Not only am I nearing the end of this course but also my LIBE diploma. I have found this course to be particularly difficult and at times extremely frustrating because of the sheer number of reflective blog posts. It was not until recently that I could see I was struggling because I was having to figure out, articulate and communicate my core values for our LLC. Throughout this course and my previous courses I have learned so much and have been challenged, but up until this particular course I have not spent a great deal of time reflecting on that learning. The timing of this course could not have been better as I have had to reflect on everything I have learned and come up with core values that reflect our Library Learning Commons, and I am evaluating whether what we do and the decisions we make support these values. Although I found this course to be frustrating at times, I also feel that I have a better understanding of my core values and therefore I am more aware of my role and where I should be focusing my energy.
Prior to this course and my opportunity to reflect I felt that there were so many different areas that I needed to work on in order to meet the learning needs of my school. How was I going to incorporate ICT, develop 21st century skills, foster literacies, empower learners? Could I truly call our library a LLC if there was still so much work to do? I was trying to address all of these issues in isolation and was feeling pretty overwhelmed. The reflective process that I experienced and developed throughout this course made me realize that it is through collaboration and inquiry I am able to address these needs meaningfully and effectively.
My Final Vision Project represents the core values for the Dr. Knox Middle School LLC. It is through collaboration and inquiry learning that we create the environments, foster the relationships and provide the supports so that all learners can thrive in the 21st century. This project was created to demonstrate to others how a LLC can play a key role in changing a learning culture in a school. My Final Vision Project is an attempt to communicate how we are doing this.
As a result of the reflecting process and this project I already feel more confident about how to help my school incorporate inquiry. I feel that my knowledge and understanding has grown along with my ability to articulate and justify why it is so important that we change the way we teach and learn. Whether it is through the LLC or my collaborative relationships, I feel better equipped to help and support my school community. I am excited to continue my inquiry journey while I support my community on theirs.
After the frustrations of last week I am beginning to see the "Light at the end of the Tunnel". I received some great feedback from Aaron and some of my classmates and from this I was able to think a little differently about my Final Vision Project. Prior to this week I struggled with communicating how collaboration and inquiry play such an important role in our school library learning commons. I tried making a video using Movie Maker and was happy that I was quickly able to learn how to use it, but I was not able to communicate clearly everything that I wanted to share. I then created a Powtoon presentation and again acquired some new tech skills, but the content of the video was not what I wanted to communicate. At this point I was getting really frustrated as I am sure is evident in my last two blog posts. I had spent so much time on both of these presentations and neither of them was going to cut it as a Final Vision Project. The feedback that I received in the last few weeks really helped because it made me realise that I am really passionate about being a TL and I work really hard to help and support staff and students with their learning. I am always ready and willing to collaborate in any way I can and my school knows this. The trouble I have is that I do not like to talk about myself and do not really like to have the attention focused on me, I just like to do the work. So when I was asked to present to a group of teachers and administrators I think this was why I was struggling so much with not being able to communicate my vision. Aaron's words were very encouraging: "You are the best tool to share your enthusiasm, excitement, and passion for this project." This made me realize that an amature video is not going to communicate the passion and hard work that is needed to create collaborative learning environments where inquiry learning flourishes. The best way to communicate this is through me. I am in the process of creating a Google Slideshow that will help me communicate how I use Collaborative Inquiry to meet the 21st century learning needs of my school community. The presentation is a framework to support and enhance my presentation about the work that has been done through our LLC and the impact that it having on everyone involved. This has been a very frustrating process for me but I have come to the realization that I can help communicate to others the critical role a Teacher Librarian plays in supporting a school’s learning needs. I have not really spent a lot of time advocating for TLs or communicating to others the importance of a thriving LLC because my school already values our LLC and the work we do together. But I realize that this is not the case for all schools and perhaps I can help others by presenting how we use Collaborative Inquiry to support our school community.
