ETL505 Module 1 - Activity 1

ACTIVITY 1 - list attributes about the information resource - reflect on which were useful and when in regards to finding, identifying, selecting, obtaining the resource

Instead of the Hider text, I decided to try to find a picture book that I know we have in my library but couldn't remember the title. A beautiful book that I want to recommend to a parent whose father has recently died. I was therefore looking for a specific resource.

Attributes known:
Title: partial - I know it has something about a tree
Format: Book - picture book
Date published: In the last year I think - will search between 2010-2013
Subject: bereavement - grandma I think
Language: English

I did a search initially in the Public Library of SA catalogue but did not hit the particular resource that I was looking for. I was able to use the attributes to narrow the number of hits so that this could be identified.

I then did a Google Books search. Once again adding the attributes in advanced search to reduce the number of resources. I was able to quickly identify the specific resource. Having the cover image in the listing really helped me identify the resource quickly so I was able to select it to discover how it may be obtained.

I then linked to Trove to see if the book was available to borrow at any local public libraries - not in SA.

I then linked to see if I could obtain the title for purchase. When I did this step in Trove I was not very successful and so I returned to Google Books - here I was able to quickly discover it was available from a range of online stores including Booktopia, A&R, Fishpond.

For those interested, the book is . . . (taken from fishpond)
Title: The Wattle Tree
Author: John Bell
Illustrator: Ben Wood
Format: Hardback, 32 pages
Other Information: colour illustrations
Published In: Australia, 14 August 2012
Publisher: Lothian Children's Books
ISBN: 0734412916
EAN: 9780734412911
Dimensions: 28.0 x 26.0 x 0.0 centimetres (0.46 kg)
Age Range: 5-9 years

Library Placement -Week 1

What a long time between posts - it is obvious that  blogging is not my preferred communication or reflection tool. What can I say, I prefer two-way reflection and bouncing of ideas. I'll have to work harder on this in the coming months.

I am half-way through my 2 week placement at the Hamra Community Library and I thought I better put down a few of my thoughts and ideas . . .

With whom have I worked?
Over the last week I have worked with a wide range of different people including the head of collection manager and some of the managers of particular areas - e.g. e-resources, children's library, youth library (teens), magazines, puzzles and games,mobile library, Book Club organiser. As the community workers also work alongside the library staff, I have also worked with a few while supporting the  holiday activity program.

Tasks
So far, while I have been reshelving resources everyday, I haven't actually worked on the main desk but am mainly working on tasks in the back area. These include:

• sorting and reducing the parenting packs from about 150 to 25. As they have not been reviewed in many years, they need to be checked for accuracy and relevancy. Each kit contains a picture book, parent reference book and DVD. The reason for so drastically reducing the number of kits available is that most are not being accessed and the space is to be used in other ways. I have weeded and then debited items through the library system, and am currently repackaging the remaining kits.
• working through problem items and matching resources, locating them in the collecting problem items where possible, and removing unmatched items from the library system.
• supporting the children's and youth holiday program. This has involved icing cupcakes, playing European handball and doing Hip Hop dance.
• going out with the Mobile Library and selecting new children's resources from the main collection to go go out in the bus.
• changing the GMD in catalogue records for Book Club resources to ensure consistency with other council libraries.
• processing board games before placing them in the main collection.
• discussing ideas with the children's librarian as to how the children's area can be rejuventated.

Ideas for my school library so far

• I really like the idea of placing a "New in 2013" label on the spine of new resources. I believe that this is will be good for people in terms of access, I believe it will also be extremely helpful when weeding.
• Further reduce the non-fiction area.
• Have a small amount of "For Sale" items that have been weeded from the collection. This money can go to the school in Senegal that we support.
• develop a selection team that can assist me when choosing new items for the library.

