Where I am now, where I’ve come from. Reflection.

Reflection and evaluation have always come easily to me, for which I am grateful. It’s not always pleasant but it does help to move forward, or rather, break out of one skin into the next.

In my professional life, I’ve celebrated with my colleagues our first term ‘under my leadership’. I say that with a smile because my role as head of library at Melbourne High School has been passed to me like an unwanted basketball, and my leadership has depended desperately on the experience and good will of my colleagues. Still, at the end of a term which contained an unusually high number of new challenges for all of us, we acknowledged (and celebrated with Laurent cake!) our successes and triumphs, our new directions and relationships. It’s always been a challenge for me to see the positive things amongst the clutter of problems and unresolved issues which tend to cloud my clear vision, being a perfectionist, and often demanding of myself unrealistic goals, but I’m happy to say that, with the help of good friends, I accepted the cake and focused on the whole picture. We had, after all, successfully managed the move to RFID (with related technical issues, as always); moved the huge cultural shift of a silent library – having provided the VCE students with an alternative space for their private study sessions – which surprised us all by demonstrating that most students actually preferred to study under our politically incorrect hovering and insistence on silence than go to the more relaxed space with a moderate amount of noise;  acted on our determination to leave the library more often to make connections with teachers and be associated less with desk duty and ‘library duties’ and more with meaningful support for teachers and students; made a good start on our promise to staff for delivery of services which responded to their specific requests for support, both in curriculum creation and collaborative teaching; worked on the planning and preparation for a refurbishment of the front of our library involving a temporary reallocation of desks, shelves, books and the like in readiness for demolition some time next term, and many more things I won’t mention because this paragraph is getting much too long.

In my personal professional life, some things changed – as they do. My activity within social networks was reduced but not weakened. Obviously I had much less time for online interaction, and sadly missed some opportunities and events (not all), but my focus was more strategic, more targeted and less serendipitous. Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other online communities have still been my lifeline, professional development, inspiration and connection to new developments and ideas. Blog posts have become less regular as priorities have shifted – all as it should be – in exchange for projects which have resulted in the satisfaction of making things happen, introducing good changes and bringing some people with me.

Do I still have readers? I’m not sure – but then this blog hasn’t attracted dialogue with others for some time. Does it matter? Maybe a little – everyone wants some kind of response when they write (I think), but then again, the writing clears my head and creates another record amongst all the posts since 2008. It may be sand art but I value the opportunity to share my thoughts with what is potentially parts of the world – at least a world further than my own backyard.

What have I learned this year?

My colleagues are my strength and support – at school and beyond. If you openly value and respect people, they will reward you with good things and surprise you with unexpected things too. Leadership is not control; it can survive uncertainty as long as that doesn’t turn to fear which makes you lose trust in your people. Life’s too short to keep on the tried and true, safe path – follow your instincts. The change you want will take time. Celebrate with your friends – and cake!

Welcome to your library – teachers

Welcome to your library teachers

 

On Tuesday I’ve been asked to give a very short talk about the library at the staff meeting. It will be my first talk to staff since I’ve been acting head of library at MHS. I’m very nervous about speaking to the staff at my own school, more so than if I were speaking to a group of people outside the school, but I need to get over it.

Basically, I want to let teachers know about the change of culture for VCE private study. Previously the library was home to an enormous number of students who had no other space, and the noise was often out of control. Even though I was initially unsure about insisting on a silent library, favouring discussion and collaborative study, I had to respect the principal’s directive, and believe him when he said that students were complaining they couldn’t study in the noisy spaces. This year students have a choice between the silent library and the ‘dining hall’ (sounds much more posh than it is) where they can work collaboratively or just relax. We’ve all been flabbergasted that most of the students still choose the library despite our strict rules for silent study. Who knew? Of course, carpet and air conditioning have something to do with this, but we are seeing so many students knuckling down to serious study.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time on a presentation which is just a visual prompt for my brief talk. I hope teachers will look at the slides instead of me! Our main focus this year is to work more closely with teachers to create rich resources, create curriculum/assignments and teach collaboratively. We hope to forge relationships and become a vital part of teaching and learning at the school. We’ve divided faculties amongst the teacher librarians, and I hope that the TLs take ownership of their areas of expertise, and that they enjoy their new roles.

