A Rationale...or a complete shift in the plan...

Well, so much can change in a week, can it not?  

Would you believe that three months after I started my first course in my Teacher-Librarianship Diploma program, our school's current teacher-librarian resigned?  And would you believe that I would be approached by our admin to step in as the new TL starting in December?  No.  Too coincidental.  BUT IT'S TRUE!

via GIPHY

What now?  Does my project change?  Do my goals change?  Does my audience change? I think it does.  Two experiences from this week are the catalysts for the proposal of the development of a new vision project: 
(1) This week, I was with a group of friends and announced my big news. Everyone's response was, "An online school has a librarian?  What will you even do?"  
(2) Yesterday, I spent a number of hours setting up the beginnings of my personal library blog/Pinterest board as discussed in the previous post and I just had this nagging feeling that this wasn't the best use of my final vision project.  

What does a DL Resource Librarian do?  Do I even know?  It's all I've thought about for five days (since getting word on the final decision that I'd be taking this position).  I have many ideas of what I'd like to develop and bring to our resource library.  In the past, I've proposed ideas to admin that I wanted to implement but they were denied and labeled "something that our TL should do". But now I AM the TL!  I can bring these ideas and start something new and fresh!  Today, in an effort to procrastinate from writing report cards and completing this blog post, I was googling "organizing a Distributed Learning library" and other similar searches.  Then I thought of the largest independent DL school in BC and wondered what their resource library looked like. WELL!  They have an awesome, online learning commons page.  This LC includes book lists, reading programs, a lending library, an lending ebook library, digital unit plans for parents to use in their homeschooling, book clubs that are run through online mediums like Blackboard and Blogger, and much, much more.  I don't need to reinvent the DL-LC wheel!  I have those who have gone before me in my very specific field.  I already have plans to connect with this school's TL.

Our library is 2 years old.  It has had intense growing pains.  And unfortunately, it hasn't had a chance to develop in the ways that it needs to for lack of TIME!  Currently, the TL of our school orders your books.  She barcodes and catalogues those books.  She ships you the books that you ordered (if you live out of the lower mainland).  She organizes those books when they are returned.  She builds the library by purchasing resources that she deems excellent.  And so far, I don't think there has been much time (or vision?) for anything else.  

I have the luxury of walking into a blossoming library with a solid foundation.  There is SO much that can and should be developed to meet the rising standards of a DL school's learning commons.  Before taking this class, I had a misconception of teacher-librarians. I had never heard that "libraries" are slowly transforming into "learning commons".  If the average person doesn't know what our TL does nor how our resource library works, why will they use it?  If our administration doesn't see how libraries are changing and how this could serve our teachers and parents in a much better way, why would they invest in it? 

image from: http://www.bythebrooks.ca/leading-learning-in-the-school-library-learning-commons/

My vision project is going to literally be a VISION project.  I am going to create a presentation that gives a vision for our school's online learning commons.  This will educate in an overview of how libraries are changing. It will also include the suggestion of how the development of the learning commons aligns with our school vision and mission. 

The digital format I'm going to use is still to be determined. I signed up for projeqt account and downloaded Haiku Deck but I think that whatever platform I use, I'll need something that I can talk over to describe what the slides mean.  I was thinking about using Jing for element of the presentation this which gives me a 5 minute window.  Perhaps I can create a few Jing videos.  

My audience: will grow.  I'm going to start with our principal and our four department vice principals with the goal of spreading my vision!  It's really a proposal for the ways that this LC needs to develop and how we can do it. After I see how the presentation is received, I hope to be able to present it (or a portion of it) to my colleagues with the goal of helping them understand how they can access and use the learning commons to develop their families' learning plans.  As the learning commons is developed (likely, this portion would be in the 2016/17 school year), I hope that portions of the original presentation will still be able to be used for sharing with parents to educate them in what a learning commons is and how to make the most of the resources we have.  Because this presentation is essentially a proposal for changes that we should made, really my audience will end up being the whole school community as they will get to watch the changes made in real-time and benefit from them in years to come.