It was great starting the case study this time as we all knew what we were doing with the technology side of things within the forum. It felt as though we were much more efficient in getting started and most group members contributed quickly.

I volunteered to do the final summary to post onto the discussion forum and also asked if everyone was happy with that which they were. Our group was quite efficient this time in getting our thoughts and strategies onto the discussion board and into the wiki which made it easier for me to collate them in order to place into one document.

I did notice though when reading through them that a couple of strategies were quite similar. As a result I had to try and join them together and one of them was more of a summary rather than a strategy.

For the next case study, it would be beneficial at the beginning to suggest on the discussion board that when it comes to strategies we should try to have different ones. This would benefit our learnings and obviously create a variation of strategies to present.

Unfortunately, when I put the final piece together I tried to be collaborative by asking for feedback before posting (particularly in relation to leadership strategies in the case study), I did not receive a response. This is possibly as group members had not checked the discussion board and also because they felt time poor. Going forward, it may be beneficial to post a reminder on the discussion board at the beginning of the next case study for members to check this each day for any questions or clarification.

I found this such an interesting and insightful task for many reasons.

Firstly, I was quite nervous about the workload and being involved in this task and I was wondering how it was all going to work. However, it has been such a great task to be involved in as it really helped me with my learnings and to actually be ‘in a group’ and thinking about the dynamics and leadership styles particularly as I am currently on maternity leave was extremely worthwhile.

From the beginning, I was very conscious about trying to be collaborative as this is important to me and I think it is a great way of involving everyone and ensuring everyone is on the same page. I started the group off in this way and posed a few questions about how everyone would like to go about roles and the actual organisation of the discussion group. Two group members replied to this, one with a similar idea to myself and the other who wanted to launch straight into it and set everything up before hearing back from the other members.

I found this really interesting. In some ways it was absolutely fantastic as I found it great that there was someone in the group who was very assertive and confident in her own thoughts and felt her way was the best way to go about it and literally just set it up. This approach made it very easy for the entire group as we just followed along and added our thoughts where appropriate. However, on the other hand, this approach doesn’t allow for members to get to know each other through a friendly and cooperative way. It could also be sending a message that others’ ideas aren’t important and we just need to get this done.

It was such an insightful activity as I hadn’t thought about it like this before. So many positives and negatives for both approaches. If the collaboration could have happened and then a quick decision/vote on the approach decided to take, this may have been a positive way to do this. Time was definitely an issue though and there was the concern that not all group members would reply so I can also see why one group member made a quick decision for everyone that would enable the task to begin. It also highlights the importance of everyone being involved ‘quickly’ from the beginning otherwise it makes it very difficult to finish the task in plenty of time.

The learnings I took away from the first assessment task have been extremely beneficial, not only as a future teacher librarian but as a current teacher.

I have always loved picture books and for this assessment I decided to focus on picture books for older children.  I am amazed by how much I learnt and I am excited to share this with colleagues of mine.  I am surprised that I was not aware of some of the features of picture books as I don’t think I had thought enough about the textures, colours and sizing of pictures and placement of text enough.  I was always aware of these but had never explicitly discussed these with my students and I believe I should have invested more of my own time in learning about visual comprehension.

I strongly believe that features of picture books is an area which should be explicitly taught in all year levels and as a result I believe there will be such great improvements across the entire curriculum.  Firstly, children will be more engaged with reading, secondly children will have greater literacy and problem solving skills and thirdly children will have the ability to make inferences regarding the text and textual features.

What a fabulous assessment piece that will make me a better teacher and hopefully inspire children further with their reading.

It has been an extremely interesting couple of weeks for me.  I believe this is mainly due to the fact that I have discovered a range of interesting resources throughout the module readings.  I have particularly found that the module activities have helped me to ‘understand’ these resources more in-depth as I have delved into these more than I may have otherwise.  I am very conscious of trying to keep up to date with the most recent resources as I am not in the classroom and I feel very grateful that this subject is helping me with exactly that.  The discussion forums have also been extremely helpful as it is great to read what works for other teacher librarians and take their ideas on board also.

This is my first week of beginning the subject, Resourcing the Curriculum and I am already feeling very inspired and motivated by what I have read.  I am a primary school teacher and I am currently on maternity leave so I feel as though this is such an insightful subject which will keep me up to date with changes that are happening with resources in schools as well as what students and teachers are finding to be the most effective resources and modes of information delivery.

I must admit that I do feel quite apprehensive about this subject as I am not currently working in a school and I hope that I can complete the assessment tasks adequately.  I particularly hope that I can gain access to the resources I need to help me with the assessment tasks as well as have an understanding of what resources are of a high quality.

Overall, I am approaching this subject with enthusiasm and look forward to what I will learn not only from Tehani but from other students, as I know this information will be of such great benefit for me now as well as going forward.

It has been a positive start to our subject, ‘Introduction to Teacher Librarianship’ this week.  I feel that I have navigated my way around the student portal relatively well.  I have enjoyed reading everyone’s introductions in the student cafe and I have found the discussion forums to be an excellent way of clarifying my thoughts and ideas.  I also gained some really valuable information and ideas from the online meeting regarding library resources and searching.

I actually began the Master of Information Science course at the end of 2016 in session three and while completing the first subject it reinforced my passion for education (I have been a primary school teacher for eleven years) and therefore I decided to swap over to the Master of Education (Teacher Librarianship) course so that I could focus specifically on the academic field.  There weren’t enough places to swap straight into this subject so I had to complete an elective if I didn’t want to take a session off.  I completed Social Networking for Information Professionals in session one of 2017 which I absolutely loved as it had some fun and interesting assessment tasks that were so relevant to the way we teach and disseminate information today.

As a result of completing this subject, I have already set up a blog which has my reflections and assessment tasks from INF506 on this.  I have spent this week trying to reorganise my blog as it initially worked well for one subject however it was not going to be user friendly for more than this.  My main objective was to make this blog easy for readers to engage with and follow.

As we begin this subject, I am really looking forward to learning and interacting with everyone!!