July 2023 – Chasing my Tale

Multiple Literacies – where does it end?

Learning comes from all angles. https://www.pxfuel.com/en/desktop-wallpaper-qdwwd

Learning does not come from a single source, it comes from multiple visual, textual, digital, audible sources and a combination of all of them. Learning is not about books, it is about using and discerning information from multiple sources.

I am a TL, an English and history teacher, which means I love books, but I also love ideas and creativty. I want my students to love them too. I have used digital text to create skills in multiple literacies for my students from quality texts like the documentary K’Gari, newspaper stories like Snowfall and 3D poetry Seaprayer. While these texts require the ability to read, interpret and analyse through multiple literacies, they also develop traditional literacy skills such as persuasion, information and emotive language manipulation.

At my school there is not a policy for multiple literacies or digital literacy. The library handbook does say Working with subject departments is integral to the work of the Library. The staff in the Library liaise with Leaders of Learning and specific subject teachers on not only acquiring resources but in developing students’ information literacy skills. The Library also offers opportunities for teaching staff in developing skills in information literacy, familiarity with print and non-print resources and in using new forms of ICT. It is a nod to digital literacy without fully embracing it.

The convergence of literacies means that TL need to be progressive in developing their skills across multiple literacies and allowing students ease of access to these through selected syllabus links.

Literacy – Provide a wide range of texts in multiple formats (printed, audio, visual and multimodal).
Content area – Provide material that support the curriculum in a wide variety of applications including Maths, Science, Religion, Commerce and Health through PDHPE.
Visual/ Screen – Provide access to quality film and visual texts.
Digital/Media- Source and access quality digital and multi modal formats for pleasure and education.
Cultural/Health/Religious – Provide a wide range of texts that explore cultural, ability and religious differences to improve empathy and understanding.
Network – Provide opportunities for students to come together and talk/discuss their favourite books and films etc.
Critical Literacy – Provide higher order critiques of texts particularly in HSC English reading material.

While this is what the Library can provide, as a TL I need to be able to communicate with the various KLAs about the material that can best suit their needs as well as teaching students how to ask for help, seek material and create greater depth in their understanding of the mass of information around them. Students should have access to this critical skill at the beginning of a new inquiry-based assessment task.

Additionally, it is important to note that transfer of information does not happen over a single entry point, but needs multiple reiterations to cement the learning. According to the study by Garrison and Fitzgerald, students had three successive Guided Inquiry tasks and ‘they progressed and developed a firmer understanding of the research process. Their responses reinforce the importance of consistency and suggest that using a school wide approach to research may beparticularly useful in building skills.’ The second statement suggests that I need to be part of a strategy to teach teachers how to better access information (not just websites) that conform to a school-wide approach according to an Information Literacy Policy to be written in the not to distant future.

What I understand from the term of multiple literacies is that ‘literacy’ extends back to its original meaning of being ‘educated, learned’. We have to be able to absorb, contextualise and critically analyse information in order to understand the world and create our own responses to the situations as we understand it. This leads us to great works “1984” which explicitly does all those things to a high level. To create this work you need to have a sophisticated sense of literacy, critical literacy, media literacy (newspapers), cultural literacy and possibly religious literacy. All of these things are self-perpetuated and interconnected through wide reading and analysis, and all through the inherent experiences of the individual.

In the 21st Century we expect our students to be developing the same skills, but also to be empathatic to a wider variety of people through cultural and trans literacy, but with the expectation that they assimilate and accumulate knowledge will occur through a greater variety of technology including digital media. Thus it is imperative that students become critical readers of their new environment through digital, screen, network and media analysis. The challenge for schools is to give students those capabilities, while at the same time giving them the option to grow critically and creatively.

It is very easy to see that a short Pixar film watched on YouTube has many elements that could relate to good literacy including religious, cultural, trans and maybe even health literacy while also incorporating a skilled manipulation of the screen and digital format. However, from last week’s reading we can see that the majority of time is spent watching Tik Tok videos which arrive as YouTube shorts. If we are teaching students to ‘read the world’ through literacy, what happens when their world is both technically limited and content poor.

Here are three examples I picked randomly off YouTube Shorts which are entertaining, but…

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QmLq7Q5JtS0

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5q72T7PUwng

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AAxfijEC9ko

I have probably written more on this than I expected to. I was really excited about the possibilities that can be explored within my context to create to make learning more engaging and student centred while also helping students develop the metacognitive skills they need to be a 21st Century (and beyond) learner.

