Booked Inn

Book Week is fast approaching!

Over on the OZTL_Net listserv, a teacher-librarian asked for ideas for getting students more involved with the annual Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) awards. While there are other, student-voted, literary awards out there (eg. KOALA – Kids’ Own Australian Literature Awards), the CBCA “books of the year” are selected by adult judges, so sometimes the students can feel left out of the judging procedure.

It’s not difficult to lead discussion with students as to what are valuable criteria for judging children’s literature. Some categories are easier for students to judge, because they are within the intended audience of certain books. With guidance, Year 6 students can still make incisive observations about what makes a good picture book for younger students. You can also deconstruct the actual rules used by the CBCA judges.

This is the third year I’ve organised CBCA voting with students this way:

* K-2 (Early Stage 1; Stage 1) are judging Picture Books and Early Childhood Books

* Years 3-4 (Stage 2) are judging Picture Books and Information Books

* Years 5-6 (Stage 3) are judging Picture Books and Novels for Younger Readers.

I supply two empty bar graph grids per student, with the titles written at the base of each column. As we read and appreciate the books, in any order, they give points out of ten and colour their graphs. When all six bars of the graph are filled in, the highest columns are declared the winners and the students record their predictions. They find it very tricky if they’ve voted “ten out of ten” for two or more titles in a category. When Book Week arrives we fill in the actual winners beside their own choices.

At my previous schools, we’ve usually done a show-of-hands voting on a class column graph, but individual voting seems to enthuse the students even more. There’s usually a lot of clapping and cheering when I announce the winners at the school assembly in Book Week.

I recall really impressing one principal, in my first year as a teacher-librarian. She said, “I’ve never heard these children cheer for a book before…!” – and a few days later there was lots more money in my library budget.

Judy O’Connell’s recent post about students and Wikipedia reminded me that there was a very funny post about Wikipedia a few months ago, on the nswtl listserv, whereby someone had found, incidentally, that some fool had sabotaged the entry on the Newcastle (NSW) Earthquake… to say that it was started by someone stamping their foot in anger.

Of course, before the first post to the listserv was barely in people’s “In” boxes, someone else, a registered contributor to Wikipedia, had gone into the site to edit the entry back again. And then announced their restorative action on the listserv. Which caused more consternation because several teacher-librarians had already bookmarked (but not thought to “Save to file”) a copy of the sabotaged entry to use as an example when doing explicit teaching about online research.

Slam it all you like; Wikipedia is invaluable as an orientation tool. A living, breathing, evolving encyclopedia of everything, written by people who fancy themselves as experts in areas of trivia. (Sounds like me!)

I’ve been know to use the wiki when I hit a topic I know nothing about, and it usually gives me at least a feel for the type of more authoritative information that is likely to be out there, beyond the Wikipedia entry. Or whether it’s a more obscure topic. And when I’ve found topics that have rather lean (or totally wrong) information, and I know something about them, I’ve been known to add data myself: Number 96, The Magic Circle Club, Luna Park Sydney, Star Trek, Andorians… important stuff like that. Even cataloguers keep a watch on it.

Of course school and university students will be drawn to Wikipedia – like moths to a flame! The key is how we all, as researchers, use that information to keep on investigating!

A teacher-librarian colleague recently said, on a listserv, “I think we need to be a bit more open with what’s happening in our schools in relation to the library.  As we are all aware, we’re pretty isolated because we have no-one else in a similar position at the school.”

While I agree wholeheartedly that teacher-librians do need to be prepared for those feelings of isolation when things get grim, there are certainly already many effective avenues we can go to for support: professional associations (ASLA NSW and ALIA); “Scan” articles left in key locations around the school; other professional literature; ringing the School Libraries and Information Literacy unit (NSW DET); networking with local TLs and valued, like-minded staff members; and input (and a sympathetic ear) from the Teacher’s Federation contact person. Etc.

