Who is it for? (Future Vision Project 2)

This week, I'm thinking about who my library website is for, and how it will be helpful.

The school that I work in does not currently have a developed library program due to the job being filled by whoever happens to be the vice-principal at the time. I am planning to set up the website for my current school, but with the goal of gaining experience with designing a library website so I can copy and edit it for myself when I get hired as a TL in my next job. I envision this library website being useful for students, parents, and teachers, all of whom are education stakeholders. As recommended by the ISTE Standards, I'm attempting to "model for colleagues the identification, exploration, evaluation, curation and adoption of new digital resources and tools for learning" (2023).

The website will be designed for student use. Since my school is a K-4 school, it will have a very simple and picture-based home page to allow young students to navigate it. I imagine a TL demonstrating the website for the K-2 classes using a projector. Starting in Grade 3, I imagine students independently interacting with it. These students could use the catalog, look up their account, and use the online resources for simple research projects. If time in the library permits, students could develop their digital literacy skills by creating projects such as Powerpoint slides with book recommendations. These projects could be shared online via the blog.

The library website will create an excellent home-school connection for parents. It will contain instructions on how to use the library - hours, contact info for the TL, borrowing limits - as well as a link to the catalog so that parents can look up what books their child has out. I'm also planning a blog section to showcase the library's contribution to the school. For example, it could include pictures of new books and projects done in library (like the book recommendations mentioned above), thank the library monitors, and share library statistics (like the number of books checked out) at the end of the year. If (and this is a big if - see below) I can get the blog portion of the website to show Instagram posts, the blog can be updated via Instagram and the post can go out in both formats. Educating the parents about what the library does will hopefully increase support for the library!

The part of the library website that teachers might find useful is the part that explains what online resources are available and how to access them. Due to the inexperience and high turnover of the TLs at my school, these resources have never been mentioned. My hope is that the website would highlight a few useful online resources (National Geographic for Kids and the Collections tab on Destiny come to mind) and make those particular resources easy to access. Recommending resources that are applicable and useful to my school setting will encourage teachers to use the website.

Image from pixabay.com

I think the two main challenges for a TL with a library website are 1) finding the time to update it, and 2) convincing people to look at it. To increase visits, I would share the website via staff meetings, email and the school newsletter. I also have high hopes for an Instagram connection. Lots of parents and staff are on Instagram. If I can link an Instagram feed to the library website, then I can update the library blog with an Instagram post. Additionally, when a parent checks Instagram, they will see posts from the library and have access to a link to the website. Having said that, I'm not finding it easy to create the link. 

Weebly is an easy and free platform on which to build a website, but there's no built-in social media link. There used to be, but it seems that now I need to sign up for another program that can provide the link between the two. The reviews for such programs are...not good. 

Wordpress is another (more complicated but more powerful) program for website building, but the free version does not allow an Instagram link. 

I'm looking at a third free platform, Wix, that claims it can link to Instagram, but I haven't played around with it enough to see whether it is actually possible. I also need to check that I would be permitted to post a link to a Wix site on the district site. I know Wordpress and Weebly are fine, because other libraries in our school district use them, but I've never seen a wix.com site.

I've got the next couple weeks to work on my project, and then one more post to share it with the world! I'm excited to get started!

Works Cited:

"ISTE Standards: For Educators." International Society for Technology in Education, iste.org/standards/educators. Accessed Nov 19, 2023.

A Library Website? (Future Vision Project 1)

Image from pixabay.com

This week, I'm doing some brainstorming about possible options for my final vision project. It is meant to be a representation of my vision of teacher-librarianship. I have three main ideas for digital artifacts I could create:

1. A professional X account focused on staying current as a TL

I've started to create this already. It is a great way to connect with other teacher-librarians and hear about very specific teacher-librarian things. The X account allows me to create a personal learning network (PLN) that will stay with me wherever I go, which is a wonderful long-term thing to have. However, I don't think anyone at my school has a professional X account and it wouldn't be easy to share my learning with the people I actually work with. If I were to create a school library X account, it would look very different than the professional X account I'm creating. When I think about social media as my final project, I get confused on who I'm posting for - parents? teachers? myself? - and how it connects to my actual day-to-day job.

2. An elementary school library website

Conveniently, I ran into the person in charge of the Microsoft Teams page for all the TLs in my district the other day, and she added me to the VSB TL Team. I was curious as to why so few schools in my district have a library website, so I searched the Team for information. I found a post from 2021 in which someone asked the group about the pros and cons of creating a library website. While a few TLs had websites, the general tone of the answers was that library websites take up a lot of time and don't get used much. Some TLs commented that there was a spot on the Destiny Discover version of the catalogue that could be edited for individual schools. Others said they ask their administrator to put the basic info on the library page of the school website. One had a school library Instagram account. It was an interesting post to read, because I see so many positives to having a webpage. I wrote a bit about it here. If I took the time to create a website for my final project based on my current school, it would (hopefully) be relatively straightforward to update for my new school. I know I would find it useful to help me keep all my resources organized and available.

3. A series of videos explaining how to use Destiny Discover

Destiny Discover is the library catalogue used both in my current school district and the district I hope to work in one day. It is simple to use, but elementary school students still need to be taught how to use it. I could create a series of 'how to' videos for students explaining how to find the catalogue, how to log in to the catalogue, how to find out if the school library has a specific book, how to find out what books the library has on a topic, how to do a basic works cited page, etc. How-to videos for teachers could focus on the 'Collections' tab. There are a lot of classroom teachers that don't know about that tab, and it can be very useful. These videos would be useful for as long as the Destiny Discover program is being used.

