ETL512: Assessment 6: Professional Reflective Portfolio

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Part A: What makes an effective Teacher Librarian?

Effective teacher librarians are curious, interested and interesting. They wonder, wander and guide students and colleagues through their own wonder/wanderings. Effective teacher librarians blend their understanding of the nature of learning and the structure of the curriculum to maximise learning for each student both in the moment and in the future. Effective teacher librarians maintain current knowledge of available resources suitable for their communities and facilitate access for the right learner at the right time. Teacher librarians aim to provide both a physical and intellectual space for the exploration of all kinds of literacies, rigorous academic exploration, community engagement and mindful recreation. The activities undertaken and promoted there should support that aim. Effective teacher librarians are leaders as well as managers, innovators as well as guides and mentors as well as students. It is in the balance and interaction between all these attributes that the magic may be found.

The Daring Librarian Mission

Jones, G. (2018). The daring librarian mission. https://www.thedaringlibrarian.com/2018/01/how-to-be-teacher-librarian-rock-star.html

The graphic to the right, by Gwyneth Jones from her blog, The Daring Librarian, resonates with me because it puts into simple language the aims to which teacher librarians should aspire.

Part B: Critical Evaluation of Learning

Introduction

I am glad to have undertaken my studies slowly and steadily over the last three years because it has allowed me plenty of time to consider, reflect on my learning, put theories into practice and change, evaluate and refine ideas along the way. I wrote the first post on my ThinkSpace blog, Embarkation (Hahn, 2019, July 8), immediately before beginning my first semester of study so that I might look back from this end and reflect on my thoughts and impressions and how they have changed. In that post, I identified the “vital role a good teacher librarian has in developing the students’ love of learning, appreciation of literature and ability to really think about the information they are gathering” and that “it is also vitally important for TLs to make their available services and skills known and visible to their colleagues, especially their newer colleagues who might benefit most from the leadership and guidance a really good TL can provide”. I had, at that early stage, identified two key elements of the role of TL: developing lifelong love of learning and literature, and advocacy through leadership. I still believe these to be important, but I missed possibly the most vital: forming relationships: relationships with and between colleagues, students and leadership, relationships between people and information and relationships between people and lifelong learning.

Theme 1: Lifelong love of learning and literature

From the outset of my studies I was surprised by the need, expressed multiple times over several subjects, to defend the use of fiction in the curriculum. This surprised me because the place of fiction just seemed so obvious to me – it was like needing to justify the place of oxygen in the air. I have learned since, however, that it is not so obvious to everyone. Reading fiction helps students to develop empathy, explore unknown activities, places and situations safely, and to experience the world through someone else’s eyes. Rita Carter, in the Tedx Talk embeded below, explains succinctly and in everyday language this very concept in a very accessible way.

Journalist Rita Carter on why reading fiction is good not only for individuals but for society as a whole. 28 June, 2018

Lesesne (2003) and Schneider (2016) both write eloquently about strategies teacher librarians, among others, can use to help students become lifelong readers and therefore lifelong learners, citing three main skills needed: knowledge of the student, knowledge of the books and motivational skills to bring the two together. These topics were addressed in ETL503 Resourcing the Curriculum and ETL402 Literature across the Curriculum – two subjects I found to be especially useful in my work as a teacher librarian. The creation of annotated bibliographies is something I have done many times over the last three years and expect to continue.

Link to reading list in Oliver for Geography resources for Stage 2. Scan or click to view.

Recently, I have discovered the Reading Lists tool within our Library Management System, Oliver, that can be used for this purpose, keeping the information accessible to staff at all times. Using this tool, I have been able to create topic based recommended reading lists for both students and staff to use, linking the resource records directly and allowing users the benefit of tools such, reserve, request and review options as well as the ability to link items directly into their Google Classroom. I have included an example of this, created for a Stage 2 Geography unit of work, Places are Similar and Different. Use of these tools relies on the ability of staff to access it. This has involved offering staff training and refreshers at planning days and staff admin meetings as well as personal tutorials at a point of genuine need when staff come to the library seeking such information, and teaching students how to use the tools during their library lessons each week.

ETL501 The Dynamic Information Environment offered the opportunity to learn not just about creating physical spaces for learning, but also creating digital spaces for learning. I found the development of Library Research Guides to be particularly valuable. I have been creating such guides for a while, but this subject taught me a new way to go about it, making the resources so much more useful and valuable to students and staff alike.

Link to Invasive Species LRG

Visit Invasive Species LRG, created before ETL501

Link to Earth's Environments LRG

Visit Earth’s Environments LRG, created following ETL501

I have included below two examples: the first from before I undertook ETL501 and the second from after.  The linear, guided manner in which the later one is designed, along with the inclusion of items such as a glossary, recommended search engines and a feedback form for users to supply their suggestions and thoughts are things I had never considered prior to undertaking this subject. The later of these LRGs along with several others created since to support Stage 2 and 3 units of work have been received to much acclaim by staff that use them and have received thoughtful and constructive feedback allowing me to continually improve the quality of resources I can offer through the library. Staff have commented particularly about the integration of information literacy skills and how they include resources that teachers would not have considered on their own.

