RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

Brilliantly animated and thought-provoking talk on education.

Transliteracy and Participatory Librarianship Talk by Buffy Hamilton

Buffy Hamilton's interesting discussion on the range of ways in which as teacher librarians we can invite greater participation and build a community with our users whilst engaging with the idea of transliteracy. A lot to think about.

Tearing Down the Walls

Belatedly doing some reading Dianne Oberg's editorial in School Libraries Worldwide 'Taking the Library Out of the Library into the school (13(2) 2007 i-ii - put forward some interesting ideas. Having struggled with what can be a isolating role - being new at a school, being tied to the library when staff on breaks as students are using the library - I would love to tear down the walls and have a roving role throughout the school. ALl the readings suggest that the teacher librarian has enormous potential and power to positively affect student learning outcomes and teaching - the role is vital, multidimensional, complex, central and so on. So I aspire to take on Oberg's challenge to expand the impact and function of the library beyound its walls. Three suggestions

1) coordination of all teaching resources not just library resources 2) technology provisioning to beceom 24/7 not just within the library 3) proactively address and help with strategies for school issues

Now I just have to find the time and the energy. But where there is a will, there is a way.

Great April Fool's Day Joke

Many thanks to Judy on her fabulous heyjude.wordpress blog for sharing the laugh.

A historical Perspective

• Select the best books, list them elaborately, save them forever - was the sum of the librarians' creed of yesterday. Tomorrow it must be, select a few of the best books and keep them, as before, but also, select from the vast flood of print the things your constituency will find helpful, make them available with a minimum expense, and discard them as soon as their usefulness is past. (Dana, 1914, p. 73) As quoted by Cromer Donna E., 'Special Libraries Association - The Importance of Leadership' in Journal of Library Administration, on-line publication 02 December 2009.

I just love this quote - it is so fascinating that the issues have not really changed over the past century. That as long ago as 1914 (or as recently) the view of information being a "vast flood" and that the management of the information changes the role of the librarian. Curating the collection is going to become as much an issue as selection and acquisition.

Information Overload

After struggling with assignments this image TOTALLY resonates with me.

Beyond the Blackboard

Megan Johnston writes in Today's Sydney Morning Herald (Monday, March 28, 2011) about learning in the digital age. I am currently struggling through my resourcing the curriculum area assignment at the moment so it was a flag for me.

The main point of the article is to highlight that 21 century learners now have the opportunity to publish their work in a much more meaningful manner than just "publishing in the classroom". I have in the past organised a book launch for a year 7 class where the Principal was invited to view the latest releases of the class who were working on a series of fracture fairytale stories. But that was last century.

Now students can use wikis (which I have used with another class to publish and critique each others' short stories), blogs, podcasts, online games which allows anyone in the world to view and rate their work. Very exciting indeed.

Schools highlighted in the article were

• Northern Beaches Chrisstian School where they use Real Audience Project (realaudienceproject.com) to publish their work via the web and sell print book via Lulu (lulu.com), Booralie FM broadcasts via podcasts in iTunes
  
• Tara Anglican College year 7 technology students use the Scratch website from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (scratch.mit.edu) to design their simple games and have the tested, commented upon and modified based on feedback.
• Convenant Christian School in Belrose had a Year 12 student design an app for iPhone and iPod Touch for chess. Chess4 app is now available through the App Store for free.
• Redlands in Cremorne use websites to build up a community of gamers to test games designed by student gaming company Chaos Theory Games (chaostheorygames.com)
• Clancy Catholic College at West Hoxton have student media group which have created their online portal to keep the school community up to date. Articles are published, videos uploaded, scrolling Twitter posts all run by year 11 students and moderated by a teacher give it the real life media outlet experience.
• St Monica's Catholic Parish Primary School in North Parramatta have launched a community radio station 92.5 FM which has a 5 km broadcast footprint
• Southern Cross Vocational College in Burwood will open a cafe and restaurant to the public
• Ballina High School runs a marine discovery and resource centre that welcomes tourists and the wider community to use the centre where students pass on information about the marine environment

The potential and variety of meaningful and new learning experiences that can be offered to students is huge. New technologies provided a set of wonderful tools in which students can now apply and see the curriculum content that they are learning as relevant. That can't be a bad thing.