Study Visit 1 - International School of Kuala Lumpur

My first study visit took place on 18th April at ISKL's Elementary School (http://www.iskl.edu.my/library/library.php) with teacher librarian, JE. I know J through the KL librarians' network we both belong to and admire the wealth of knowledge and experience she has in the field of teacher librarianship. J is passionate about reading and children's literature, and has worked for New Zealand's National Library.
J has been working at ISKL for eight months and explained that she has spent a large portion of her budget transforming the collection from a dated US-centric one to one with more of a modern international focus. She hopes the revamped collection will better suit the needs of the school community. J has also concentrated on updating the genre section, series and easy reading/chapter books. The collection is predominantly print, but they do have subscriptions to a few online resources. A cybrarian has been appointed to begin work in August and her role will be to push digital learning throughout the school. What an exciting appointment to the school!

The photo below shows the inviting area J has created for parents. She believes it's important for the community to feel welcome in the library.

The library has links on the school website, but as yet there is no reaching out to the school community through social networking as in a blog, Facebook page or Twitter. J sees the merits in using these technologies, but just hasn't had the time to set them up. It was good to hear about some of the initiatives taking place in the library:

• Creating different spaces for different purposes e.g. parents' section
• Bringing everything down to eye level
• Improving displays & signage
• Creating new collections e.g. chapter books, sophisticated picture books for older readers
• Including children in designing the Manga comic area “Heaven Sent” on iPads

I appreciate J's creative (and free) ways of providing on-site professional development for her staff. They role play interactions with staff and parents, spend 30 minutes a week in the “help” section of their library management system (Destiny) and she also encourages them to read a book a week of their choice.

This study visit helped me to see the similarities and differences between our two international school libraries. We are alike in that we have school management that support our programs, healthy budgets for materials and visiting authors, vision for how we want our libraries to improve and that we both spend the majority of our working days doing admin work. Major differences include number of qualified staff and size of budgets.

I found that there are more similarities than differences in our libraries, so I hope this means that we are both on the right track for providing first class services to our patrons.

Developing a Cybersafety Policy

My school does not currently have an Internet safety policy, so measures need to be taken to establish one. The last time our ICT policy was updated was 2005, so this also needs revising.
Three ways I think we can inform our school community's understanding of the need for a cybersafety policy are:
1. Establish a cybersafety team comprised of a representative from each area of the school community.
2. Audit both Primary & Secondary students to gauge the types of technology used and the frequency of use. Parents of younger students may be required to complete this on their behalf or teachers can ask the children verbally.
3. Create a policy which suits the needs of our clientele in this international setting.
Instead of being reactive (as we often are in my school), we need to be proactive and get the ball rolling in the right direction if we want our students to be thoughtful and responsible users of the Internet, now and in their future lives.

EARCOS 2012, Bangkok, Thailand

When asked if I would like to apply to attend the EARCOS 2012 conference in Bangkok at the end of March, I jumped at the opportunity to not only visit another vibrant Asian city, but to attend some really relevant PD for teacher librarians. Nine teachers from my school attended and it was wonderful to spend both professional and leisure time with teachers that I wouldn't regularly see in our huge school.
Fabulous keynote speeches were presented by Cathy Davidson, Steven Layne and Jason Ohler. Relevant and practical workshops were given by Doug Johnson, Jeff Utecht and Peggy Sharp. I came away from Jeff's sessions with loads of ideas about how to use Google docs more effectively and how to use a Facebook page to market my library.
I really loved these wise words from keynote speaker Dr. Steven Layne “Nothing works for every child, but something works for every child.” This really hit home about the importance of moulding the curriculum to fit the needs of our learners.

Tagxedo success

I have just tried out Tagxedo and am so happy that I did. It enabled me to easily create a funky, personalised image for me to use in my presentation for Assignment 1. So many times I had admired other people's Tagxedo images and thought that the tool was way beyond my capabilities. Judy O'Connell, my lecturer for ETL523, has been encouraging us to experiment with new online tools, pushing us into uncharted territory. This is one tool that I will definitely use with my students. So glad I took the plunge.

 http://www.tagxedo.com/

Digital Citizenship - some thoughts so far

I have done so much reading about DC this week that I feel like my brain is on the verge of bursting. Seriously, though, there is so much to consider when thinking about DC. The idea that keeps coming back to me is that DC must be a whole school approach - as the African proverb says "it takes a village to raise a child". If we want children to be technically savvy and have well developed social skills when using the Internet, then all stakeholders (students, parents, teachers and administrators) need educating. The whole school community needs to buy into reinforcing safe, ethical and responsible Internet habits in all students.

Oxley's description of some teenagers' reckless use of the Internet reinforces in my mind the fearlessness of teenagers (thinking here about the higher road death toll in this demographic). She described how teens are "unconcerned that posting personal info. online might negatively affect their future" (Oxley, 2011, p. 12). Teenagers need to be shown explicitly what the ramifications could be, now and in the future, for any thoughtless, irresponsible actions in the digital world.

Oxley, C. (2011). Digital citizenship: developing an ethical and responsible culture. Access. 25(3), 5-9.

Reflection on Assignment 1 - ETL503

Initially I thought this assignment seemed straightforward enough i.e. find 10 resources to adequately resource an area of the curriculum. Wow, did I learn a thing or two! First of all being that assignments and end of term parties don't go well together. 
Before starting this subject I had heard about learning objects from forum postings and postings on listservs I subscribe to, but couldn't really visualise what they were. Gaining access to The Learning Federation website was like striking oil. I found so many objects that my teachers could make use of and that are totally relevant to our units of study, but unfortunately overseas schools are not able to access the site. So disappointing.
Loertscher's notion that the users guide the selection of resources reinforced that I am on the right track in involving the students, teachers and parents in collection development. He also states that it's not about what a library owns but what it can make available to its users made perfect sense to me. My users love their printed books (I'm a TL in a primary school) but they also appreciate the flexibility of using digital resources as these can be accessed from home through the library's Moodle page. The difficult part for me is ensuring the resources are relevant, suitable and support the students' and teachers' curricula needs.
I enjoyed the challenge of sourcing new resources for the Year 5 topic "The Environment" and believe the teachers will be pleased with the results when they come to teach the unit in May. 

Website Evaluation

It turns out that the way I have been evaluating websites has been on a fairly superficial level. Having completed my first assignment for ETL501 Information Environment, I now know what to look for when evaluating websites for students' and teachers' use. In the past, my main criteria for evaluating a website was whether or not the content was useful and pitched at a level suitable for the intended audience. I also took into account how easy it was to navigate around the site and how visually stimulating it was for learners.
Now, however, when I attempt to evaluate a website, I am armed with a checklist consisting of educational, reliability and technical criteria, enabling me to critically analyse how suitable the website is for the intended audience and whether or not it supports the teaching and learning taking place.