The idea of ensuring resource guides included resources that teachers and students would have been unlikely to find on their own was first introduced in ETL402 Resourcing the Curriculum, and reiterated in many other subjects I have taken throughout my studies and I recently had the opportunity to see this idea in action at a public library while on professional placement. The outreach librarian was selecting resources for patrons who had opted for the home delivery service available to less mobile members of the library. She too was keen to include in the selection a resource that the patron would hopefully like, but may not have chosen themselves. She used tools such as the Tourist Map of Literature

Screeb grab from the Tourist Map of Literature

Click to visit the Tourist Map of Literature

website (pictured to the right) to find authors similar to those the patron had read and enjoyed previously. This is a tool I am now using in my practice as a teacher librarian.

In order to ensure there are resources available to suit the needs of the school community, it is necessary to have in place a strong collection development policy, including a procedure around selection and deselection. This concept was first introduced in ETL503 Resourcing the Curriculum and has been developed during other subjects along the way. When I first began work as a teacher librarian in my school, I came to see that the collection was out-dated, old and in poor condition. As a result, usage of the library resources was limited. I have taken the ideas learned especially in ETL402, ETL501 and ETL503, to begin updating the collection. During my study, I was introduced to the idea of using analytical reporting to judge the health of the collection. I decided to implement this in my library, discovering quickly that the average age of the collection was over 20 years – this did not surprise me, unfortunately. I knew that the first task was to undertake a weed of the worst offenders. I established a ‘shelf of shame’ in my office consisting of items removed from the collection far too late to remind me of the need to weed and I have found it a useful tool to share with others when they question why I am “getting rid of so many books”.

A witty mnemonic explaining the criteria used for deselection of materials in a school library: F -Does it foster a love of reading? R - DOes it reflect your diverse population> E - Does it reflect an equitable world view? S - Does it support the curriculum? and H - Is it a high quality text?

Image by Jennifer LaGarde
www.librarygirl.net
Shared under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)

I have included to the left a graphic from the blog of Jennifer LaGuarde (2020, April 30) explaining her approach to weeding. It resonates with me as it puts into positive language the desirable features of school library collection against which candidates for weeding may be compared.

Theme 2: Advocacy through leadership

ETL 504 Teacher Librarian as Leader introduced terms that can be used to describe phenomena previously observed – developing a deeper understanding of the styles of leadership available and the effect of each. Having the language to discuss and describe these concepts helps to nuance my understandings. In this way, I can be more deliberate in my choices around which strategies I employ in different circumstances and also to recognise and support the choices made by other leaders in my workplace.

Just as it is important for teacher librarians to provide a safe “third space” (Korodaj, 2019) for students, it is important to also provide this for staff. Change leadership (and I deliberately choose the word leadership rather than management) has been a feature of the work of schools in recent times – through the pandemic and the resulting pedagogical changes, as well as with the introduction of new syllabus documents in NSW schools and the challenges faced by many schools with staffing and casual relief. Many colleagues have expressed to me that, while they understand the features of the new syllabus documents, and appreciate the changes they are to make, they need more professional development in what it all looks like in reality. These conversations have taken place in the “cone of silence” – When the library office door is closed, information shared and discussed does not leave the room. By creating this safe space for staff, I aimed initially to give them a place to vent. It also allowed me to learn about what they need and how I can support them for the betterment of student learning. In my blog post, Module 3.1: Stress (Hahn, 2021, March 20), drawing on the work of Cross (2015) and Clement (2014), I explored how servant leadership such as described above and by Burkus (2010), might help to alleviate some of the stress teachers encounter. A secondary objective of this work is to help colleagues recognise, value and support contributions of the library to the life of the school, thereby activating third-party advocacy in the manner described by Kachel et al (2021).

The school library and teacher librarians are in the privileged position of having a big-picture view of the curriculum, activities and events of the school as a whole and can place them in the context of the school’s strategic plan thereby identifying areas of common interest to different groups within the school and invite them to collaborate. This relies, however, on teacher librarians actively seeking to be involved in the teaching and learning cycle of the various teams across the school, the danger lying in the alternative, described by Sturge (2019) as “a revolving door of classes” (p.26) wherein teacher librarians become isolated, and miss opportunities to address issues of information literacy at a point of genuine need – that is, finding authentic moments to address skills and knowledge contained within the Information Fluency Framework when they are actively needed by students to complete tasks required for other subjects. It is in this real-world use of skills that true life-long learning can occur. Because of this, it is vital that teacher librarians employ their instructional leadership skills and teacher leadership skills in order to mobilise and activate colleagues and others in advocating for the library, much in the manner described by Bonanno and Moore (2009). An excellent example of this is found in the Students Need School Libraries campaign started and headed by Holly Godfree. This group provides, among many resources, flyers and promotional materials that are made available for teacher librarians to share with their communities, assisting teacher librarians to harness the advocacy power of school communities in support of their library program.

Instructional leadership has been a feature of my work in recent times, especially around the use of technologies to support educational access by students with learning difficulties and additional needs. By adjusting my fixed timetable in collaboration with interested class teachers, I have been able to provide team-taught lessons introducing and utilising assistive technologies such as Immersive Reader with all the students in a class, demonstrating for students how and when such technologies may be useful to them, at the same time demonstrating to teachers how employ universal design in conjunction with the available tools to allow all students to engage with curricula on an equal basis. By working specifically with targeted, interested teachers, I have been able to harness their connections and relationships to further advocate for the services and skills a strong library program can provide.