Garrison, K., & FitzGerald, L. (2017). ‘It trains your brain’: Student reflections on using the Guided Inquiry Design process. Synergy, 15(2). https://www.slav.vic.edu.au/index.php/Synergy/article/view/v15220179

The Contradictions of the Information Age

The Temple of Anubis from Assassin’s Creed, https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nYq4y6

Do you like the picture above?

A beautiful recreation of an Egyptian temple complete with imposing statues of Anubis, colourful artwork celebrating a variety of gods and the achievements of the pharaoh and the iconic obelisks to the side. and besides that, Anubis, the jackal god of the dead is everyone’s favourite as he oversees the embalming process and guides the dead through the underworld.

Year 7 students think Anubis is pretty awesome as well. So awesome that this temple was continually added to their assessment on Ancient Egyptian religion.

The only problem was that the temple did not exist and Anubis himself did not have a temple. And when you think about it, why would you build a temple for the living to the god of the dead? Far better to build the most spectacular temple to the gods of power, such as the Temple of Edfu, below, dedicated to Horus, the god of the pharaoh. However, despite its colossal entrance, it is not as inviting as the imaginative game temple above.

Temple of Edfu https://egymonuments.gov.eg/monuments/temple-of-edfu/

And here lies the contradictions of the information age. Schools can offer a vast amount of amazing information at the touch of a keyboard, but students will be drawn to the intrinsically more engaging and fun side of the wide offering a plethora of distraction and boredom from prescribed work.

The benefits of instant information are endless. It can deliver access to a greater variety of timely content to students that a library cannot provide. It allows students of all socio-economic backgrounds to access the same information regardless if they come from a marginal school in remote Australia or the most elite school in the metropolitan areas. It provides instant information to issues and events that are constantly updated. It provides access to students with low reading levels to access information by using tools such as PDF reader or YouTube.

However, just because a student can access these services does not mean they will. In my experience as a classroom teacher, students tend to access the first piece of information rather than the best piece of information meaning that there can be huge inaccuracies. Students also tend to choose pieces of information from the Google search page and the image search page rather than opening the websites to access the information. The other problem is that students do not have the same level of access, students may not have stable internet in remote or regional areas or they might not have access to a computer or device.

Librarians have the chance to improve student access to information through sites such as Libguides where students have links to reliable information that directly links to their assessment/research work. Librarians also need to allow access to other digital resources that are not possible to obtain from the internet such as Journal articles, AV material (clickview) and ebooks. Despite being digital these sites need to be maintained to ensure currency, stability and changing assessment or syllabus focus.

However while schools and TL tend to focus on reliable sources that tend to be like an encyclopedia in a digital format, students have their digital eyes facing a completely different direction. The infographic, Data Never Sleeps from Domo revealed that Tik Tokers watched 167 million videos and streamed nearly 700,000 hours on YouTube every minute in 2021, compared to a paltry 5.7 million Google searches. This is incredible compared to the 2013 data where Google reigned supreme at 2 million searches (just under a third of current viewing, YouTube was only 48 hours of viewing and Tik Tok had not been created yet.

So who is to say what will be the fads and what will be educationally constructive in the years to come. The challenge to TL will be to adapt and apply the changes to artificial intelligence, virtual or augmented reality and the metaverse in the best way that to suit the needs of the learning environment and the students and teachers.

The broader information landscape is a huge challenge to how school libraries meet the needs of engaging student learners in the 21st Century. The Teacher Librarian should provide information in both a classical and changing technology setting that will improve a quality education and provide engagement and deep learning opportunities to students.

Domo (n.d.) Data Never Sleeps, Retrieved July 30, 2023 from https://www.domo.com/data-never-sleeps

The Light in the Chasm

The dark and deep cavern. From PXFuel (https://www.pxfuel.com/en/desktop-wallpaper-pnofa)

PART B – ASSIGNMENT 1

My father was a Teacher-Librarian and my mother was a midwife.

When I was a child people would say to me, “Are you going to be a teacher like your father?” Or, “Are you going to be a nurse like your mother?” The answer to both was an emphatic NO!

I have now started my sixth career, five of these required university qualifications, and I am now back to the beginning. A Teacher-Librarian after all. Some people may call that fate, some people may call that opportunity, others might say that is simply free-falling. I hope it is serendipity.

I felt like I entered the deep, dark chasm when I took on the role of Teacher Librarian. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was about to move schools in Week 7 of Term 1 of this year after I was awarded the position after the incumbent TL and Ancient History teacher became very ill at the end of January.

