Supporting Teachers’ ICT Curriculum and Pedagogy: How can I be part of my colleagues' ongoing PD?

This idea of Teacher-Librarians as technology leaders is not my first thought when picturing a school librarian.  In fact, none of the schools in which I have worked have employed a librarian that was considered a technology leader. While I haven't seen this concept in action (except for our esteemed leader, Aaron Mueller!), I love this new, changing face of the teacher-librarian.

What does a TL do?

Image courtesy of: https://anethicalisland.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/27-things-your-teacher-librarian-does/

As asked in our assignment, "How can we, as educators and Teacher-Librarians share what we’ve learned with our wider communities of practices?"

Firstly, I have plans to keep up with my blog even after this class is done (or perhaps starting a new one but continue the act of blogging).  I think it is a great way to expand on articles that we find linked on Twitter or begin conversations about topics of interest.  If we're meeting regularly with a Personal Learning Community, we can work with this group to choose topics to research and each write about.  I think that blogging is a great place to begin sharing what we've learned with a wider community.

BUT, What are the ICT needs of the communities in my own school?  As a community of DL teachers, I think the specialized ICT needs are (but not limited to) the following: (1) tech to keep us in touch with our students/help us assess/document learning etc., (2) innovative ideas for connecting students to one another, (3) keeping students safe online, and (4) finding the best resources for students to use in their learning.  Working with a community of parents who school at home, their needs are quite similar to those that I listed for DL teachers.

Our current solution for meeting the ICT needs of our DL teachers is that we have people on staff who create "how to" videos for all the programs that we use and these are posted in our Moodle Staff Room.  In the summer, admin provides a weekly online workshop called "Tech Tuesday" about a specific tool that we should/could be incorporating into our practice.  Twice per year, we have two-day conferences in which we have the opportunity to learn more about various topics. These are usually whole-group sessions.(we have about 25 teachers in my department)  

The current solution for meeting the ICT needs of our parents is minimal.  All I can think of is that there is a column in the monthly newsletter about new technology.  

The question here is "What can I do differently, or new, this year that better supports the development of our department's ICT needs?"

(1) Tech to keep us in touch with our students/help us assess/document learning etc. 

I think the biggest challenge that I face in sharing what I'm learning with my DL teacher community (or that they have in sharing with me) is the overwhelming feeling that one cannot master one. more. technological. tool.  We are constantly inundated with awesome suggestions from colleagues about what they are using and sometimes I think, "I just can't learn one more thing right now."  I don't think I attended any Tech Tuesday online workshops this past summer because of this feeling.  How do we overcome this?  

One idea is letting teachers choose their interests for these 2-day conferences that we attend. Those of us interested in leading a workshop could share our workshop idea with admin. Then they could create a list of workshop possibilities.  Teachers could vote on workshops that they would be interested in and then these would be offered at our conferences.  Here's a great article that I found about how to design a good workshop.

Image courtesy of © iStockphoto MichaelJay

My other main idea that relates to this topic is described below #4.  **Getting bored by reading about my very specific audience that doesn't relate to you?  Skip down to that section!  ;) 

(2) Innovative ideas for connecting students to one another

This is probably more of my personal idea and not necessarily my colleagues as it stems from Why School? by Will Richardson.  I would definitely like to lead a workshop summarizing Why School for staff in order to start discussions about how to implement Richardson's concepts for "new school" into our DL programs.  I found this great list of the best student collaboration tools and the number one tool is VoiceThread which I have just started using (and loving) this year.  Especially as we begin to plan 2015/16 using BC's new curriculum, this would be a great time to begin this conversation about "doing real work for real audiences".  

(3) Keeping students safe online

As we begin to think about connecting students to "real audiences" as I wrote about above, it's important to find the best ways to proactively teach parents to teach their children to protect themselves online and learn about digital citizenship.  Some my top finds in this topic are all on www.CommonSenseMedia.org.  Here's an example of the awesome resources that I have already found on this site.  My idea on how to incorporate this into ongoing PD is described below #4.

(4) Finding the best resources for students to use in their learning

It would be great to begin creating something that connects our DL teachers and homeschooling parents with the specific resources that we have in our school's resource library. Parents and teachers can only see what we have in library through title alone in our current search engine.  It would be so helpful to host mini-workshops or even create workshop-style videos in which one talks about a variety of our library resources relating to one topic.  For example, if you were wanting to learn about rivers and oceans, what resources are in stock?  What do they look like?  How would you incorporate them into a integrated unit at home with multi-aged children?  This would be an excellent way to share

An idea that incorporates all of the above (and starts me thinking about my final project):

Essentially, there are not a lot of professional development opportunities directly relating to Distributed Learning teachers (or DL-TLs!).  

What if we jump on the 23 Things bandwagon!  Have you heard of 23 Things?  Perhaps you haven't as it originated in 2006 - I had not heard of it until stumbling across is today while researching this topic.  However, I think it's a fairly famous project in the TL world.  I'm just new to this world!  It is a education and learning project developed by Helene Blowers to encourage librarians to learn and adapt to Web 2.0 and other new technologies.  Check out this original project assignment list here.  I love it!  According to the FAQs, it's,

"...a self-discovery program which encourages staff to take control of their own learning and to utilize their lifelong learning skills through exploration and PLAY.  There will be no classes or workshops offered to support this program.  Instead, staff are encouraged to work together and share with each other their discoveries, techniques, and "how to's" both in person and through their blogs."

What if our school developed a DL-specific "23 Things" type course that would walk a DL teacher through an introduction to some of the best technology out there that relates to the list of ICT needs that I have explored here (and many others!).  Because it's self-discovery, only teachers who are interested would participate but if it was described as only an hour a week, what teacher would not want to participate?  Also, perhaps there could be some incentives for completing, blogging, and tweeting about the topics.

Lots of ideas here for me to build on and develop this year as well as some to develop into possible final projects.  I've shared this blog post with my vice principal in hopes of actually putting some of these ideas into practice this year and/or coming years.

Bibliography: 

"23 Things". Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.  6 Aug. 2015.  Web. 28 Oct. 2015. 

Building Student Success: BC's New Curriculum. BC Ministry of Education. n.p. 2015. Web. 28 Oct. 2015

Common Sense Media. Common Sense Media.  n.p. 2015. Web. 28 Oct. 2015

Common Sense Graphite (2015) "Best Student Collaboration Tools".  Common Sense Media.  Retrieved from https://www.graphite.org/top-picks/best-student-collaboration-tools . 28 Oct. 2015

"23 Learning 2.0 Things". Learning 2.0. PLCMC. Aug. 2006.  Web. 28 Oct. 2015

Mindtools Editorial Team (2015) "Planning a Workshop: Organizing and running a successful event".  Mindtools.com. Retrieved from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/PlanningAWorkshop.htm . 28 Oct. 2015.

Shulba, Rebecca (2015). "Reading Review Blog Post #3: Let's Narrow It Down". MrsShulbaGoestoSchool.com.  Retrieved from http://www.mrsshulbagoestoschool.blogspot.ca/2015/10/reading-review-blog-post-3-lets-narrow.html . 28 Oct. 2015