Theme 3: Relationships

A colourful rug defines the space while brightening it up

Brighten and define the purpose of areas with rugs

The Third Space is also vital for students. In ETL 501 The Dynamic Information Environment, I explored the development of effective spaces both physically and digitally. One of the main take-aways from this subject was the need to consider how the designed spaces impact and are impacted by the people who use them. I had not previously considered that, by providing group vignettes, hidden individual reading areas, large open whole class spaces and interactive displays could encourage students to behave and interact differently with the information they are using. To this end, I have added to the library I work in, rugs that define the purpose and use of different areas, a variety of types and groupings of seating, flexible work table orientations,student work examples and wall displays that teach. I am still working on rearranging shelf configurations and technology storage to maximise use and availability.

I approach interactions with students with humour where appropriate to encourage them to see me as approachable; high expectations of behaviour so that I avoid unnecessary unpleasantness; openness and patience to encourage students to talk to me about their needs and thoughts. I provide interesting activities at lunchtime in a climate controlled environment to encourage students to come into the library voluntarily and view it as a pleasant and desirable place of interest. In this way, I hope to engender a belief that the library is a welcoming, interesting place in which ideas and information can be explored and discussed in a rigorous but non-threatening way. The lego building vignette pictured to the right is used at lunchtimes.

A collaborative puzzle area with a wall that teaches

The collaborative puzzle

Students are invited to build on to constructions made by other students in previous sessions. Once firm boundaries were established around the protocols for use of the space, students have been engaging positively and enthusiastically at lunchtimes. They are (mostly) able to leave it alone during class time and a helpful side effect has been drawing student’s attention to the sometimes neglected early chapter book collection housed around the lego area. This has seen circulation of this collection rise by 23% in the 6 months since establishment of the lego area.

A group of students can work collaboratively on lego projects

Community building activity: collaborative lego construction

Jigsaw puzzles (pictured to the right) have also been used for collaboration and community building among students. It is my intention that these collaborative activities will encourage disparate groups of students to engage in shared activities, getting to know each other better and learning to engage positively with students from other backgrounds and interest groups, contributing to the development of a cohesive school community that forms part of the school’s medium to long term goals. An additional advantage has been providing activities and environments that promote wellbeing for our students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) (Saggers & Ashburner, 2019). Puzzles are selected based on the special interests of these students and well-ordered, usually quiet and minimally stimulating areas are used to provide these students with an environment they can use to calm and re-regulate themselves as needed. This encourages all students to see the library as a peaceful, interesting and pleasant place to learn and to practise interacting with others. Visual cues, noise-cancelling headphones and positive, calm relationships are also used to engage our students with ASD.

Part C: Developmental Evaluation

The ALIA/ASLA Standards of Professional Excellence for Teacher Librarians (ALIA, 2004) provides the professional knowledge, practices and commitments that teacher librarians should strive to achieve. A key development in the professional knowledge area during my studies has been the introduction of the

Information_fluency_framework which aims to “articulate the work of the teacher librarian (p.4), drawing together elements of the Australian Curriculum General Capabilities and NSW Syllabus documents to make plain for all school staff and leadership the skills and understandings that teacher librarians teach and where they fit in the curriculum. This important document, recently released and only pertinent to NSW schools, has not been a part of my studies at all. As a result, I have needed to identify and source professional learning opportunities outside of the University, such as PLCC After Hours Professional Development, spearheaded by Gina Krohn (see left). Continual engagement with professional networks of teacher librarians and alumni groups is vital to identifying opportunities to continually develop my skills and understandings around pedagogy and curriculum developments. An area I would like to focus on in the near future is utilising educational technologies to enhance teaching and learning opportunities, with a specific focus on developing the skills of kindergarten to year 2 students and their teachers.

ALIA-ASLA Standard 3.4 Community responsibilities requires teacher librarians to participate as members of professional communities. Over the last three years that I have been studying and working as a teacher librarian, I have joined several network groups, both formal, such as becoming a student member of ALIA (which I will continue into a professional membership once I graduate) and joining the Teacher Librarian Network in Northern Sydney through my employer, and informal, such as joining social media groups for Teacher Librarians both in NSW and around the country and world. I have found there the most supportive and collaborative group of colleagues I have found so far in the education industry. This spirit of cooperation and collegiality is something I strive to replicate and actively promote in my workplace.

Standard two requires teacher librarians to provide exemplary information and library services. Recently, my school held a festival of reading for Education Week. I was able to demonstrate and explain to parents and staff alike the services I offer as teacher librarian. I was able to demonstrate some of the Library Resource Guides developed to support collaboratively taught units of work in Stage 2 and 3, show teachers and parents how to access the Library’s digital collections from their mobile device and explain the reference and information services available in the Library.

