Sertic's Library Musings

LIBE 477 - Final Vision Project: Learner Considerations I know when I first began my training to become a teacher, one of my sponsor teachers passed along these wise words: “Why reinvent the wheel when you can learn from others who have already figured it out?”  There are so many seasoned teachers out there, why wouldn’t we ask them for help with resources, lesson planning, worksheets, methods of dealing with differentiation, and the list goes on? Now, with the advent of new technologies, the same holds true.  Ask those who “know”.  Several years back, technology was obviously becoming a focus in our district with the outfitting of iPads and Chromebooks into schools, district licencing of the G-Suites for education apps, and many professional development opportunities.  I felt nervous and overwhelmed in learning these new technologies, and I know I wasn’t the only one.  Fortunately for me, I have a tech-savvy husband who guided me through troubleshooting ...

LIBE 477: Final Vision Project: Design Considerations What to Do? Where to Begin?  My Process. As I began contemplating where to go with my learning and what to focus on for my Future Vision Project, I knew immediately I wanted to focus on something I could use and share with my colleagues as a classroom teacher to promote 21st century learning and something I could share and use as a future teacher-librarian.  By reading Why School: How Education Must Change When Learning and Information Are Everywhere and doing my reading review research, I’ve learned about the importance of teaching in a manner that promotes learning to learn rather than content collection.  With the onslaught of technology, education is no longer something that needs to be delivered.  Students need to be taught how to be self directed, literate, organized, to make sense of people and information online, how to connect and build relationships online in a safe, ethical and effective manner, an...

LIBE 477: Reflection On My Learning  Wow, these last few weeks have flown by!  With the phase two inquiries we had to complete, I have learned so much; not only about the topics, but about myself as a learner and what I’m capable of. In terms of the topics we looked into, my key takeaways were: Developing a reading culture in schools and classrooms can be done in so many creative ways.   There isn’t one single answer.  What excites me about this is I can take what interests me, what excites me, and pass this along to my students.  Hopefully, my passion for creating this reading culture, will “rub off” on my students. Professional learning doesn’t have to be a solo activity .   Learning about ICT, teaching practices, librarianship, anything education related really, is better done when there is more than one person involved.  By sharing our knowledge (ideas, what went well, what did not, etc), we aren’t overwhelmed with the tremendous ta...

Libraries Are Helping People Help Themselves This week I explored how libraries are helping their patrons with access to information and/or services.  While exploring global libraries, I came across this fun article that lists some quirky mobile libraries and bookstores that have been creatively set up in many areas of the world.  From outfitting food trucks into mobile libraries, to hand made push carts, to donkey-carrying libraries, these examples demonstrate a passion to share reading, regardless of economic privilege or not.  But is this enough? In our internet-driven world, where information is at our fingertips, how are communities, especially those in impoverished or developing areas, gaining access to information?  Public libraries are the answer, locally and globally. I discovered this fantastic video that nicely outlines how impactful public libraries are in our internet-driven world.  Although this particular video was filmed in the United...

Teacher-librarians as ICT Professional Development Leaders Image Courtesy of: https://info.askalibrarian.org/ Through the work I’ve been doing during this course and other courses I’ve taken toward the teacher-librarianship diploma, I’ve learned so many skills that I hadn’t known or used before.  For instance, blogging, using data-bases for information, using different tech tools for demonstrating my learning (Padlet, Symbaloo, Powtoon, etc.), information to teach digital and media literacy - the list goes on and on. As a previously self-labelled “technologically delayed individual”, I feel incredibly accomplished learning how to use these different tools.  As a teacher librarian (TL), I think we are in the perfect position to help our colleagues feel this sense of accomplishment in developing their ICT skills at schools. Carl A. Harvey II in “Are You the Next Leader in Our Profession” (2011) states that “We have to be one of the folks in the building to whom students a...

LIBE 477: Inquiry #2  Developing your own ICT Skills and Pedagogy Image courtesy of: https://www.aeseducation.com/career-readiness/what-are-21st- century-skills Education practices need changing as the world we live in is changing. No longer are traditional teaching methods sufficient for the digital age we are living in.  With information at our fingertips, memorization and regurgitation of information is no longer relevant.  We as teachers/teacher-librarians need to help our students develop the 21st Century skills that will better prepare them for the future they will be living in.  Our students are digital natives and we, as educators, need to help them develop digital and media literacy.  Technology is changing at such a rapid rate, how does one keep up?  How do we find the time to explore and develop our own ICT skills? Image courtesy of: http://thoughtfulcampaigner.org/life-long-learning-for-campaigners/ I believe the first step is ackn...