I hope you can make sense of the visual prompts in the presentation. My talk will be brief and I plan to speak very plainly; I’ve consciously avoided educational jargon. Today I read an article by Daniel Pink, “My challenge to you: only speak like a human at work” which confirmed what I’ve believed – that if you can’t say it simply and sincerely, you’ll lose your audience, or at least you won’t have much of an impact.

Sorry I wasn’t able to embed the presentation, so you’ll have to download it via the link at the top of the post. Not sure why I can’t – maybe it’s Chrome?

What’s been happening – term 3 has been a busy one

I’m not the only one remarking on the lapses between blog posts. The blog is no longer the main platform for sharing and communicating – there is a long, long list of online places which need to be fed and looked after – for me that includes other blogs, Twitter, Pinterest, Scoop.it, Diigo, Slideshare, Vimeo, Libguides, Facebook and all its groups, and more. So I thought I’d drop in and do a quick update on what may be worth checking out in case it’s helpful or even interesting.

My school library blog has been keeping up with reading ambassadors for the National Year of Reading (#nyor12). These short and informal interviews are a pleasure to read, and reveal thoughtful responses to reading preferences. We’ve also recently celebrated 2012 Book Week with a hugely enjoyable ‘party’ in the library. I’ve included photos I think you’ll enjoy of our costume and cake competitions so that’s definitely worth checking out. This is the first Book Week celebration I’ve attended at Melbourne High School since I started a year ago, and it was fantastic. I was so impressed by the willingness of staff and students to dress up and play the part. The creativity displayed in our book-themed cake competition added a gastronomical dimension – who can resist cake? Yes, we did go on a bit about the cakes looking too good to eat but it didn’t last long.

I’ve been having such a good time resourcing the art curriculum in the last few months. My art blog churns out a diverse selection of inspiration to art students and teachers (I hope). This includes images, photography, design and animation.

Our students explored links to websites with antiquated encyclopedia images to create their ‘transformations’ which I combined in a slide show. The reduced image size doesn’t do justice to the details in the students’ work, so have a look at larger ones in Mihaela’s new art blog.

Yes! Our head of art now has a blog, and so do her students. This term our year 9s and 10s were lucky enough to get iPads, so we decided to get them to create Posterous blogs which we linked to Mihaela’s ‘mother blog’ and encouraged them to start snapping away with their iPad cameras so that they could develop a store of visual inspiration for their work. The beauty of a mobile device is the opportunity to capture photos as you go about your everyday activities. I’ve found the best images are the unexpected ones. I was inspired to get the art students blogging when I saw my dear friend, Marie Salinger’s, student blogs. Marie’s students have realised the rich potential of blogs in terms of journalling, reflecting, evaluating and just plain sharing. A blog is visual, it’s sequential, easy to access online and share with others; it invites responses and conversation. In her Visual Arts blog, Marie has reflected about the way in which iPads have enriched learning for her girls. The way Marie’s students used their blog to experiment with and evaluate iPad apps for drawing, then share with others, inspired me to talk to Mihaela about doing the same. Consequently I went into obsessive mode and lived and breathed art and apps for a couple of weeks, adding an Art Apps page in our LibGuides, my art blog, Pinterest, Flickr and Diigo.

Robot I am Apps used: Blender Pixeltwist                 (iphoneart.com)

Recently a dedicated team of students from the co-curricular group, Writing Competition, successfully wrote a book in a day. They had to collaboratively write at least 8,000 words and illustrate their story. The whole thing had to be done within 12 hours. I was very proud of the way they managed to work together and fuse their ideas and talents to produce a fantasy story for the Children’s Hospital. I hope to be able to share their book once I check the copyright.

Well, that’s it for now. Hope some of this has been useful to you.

Poetry Graffiti at MHS

The library is a space with unlimited potential. Of course I’m not talking about things that are financially prohibitive. It’s not bound by faculty, it serves an enormous range of purposes; it’s the social and cultural centre of the school – at least potentially.