Descriptions of the role of teacher librarians

Backing board used as a conversation starter at the Festival of Reading

Pictured to the right is the backing board used during this presentation. I did not specifically refer to it, but used it to draw attention to the role of the teacher librarian and to provide conversation starters with parents. This was a highly successful morning and one of the immediate benefits I can see is dramatically increased circulation of our digital collection, and three new requests for collaboration from teachers who have not previously engaged with library services. An area I would like to develop more within this strand of the professional standards is evaluation of the library’s collection. To this end, I have enrolled in a course offered by Softlink (providers of Oliver Library, our LMS) that will address use of analytical reporting in the school library. Other sources of ongoing professional learning are SCIS Professional Learning Webinars and Primary English Teachers Association Australia courses and conferences which often offer content relevant to teacher librarians.

References

Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA). (2004). Standards of professional excellence for teacher librarians. https://read.alia.org.au/file/647/download?token=6T4ajv0c

Bonanno, K. & Moore, R. (2009). Advocacy: Reason, responsibility and rhetoric. https://kb.com.au/content/uploads/2014/08/Keynote-Advocacy.pdf

Burkus, D. (2010, April 1). Servant leadership theory. In DB: David Burkus. http://davidburkus.com/2010/04/servant-leadership-theory/

Clement, J. (2014). Managing mandated educational change. School Leadership & Management, 34(1), 39-51. https://doi: 10.1080/13632434.2013.813460

Cross, D. (2015). Teacher well being and its impact on student learning [Slide presentation]. Telethon Kids Institute, University of Western Australia. http://www.research.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/2633590/teacher-wellbeing-and-student.pdf

Jones, G. (2018). The daring librarian mission. https://www.thedaringlibrarian.com/2018/01/how-to-be-teacher-librarian-rock-star.html

Kachel, D. E., DelGuidice, M. & Luna R. (2012). Building champions in the school community. In D. Levitov (Ed.), Activism and the school librarian: Tools for advocacy and survival. (pp. 85-98). ABC_CLIO, LLC.

Korodaj, L. (2019). The library as ‘third space’ in your school: Supporting academic and emotional wellbeing in the school community.Scan, 38(10). https://doi.org/10.3316/aeipt.226270

LaGuarge, J. (2020, April 30). BFTP: Keeping your library collection smelling F.R.E.S.H! The Adventures of Library Girl. https://www.librarygirl.net/post/bftp-keeping-your-library-collection-smelling-f-r-e-s-h

Lesesne, T. (2003). Making the match: The right book for the right reader at the right time, grades 4-12. Stenhouse Publishers.

Saggers, B. & Ashburner, J. (2019) Creating learning spaces that promote wellbeing, participation and engagement: Implications for Students on the autism spectrum. In Hughes, H., Franz, J. & Willis, J. (eds.), School Spaces for Student Wellbeing and Learning. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6092-3_8

Schneider, J. J. (2016). The right book for the right reader at the right time. In The Inside, Outside, and Upside Downs of Children’s Literature: From Poets and Pop-ups to Princesses and Porridge (p. 98-158). https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/childrens_lit_textbook/6/

Sturge, J. (2019). Assessing Readiness for School Library Collaboration. Knowledge Quest, 47(3), 24–31.

metadata management in public libraries

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Today was my first day on prac in a public library in regional NSW. I spent the day getting acquainted with the space and the staff involved. Today I mostly worked the circulation desk, doing tasks not unlike those I do everyday as a teacher librarian – running the front of house. Over the day, there were no reference or readers advisory enquires, but there were a great many “do you have…” and “How do I print?”. The LMS seems very unfriendly, antiquated and difficult to use. I did learn of a great tool: Fantastic Fiction – a selection and readers advisory tool that I think could be an extremely useful tool in a school library, though I think it will take some investigation to work out how to limit its suggestions to children’s literature. One of the goals I had right at the beginning of my studies was about how to recommend texts and undertake readers’ advisory, especially being unfamiliar with the collection and with adult fiction more broadly. Children’s fiction I am getting a better handle on, but adults are another beast altogether.

I had an interesting conversation with the library tech today. She was creating a lot of new catalogue records as the library is opening a new branch and all of the items have to be sourced, processed and catalogued. She was working from a purchase list and writing the catalogue records manually, using details found on the Libraries Australia website. Despite being able to download the MARC record using the z cataloging feature of the LMS, she insisted it was faster to do them manually as too many details would need to be deleted. Some of the things she would delete was all but one of the subject headings, any alternative titles and the series statement. I asked her why she deleted this metadata as it seemed it would make for an easier discovery process using the library catalogue. I still don’t understand why you would want to limit discoverability, especially the series statement in the fiction collection (or the non-fiction collection, come to that). I can understand why you would want to identify just one genre term that best describes the work, as it would allow you to label it with a genre sticker and make it easy for patrons to visually identify a book they might like to read. The library tech was quite insistent that the other data was unnecessary and would only make the catalogue more complicated than people could handle. Having spent a good amount of time recently doing searches of my own library’s catalogue in order to create some resource guides and class collections on specific topics, I have been very glad of having the level of detail available that I do from the SCIS records. I can see that not everyone would need to use all of the data all of the time, but it doesn’t hurt, surely? And it might help sometimes. I will broach this subject with her again in a few days to see whether I have misunderstood.  An example is that this same tech asked me to pull some resources for a display about winter. As each catalogue record had been deliberately limited to one subject heading for each resource in the fiction collection and two in the non-fiction, I was not able to run a complete search to find possible resources. The fiction collection mostly had the subject heading “Australian Fiction” which doesn’t really describe what the book is about at all. How does this help with resource discovery?

