booksplus

The course is over, I now KNOW just how much I DON’T KNOW!  But it has all been worth it.  When I can ’sneak a moment’ from all the other demands on my time, I have a look at my library blog and update it.

http://missus13.globalstudent.org.au/

I know I have a long way to go yet, but at least now the students are starting to take my vision of bringing the Library Learning Centre into the 21st century seriously.  Hopefuly, with a lot more marketing, I will even be able to get the students to contribute.

 It is disappointing, at a time when the library team is working so well together – and three of us have completed the Web2 course – that our new administration fails to have any appreciation of the value of a well-staffed and resourced library program.  I wonder how much of our enthusiasm we will have the opportunity to pass on to our students as they ‘plunder the program’ to save a few dollars?

I CAN’T BELIEVE I MADE IT!  At the beginning of this course I was very nervous about my capacity to complete all tasks.  I am now happily updating my school’s library blog, have my library staff confidently contributing to our PRC review on the wiki and very dependent on my Delicious bookmarks.  Thanks everyone for putting this course together.

I have had a look around the ebooks on the Gutenberg site.   Of the freebies there was not a lot my library would use at this point.  Over time I know we will want to pay for new books that become available and have them on our intranet for students to read online.  Facilities in the school – and a fairly small budget – make that unreasonable at the moment, but the time will come when students will prefer this – in some cases – to the print version. 

During the year we have already made use of a couple of books that were available online through EdNA Online.  The grade two class enjoyed watching a fairy tale while listening to another voice reading for a change.  They loved the image of the page turning.  Using the data projector meant all students could see the book on the large screen, no matter where they were sitting on the mat.  This was also a nice change for the teacher librarian who could relax and observe the reactions of the students.

As a year 12 English teacher I have already come up against the request for audio copies of our novels.  What I have been able to locate – so far – has been very expensive.  However, three of my boys decided that it would be good value for them to ‘go thirds’ and pay for a file that they could download to one of their MP3 players.  Some people would rather pay anything rather than read!  I say this just a little critically but I understand that this is not going to be an isolated case in the future when the now generation would rather plug in and listen as they walk  or exercise (not a bad idea at all really) than sit in a chair and read.  When schools allow IPods – not ours yet – we will need to have these resources online for them – copyright permitting.

Thanks for the support and introduction to the range of educational possibilities out there on the web.  Now, as a teacher librarian, I intend to put my foot down and make time to explore the ways they can be more useful at school.

I had a look around the website and listened to what participants had to say on their ‘Message in a bottle’ 5th birthday podcast.  It is not hard to understand the attraction of the opportunity to create a new personnae and test it out on this program.  I have friends who have done so and are pleased with it as a fun activity.  I do have some concerns about some people’s ability to distinguish this ‘play’ identity from their own and how it may influence their participation in the real world.  As a ‘time poor’ individual who enjoys the social contacts that I am able to make with my friends and family I don’t see a real need – or the opportunity – for a ’secondlife’ of my own.

As with most schools this could not be done if I were at work today.  I have come to an arrangement with out site administrator who will allow access to these types of sites BUT only after all of the students have LEFT THE PREMISES!  I wonder how long before this changes?  It is only a few short years ago when I had to appeal to school council – in another school – to allow students access to the WWW at all. 

At home I had a good look around TeacherTube.  There is no doubt that some of the material on there could be put to good use in schools.  ‘We didn’t start the fire’ complete with photos of all of the public figures who feature in this Billy Joel song, would liven up any history class – especially the Year 11s who are looking at 20th century history.  The ‘Nouns’ was very cute.  Perhaps if some of my year 12 English students had have seen this they would know what I was talking about – without me having to add “naming words”.

I had already looked at podcasts on a number of useful sites before.  As teachers – in schools with limited budgets – we are not always allowed to go to all of the professional development activities that we think would be useful.  I have found it useful to look at the SLAV website and listen to – or view – information on those I have not been able to go to.  Just now, listening to Mary Manning’s introduction to Will Richardson’s Re-imagining May 2008  session made me wish I could have been there.  The lnks on his wiki are amazing.  I will definitely be recommending it to the rest of my staff.  I know this course is meant to be a ‘taste tester’ for all these tools – and it’s working – but I wish I had more time to follow through on all the activities.

Like all teachers – I have finally been struck down by the school ‘lurgy’.  This has somewhat slowed down my attempts to work – even though I have been at home most of the week.  Today I finally felt enough enthusiasm to turn on the computer.  The wiki task – once a colleague suggested wikispaces was her preferred option – proved simpler than I anticipated.  I was hoping that I could set one of these up so that instead of the old fashioned – but still useful – PMI as a way of gathering feedback on our school’s participation in the PRC we could have a go at doing it online.  I have set up the NWSCLibLC wiki and emailed the address to the rest of my team in the hope that they will all have a go. https://nwscliblc.wikispaces.com   Time will tell.