When I was doing my teacher-librarian retraining in 1990 at University of Technology Sydney (UTS, Kuring-gai), there was a lot of emphasis on TLs being proactive (thanks Ross J Todd, Barbara Poston-Anderson, Jill Buckley, Michelle Ellis and Joyce Kirk).

I often read horror stories on the teacher-librarian listservs – about TLs not being appreciated - but I can honestly say that, of the eight or nine long-term Principals I’ve had over my teaching career, they’ve either already been staunch or open-minded supporters of the school library (and the teacher-librarian), or else I’ve helped to educate them into being supportive. I once proved to myself - in a large school - that the effective way to the Principal’s ear was through the executive staff – one by one… until they were all on-side. My side. My proactive message, proudly modelled for all to see in collaboratively planned and negotiated lessons every week, eventually won through – because it wasn’t ever only me repeating the mantra of what was to be the TL’s desired contribution. (And I shocked even myself, turning a “non negotiable timetable set in stone with no team teaching” into a fully cooperative timetable after only one full year at the school).

And if I’ve somehow led a charmed life and simply fluked it into good schools with good Principals my whole career, I apologise. I reckon I’ve made plenty of lemonade out of my piles of lemons over the years.

Since when have Principals been the enemy? (So much for the old stereotype of the Principal married to a teacher-librarian.) I think that it’s great that Principals swap notes about what their TLs do. Because surely no one is going to be convinced to downgrade their TL’s contribution - on the whim of another Principal’s misguided opinion –  if the whole staff at a school hold that TL and their work in high regard. Surely, even the most stubborn, unconvinced staff can be won over, person by person, if you have to.

The poster also mentioned TLs being used as ”dogsbodies”. A few times, as TL, I’ve been delegated a job that might be considered a dogsbody’s job. Current case in point: distributing The School Magazine to teachers every month, which no one else wanted to do any more. I made it my special duty last year (and this year): mentioning exciting ways to use it in staff meetings, finding the links to class programs, printing out free online guidebooks, and (even) making teachers feel a bit guilty for not using the resource wisely.

Custodian of the school web site? Suddenly the school library became the hub where all material for the web site is generated and maintained, and integrated into collaborative planned and/or taught lessons in the library.

I know of other TLs who have inherited Stewart House Rep, SRC Coordinator, School Yearbook Editor, School Historical Artefacts Cupboard Custodian, Chess Club, or Choir – and each can become either an intrinsic joy of the job, or an unwanted albatross, depending on the way you look at that glass: half full, or half empty.

Today I received lots of encouraging feedback on yesterday afternoon’s staff meeting about blogs, wikis and OASIS Web enquiry, so I’m feeling a lot bouncier than last night.

I will be ensuring to revisit the wiki pages with each class group that comes into the library. The more often the teachers see their students reacting positively with wikis and blogs the more I hope they see the same potential in Web 2.0 as I do.

A few people from outside of the school asked me today what handout I used. It was one I conjured up myself yesterday. It’s expressed as layman-ish as possible – and I hope I didn’t send anyone off in a wrong tangent with incorrect descriptions. Please let me know if you find the glossary useful. (It’s not alphabetical; rather it’s more chronological. I hope. Going from “Most likely to be known about” to “Huh? What’s that?”)

Blogs & wikis vs websites

Email: electronic letter writing. Advanced users attach files and graphics. You can “cc” (carbon copy) to others of your choosing.

Listservs: one post of an email can be received by all people subscribing to the listserv, even though you’ve posted to the one address. Unable to change content of an email once people on the list have received it. Set up and administered by a “list owner”. Send automated commands to an email address to join or quit a listserv.