Kingston Library

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I am lucky enough to have secured a professional placement for ETL527 in a regional public library. On my way down to Cooma today I had the opportunity to kill some time by visiting the public library in Kingston, ACT. It is a different affair to what I am used to in a public library: a single shop front lined on both sides with tall shelves with low browsing boxes and ottoman seating between. In the children’s section, there is an abundance of front facing shelving that seems to be monitored closely by the 3 staff members. Practically as soon as a book is taken down from the shelf, another is put in its place. This seems a mixed idea. On the one hand, the shelves always look tidy, appealing and well organised (full looking and in rainbow stripes). Ideal for browsing and very appealing to children. Perfect when the patron is looking to be inspired. However, if a patron was looking for something particular, it would be quite difficult to find. I expect this indicates that most of the junior collection users are not looking to read something particular, but come to be inspired to read – to find literature appealing and interesting. There is a strong shopping vibe here. Patrons borrow impulsively. I have taken a book down to browse. It was replaced swiftly and now I can’t see where the rest of the collection is to reshelve it. It is clear that it would be unusual here for people to take books off the shelf to browse and then not to borrow them. I will try it again and see what happens.

Same result: A staff member came almost immediately, book in hand, and replaced it. I am left to wonder if this is the whole collection, or if more is stored out the back and used to replenish shelves as needed. What would be the purpose of this? I would love to engage a staff member in a conversation to find out, but they are busy and actively ignoring me. I do not feel welcome here nor encouraged to stay.

The general collection is mostly spine out and alphabetical, with much less visual appeal. interestingly, the amount of space dedicated to reserves and requests seems almost equal to the space dedicated to the collection, indicating perhaps that the population here is well engaged with the LMS and acquainted with the online service offered. If this is the case, it would explain how the library can keep only part of the collection out at a time and therefore how it can serve the community with such a small space. I wonder if this is a consequence or response to the pandemic? While there is seating offered, it is not comfortable or cosy. I feel like I should not just be sitting to read – I am non-verbally encouraged to select, borrow and leave. I have mixed feelings about this.

ETL501: Critical Reflection

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I undertook ETL501 in order to understand more about effective design choices. My school is currently modernising our library space (Hahn, 2021, July 3). Assessment 1 allowed me to identify solutions to the pain points. Main changes now planned are the creation of distinct zones and use of half-height shelving to delineate those spaces and to act as traffic-management devices. Nicole Bolden (Bolden, 2021, September 21) suggested that signage should be prioritised: a solid idea because, not only does it allow library users to locate the resources they need, but the process of creating it also assists the new TL to become more familiar with the collection – a vital understanding to develop, teamed with an understanding of the needs of the school community.

Resource selection for my Library Resource Guide needed to be teamed with presentation. I needed to consider how to present content in a way that is open enough to encourage emerging independent inquiry skills, but structured enough to provide quality, engaging resources for content learning (Kuhlthau et al, 2015). In order to achieve desired depth of understanding, I needed to significantly narrow my scope of content. Some students would have limited independent reading skill. This presented significant challenge. Using the readability tester from Webfx, I was repeatedly reminded that, often, texts present more challenge to students than expected, highlighting the difficulty students have in negotiating the online (and print) environment, underscoring the importance of digital curation in the role of TL (Cherrstrom & Boden, 2020). By including commentary on difficulty, expected content and suggestions for integration of new knowledge into existing schemas, skills of source selection, analysis and critical thinking were developed.

While inquiry learning aims to develop skills for independent and lifelong learning (Kuhlthau et al, 2015), most students in Stage 2 could be expected to need significant teacher support. Consequently, I chose to create my Library Resource Guide to include information for teachers and to present sources that would provoke discussions, allowing the teacher and TL to model and explicitly teach needed skills. Scaffolding and developing information literacy skills is a vital component of the role of the TL (Aisah et al, 2018) and so, as well as narrowing the content focus of my Guide, I also narrowed the information literacy skills taught to allow students to deepen their understanding and familiarisation with each skill in order to overcome the superficial use digital resources described by Coombes (2019).

Creating digital learning resources is an important aspect of the work of a TL. In the Module 5.2 forum, I commented that specialised and nuanced subject knowledge required to create effective research guides for secondary libraries is different to primary school libraries, where the subject content is less technical. This is not, as Jodie Lednor (Lednor, 2021, October 1) suggested, to say that secondary TLs cannot or should not create such resources, rather articulate the importance of collaboration with subject specialists. One of my 2022 learning goals is to develop my skill in reference interviews. I believe these techniques could establish exactly what a teacher requires students to do and understand as a result of their inquiry, and therefore guide the development of resources. Ross et al (2019) offer guidance on this topic and I look forward to implementing their strategies and learning others during ETL507.