Knowing how precious time is this week I went on to look at the second part of the activity – Rollyo.  I signed up and used this URL as a link to the new rollyo account.  Hopefully it will work.  I can see when time permits this would also be useful – but perhaps not as useful as Delicious – which I’ve already become quite dependent on.

In the middle of Book Week and trying to finalise our 300+ students’ PRC entries I didn’t know how I would get time to look at this.  Friends suggested I would love it – and I DO.  Instead of having my favourites – at home – on my laptop – on whatever desktop I might happen to be working on – I could have them all together.  Amazing!  And when you start looking at other people’s bookmarks you find all sorts of goodies like http://www.go2web20.net/ Too many distractions there – but what fun to look forward to in quieter times.  Looking for job descriptions – and trying to convince a member of my staff that our role has expanded beyond the ‘picture book + colouring sheet’  led me to http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/cmis/eval/library/value/val4.htm using the tag ‘teacherlibrarian’.

Looking at the implications for teacher librarians of being familiar with these tools and being able to use them in our libraries – and share them with our students – it is not hard to see their benefits and relevance.  If we want students to use our facilities, we have to communicate with them on their level.  Having set up BookPlus http://missus13.globalstudent.org.au/ our school library blog I can now let my students have the latest news in a manner that is far more exciting than the old A4 black and white ’student bulletin’, with links that will make their school lives easier  http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/index.html and fun http://www.penguin.com.au/puffin .

A visit to our local public library confirmed this belief.  While we were there being introduced to what our local library can do for our students Cenza introduced us to QuickSand http://cclcquicksand.blogspot.com/ which CaseyCardinia Libraries introduced to keep in touch with their teenage members.  They also had ‘Shelfari’ which I have now signed up for – but haven’t been able to get onto my blog yet.  I’ll give it another go later.  A bit like trying to get my own Flickr photos on this blog.  Not working yet – but one day ….

 

 

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Tailoring my iGoogle account Home Page in terms of presentation was fun.  Would I adopt the Paris theme – memories, memories – the cat theme – especially since my cat Madelyn supervises most of my sessions at the computer, or, the beach – where I feel most relaxed.  The beach won.  Adding the frog wasn’t my most exciting moment and neither was adding the Education tab which appeared to be very USA-ccentric.  HOWEVER when I added the Kids stuff tab I could really see the advantages to having this account.  Straight away I was looking at kid book reviews, which I’m sure some of my students will enjoy, activities and even a Beijing Olympics’ mascot colouring sheet which was really popular with the Early Years students at lunchtime today.  I’m hooked. 

As I already had established a Google account this was one of the least intimidating of the tasks I have attempted in this course so far.  Looking through the options I readily enjoyed my time on Google Maps – which we had used to take a closer look at accommodation when planning our trip to Europe last year.  I even allowed myself a little trip down memory lane to the location of L’hotel Millesime on the Left Bank in Paris. I was having a good time but after attending a meeting this afternoon, where the topic of discussion was the soaring costs of internet downloads, I’m not sure that many of my students will have access to this facility at school.  I didn’t really see my need for Docs just yet but maybe the time will come when it easier to share information this way.  Our school’s use of an efficient intranet, which staff and students access from either school or home, makes this form of ’sharing’ not necessary at this point in time.  Now, as for the Book Search, this could be a real bonus.  If we could preselect a number of books that we would like to recommend and then have the students read a page or two online – as a ‘taste – tester’ that would be fun!

I know I should have been excited when I opened a Facebook account and someone I sang with years ago wanted to be my friend – and promptly sent me reminders about her current music engagements – but all I thought was ‘I really should update my email address book!’  I can see the attraction in this social networking site but it’s not for me.  Life is already too hectic when the only time I could catch up with one friend this ‘holiday’ was after grocery shopping tomorrow morning!   I looked at My Space as well and can see its value when trying to advertise to the young to capture their patronage.  My school currently blocks all access to both these networks, so although I am pleased to have ‘made their acquaintance’ I probably won’t be making much use of them just yet.

On the other hand I am quite pleased to have been ‘burning the midnight oil’ to work on the student blog I am setting up for my library.  We have been having some renovations in my library over this break and it would be good for the students to see that the changes are more than just cosmetic.  Over the next week I’ll put a lot of effort into it and then do my best to convince my site administrator – and the IT Committee – that it needs to be added to the Library Page – currently not very interesting – on our intranet.  Thanks Leslie and crew, I never thought I would be able to do this. http://missus13.globalstudent.org.au/

What an interesting way to follow the news, locally and across the world, at a glance.  Not quite the relaxing experience of a long breakfast over the Saturday Age, but a quick way to see what is of interest to follow up in the news.  For those days when a leisurely read of the paper is out of the question this is a terrific alternative. And, in our now eco-friendly world, it saves paper too!  Win Win situation!