I asked the TL at the school I was at what I should do and she said, “You’ll know when you get there.” And I asked the previous TL at my current school and he said, “Just have fun!” I asked my father and he said, “You’ll be fantastic.” Thanks. I was looking for clarity and I received platitudes.

Just as the CSU readings and the lecturers have said, I have discovered the plethora of roles that make up the TL position once I donned the mantle. I am in the process of introducing a literacy program for students at both ends of the reading spectrum. I am liaising with the KLAs to give them multiple learning opportunities through the physical, digital and technological resources we have including VRs, museum boxes and iPads, while also allocating targeted budgetary resources. I have talked to the executive about how the library can reflect the school vision, I have met with parents during the open night and I encouraged my Library Assistant to talk on community radio, which she did in her own hilarious style. I am now trying to update and reorganise our AV resources. So it is true, I did discover what to do.

Of course there are books. I was told I would have trouble spending my budget, and I have promptly proven everyone wrong! I love liaising with the English staff who have a completely different reading program to my last school where I was previously an English and History teacher. I have also started to get used to the regular readers and the types of books they are interested in – Graphic Novels, Humour and Crime seem to be the go. Science fiction is a deserted alien landscape and Action seems to be a bit lifeless as well. Lastly, there are the students who create the buzz and extra lift to my day. And so it is true, it is fun.

Every day I learn, and sometimes I learn that there is so much left to learn. That is why I have started the M.Ed at CSU, and one day I hope to fill my chasm of knowledge with light and be the fabulous person that my father believes was always inside.

The Light in the Chasm. PxFuel (https://www.pxfuel.com/en/desktop-wallpaper-vhwjn)

Linda Gleeson

15 July, 2023

Reading to dream

https://www.pxfuel.com/en/desktop-wallpaper-edvyh/download/1280x800 — Dream Whale. From PXFUEL (https://www.pxfuel.com/en/desktop-wallpaper-edvyh)

I can’t stop reading.

I read in the car, I read while I’m watching TV and I read on the headland while I’m waiting for the whales. When I’m not reading, I’m talking about books, the characters, the plot twists, what I like and what I don’t like.

It makes sense that I ended up studying to be a Teacher Librarian, I mean, that’s all I need to do isn’t it – read!

My journey to this point of time was not preordained. I was a journalist because I wanted to tell the stories of people who inspired me. I became an author because I needed to tell the stories about my passion. I became an English and History teacher to share how people and their words have changed the world. And now I have become a teacher librarian because it seems my world has coalesced to give students the tools and encouragement to become lifelong learners with a delight of reading.

But how do I do this when so many of my students ‘hate’ reading? And they might hate reading, but nobody hates stories, stories are what makes us human after all.

Vicki Newton’s article, Teacher Librarians: Literally Irreplaceable (2011 PETAA) has grounded me that the role of a teacher-librarian is so much more than stories and reading.

It is about managing time, budgets and collections, developing diversity, acceptance and client-based collections, liaising with the syllabus, the staff and the ever changing landscape of the digital age. It is about creating excitement through events and teaching experiences and creating opportunities through executive and parent interactions.

Is it too much?

Yeah. Nah. It can’t be too much because the students I have in front of me need to find all the hope, inspiration and dreams that come from reading. And the students that do bring joy into their own life – and mine too. Some students read fishing guides, others read graphic novels five at a time while the very rare senior student attempts Pride and Prejudice.

But most read nothing at all. Nothing. And that is scary. Renaissance Readers estimate that reading 15 minutes a day makes all the difference to students. They perform better in English and comprehension topics, but, surprisingly, they also perform better in Maths and Science examinations, even when the questions are symbol based.

Reading, not socio-economic factors, not the school system and not even the teacher, but reading is the biggest indicator of student success in their examinations. Examinations is one thing, but it is also creates and opens opportunities in their adult life, if for no other reason that it acts as a defence against self-congratulated ignorance.

But more than that, reading allows these students to dream, escape their anxiety and enter into a new place.

And while all the other roles of my life are important – the resourcing, the management and the liaison, there is nothing more important than encouraging these students to read. Is it too hard? Yeah. Is it unachievable? Nah. I just have to find new ways to make it happen.

Sometimes I dream stories, I dream of characters, words, imagery and plots. I dream of beaches and whales and the stories that splash their way to the surface.

The stories take me to a new place, a new world, a better world.

All because I read.

I hope I can ‘open the gate’ to have my students enter their world of reading and dreaming too.

Linda Gleeson

14 July, 2023

Newton, V. (2011). Teacher Librarians : literally irreplaceable. PETAA Paper 226. 1-8.