This week has been a frustrating week as I feel that I am "spinning my wheels" and not getting anywhere. I have decided to take a step back and try starting again but from a different angle. I am hoping that I can tie in some of the previous work that I have done because I have spent so much time on this already and I need to move forward.
What I wanted to communicate was how collaborative inquiry has been the focus of our LLC this year and how it is having such a positive impact on so many different areas of our school. Through collaboration and inquiry teachers are working together to create learning environments that are not only innovative and but also support and enrich student learning. The shift from teachers and students working in isolation to them collaborating and sharing is changing how our school learns. The LLC is a big part of driving and supporting this change.
I was asked by my administration to present to a group of teachers and administrators from another district and share what our LLC has been doing to support the learning in our school. I began preparing two different presentations, which I shared in my previous post, but neither really works for this project. I feel like I have so much I want to share but I am struggling with how best to present this. I want to use technology in innovative ways and have already learned some useful skills while using Powtoon and Moviemaker, but neither are working for me and this project.
I have restarted by going back to the "Vision of the Future" and framing it around transforming a Library to a Library Learning Commons. For the past two years I have been using the Leading Learning document to help set goals, guide my decisions and document growth about our transformation. This year has been a very exciting year because our school has embraced collaboration and inquiry learning and as a result the Library Learning Commons has seen significant growth in all of the standards of practice. These are the key elements that I would like to communicate in my vision.
I have started to create a slide show that attempts to communicate this. Here is what I have so far:
I have so much that I would like to share about what we are doing in our LLC and where we are heading but feel limited because I am trying to make it a visual presentation. Right now I am thinking that maybe I should just write my vision as a document. Anyway this is where I am currently at. Works Cited Canadian Association of School Librarians, Leading learning: Standards of practice for school library learning commons in Canada, 2014. http://llsop.canadianschoollibraries.ca/ Parallel Studios. (2016) Unsatisfying. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/189919038
For my post this week I will be writing about where I am at with my final “Vision of the Future”. I will start with what I am trying to communicate through my project and then demonstrate where I am at with my project as well as some of the problems that I am encountering. I have been asked by my administration to put together a presentation that demonstrates the collaborative role of a teacher librarian focusing specifically on a recent inquiry project involving a humanities teacher at my school. We will be presenting this to a group of teachers and administrators from a nearby district. I decided that I wanted to push myself and create some sort of video presentation because a big part of what we wanted to communicate was the important role that teacher librarians have in supporting teachers with collaborative planning and teaching. This includes creating innovative learning environments and focusing on learning that has high student engagement. We want to show the video to give them an idea of what we have done and then give them an opportunity to ask questions. Because I have no real video experience except for using Powtoon once before, this is a bit of a stretch for me! I began using Movie Maker but quickly decided that this would not be a good option because most of the visuals I have are photos and from what I understand it uses video clips. I then started using Powtoon but I am not really sure if this is going to work as well as I thought. Here is what I have so far.
I also worked with with our District Instructional Leadership team to create a video that explained how our inquiry project used the 7 OECD Principles of Learning. This was presented on November 3 in a session presented during our most recent NID. Here is the video:
Where I am having problems is neither videos seem to represent the “Vision of the Future” that I think is necessary for this project. I wonder if this is because I am limited to the photos and videos that I have. I also wonder if part of the problem is that we are right in the middle of this Inquiry Unit and will not be finished before this assignment is due. Maybe I am overthinking it and I am trying to include too much in the video. Maybe I include one or combine both videos and provide a written explanation. I feel that I have hit a bit of a wall with this project, and it could also be that I am trying to create one video for two different reasons. I would love some feedback. Maybe it is fine, I do have a tendency to overthink things. I am hoping that looking at where others are at in this project might help or perhaps some feedback might help. This image sums up my state of mind at the moment. I am clearly in the middle.