Other Comments

• It has been much easier to focus on and complete a task without interruptions - not everything to everyone like it seems to be at school.
• While people are responsible for set areas, there is still collaboration and bouncing of ideas between them.
• Far less flexibility in cataloguing. eg. the required changes made to the book club records have made them less identifiable but still needed to occur.
• The children's library have just created series boxes - much the same as the ones I introduced 3 years ago - nice to see I am on track!
• Reshelving books in non-fiction to 5 decimal places at times is a headache - I'm so glad we don't do this.
• They are far more ruthless with weeding resources than what I have been. While I am not going to go this far, I think I can afford to be more ruthless.
• Horizon seems a more flexible cataloguing system than Metamarc. However, with the introduction of the "one-card' public library system, they will be changing soon.

Let's see what next week brings.

Assignment 2 - started finally

Lots of people have been having lots of questions about Assignment 2. I'll be honest, I haven't done a lot of thinking about it yet - unfortunately other things have had to take priority - i.e. Learnlink. As I am also the IT coordinator, I have had a huge part to play in the transition from EduConnect to Learnlink in our school. After having to manually install IE8 on at least 85 computers with our part time techie (wouldn't install through group policy!) on Wednesday, we transitioned to the new system on Thursday. What this will mean and the troubleshooting it will involve will only begin coming to light on Monday when everyone goes to use it!!! The techie isn't back until Wednesday so you know  who they'll be asking! Fun!!

Anyway, I started to feel worried that I hadn't done much towards my assignment and so I have had a bit of a play in WikiSpaces and Weebly. I must say that, like others, I have found Weebly a little easier to play around with and modify and so I think I'll be going with that one. I have been looking to create it as more of a library online site and so will need to do some more playing to see if I can get it to work and still fulfill the requirements for the assignment. Tomorrow's job after doing last week's and hopefully this week's forum posts.

The information process

Thought I better do a post so I have pasted my activities from the week. I must say the NSW and WA websites that support TLs are great - nice to see TLs being supported in other states! 

Activity 1a: This may or may not be relevant but in SA, Year 7s are still in Primary School. No matter the age, I nearly always get students to brainstorm prior knowledge, ideas/questions for inquiry – individually, in pairs, small groups or as a class. With older classes I often get students to think, pair, share and then record key ideas on post it notes. Then they get into groups of 4 to combine ideas and group them etc. I use post-its because I find kids are more likely to record all their ideas and not feel as worried about spelling as it isn’t in their books. Also, it allows for easy movement and regrouping as they discuss their ideas with others. I generally take a photo of their work that they can put in their books as a record.

In terms of teaching them, early in the year I do a whole class brainstorm – either with post-its or recording ideas on the interactive whiteboard using Easiteach. (I have just been given a new board and now have Notebook but haven’t really played with it yet.) Once we have a whole list of ideas or words, we then go about grouping them – connecting ideas and creating sub-groups with headings. We also end up with lines joining similar or linked concepts.

I know that there are a lot of ways you can do this on computers but with our unreliable and frustrating computer situation at the moment, it is far more time-efficient and productive to either do a class concept map on the interactive whiteboard or use the post-its.

Activity 1b: Creating the questions prior to searching gives students direction in terms of the kinds of information for which they are searching. Experience has shown me that without questions, they just start to record everything. I think the questions or headings are important as they provide the map or directions for the search. Also, I get students to identify key words and then synonyms they are scanning for. Eg. eat, food, diet may be words that you look for to find out about what something eats.

When creating questions, I always involve students, no matter the age. Even JP kids have ideas about what they would like to find out about a topic. I then use their language and ideas within the questions that are required. Sneaky but it helps students to feel they have some say and control over what they are learning.

One way I try to teach students to create good questions is through discussing and modelling fat and skinny questions. I also limit the number of questions and so they need to gather as much relevant information as possible from each question. I also focus on the question words Who, What, When, Where, Why and How and also often start with the phrase I wonder . . .  This seems to help students to create questions rather than statements. We also do a lot of sharing and one group of Year 7s this year are really beginning to give advice to and support each other.

Activity 2: I haven’t really explicitly taught students about creating a search strategy. I guess in very general terms, I try to touch-base with students/pairs regularly to check where they are at, gaps in their information etc. This is definitely something that I will be looking to incorporate more next year - starting with the upper primary classes. At the moment I tend to give students at least 3 websites to start.