Electronic bulletin board services (BBS): Similar to a listserv, but you can see everyone’s responses on a web page (click heading to see contents of an entry). Can often edit your replies after the fact, or view them as threaded responses, following a discussion with many participants. An example of a mailing list archive is at: http://www.schools.nsw.edu.au/schoollibraries/listserv/possummagic07/maillist.html

Websites: text and images on a particular theme or topic, presented in “pages” with clickable links that lead to other pages in the site – but also other Internet sites, forming a “web” of interrelated information. Commercial or hobby-related. When used with students it’s important to use judgement re accuracy, editing, validity of site publisher, date of upload, frequency of revisions (“What’s new?”), etc. Requires knowledge of HTML or web design software, such as Dreamweaver, plus uploading software (eg. Fetch). Our school website (est. intranet 2002; Internet 2004) deliberately does not have too many bells and whistles and is at: http://www.penrith-p.schools.nsw.edu.au/

Web 2.0 is the next, new wave of interactive Internet services and web tools (all-inclusive when designing/uploading), including:

Blogs: similar to online diary entries, but ease of uploading, editing and dating of new text entries and images means blogs may replace many websites. Blog is short for Web Log. Can specify other individuals to contribute (can be moderated or not) plus encourages feedback comments from general public or nominated groups (can be moderated, edited, or not). Our school is currently participating in a book rap in blog form at: http://rapblog.edublogs.org/

RSS feed: Automated updates (eg. via email) of nominated blog contents, so you know immediately when new entries have been posted. RSS feed won’t show later corrections by the list owner though. For people who want info coming to them, not browsing the net at their leisure. The RSS acronym has multiple meanings including:

· Really Simple Syndication

· Rich Site Summary

· RDF (Resource Description Framework) Site Summary.

Wikis: scrapbook-style entries of text and images, but ease of uploading, editing and dating of new entries means wikis may replace many websites. Can specify other individuals to contribute (original versions can be restored if owner disagrees with changes) plus encourages feedback comments from general public or nominated groups (can be moderated, edited or not). “Wiki” comes from the Hawaiian word, “wiki wiki” meaning, “Quick!” Our school’s wiki (est. 2007) is at: http://penrithpslibrary.pbwiki.com

They say that teachers are most effective when we convey strategies for accomplishing tasks in explicit ways, and preferably just prior to the point of the learner(s)’ need – which is when they are most likely to be open, motivated and goal-oriented. A looming deadline probably helps as well. I don’t have any pithy, fancy quotes at hand, but it’s the style of teaching that I’ve honed through many years at PSP (Priority Schools Program), formerly DSP (Disadvantaged Schools Program) working environments, plus via my training and practical experience as a teacher-librarian.When these findings match up during my own learning, and my own readiness to learn (not to mention motivations and goals), I only cements my confidence that I’m on the right track. I wasn’t ready to learn about wikis until I was ready to teach about them. I wasn’t ready to learn about abseiling until I was ready to help students learn how to do it. I wasn’t ready to learn to ride a bicycle until – well, no need to go into that anecdote. The ducks in Centennial Park haven’t forgiven me yet.

On Sunday, knowing that Early Stage One and Stage One were to be studying Chinese New Year this week, and Stage 2 was to be studying Buildings and bridges, I went into the city with a borrowed digital camera and took lots of photographs of the Chinese New Year Festival Parade, plus assorted Sydney bridges. My intention is that we will use these images to create some wiki pages, and some group-negotiated, well-researched, descriptive captions (using SCUMPS, but more on that later). How to get the Photoshopped images available – and guarantee having access to them at school – for Monday morning’s classes, especially since I use an iMac at home and several, variable quality PCs at school, none of which seem to like my Mac-altered images or memory sticks?

The obvious answer was to upload the photographs to my Flickr account – to show them as a slideshow - and to finally learn how to shunt thematic images into special folders. It was all so much easier than I expected – so why was I so hesitant all these months/years? (We don’t have an interactive whiteboard at school yet – but I can already imagine some of the ways I will be able to use the board with students and teachers.)

The two lessons worked extremely well. I set up a Flickr slideshow on adjacent computers (Bridges – Stage Two or Chinese New Year K-2), and selected student volunteers to manipulate the mouse that would kept the slideshows progressing. I explained to the students and their teachers that we would be setting up a SCUMPS matrix (stay tuned!) on wiki pages so that groups of students could collaborate on descriptive factual writing into each of the matrix cells, which we’d then upload to the Internet at the touch of a mouse. That’s the plan, anyway. Who knows where this may lead once the students and teachers have their input?