For my blog this week I am going to share the success that I have had with collaborative planning this month and demonstrate how using inquiry has helped with the integration of ICT. Up until now have I have been struggling with how best to help teachers integrate ICT into student learning, but I realize that using the “Model of Inquiry” make it easy to implement and supports and enhances student learning.
When I took over the library just over two years ago my goal was to transform what was once an underfunded/underutilized library into a Library Learning Commons that supports staff and students, and also promotes collaboration and inquiry. Knowing that I needed some direction I worked with some district leadership staff, as well as some other librarians in my district, and we decided that we would use the Leading Learning framework to guide the transformation. I decided to narrow my focus on one area of the Leading Learning Standards: Facilitating Collaborative Engagement to Cultivate and Empower a Community of Learners. To be honest, I felt a wave of relief as soon as I narrowed my focus because I knew that I could not transform everything at once. I also think that I became more organized, efficient and better able to prioritize my time in the library.
I set out to try and establish new collaborative partnerships through the library. I already had continuing and healthy collaborative relationships with many teachers with whom I have worked with in the past when I was a teacher at my school. I was determined to try and reach out to staff that I had not worked with before. As a result, over the past two years I have had several collaborative relationships where I was nudging them toward inquiry, but up until this year had not had the opportunity to collaborate using true inquiry from start to finish.
Using the newly gained knowledge from this course as well as another I am taking, I reached out to a teacher that like me was really wanting to transform a unit of study into a true inquiry unit. This grade 8 humanities teacher was not happy with the traditional teacher-centered short story unit that had been taught the same way for many years using the same traditional stories. We started by setting up each student with a Google account and we decided to start using Google classroom to communicate with students.
We then began to plan an inquiry unit that focused on student engagement, was student-centered and met the learning needs of every student in these classes. I write about the process of curating our resources in a previous blog post. We used Stripling's model of inquiry to guide us through every step of this planning process:
We also utilized our instructional leadership team to help us through this collaboration and they have been able to commit to supporting us through this entire process. Using GAFE has made communication and resource sharing highly efficient and effective. So with our unit collaboration team, our inquiry unit plan, our resources and our ICT we felt that the only things missing was the environment to introduce the unit.
Our collaboration team felt that we needed to use the library space and wanted to do something "outside of the box". We called our inquiry unit "Experiencing Story" and wanted our students to participate in "story tasting" where they would choose from a menu of short stories that were all online. They would have iPads that they would take with them and choose stories, in a variety of media formats, that corresponded to the different environments. We had 4 themes: Zombie/Horror/Crime, Relationships, True Stories and Dystopia. We then decided we would set up the library into 4 themed areas with props, food and a created atmosphere.
Zombie/Horror/Crime was set up like a spooky graveyard and zombie eyeballs and cranberry juice served in blood red cups were available to eat and drink.
True Stories was set up like a coffee shop with tea and hot chocolate to drink, candies to eat and lamps, comfy chairs and blankets to create a warm environment.
Dystopia was set up in a book room with space like candies to eat, glow bracelets, fiber optic lighting, a strobe light/disco ball machine and space music to create the mood.
Relationships was set up like a romantic picnic with cookies, roses, chocolates and green foliage wrapped with white lights.
We really wanted our students to enjoy their experience so we did not tell them anything before the tasting and we only asked them to do the following on their iPads in google docs/google slides while they participated:
You are a critic for this tasting and your task is to collect evidence of your experience. You can collect evidence on an electronic device, use voice to text, write notes on paper, take pictures etc. Try to include your 5 senses in your evidence. Jot down what you are feeling throughout this experience, as it will be helpful to you later.
How you’re feeling about the experiences, the images, the text, the props, the food, the atmosphere. Can you go further and say why you are feeling this?
You must sample at least two stories from each station. If there are different media forms (text,audio,video) available for a story, try to ‘taste’ them all!
We were very fortunate to have our 3 members of our instructional team with us to document the book tasting for 3 different grade 8 classes. They asked only a few questions and recorded their observations and the student comments that were heard during the experience:
Notes from Block A Students:
“Hey! There’s hot chocolate!”