References

Aisah, M. A., Abrizah, A., Idaya Aspura, M. K. Y., & Wan Dollah, W. A. K. (2018). Development of an information literate school community: Perceived roles and practices of teacher librarians. Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, 23(2), 63–75. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.22452/mjlis.vol23no2.4

 

Bolden, N. (2021, Spetember 21). Effective Information Service. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_57506_1&nav=discussion_board_entry&conf_id=_114042_1&forum_id=_241160_1&message_id=_3804327_1

 

Cherrstrom, C. A. & Boden, C. J. (2020). Expanding role and potential of curation in education: A systematic review of the literature. The Reference Librarian, 61(2), 113-132. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1080/02763877.2020.1776191

 

Coombes, B. (2009). Generation Y: Are they really digital natives or more like digital refugees? Synergy, 7(1), 31–40. https://search-informit-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/doi/10.3316/aeipt.178236

 

Kuhlthau, C., Maniotes, L., & Caspari, A. (2015). Guided inquiry: Learning in the 21st century, 2nd Edition . Libraries Unlimited.

 

Lednor, J. (2021, October 1). Re: Creating Resources. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_57506_1&nav=discussion_board_entry&conf_id=_114042_1&forum_id=_241159_1&message_id=_3808932_1

Ross, C. S., Nilsen, K. & Radford, M. L. (2019) Conducting the reference interview: A how-to-do-it manual for librarians, 3rd edition. ALA Neal-Schuman. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csuau/detail.action?docID=5850100

A balanced collection

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This week’s module asks whether our school library has a balanced collection. A balanced collection means that there are sufficient items in the catalogue that cover all curriculum levels and offer a variety of types. For example, it needs maps, posters, kits, professional resources, fiction, non-fiction, junior fiction (all sufficiently diverse), web-based resources and AV resources, but could also include games and toys, construction equipment and such. In terms of fiction, our library has a relatively large collection that is slowly being updated and diversified. The junior fiction section houses picture books and simple chapter books. Many of the simple chapter books do need updating and diversifying. It is a challenge to find such resources that feature diverse characters without being “preachy” or overly contrived. I would not say that it is balanced at the moment, but it is a work in progress and is certainly closer to being so than it was 2 years ago. The fiction section contains a good number of print items, mostly realistic fiction and fantasy. I am working to build our collection of other genres, especially graphic novels. Until 2020 our school library did not hold any graphic novels or manga at all. Now it is easily the most popular collection, but it is never on the shelf so I think it still needs augmenting. The challenge with manga and graphic novels is the inclusion of socially appropriate content. Many hold story lines that are appropriate, but artwork that is not or vice versa. Again, this is a work in progress.The non-fiction section needs a lot of work at the moment. Many resources are out of date or uninspiring and unattractive. It is more difficult to sources resources on some subjects than others because they are outdated so quickly – subjects like technology and geography are quickly out of date. This subject has reminded me of the value of almanacs for this purpose. I think this is an area I would like to explore more fully in the fullness of time. It is also an area in which I think a digital collection could be very useful. It is much easier and cheaper to update websites and links than it is to update the print collection.

Our digital collection is almost non-existent at this point, though I have recently been successful in gaining approval for an ebook subscription trial through Wheelers. The next stage of this trial is to recruit some students to evaluate it. I like that it is accessible from any device – iOS, Android or browser based. I like that there are collections that have been curated already to start us off and that we can add other titles over time as we have a chance to review them. Another method of enhancing the digital collection is by including in Oliver web-based resources. I will begin by looking through the SCIS database as there is a plethora of resources and suggestions available there. I must create some method of regularly checking that the links are still active. I will include this as a task in the annual stocktake but perhaps more regular checking will be important, as I alluded to in my post about Scootle recently. Perhaps I can teach the students how to use the “send resource” function to alert me to any issues they discover, thus harnessing the people power of our 900 students, and hopefully offering another way of interacting with the library.

The collection of items such as kits is fairly small in the school library at the moment as this has been under the perview of subject coordinators at my school. Science resources are kept in the science store, for example and are not part of the library collection. I think this needs to change as it is not very effective. Nothing is catalogued, the storeroom is a bombsite and noone knows what is there or how to find it. In the fullness of time, this is a project I would like to take on, but at the moment it is a longer term plan. Visual items, such as maps, posters and AV resources, has, in my opinion become less vital in recent years with the advent of technology that can access these items on an as-needed basis and the items are more likely to be up-to-date. This is always supposing that the digital collection is up to scratch to assist teachers and students to find such quality resources. This is not the case at the moment.

Learning Objects

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Learning objects are reusable items, often, though not essentially, digital, that support technology-enriched learning. Today I have viewed a number of learning objects available through ESA . The first thing I noticed was the number of resources that were unavailable, moved or no longer supported. Of the first 8 resources I attempted to look at, 7 were no longer available. This was very disappointing and served to underline the importance of keeping resources updated, checking the live status of links on a regular basis and ensuring that bookmarks are regularly reviewed. It would be easy for a school library patron to discredit the library as an out-of-date, irrelevant institution if resources promised can not be delivered on such a regular basis. Regular maintenance of such repositories would have a three pronged impact: ensuring links are current and active, locating and potentially adding (or removing) new titles to ensure all learning areas are addressed, and promoting teacher librarian familiarity with the digital catalogue, allowing them to assist members of the school community to identify and locate resources at point of need.

