information – Mrs G's Masters Musings

Tag: information

15
Aug
2022

Web 2.0 and the teacher librarian

categories: ETL501, role of the Teacher Librarian

Key aspects of Web 2.0 that are likely to impact on education in today’s schools include web search skills, website evaluation strategies and the effects of social media.

The use of search engines has a huge impact on education. There are a vast number of search engines available, and they all allow a list of websites appearing at the click of a button. This information glut can be difficult to navigate, particularly if students do not have the skills to effectively evaluate websites. These skills are not innate, and students are not digital natives (Kirscher & De Bruyckere, 2017). It is disservice to our students to assume they have the skills to navigate and discern information presented to them online. Just because our students have grown up in a world where the internet always been in their lives, does not mean they naturally have the skills to navigate it. To put this in perspective, we all grew up in a world where there are cars, however we all needed explicit instruction to learn to drive one.

Web 2.0 provides an interactive experience for students, and they can comment on and ‘like’ pages and posts. They can create their own blogs and interact with other internet users. This opens a whole can of worms for schools around cyber-safety for their students. All schools have a responsibility to ensure that students are safe online. Schools need to have a ‘Responsible use of ICT’ policy and it needs to updated regularly and adhered to. This helps to ensure students’ online safety.

The impact of social media platforms is ongoing in schools. It’s more than teaching students about the dangers of these social media platforms (grooming, cyber-bullying, identity theft) but for schools to understand what behaviours are being promoted in trending videos (Wright, 2022). With this knowledge, teachers can support students in their safe navigation of these social media platforms. Our students are exposed to more information than ever before and they must have the skills to navigate this information. Remember, not everything you read in on the internet is true!

This might all seem like a lot of doom and gloom with the online dangers for our students. But there is a light! The teacher librarian can support students in their skills to navigate Web 2.0 tools. From effective search skills to website evaluation, the teacher librarian is well-placed to teach these skills explicitly in a range of subject areas across the curriculum. There is also opportunity here for the teacher librarian to provide professional development to staff to upskill them in these areas as well. Web 2.0 applications are here to stay and cannot be ignored. To ignore these is to ignore student needs.

References

Kirscher, P.A., & De Bruyckere, P. (2017). The Myths of the digital native and the multitasker. Teaching and Teacher Education. 10(67) 135-142.

Wright, A. (2022, April 7). TikTok: What Are the Dangers and What Should Schools Do? School governance. https://www.schoolgovernance.net.au/news/tiktok-what-are-the-dangers-and-what-should-schools-do

08
Jan
2022

The future of school libraries

categories: 21st century library, collection development, ETL503, role of the Teacher Librarian

Libraries must adapt to changes and the needs of the community. A library that remains stagnant in its services becomes redundant. The key point of libraries and librarians is to understand their community and adapt to their needs (Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), 2014).

The principal must be future-focused for the library to continue to be of service to the school community. A principal who believes that a library is a place to house books will be doing a disservice to their school community. The collection development policy must reflect the changes in access to information and adapt to these for the library to remain relevant (Abercrombie, 2018).

In a primary school setting the physical non-fiction (NF) section will continue to be a vibrant area of the library collection, however this must be regularly updated (including weeding) to ensure current information is presented (Abercrombie, 2018; ACT Government Education, 2019). I know at my library the NF section is hugely popular and the books are suitable to the needs of the students.

In 10 years’ time, the NF section at the senior school would look vastly different. My library in the senior school has a well-resources NF section that is hardly touched by the students. When researching for assignments, the students use online platforms rather than physical resources. All students in the high school have their own laptop which is used in all classes, whereas the primary school students do not have uninterrupted access to information technology. I believe that within 10 years the NF section of the high school library will no longer be there or will be limited to a few bookshelves. This does not mean that the collection will have shrunk because the online collection will grow significantly. The budget that would have been spent on the physical NF resources would be used to purchase e-resources.

The teacher librarian themselves play a critical role in the function of the school library (ALIA 2014). Casting my mind back to my high school library experiences, I remember a ‘library dragon’ who was unapproachable and sent you out if you so much as breathed in the library. This was not a space where I wanted to go to do any kind of research but, being pre-internet boom, there was little choice. I am sure this was not everyone’s experience, but it definitely stuck with me and, as I embark on my TL journey, I know what I do not want to be. In a typical day at the library, I support students and teachers alike in selecting resources for research and recreational reading, and my main project is creating resource pages for students and teachers to use to support research across a range of subject areas.

I feel the library will always be a space where the school community can come to access resources (either physically or digitally), learn research skills, or simply enjoy some quiet time.

References

Abercrombie, S. (2018, May 30). Why do you need a collection development plan? Knowledge Quest. https://knowledgequest.aasl.org/why-do-you-need-a-collection-development-plan/

ACT Government Education. (2019). School libraries: The heart of 21st century learning. https://www.education.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/1435435/School-Libraries-The-Heart-of-21st-Century-Learning.pdf

Australian Library and Information Association. (2014). Future of the library and information science profession: School libraries. https://read.alia.org.au/content/future-library-and-information-science-profession-school-libraries

09
Apr
2021

Information Literacy in the school context

categories: ETL401, Information literacy, Inquiry learning, role of the Teacher Librarian

Mandy Lupton’s article Inquiry skills in the Australian Curriculum presents an interesting analysis of the links (and omissions) in the inquiry methods in the Australian Curriculum across the disciplines of Science, History and Geography.

