 minutes, I would check in and ask if they wanted more time and they always said yes!  I was shocked.  I had students that returned to school that did not enjoy reading in the traditional sense, but they absolutely loved reading on Epic! 

I do believe that this is because they are able to switch to something else very quickly and easily if they find that they are not interested in what they are reading.  This may not be the best for their reading endurance, but at least this way they are not constantly getting up and socializing with their friends along the way as they choose a new book.  So I guess it was also a helpful classroom management tool 🙂

Using Epic! Books for kids App with French Immersion Kindergarten class. They loved the Read-to-Me feature, in French I might add!

I used this App to support reading as low as the Kindergarten level.  It is so user friendly and having the ability to assign a collection of books allows the teacher to have a little bit of control instead of a free for all.  The Kindergarten students really enjoyed the Read-to-me books and they were super engaged.   I know that this is in part that they were in front of a screen, but they were still tracking and listening, which is what we want to see in emerging readers.  I think that this is highly important when creating resources for teachers. 

The web allows us to do amazing things, “You create some sort of web tool that students can refer to when you’re working with a different teacher and another teacher comes to you at the same time.” (Fontichiaro & Oehrli, 2014, p. 38)’ Having this access is a game changer for classes who may be working on similar inquiries.  Having a resource like this could allow several classes to be studying the same novel without having to purchase the book, or several classes could be working on the same Inquiry project and the TL would not have to worry about running out of resources. 

As mentioned in my video, if I am to move into a Learning Commons position,  I could see myself using this App a lot  while collaborating with teachers.  It is a great resources for any type of inquiry as it offers both books and videos for the students to learn from.  If teachers wanted students to stick to a general theme of their inquiry, I could also help curate a collection, or maybe several collections of books and videos that would suit the inquiry.

Works Cited:

Fontichiaro, K. & Oehrli, J. A. (2014a). Nudging toward inquiry – Turning the tables on collaboration part I: Planning for success. Library Media Connection 32(4): 36-38.