Despite my initial lack of success, I did not give up. I looked for resources to support areas of the HSIE curriculum, looking at the places strand in the geography syllabus. For Early stage 1, I found a unit of work from The State Library of NSW: People live in places. Important places – Homes which is a mini unit of work based around a collection of photographs of homes in Australia during different time periods. Students learn about features of homes and how they have changed and stayed the same over time and consider how we look after homes. The inclusion of teachers’ notes along with all resources needed makes this a simple but effective activity for Kindergarten. Teachers can direct students’ attention to the fact that the State Library is a reliable source and discuss the value of photographs as primary sources. The inclusion of metadata with each item allows both class teachers and teacher librarians to attribute ownership and show students why it is important to do so.

Next I looked at Aboriginal understandings of weather and seasons. This interactive map shows the various traditions and beliefs from different areas of Australia. This is an interesting resource for year 1 as it combines understandings from both the Science and Geography syllabuses and makes clear the differences between the First Nations peoples. However, it is quite text heavy and would require teacher assistance to be useful for this age group. It would be interesting to pair with a study of Cooee Mittigar by Jasmine Seymour and Leanne Mulgo Watson.

Following on that theme for stage 2, I searched for a learning object for stage 2 about significant places in Australia. This site, https://storyspheres.com/uluru/​ takes viewers on a virtual tour of Uluru. At each place of interest, a recording of Aboriginal elders explaining the significance of what can be seen is available. The site is quite graphics and sound heavy and so is a little slow to load, however, it is a rich source of information gathered from a primary source and is accessible to all students due to its highly visual and auditory nature. This site is useful from a digital literacy perspective because the options available to the user do not become apparent unless the look for them. They need to use the 3D interface to notice details and look over the whole landscape before choosing where to go or what to listen to. The provides opportunities for discussion around examining all parts of a source rather than jumping in a focusing only on the obvious.

The final learning object I found for stage 3 involves comparing how people live in various parts of the world. Dollar Street allows users to compare the daily lives and activities of families from all over the world in all income brackets. Students in stage 3 can learn about ways in which they are similar and different to people all over the world, but also identify poverty as a significant issue in the well-being of people. This could be a very good resource to use in the initial stages of an inquiry unit and presents opportunities to look at how the families were selected, who is represented and, importantly, who is not represented. This video (Ted, 2018, January), a Ted talk by the creator explains it very well.

Ted. (2018, January). Anna Rosling Ronnllund: See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income

. YouTube. https://youtu.be/u4L130DkdOw

Learning so far

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ETL501 has so far been a very interesting subject. I am, by now, used to the online learning model and I appreciate the advantages that it has over face-to-face learning. I can access the content at a time that suits my other commitments. I have all the content logically laid out and collected in one place. I can read the thoughts of others, including the instructor, on the content in the discussion forum, though, I can not easily or quickly get them to expand on, deepen or explain their ideas to explore further. On the other hand, the comments that are left are usually carefully considered and articulated clearly, the exploration taken up by those further down the thread.

I had not considered when I started this subject that the content would be so interrelated as it is. I expected that the physical environment and the online environment would be quite separate topics but in fact I have come to see the connecting threads: resources, whether physical or digital, must be fit for purpose. The purpose behind the resource/object/item/choice must be the driving factor. That is, that the teacher librarian must have an idea in mind of the learning they wish to take place and select the appropriate tool for the job. A physical library that looks amazing and colourful and exciting and innovative is of absolutely no use to anyone if the students can not learn there. If it is too noisy, too distracting, too uncomfortable, students will not engage. Group collaborations happen much more readily in informal seating arrangements than in rows in a lecture hall. Similarly, the teacher librarian must select digital tools to use that match the purpose and audience of the lesson. Students must be taught how to use and interact with the resources (physical or digital) to their advantage, develop their lifelong learning skills by learning to select the appropriate tool for the job.

The flipped classroom is a concept many teachers are becoming intimately acquainted with during home learning in 2021. Classes have been forced online and teachers and students both have had to learn quickly how to use the available tools. There have been some stumbling blocks that very few predicted in terms of equity of access even in affluent areas. Motivation in an online environment has been very difficult for some students (and some teachers, no doubt). A key feature of my own kids’ experience is that their lack of literacy (they are 4 and 6) prevents their accessing much of the content their teachers provide and so they have needed almost constant guidance and assistance. I have observed online classes in several grades and several different teachers in two different schools and a clear observation is that those teachers who have taken the time to teach the students how to use the tools and technology (both practically and in terms of etiquette) have had a more successful outcome. Presenting content in a 5 minute video and then following up in a Zoom class (a flipped classroom model as described by Teachings in Education (2017) and Earp (2016)) seems an effective strategy for these students. Yet there is still a group of students who do not engage at all. For some, time outside the classroom is not for school work. There are other commitments they attend to even in non-covid times. One of the considerations for implementing a flipped classroom that teachers and teacher librarians alike need to consider is whether it is likely the target student audience will or should engage outside of class time.