I’ve been thinking about how to dispel the fallacy that the library is just about books, how to include popular culture and encourage students to feel that the spaces in the library belong to them. It’s good to start small. I spoke to my colleague, Denise, about setting up a ‘Poetry Graffiti’ board. The idea is that students pin up poetry they like and have either found written. I thought we’d add some pictures to inspire thinking and whimsy, and we hope the students will understand ‘poetry’ in a broad sense and contribute both text and images.

To share pictures with Denise without the hassle of emailing them back and forth and keeping separate folders, I decided to try Pinterest. I warn you about Pinterest, it does suck you in if you’re a picture person (no, I’m not talking about wedding photos or recipes). My Pinterest boards have grown amazingly fast. I started collecting interesting or quirky images into a poetry board.

To provoke interest in a cryptic way, we decided to start off by creating a ‘Watch This Space’ board. This is how we did it.

Denise has done a fantastic job on creating the board. In the solitude of a library on Athletics day, she has created a brick wall using A4 prints and pinned up a couple of poems to get the boys started.

I hope this board will take off and that creativity, love of poetry and poetic image will fill the space and give students the chance to contribute their graffiti. We’ll see. I’ll keep you posted.

Watch this if you work in a library

It’s been a busy start to the year. My posts have been few and far between but I’ve been more active in sharing things on Twitter and Scoop.it as well as our new LibGuides online resources. Oh well, here’s a video I think you might enjoy. I found it here.

Shakespeare on Facebook

View this document on Scribd

This made me laugh. Some of my favourite Hamlet statuses:

Hamlet wonders if he should continue to exist. Or not.
Hamlet added England to the Places I’ve been application.
Ophelia loves flowers. Flowers, flowers, flowers. Oh look, a river.

I wonder if other versions exist. This could be a creative writing idea. You actually do need to know about the play to be able to write the statuses.

Photo courtesy of Sakypaky on Flickr

 

Our Head English teacher is using Facebook in the hope that it will allow boys who don’t usually contribute in class to have a voice in front of their peers. How do you explain to cynics your choice of Facebook as a platform for learning?

Adolescents have moved to Facebook for networking and communication. I’ve become a Facebook addict myself. One of its offerings is a non-threatening form of communication with a potentially large group. Another is the satisfaction of belonging to a group. It’s more accepting and democratic than face-to-face interaction – it doesn’t judge you by your appearance, age or abilities. You can choose your own hours. You can stand back and observe, or you can jump in and lend your voice.

Transfer all this to a learning environment, and you have a potentially brilliant scenario. Those who are slower to respond to discussion will not be pushed out. There’s time to think, respond, edit. The teacher can set the stage and then creep back to give control to the students. Hopefully, students will feel more comfortable to ask questions, give suggestions.

Those of you who’ve been reading my blog will know that I believe we should use technology and social media in creative ways to facilitate learning and engage students. Not for its own sake, and never without good reason. Recently my webpage on the school library intranet has evolved into a blog ‘What’s new in fiction?’ I’m so over people saying things like ‘Oooh, a blog! You’re really into all that technology stuff!. Well, no… I’m not. I’m not into it. I’m just looking at what possibilities it has for engaged and creative learning and teaching. Here is a list of things I appreciate about the fiction blog when talking to classes about books and reading:

It evolves nicely; each post introduces a new book, author, series, etc.
I can use casual, relaxed language, with even some humour
I can include pictures (book covers, author photos, etc.) and videos (book or film trailers, interviews, etc.)
Colour, font size, layout make a difference
I can include links to author and series websites, transcripts, extracts, maps, etc.
There is choice in what the students read, how much, when, etc. Compare that to a teacher’s talk;
Authors become real people as students link to interviews, blogs that reveal everyday chat or writing processes, weaknesses, personality, background, musical tastes, etc.