I’d just finished patting myself on the back for accomplishing my goals, and started to head off for lunch, when a new staff member asked about looking for particular resources in the Teacher Reference section of the library. I almost set him off to the correct shelf, with a mere finger point, when I realized that, since he was suddenly at that “point of need” (and, under normal circumstances, I’d be at lunch), I’d do a quick bit of explicit teaching – and demonstrate OASIS Web enquiry for him. It was very successful, brief session, and we located better resources than if I’d relied on my memory, or the luck of random shelf-browsing. The teacher was excited about testing out remote access to from home, using the My library hyperlink on his Portal page.

Also, coincidentally, I happened to see a reference to the second annual ALIA (Australian Library and Information Association) Library Lovers promotion on the upcoming Valentine’s Day (thanks Victor over at the nswtl listserv) on the 14th February. Somehow, I managed to overlook this quirky event last year and, at first, I thought it a rather dubious connection, attempting to cash in on Valentine’s Day. But then, thinking back to my impromptu demo lesson on OASIS Web enquiry but I suddenly realised that holding a Library Lovers morning tea for the staff on Thursday will finally secure me the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the new web tool to the whole staff at once. Up until now, I’ve only been able to do a few 1:1 orientations (at point of need), but without a firm deadline – ie. my own point of need – I guess I’ve been procrastinating, and all staff members do need to know about Web enquiry.

I quickly cleared the event with the Principal, and made up the invitations on pink paper, using the graphics supplied on the ALIA website. One of the staff chuckled over her invitation, “Cool! It’ll be the only action I get on Valentine’s Day. My husband’s in Victoria this week.”

Oh – and I should point out that, yesterday, I didn’t have hyperlinks to reply upon to use my slideshows and I was trying to prevent the students scrolling into my other (very off-topic) Flickr photos. It was only in the wee hours of this morning that I realised that Flickr would permit me to quote separate URLs for themed sets! Another exciting discovery that will greatly improve today’s activities (ie. the next two batches of guinea pigs, er, students).

Over at the professional teacher-librarian listservs, OZTL_Net and nswtl, it is customary to post a “hit” of useful feedback to the list when people have elected to send private emails in response to a post. The information is anonymous, in that it’s from private emails, and a hit can save the cluttering up of the actual listserv traffic with lots of “me too” and “well done” posts. A hit also collects useful snippets of information in the one place.

A few days ago, I posted the URL of this blog to both OZTL_Net and nswtl and the emails started coming in immediately. Many thanks for the great feedback, everyone. Some readers responded in the Comments section of the blog itself, but I wanted to share some of the other messages that have come through to me by email.

What is really exciting (and important) is that I’ve already inspired others to take immediate action to plan for using Web 2.0 tools with their classes this year. Blogs! Blog comments! Wikis! Memes! Book raps

As I said last year – on the second occasion I heard about the place of wikis and blogs in education – if I don’t attempt it now, I might never feel “ready”. There’s something to be said about learning along with the students.

* “Good on you Ian. I’ll be reading. I’ve just started writing one too… Good luck on the blogging journey!”

* “I checked out your blog cos I had a spare mo and liked your 10 questions so much I thought I’d have to ask if I can use them blatantly for the book discussion group that I have to set up as an extracurricular activity. I’ll share the blog too but thought I might set up something similar or get the students to do it on our school intranet.”

* “Very impressive, Ian”

* “I checked out your Wiki with the kindy kids. Loved it! Love to try it this year… The stories are great by the way. I’ve set up a Wiki with pbwiki and so am one quarter of the way there.”

* “FABULOUS!!! I can only aspire to bloggin’ at present but I take heart from your bold step”.

“Looks great – very inspiring.”

Thanks everyone! See you here in the blogosphere sometime.