Activity 3: I have used hoax sites to identify the need to critically analyse the authenticity of a website. Earlier this year I used the Explorers one. I also expect students to record information from a variety of sources and so they have to cross-check their information. I also deconstruct at least 3 websites on the same topic - discuss pros cons, etc and then have ranking lines for most useful, least useful. Students have to justify their which always sparks a fierce discussion between students. I generally just prompt or guide the discussion. Very interesting and informative to see the weight students place on the appearance, amount of text, images etc as this guides me in how to support student learning. I also regularly model and talk out loud my thought processes when assessing a websites.

Activity 4: I have found that the range of ability for students to reflect on their learning and transfer to new situations is huge. It is an area that I think sometimes gets forgotten as we tend to finish the learning and then move onto the next thing. In saying that though, I have more recently been doing more short term inquiries – 1-2 sessions – and then noting and recording key learning both after that session and then again before the next one.  Still something I need to work on though.

Web 2.0

While I think there is great potential in Web 2.0 tools, issues with school computer infrastructure and filtering systems will need to be addressed before schools can truly explore these.

I also think it is crucial to keep in mind that like any resource, a web 2.0 is a tool and so its use has to be purposeful - it needs to be the best tool for the job. I am not into using technology for the sake of being able to say that you're using it.

Over the next few weeks, I am planning to explore edublogs and seedwiki to see if these better suit my needs - I obviously use blogger and have tried wikispaces without a complete success. I am not a big blogger and I feel it is not really my thing. I feel very disconnectd and miss the connection with and feedback from others (though I completely acknowledge that I am at fault here!) Also, I don't really think I have anything that important or exciting to share!!

As for some of the other tools, at the moment I am holding off to see what the new education department system/portal will have to offer. We are required to use it so it seems to me that it makes good sense to try to use it if it can do what I want.

One question that I have that is is a bit out there is whether some aspects of technology, is enabling people to disconnect with others - example of this is the many occasions when I have seen people 'doing lunch' but seems to spend most of their time not talking but mucking around on their phones or iPads. I am not anti these tools, not in the slightest, but maybe something to think about!

Effective Search Strategies

I hate to say it but Google has been more reliable in finding relevant sites.
I must admit that Google has allowed me to become a bit lazy when searching - I get hits even when I don't deserve to. While I am not really comfortable with Google developing a profile on the types of things I search, it does mean that I am more likely to get hits - sites appropriate for teaching and students.

One problem that we are currently having at work is that there seems to be a conflict with Google and our school filtering system (other schools are having the same problem) - we randomly get Error 403 or 404 when using Google or trying to open links off Google. Very frustrating!! This does open the door to other search engines though.

I had to do a similar activity when I did a Web2.0 online course last year. Here is the link if you are interested in what I found then.
http://sakepuss.blogspot.com.au/2011/10/week-8-syndicated-search.html

Website Evaluation

I have used Schrock’s 5Ws (modified to suit my students) with Year 4/5/6/7 students at school. It was a real eye-opener for me to realise that students just don’t even think to check whether a website is relevant. I think what made me start teaching website evaluation was when, many years ago when I was doing a unit on Australian artists, a bright Year 7 boy found a website on his artist Tom Roberts and diligently started to take notes from it. He didn’t even notice that it was a genealogy website for a different Roberts family and that this Tom Roberts was born much more recently. Amazing!

One way that I have highlighted the importance of website evaluation and cross-checking information this year was with the site http://allaboutexplorers.com/about/

This website has been created by teachers and has questions on different explorers and two information sources for each – with information than doesn’t match. It also has three reading levels which was a plus. I tried using it in a few different ways but the I found the best was when I had one pair using one site, and another pair using the other. The pairs then had to come together to write their answers. I thought one group was going to have a complete meltdown before I told them I had been designed that way on purpose. A very useful activity, but I won’t be able to use it again for a few years.

Another aspect of website evaluation I think it is also important to note is that not all teachers can confidently evaluate websites. I am finding that when I go through website evaluation strategies, processes with students, I often have teachers commenting that they hadn't thought to look at websites in that way. That's not to say that I am an expert - definitely a learner as well. I guess I find it interesting that teachers, who so carefully select print texts, don't evaluate digital texts in the same way.