TL Captain's Blog: my learning journey

TL Captain's Blog. Stardate 2020.305 LIBE 477 - Inquiry Blog Post #4:  Developing World Libraries / Mobile devices Photo credit: Mauro Pimentel. Image source . I spent a lot of time researching this inquiry post and had some trouble coming up with how mobile devices helped libraries in the few countries that I tried, however, then I came across this story and was so inspired! Lua lives in the Tabajaras favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Favelas are impoverished  Brazilian slums on the edges of major cities, some with limited access to sanitation, technology and education.  Lua used her Grandmother's cell phone to log on to Facebook and put out a request for book donations for her new library that she wanted to start. She also pretended to be her Grandmother and messaged the president of the local community association asking for use of some space in the community centre.  She got both. She receives around 1,500 books a day and has run out of room, so she is goin...

TL Captain's Blog. Startdate 2020.301. LIBE 477 - Inquiry Blog #3: Supporting Teachers’ ICT Curriculum and Pedagogy: On-going Professional Development In our district, we have something called PLC (professional learning communities) that meet each Monday for an hour after early dismissal. This is supposed to be collaboration time with other staff on common goals that are set out at the beginning of the year and take the form of an inquiry.  I have always joined another inquiry that I've been interested in and never headed one on my own. After finishing this course, and completing my website on the inquiry research process, I feel that I will have many things to share with my staff around inquiry, accessing resources, the types of resources that our district has, and fun and new presentation websites and apps for student and teacher use.  Once I get into a LC, I would like to host weekly PLC's around those topics to help teachers become comfortable with what we have, how to ...

TL Captain's Blog. Stardate 2020.298. Image Source: Pixabay Lesson 5 I really liked the statement that "instruction on information skills and the use of reference materials should involve a collaborative effort by the classroom teacher who is the subject expert, and the teacher-librarian, the information specialist" (LIBE 467, Lesson 5) because it underscores the importance of collaboration with TLs and classroom teachers, but also because I feel that it takes the pressure off of me. Realizing that I need to be the information specialist and not the subject expert on every grade level and every topic is a huge relief. I feel that sometimes I think that as TLs, we should know the answer to every question asked by students and staff, and we should know everything about everything when we are offering to collaborate with teachers, but the reminder that we are finding and constructing the answers WITH the students and our coworkers is important.  Lesson 6 really got me thinki...

TL Captain's Blog. Stardate 2020.291 Inquiry Blog  #2:  Developing my ICT Skills and Pedagogy Image Source: Pixabay I know that Twitter is a very popular way for educators and education experts to share information and connect with one another.  I am on Twitter, but it's not something that I check everyday like Instagram .  I tend towards the visually appealing Instagram, as  I find Twitter to be very dense (even though the snippets are so small). There is just so much to scroll through, so much coming at you, so much to weed through, and so many links to check out. I never feel like I have the time to engage with it properly, and when I save things "for later" I never go back to check them out... one of my biggest technological failings.  I have a personal and professional Twitter , and I think that I need to clean out my personal account or perhaps just switch to the professional one, as my personal one is too full of (American) politics, news, and argum...

LIBE 467 Assignment 1: Evaluation of a Reference Work Image Source Part 1: Old Resource Review - The World Book encyclopedia set, 2012 The encyclopedia set that is currently housed in the library resource area is a 2012 World Book encyclopedia . While this may seem like a fairly recent publication, 2012 was 8 years ago, and much of the content will be outdated. At the very least it does not contain new entries of major events that have happened in the 8 years since publication (e.g. the Covid-19 pandemic).  The following rubric contains questions that will help to evaluate the relevance of this resource to our school and our students. Reference Resource Evaluation Purpose & Relevancy  What is the content scope of this resource? What is the purpose of the resource? Is this resource relevant to students and staff in regards to inquiry-based learning, projects, and/or personal interest? Is the information that the resource contains unique? Is it related to other works? Is it ...

TL Captain's Blog. Stardate 2020.283 Inquiry Post #1 - Fostering Reading Cultures in Schools Currently, in my classroom (secondary math and science) the extent of my reading culture is that we have silent reading time at the beginning of each block for 20 minutes, and I model my thinking around how to read a science textbook.  After reading some things from my LIBE courses, I am going to start reading during that time also, to model the importance of reading to my students, but also to show that it's enjoyable! Then I can make current book suggestions to them once I'm done! I am also going to book a time to take my class down to the library, not just to sign out silent reading books, but to have the librarian do a tour of the library sections and help students to locate books that they may want to read or are at their level.  When I was in a TL position, obviously much more of my day was dedicated to fostering reading cultures in my school, however, I was split between thre...

TL Captain's Blog. Stardate 2020.277. Reading Review #3 My takeaways from my research and explorations so far is that there are a million and one sites that contain information on information literacy skills and the inquiry process, however, I never found one complete site with everything included. This is probably a good thing since I intend to start creating one for the final project! After mapping out everything that I hope to include, I can only say that the project will be a teachable inquiry process framework that will be filled in and fleshed out in the months after this course, as there is A LOT that I want to include, and some of it will be content creation if I am not happy with what I find out there... which will have to come later.  The web searching that I did was actually a little overwhelming. Every university has their own plagiarism and bibliography pages, so I will just have to choose one and go with it once I get to planning that lesson. Many personal/professiona...