(OK, the above points are not unique to blogs)
Here come the blog-specific points:

The students read and write comments, ranging from the non-threatening two-word comment, to the more elaborate or passionate response;

Reading peer comments is more satisfying than listening to teachers’ views (hence Facebook idea);

Other people in the school community can write a post or book review, eg. non-librarians (leading the students to the realisation that it’s not just librarians who read, and that reading is ipso facto not solely a librarian’s past-time;

These other people could be students of all ages, teachers, teachers who wouldn’t normally be associated with reading by students (don’t take offense, but I’m thinking sport teachers, science and maths teachers, male teachers…)

The combination of different readers, each with their own reading preferences, their own way of writing, provides students with a kaleidoscopic view of what’s interesting to read;

Students take ownership of the blog by writing or commenting, by suggesting content, and the school community becomes involved in what was previously a librarian’s domain.

Reading is actually discussing, arguing, agreeing and disagreeing, thinking, wondering, escaping; and you know all this because of the discussion;

Reading becomes collective, cool, broader (you realise that tastes vary greatly and it’s okay to have your preferences; reading can be student-directed and even fun.

What I regret is that my fiction blog is a closed blog on the school intranet. It serves its purpose, but misses out on further possibilities and connections.

What are your views about using Web 2.0 tools like blogs and Facebook in teaching and learning?

History of libraries – fascinating

the universal library Uffenbachiana 1729-1731

Originally uploaded by tsheko

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a brief hiatus, due predominantly to brain fag, having almost exhausted all things Web 2.0 (or is that, exhausted myself?) I decided to offer a morsel of general interest, to whit, a fascinating site detailing the early history of libraries. Have a look, too, at Survivor: History of the Library from History magazine.

Notice my reversion to bombastic and antiquated expression when I have nothing to say.

Wait, I do.

Things haven’t changed (much)#21

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/smrrZpbvI20" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Watch this government career film from 1946. Yes, the librarian's world has become a different place, but some things never change. Do you recognise the young man with the wide-eyed, hopeful face, confident that the librarian will make his book magically appear. 

Notice that all the librarians are women but the administrator is a man. 

Have a look at 11 other library YouTube videos

Finland, Finland, Finland (the country where I’d quite like to be)

Inari lake, Finland

Originally uploaded by enricod

I found an interesting blog connected to a Library 2.0 Symposium in Finland based in the Abo Akademi. If you can trust my limited Swedish, it’s a Swedish university in Finland. I found the statements about Web 2.0 in libraries interesting so I’ve included a paragraph:

‘The main goal of this project is to deepen the understanding of the interactive information source called Web 2.0 focusing on knowledge, experience, collaboration, and creation of new contents. The role of the information professionals and the libraries (Library 2.0) in this new dimension of the information chain is crucial. We need to put libraries in a stronger position allowing them to respond more quickly and flexibly to user needs, and to new challenges and development. Through this project we aim to develop the skills needed to manage the new information platform and foresee the development of needed competencies in the information society. The new techniques demand computer, social, and network competencies and may result in new kind of digital divide as well as creating new forms of information overload. We need to shift our understanding of the information society. It is not only a question of shaping order in information chaos but understanding how individuals shape their own personalized information spheres’.

I think this sums it up!

#7 Librarything

My Book – Bound Edge

Originally uploaded by kate e. did

I’ve been ‘cataloguing’ my books on Librarything for a while now. It appeals to my sense of order and love of storing data neatly. If I’m looking for book information for a talk, instead of looking through masses of separate word documents in folders saved all over the place, there it all is in one spot. Each book is instantly recognisable by the book cover – you can choose the exact cover you have in your library – and at a glance you can peruse for genre or keyword by looking at the tags. Bibliographic information is there. Two things I particularly like is that you can find out what others think about the book (social data – click on the icon of two peope under ‘shared’ on the right) and put in your own synopsis or review. Usually I choose one or more reviews from journals or blogs or whatever, and copy them in. Not sure if that’s a problem with copyright, but it’s just so that I’ve got everything at hand when I need to talk about a book. The comments by others is a good alternative to the more formal reviews of journals. Down to earth. It’s a place where you’re allowed to say you couldn’t stand the book.