FOSTERING A READING CULTURE:
Take away: Even though I'm not in the home with my students, I still can have an impact on the development of a reading culture in homeschooling. Reading this list of things that I currently do and have done in the past, it made me realize that I should continue providing experiences like Author of the Month studies and getting kids together to talk about books. And I have a farther reach than just my own 25 students - what about the 500+ students in our school? After reading some other LIBE477 students' blogs, I have more ideas for ways that I could help foster whole school reading challenges and activities.
New avenue for development: I plan to spend some quality time on connecting my students over Symbaloo and VoiceThread. I think it would be so amazing to have all the 100 Books to Read in Kindergarten as picture icons on a Symbaloo for my kindergarteners to record their favourite parts of books. How great would an Author of the Month unit be if all the author's books were posted as icons on Symbaloo where my students could click on the latest Mo Willems book they'd read and hear other homeschool students talking about it? This is a major goal for my summer pro-d!
From my peers: I really appreciated all the tangible ideas that I read in my cohorts' blog posts on this topic. Christopher Hunt was generous to share his Reading Extravaganza Challenges and I loved these! As I mentioned above, I'd love to implement some whole school reading challenges and I plan to create something similar to and inspired by Christopher's challenges.
DEVELOPING YOUR OWN ICT SKILLS & PEDAGOGY:
Take away: Essentially, I have done very little to develop my own ICT skills and pedagogy. This class has been eye-opening to all the things that I have been overlooking and chalking up to being "too much work". Jen McLean literally inspired my re-thinking of PLCs from her blog post on this topic and I immediately went out and emailed our assistant VP to get a PLC started again. This has been set up and begins this month! A true take-away from this class, for sure!
New avenue for development: I actually set myself 3 goals in this post and it's good to have this opportunity to go back and reflect on those goals again! I met the PLC goal and definitely started to increase my tweets but have not been doing this weekly. This is something that I think I would get a lot out of in the future after this class is over so I have now set it as something on my calendar as a Sunday pop up to remind me to spend some time on Twitter, reading articles, and searching relevant hashtags. My 3rd goal was to spend time exploring this article and spend time "brewing my own PD". The question is when? I have been thinking a lot of PD for our staff and how I can begin to improve that as my final project. I can see that this would be a great place to start.
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| Image from: https://www.edsurge.com/research/guides/how-teachers-are-learning-professional-development-remix |
Take away: I think the biggest take away from this post (and really from this whole class in general) is that I started this TL Diploma with a really naive view of the role of a teacher librarian and what I started to realize through this post (and really, all the previous posts) is that despite a whole shift in thinking, I am STILL interested in being a TL; even developing a greater passion for this future role. Bronagh Rogan brought up a great point when she said that the position of being a TL can be isolating and that you have to work to ensure that you "promote your willingness to share, collaborate, and learn together". This was impactful to me because my current job of being a DL teacher is isolating! I have taken Bronagh's comment to heart because, even though I'm not yet a TL, I can begin developing the willingness to share and collaborate now!
New avenue for development: When you're taking a course, you're constantly learning new things, getting excited about new things, and wanting to try new things. How do we carry this on AFTER a course is done? I spent a lot of time thinking about the possibilities for developing a 23Things-type "course" for our DL teachers to inspire them to continue developing their ICT skills. I have plans to discuss this more with our VP and figure out if this could be a relevant use of my final project.
DEVELOPING WORLD LIBRARIES/MOBILE DEVICES
Take away: This was a hard post for me to write and it took me hours to research and write it yet it was my poorest blog post yet. Blerg. Can one still take something away from a rough assignment? YES! I realized that I don't spend much time thinking about this topic because I don't feel like there is much I can do. What a terrible attitude. ;) Armee's enthusiasm for this topic was so off the charts which I really appreciated. Sometimes, I question the stats that we read here about far off places like Uganda or South Africa - what does it really look like in the field? I facebooked some friends of mine who have lived in Uganda for about 5 - 6 years and asked them if there are any library initiatives around where they are. I didn't hear back from them in time to post my last post but they sent me some links of initiatives that they've heard off locally - both are book based. I asked if they thought the money that's been put into book-based initiatives would be put to better use by developing better internet. Jeff said that even the poorest people have cell phones but only about 5% would be smartphones but there are lots of cheap smartphone options and data is cheap as well so this will continue to be a growing area. A great point that he made is that no one is going to travel into the city to access a library so internet improvement is "not a better option. It's the only option." Hearing about these things first-hand and hearing how they support the stats that I (and many of you) found, really helps me get behind researching and helping organizations who are seeking to make such improvements.
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| Image from http://ink361.com/app/users/ig-221734493/worldreader/photos |
Just one?
If I could pick just one topic from Phase 2 that resonated with me, it would be the development of PD opportunities that are directly useful to the current position that I am in. I don't think there are enough opportunities for PD that are really specific to my unique job and I'd love to get my colleagues excited about the media and technology out there that could really get them thinking about connecting their students with each other and make other real world connections. We need to stop feeling isolated ourselves before we can begin to help homeschooling families feel less isolated as well!
Websites linked in this post:
http://voicethread.com/
https://www.symbaloo.com
http://exlibrismrhunt.blogspot.ca/2015/10/trial-2_4.html
http://learnteachreach.blogspot.ca/2015/10/libe-477b-inquiry-blog-2-plns-anytime.html
https://www.edsurge.com/research/guides/how-teachers-are-learning-professional-development-remix
https://blogs.ubc.ca/bronaghslibeblog/2015/10/23/sharing-is-caring/
http://msmlibrarycommons.weebly.com/ms-ms-library-blog/blog-post-4-literacy-libraries-and-tech-around-the-world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_Things
http://jeffshan.blogspot.ca/p/living-in-uganda.html
http://www.worldreader.org/
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I also recently started using Symbaloo and I love your idea of using it to share book reviews. I feel like I'm not an "expert" in many of these new tools but I guess the best thing to do is just get your feet wet and go for it- really what's the worst that could happen? :)
ReplyDeleteAn excellent question that I often ask myself! "what's the worst that could happen?" then I think up the worst and if it seems manageable, then I go forward! Haha. Love it.
DeleteGreat reflective post that took us on a memory walk through the last few weeks and your explorations. Good highlighting, sharing, discussing and connecting. You shared your struggles, your successes, your goals met and your future plans. A great conference you should consider going to in the spring is the BC Distributed Learning Conference. I always went to it and gained many useful skills, networks and relationships with other DL educators. Good blog post with strong tags, links and embedding.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the shout out re: Reading Extravaganza Challenges. I'd love to see what you come up with.
ReplyDeleteAlso, very interested to see your version of 23 Things eventually. I'm thinking of using those 23 lists myself as next year's after-school pro-d, perhaps with a small group of interested teachers.