When thinking about providing library services, it seems to me that teacher librarians should keep the above in mind. Some students will want to engage in learning and need access to resources outside of when they are actually in the library. Some will not. Some will be able to read and learn from a screen. Others prefer print copies. Providing a mixture of both approaches allows the teacher librarian to meet the learning needs of students in both situations. Similarly, in order for students to be able to access resources and learning from the library program, teacher librarians must teach them how to access, use and apply the available tools.

Earp, J. (2016, February 3). Homework culture key to flipped learning success. Teacher. https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/articles/homework-culture-key-to-flipped-learning-success

Teachings in Education. (2017, June 20). Flipped classroom model: Why, how and overview [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/BCIxikOq73Q

Note taking

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I see no need to limit students to one form of note-taking. Different forms serve different purposes. The point is that students record the information they find in a way that they can locate information later, and then, over time, they transform those notes to serve as repetition and reinforcement of the ideas.

Some key strategies are:

Cornell system for recording prose notes

Concept mapping to visualise the main ideas and how they are connected

diagramming or making notes visual.

In all cases, it is the transformation of the notes that leaves the lasting impression. Holland (2017) recommends a variety of techniques and thinking routines to help students synthesize their notes and the concepts involved.

I believe that it is necessary to teach a variety of techniques to students and to point out not only how to use them, but when and for what purpose, and then to give them lots of opportunities for practise in real situations.

 

Holland, B. (2017, August 17). Digital note taking strategies that deepen student thinking. KQED: MindShift. https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/48902/digital-note-taking-strategies-that-deepen-student-thinking

Blogs in the Library

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This week’s module task ask me to think how a blog could be used in the school library. There are the obvious ideas that spring immediately to mind: a journal of book recommendations and reviews, possibly of new titles into the library. Perhaps reflections on class activities, students could jointly construct posts about the target information literacy concept from the day’s lesson. Students could contribute content on reading recommendations, polls about whether the content on a particular site is reliable or suitable for academic work. Articles could promote upcoming events in the library or the school more widely. Posts about transferable academic skills, such debating, referencing, writing skills etc, could assist students and families at certain times but would need to be searchable and set in categories so students can find what they need asynchronously.

One of the ideas suggested by Morris (February 11, 2020) is to use the school blog as a way to engage families and the wider school community. Offering updates about programs running in the school, school events, tips to help at home, parenting information and so on, schools can encourage families to be involved in the life and education offered at the school. Morris goes on to suggest that a class blog can be used as an organisational agenda for the school day. I have used one in kindergarten in this way where, at the end of lessons, the students and I would jointly construct a report for parents about what we learned, incorporating the WALT statements and photographs or videos showing how they met the success criteria. This acted not only to engage the parents, but also to solidify and reflect on learning for the students. It does take time, but was a good way to teach students about interacting appropriately in an online environment.

 

An important consideration with any project being undertaken in the library or classroom is an analysis of the benefit against the amount of work involved in maintaining it. Creating an maintaining an online presence as described above is an important part of the role of the TL, but it is not without a time commitment. Students can be recruited to help, especially older students, but they need training and supervision also. This time needs to be factored in to the workflow of the library team.

 

Morris, K. ( 2020, February 11). The top 10 ways blogs and WordPress are used in schools. The Edublogger. https://www.theedublogger.com/blogs-wordpress-schools/ 

Web 2.0 and 3.0 and constructivist learning

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In order to place web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies within the realm of constructivist learning, it is necessary to first establish what exactly is meant by each of those terms.

In the begining,  websites were static; created by experts in their fields and designed to convey information and data. Later, websites began to offer users the opportunity to interact both with each other and with the website. Users were now creators as well as consumers. This was known as web 2.o. A further development in web technology saw the technology trying to understand the intention of the user and act to facilitate the task they are trying to achieve. An example of this is semantic searching, or “Did you mean…”, “People also ask…”, “Displaying results for…”. Machines try to understand and react to natural speech and information needs. They tailor search and information results to the individual user with the idea that this will be more likely to suit their needs. This is web 3.0. The next generation, web 4.0, suggests Spivack (2007), will involve distributed searching and intelligent personal agents. The introduction of Artificial Intelligence that can act as an online personal assistant is a direction in which Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant have already travelled. The danger of allowing technology to tailor responses to our usual needs is that we may miss out on unexpected results when we attempt to find information or complete tasks that are not within our usual paradigm. Searching for information showing an alternate point of view becomes more difficult. Students who engage significantly with this technology through social media may be led to believe that opinions and world views that are different or opposing to their own simply don’t exist. A dangerous position indeed for a constructivist. A constructivist learner makes their own meaning by gathering information and evidence from their own experiences. If technology that is designed to increase our access to information is actually acting to limit easy access to information that agrees with that which we have already engaged with, we, as learners and teachers, need to be purposefully engaged in seeking information and perspectives of others in order to widen our world view. This is not an easy task, and one that many students, at least in my experience, resist. Here in lies one of the most important jobs of the teacher librarian. Exposure to information and stories about the experiences of others, teaching students to search for, find and analyse other perspectives is our bread and butter, our schtick, our reason for being.

 

Spivack, N. (2007, October 4). Web 3.0: The best official definition imaginable.