“In a second. I want to finish.” (Student pointed to the story they were watching and did not leave to get hot chocolate.)
Student paused their story to take a picture of the station. “This is the best.”
One student checked all the story links first to preview the stories before deciding on a story.
“I can’t believe it. That ending.”
“That’s, uh, an interesting story.”
“Which one did you read?”
“The graphic content one.”
“I really like it. I like that there are groups. You can pick which ones you like, and you don’t have to read them all.”
“Dystopia, here I come!”
“I read the one that was hard to say. I liked it. The ending was good.”
“Yeah, I DID NOT expect the ending.”
“I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“This story is so corrupt. She’s cheating on both of them.”
“It’s a love story… through dance!”
“I can’t believe she went with him. She was totally in love with the other guy!”
“ I have a cousin who is transgender.”
“Yeah, and you have a friend who is, too.”
Notes from Block C Students
“This is really neat. I get more out of the story.”
“It’s neat to think about experiencing a story with more of your body.”
“Yeah, the lights just add to the ambiance. It makes you never want to leave.”
“I really like the story. I like how creepy it is.
“Yeah, I like the ending when…”
“Shhh! I haven’t gotten there yet!”
“Oh, right.” (Student whispered to me so that the story wouldn’t be ruined for the other student).
“This whole experience right now, I like it. The different spaces - it makes it like you are in the story.”
“I like the one from crime. I can’t pronounce it. I’ve never read a story where the main character is the bad one.”
Notes from Block D Students
“I don’t understand why this is a song.”
“Don’t you think a song can be a story?”
“Yeah, actually I think you can tell a really good story through song.”
A student jumped while reading a story and wrote something down on their paper immediately. I asked what happened. “It was really shocking, this story. I wasn’t expecting this.” Showed me the part. “It is just, like, super creepy. I am interested.” “What do you think of this experience?” “It’s good.”
“Yeah, but I mean, like she said at the beginning, what does the experience make you feel?”
“I think sound comes into play. It adds to it.”
“The music makes me calm.”
“The lava lamp makes me happy.”
“I’m not sure these stories are for me, but I like the atmosphere here.” (student then moved to another space).
“I really like this. There are so many short stories. If you don’t like one, you don’t have to read it all.”
“I liked it. We could read what we wanted to read. We could also be comfortable.”
After the students finished their two day “Story Tasting” we wanted the students to take the evidence that they collected and reflect on their experience. We decided that that we wanted students to using blogging as a way to communicate their learning throughout this unit. This would allow them to reflect, invite other students to read and comment on their blogs, to get teacher feedback and invite parents to read about their learning journey if the student wanted. Because we were already using GAFE, Blogger seemed like a great fit. I did a 15min tutorial and the students were up and running with their blogs.
Our "Experiencing Story" inquiry unit has already created quite a stir at my school as many students who were not in these classes have heard about the experience and want to know how they can have a similar experience. Teachers are also asking questions and I have a group of three teachers who want to collaborate using inquiry as soon as I am available, which is fantastic. I did not anticipate that this story tasting would be such a great way to promote inquiry and seamlessly integrate ICT.
This project has really made me realize the power of inquiry learning and collaborative relationships. I have learned so much in this course and through this experience and I am not even done yet! With my focus on collaboration and Inquiry I am able to incorporate the many ICT tools and skills that I have learned in each of the modules in this course. I also feel that developing collaborative relationships with my community through inquiry has fit very nicely with this course. I know that this will continue to be my goal for this year and I can't wait to see how the rest of this inquiry unit goes. I also look forward to building more collaborative relationship within my school.
Works Cited
Canadian Association of School Librarians, Leading learning: Standards of practice for school library learning commons in Canada, 2014. http://llsop.canadianschoollibraries.ca/ (retrieved Oct. 28 , 2017)