I'm leaning away from an X account as my final project, because the connection between it and my job is less direct. I want to create something that will be directly useful for when I am hired as a TL (hopefully next year). Both the library website and the series of videos check that box. I like both ideas, but I've been thinking about library websites for so long that I want to explore that option. The ISTE Standards ask educators to "seek out opportunities for leadership to support student empowerment and success and to improve teaching and learning" (2023). I believe a library website is an example of such an opportunity.

Works Cited:

"ISTE Standards: For Educators." International Society for Technology in Education, iste.org/standards/educators. Accessed Nov 12, 2023.

Pause (Inquiry Blog 5)

 

"What are your key takeaways, learning and direction after all this exploration? What are the new avenues for development in your personal and professional practice? What are you going to take with you, moving forward from your own explorations and also from the explorations of others in this class? If you could pick just one topic from Phase 2 that resonated with you, which is it and why?"

- Inquiry Blog Post 5, LIBE 477B, UBC 

Phew! I can’t answer all those questions in one blog post…but I’m hoping to touch on parts of all of them. I have come up with four takeaways from the last four weeks of the course:

1 - I was surprised to learn that I am interested in how to choose and lead effective professional development! It’s not an area that I have been drawn to in the past. I might actually enjoy being part of the pro-d committee!

2 - We are very lucky to have the amount of resources that we do. There are many places out there without any books, let alone internet and ways to access it. Good people are working hard to improve this situation, using vans, donkeys, buses and boxes with fancy satellite connections, as written about by Suzanne Bartel (2023). Sometimes their efforts work well, and sometimes they don’t (Haymen Leong, 2023). I appreciated the reminder that most Canadian schools have a lot of resources.

Screenshot from @LondonPublicLibary, Nov. 3, 2023.

3 - Social media is great for professional development! I recently learned via my shiny new X account that Wednesday, November 8 is #IReadCanadian Day. I’m a classroom teacher, so I headed to the school library last week and hunted down a box full of books by Canadian authors. I plan to share them with my Grade 3/4s next Wednesday. I hadn’t paid much attention to the nationality of children’s book authors and was happy to learn some favourites are Canadian - go Melanie Watt (Scaredy Squirrel) and Barbara Reid (Birds)! On the less positive side, I find time disappears when I am using social media. I blink and an hour is gone and I haven’t accomplished anything specific. Discipline is necessary to use X effectively. Having just started my X account, I am also disappointed to hear that the BCTLA will be retiring their X account and focusing on using Instagram/Facebook. I don’t have the time to interact with multiple platforms!

4 - I’ve enjoyed this format of learning! I learn more with a group of people all researching, writing, commenting and discussing than I do when I just think about a topic on my own. Blogs are much more flexible than the Canvas platform, and I like following the links, pictures and videos everyone has added. We created a PLN. I understand it’s a forced one, because we’re all taking the same course, but it’s a pretty great way to learn. I hope to keep in touch!

Moving forward, I want to try putting the ideas we’ve been discussing into practice.

Images from Laura Robinson, 2023.

I am going to bring more opportunities to develop digital literacy skills into my Grade 3/4 classroom. I already tried an online research project (see pictures above). It was a flipbook containing facts students had found about local landforms. I learned that my students are very easily distracted by all the other things that computers offer. I had students taking photos of themselves, googling their names, etc. Clearly, I need to set better expectations about what the computers are to be used for. The research part also took a lot longer than I thought it would. My students got there eventually, but I see several potential ways to make the process more efficient! Next, I want to try out either Powerpoint book recommendations or Padlet.

Additionally, I’m going to maintain my X account. I’m learning new information (see previous comments about #IReadCanadian) and finding more local TLs to follow every time I check it, although I have developed some FOMO because I’m not on every social media platform (see previous comments about BCTLA and Instagram). I’ve discovered that many of the names I was thinking of changing my X name to are taken (LauratheLibrarian, LRobinson, etc). I tried to change my name (twice!) and ran into separate technical issues each time, but I finally got it figured out. I haven't posted anything, so it's not very interesting yet, but my official new name is @MsRobinson_TL.

The next phase of the course is our Final Vision Project. As I’m leaving this phase with a new X account, I’m wondering if the X account I’m developing might turn into my final project. I originally thought I was going to develop a website for my school library, but I’m really enjoying exploring professional development via social media. I can see I’ll be thinking more about this over the next week. Stay tuned!

Works Cited:

Bartel, S. "Mobile Libraries in Kabul." A Learning Journey, Wordpress, October 26, 2023, suzannebartel.wordpress.com/2023/10/26/mobile-libraries-in-kabul-inquiry-4/. Accessed Nov. 4, 2023.

Leong, H. "Mobile, Financial, and Information Literacy through Public Libraries to Alleviate Poverty in Gujarat, India." LIBE 477B 63A 2023W1, Wordpress, October 25, 2023, blogs.ubc.ca/haymenleong/2023/10/25/mobile-financial-and-information-literacy-through-public-libraries-to-alleviate-poverty-in-gujarat-india-inquiry-blog-4/. Accessed Nov. 4, 2023.

@LondonPublicLibrary. "Start celebrating #IReadCanadian Day with our list of Canadian books for young people. Borrow them instantly until Nov 12th at: lpl.overdrive.com." X, Nov. 3, 2023, twitter.com/londonlibrary/status/1720429632548167838. Accessed Nov. 4, 2023.