Watch this. We can learn from this example.
Ask our users what they need. Simple idea really.
You can find more information about the project here. It’s a German site so you’ll need to find a way to translate the page. Thanks to Leeanne Windsor and Kim Cofino for tweeting about this.
Wow.
I. am. actually. going. to. this. conference.
Can you even begin to imagine how excited I am about this? It is such a great opportunity to connect with people I have worked with and talked to in my online network of connected friends who teach me so much. It’s an opportunity to meet with many who I haven’t yet had opportunity to connect with. Just being at a conference with so many like minds is going to be so exciting and such a learning experience.
I can’t wait to hear the thoughts of people like David Warlick, David Jakes, Ewan McIntosh, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Marco Torres. People who will be presenting include Clay Burell, Kim Cofino and Jeff Utecht – more minds I want to tap into!! I’m particularly looking forward to finally meeting Clay who has had such an impact on my life this year. I’m also looking forward to meeting Simon Power, an Australian teaching in Shanghai.
I’m actually catching up with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach in Melbourne next week. I’ve been working with Sheryl to get an Australian arm of the global cohort for Powerful Learning Practice formed. The cohort’s pretty much come together now. It’s really exciting and we should be kicking this off on September the 8th. I see this as a way to move my school forward. It’s been wonderful getting to know Sheryl online and I’m looking forward to our face to face meeting next week.
Would I have thought this is where I’d be when I started blogging in January? No way. Just goes to show you what can be achieved with determination and persistance (and a very supportive school behind you who appreciate what you are doing – I am so very grateful). To retweet @thebuddha;
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.
Kim Cofino is a 21st Century Literacy Specialist at the International School of Bangkok. She wrote a really interesting post last week that was mentioned on Jeff Utecht’s SOS podcast about Teacher-Librarians and their connection with Educational Technology facilitators and vice-versa. It was called Libraries & EdTech: Like Peanut Butter and Jelly! Kim attended the ECIS Librarian’s Conference in Berlin and was obviously impressed by what she saw and heard. I’ve been following Kim on Twitter, and noticed many updates during her time at the conference, with her musing on the ideas being presented. One of the presenters was Ross Todd. TLs in Australia will know Ross as will many others in countries around the world as he is an international presenter. Last year he addressed a Victorian SLAV conference and presented fabulous ideas to help us promote guided inquiry in our libraries and classrooms. I particularly like the way he used the term ‘zones of intervention’ to describe how TLs should be thinking of teaching information literacy in our schools. It resonated with how I see our role – rather than trying to structure information literacy into classrooms or having students come to the library to learn how to ‘do stuff’, we should be targeting specific zones of intervention that present themselves as students work on projects in differing curriculum areas. It is this point of need teaching that has the most impact – when you need to know something you go about learning how to do it – we can all apply this to our own learning so why don’t we try and target information literacy teaching the same way. Don’t believe that in any way I’m having massive success in my school achieving this – like anything, it requires relationship building with teachers so that you can work together on curriculum initiatives. Chip, chip, chip away!
I suppose the article held appeal because I feel like my role is merging between being a TL and an Ed Tech facilitator. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a tug of war and I don’t know which side is going to win out! Kim took a different view and one that I like. She made the peanut butter and jelly analogy for the following reasons;
The ideal is to have a TL with a working knowledge of Web 2.0 – this is where information is heading and a head in the sand approach just isn’t going to cut it I’m afraid. If schools had the budgets to appoint Ed Tech facilitators this would be an added bonus. Not happening where I work at the moment. International schools seem streets ahead of us on this front. Better yet, let’s seriously look at something that Jeff UTecht broached in a document he wrote that I posted two months ago. He called the role the Literacy/Media Specialist in a document called ‘Planning for 21st Century Technologies.’
As a profession, Teacher-Librarians need to seriously look at what is happening in relation to the way our students interact with the internet to find, create and collaborate when learning. We need to skill ourselves well to embrace the future and we need to be working very closely with Ed Tech facilitators. If they’re not in our schools then maybe it’s us who need to take the reins and guide our teachers and students forward. To my way of thinking, this is how we keep our profession relevant and it’s the best kind of advocacy we can present to convince our school administrations of the need for qualified TL’s in School Libraries. Take a read of Kim’s post and see what you think.
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 