These three disciplines give scope for inquiry learning, whether it’s guided inquiry with questions posed by the teacher, or open inquiry with questions posed by the student. Both of these inquiry models require the students to answer the questions using inquiry methods.

Inquiry models can be used across a variety of disciplines. It is important to have a consistent approach to inquiry so that the same techniques and methods are used consistently. Kath Murdoch’s Inquiry Cycle (Murdoch, 2019) is the inquiry method I am most familiar with as this is the model that is used in my K-12 school.

This uniform approach to information literacy is intertwined with collaboration between the TL, teachers and the principal. The vision of all three need to match so that the skills being taught and used by the students are systematic and consistent.

Lupton states that there are omissions in the Australian Curriculum when it comes to information literacy and the imbedded skills. This omission is seen as both an oversight, but at the same time an opportunity for the TL to shine in their role as curriculum innovators.

“If teacher librarians see their role as curriculum innovators, then integrating the Australian Curriculum strands into a coherent inquiry learning framework that explicitly integrates information literacy may be one of the most significant ways we can contribute to the implementation of the Australian Curriculum” (Lupton, 2014, p. 18).

This cannot be done by the TL alone. It needs to be a whole-school approach in order to achieve the best outcomes for students in their emerging and continuing skills in information literacy.

References

Lupton, M.(2014) Inquiry skills in the Australian Curriculum v6, Access, November

Murdoch, K. (2019). A model for designing a journey of inquiry. Retrieved from Kath Murdoch: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55c7efeae4b0f5d2463be2d1/t/5d672b554646780001dbe0fd/1567042417794/%23A+MODEL+FOR+DESIGNING+A+JOURNEY+OF+INQUIRY.pdf

13
Mar
2021

Are school librarians an endangered species?

categories: ETL401

After watching Karen Bonanno’s keynote address I believe the take home message to be you are only redundant if you believe yourself to be so and to make sure you are not redundant it is important to have a plan in place in order to achieve your goals.

From the article, Bonanno shows direct relationship between literacy, library budget as well as and student access to teacher librarian support. The TL becomes the link between teachers planning curriculum and resources being used to teach. TLs need to stay on top of information trends and need to ‘ensure their knowledge and skills are kept up to date’ (Bonanno, 2015, p18).

References

Bonanno , K. (2015). A profession at the tipping point (revisited). Access, 29(1), 14-21. http://kb.com.au/content/uploads/2015/03/profession-at-tipping-point2.pdf

Australian School Library Association. (2011). Karen Bonanno, Keynote speaker: A profession at the tipping point: Time to change the game plan. [Video]. vimeo. https :// vimeo .com/31003940

11
Mar
2021

The TL in the Information Landscape

categories: ETL401, Information landscape

I was faced with a question today from a student asking if I could help them find information about sink holes for a Geography assessment task. I actually found this particular student wandering through the shelves of the non-fiction section trying to find what she was after. After checking the database together (and found that our library was lacking in such resources – another issue to be faced another day) she decided to set herself loose on the world wide web.

This interaction got me thinking about the information landscape and my role as a teacher librarian. I think back to how I would have researched at high school and it looks very different now. Students no longer drag heavy volumes of encyclopaedias off the shelf or search the CD-ROM of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Instead, they search through a few taps on the keyboard and a click of the mouse. However, after these taps and clicks, a mountain of information on a particular topic appears. Price (2015) sums it up very neatly. “Today, our best estimates suggest that at least 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is produced every day.”

To get my head around such a large number I had to research it.

(Quintillion Definition (Illustrated Mathematics Dictionary), 2018)

This is an enormous amount is information; A number so big that it is equal to a million million millions (Quintillion Definition (Illustrated Mathematics Dictionary), 2018). To say this is mind-boggling is an understatement. Remember, this number was produced in 2015. However, “by 2025, it’s estimated that 463 exabytes of data will be created each day globally – that’s the equivalent of 212,765,957 DVDs per day!” (Desjardins, 2019).

With that is mind, as librarians we need to be able to understand current information trends and this is a daunting task to say the least.

To assist students to navigate the information landscape effectively, teacher librarians need to have strong skills as information specialists (“What is a Teacher Librarian?”, 2019). TLs cannot possibly be able to be experts in all areas but need to be able to adapt to changing requirements in technology and needs of staff and students alike. As a result of these needs, TLs are required to be life-long learners in order to adapt and change with the adapting and changing information landscape of which we are all a part. We are the stepping-stone for students to learn how to navigate emerging areas of the information landscape and to equip them with the skills to sift through the vast amounts and types of information available, and to make discerning choices about what is useful and what is not.

During the week I came to the conclusion that the teacher librarian is an important link between students and their navigation of the information landscape. The variety of ways to access information has changed and will continue to change over time.

References

Desjardins, J. (2019). How Much Data is Generated Each Day?. Visual Capitalist. Retrieved 11 March 2021, from https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-data-is-generated-each-day/.

Price, D. (2015). Facts and stats about the big data industry. Cloud Tweaks.

Quintillion Definition (Illustrated Mathematics Dictionary). Mathsisfun.com. (2018). Retrieved 10 March 2021, from https://www.mathsisfun.com/definitions/quintillion.html.

What is a Teacher Librarian?. Asla.org.au. (2019). Retrieved 10 March 2021, from https://asla.org.au/what-is-a-teacher-librarian.