I have loved every minute of my time at James Hargest College. The school initially did a great job in educating me back in the 1970′s and 1980′s and I’ve always held very fond memories of my high school years.
When I started as a part time librarian back in October 2000 it felt odd to be sitting in the staff room alongside teachers who taught me (Yes, there were still quite a number continuing to teach here in 2000 and there are still some today – you know who you are Mr Elder and Miss Dunlop!!) but I felt welcomed and quickly became part of the life of the school.
Plans were already afoot for the redevelopment of our new library when I started and it was fantastic to be part of creating the wonderful space that all of the Hargest community now uses to great effect.
After having had a variety of different jobs from receptionist to administrator to radio producer through the years after high school I can say it is truly magical to finally know what I want to do when I grow up! For me, the intersection of libraries and learning is what spins my wheels and gives my working life meaning and purpose. It has been both satisfying and rewarding to develop my understanding of how these two different facets of education work together to bring about the best outcomes for students and how to grow programmes and lessons that are enjoyable and meaningful for everyone.
I want to take the opportunity, as I embark on my last day working at Hargest, to say the biggest, heartfelt thank you to each and every current and past colleague who encouraged, listened, advised, responded, discussed, brainstormed and collaborated with me over the past 12 years. You have all contributed to my professional journey in a myriad of ways which is incalculable in the continuing development of my unique role in a school teaching and learning team. I am very excited to be moving on to the next chapter in a career I’ve grown to love with a passion. And I look forward to some of you at least, continuing to share in that journey alongside me. I will always be very proud to say that I worked at James Hargest College.
PS: If you don’t know who Miss Dunlop is, ask Nadia.
I had the utmost pleasure today to join with a group of 50-strong librarians at the LIANZA Otago/Southland Library Assistants Day held at the Invercargill Public Library and share with them about what it means to be a school librarian.
Where to start!! No two days are ever the same and what you start out planning to do at the beginning of the day may look totally different by the end of the day, so the challenge was how to go about showing the variety and breadth of work that we do in a school library setting.
This presentation is what I eventually came up with.
It turned into a bit of a time and motion study of one day of work for me in the James Hargest Library. I then finished with some thoughts and ideas about how public and school libraries can begin to think about working together.
If you have any great examples of working with a library that is in another sector, I’d love to hear about it! Please share them here so others can benefit from your fantastic ideas.
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson
This is one of my top reads from 2012 …. In fact it would probably rank as one of my top reads ever! It certainly qualifies as one of the most inspirational books I’ve read.
On the back cover of my copy (loved it so much I bought a copy for my school staff professional library and purchased a copy for myself. And I intend to gift it to my 22 year old son as well.) it says:
“If you want to create a space for innovation, you won’t get far by cloistering yourself away from the world and waiting for inspiration to hit you. Chance favours the connected mind”.
I had light-bulbs going off all over the place when I read this book. There was so much to think about! So I’ve restricted myself in this blog posting to highlighting just one of the key ideas for me. This came from chapter III, The Slow Hunch, and the key idea was The Commonplace Book. I cannot believe I hadn’t come across this concept before. Thank you Steven Johnson for being the person to enlighten me.
Commonplace books were used extensively during the 17th & 18th centuries by scholars, scientists and anyone with intellectual ambition as a way of recording information, facts, ideas and thoughts that were particularly important or relevant to them. Here is how Wikipedia describes them:
Such books were essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas and each commonplace book was unique to its creator’s particular interests.
This concept really resonated for me as I’m continually thinking about all sorts of things related to my work in libraries and the intersection of this with information and education, and I am regularly excited by how seemingly disparate ideas from various places all come together for me to create an idea or activity. I’m also convinced, by the number of times I have that “I know I read something about that somewhere and now I don’t know where I read it, when I read or even who wrote it” moment, that I really needed to be more deliberate in noting down these things along with my reflections of them. The commonplace concept was my perfect solution!
It’s like when I attend a conference or a workshop or some other type of professional learning opportunity. It’s not so much the guts of the presentation that I take notes on, most presenters give you access to that anyway, it’s my thoughts and reflections on the ideas that stand out for me that I make my notes about. Of course you need to spend time soon afterwards, preferably within the next day or two, expanding and explaining the notes to yourself for future reference. After all, who has had the experience of going back to notes you’ve taken at a conference after a few months or even a year and not had any clue about what it was you thought was important in the first place! Having your own commonplace book could be the answer to that.
I have a friend who, about a decade ago, spent a year religiously writing in her diary every day about what was happening on the farm, what her children were doing, what the family was involved in. She said it was a huge commitment of her time but now they have this wonderful snapshot of a year in their lives to look back on. What an amazing gift to leave your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. An insight into your thoughts and ideas as they developed.
Of course nowadays, a commonplace book doesn’t have to just be a physical journal or a scrapbook you note things down in. In the current electronic age this could be an online journal or blog that you can very easily add to and refer back to whenever you want or need.
Educational Context
I got to thinking about how we could use this commonplace book idea with students. Here’s some of the possible applications that I see:
Use it as a tool right from Year 9 to get students to reflect on their own learning, challenges, successes, strategies, accomplishments and then have them do something with it as a senior student each year they are still at school
A particular curriculum area could incorporate it into their senior programme and build it through from Year 11 to Year 13
A class could use it as a version of a time capsule where students make regular entries though the year after setting goals at the beginning and reflecting on their success or otherwise at the end of the year, including reflection of what led to the result they attained
I see the commonplace book concept as potentially being a very powerful tool for learning planning skills, self-management and intentional thinking. The multi-year approach could be managed relatively simply by having students create their own blogs which won’t potentially get lost or destroyed in the transition between years. I know there are pitfalls to this idea, but I do believe there are huge benefits to be gained for students if the fish-hooks are ironed out.
There are bound to be a number of other great ways of incorporating this into the school or library programme that I haven’t thought of yet. I’d love to hear any other practical applications you might come up with.
So have I sold you on the commonplace book? Do you want to know more about Steven Johnson’s fantastic book? Here’s the very creative book trailer for it
Want to know even more? Here’s Steven at a Ted Talks event talking about the history of innovation
Inspired to read his book now? Can I suggest you run (and I mean literally, run!) to your local library or bookshop and invest in this treasure trove of ideas for yourself. Happy innovating!
Anyone who begins a blog posting with “I just cannot help myself from bubbling with excitement; my students are loving reading this year.” has grabbed my attention from the get-go! And this is exactly how teacher Pernille Ripp began her blog on 10 Things That Helped Us Love Reading More
I also love blogs that set out at the very beginning what you’re getting into and I especially love lists, so Pernille’s list of 10 things that helped her and her students to love reading more held huge appeal.
Her 10 suggestions are explained fully in her blog (link above) but here’s just the list to get you started:
Share my own reading life
Stay current
Share your books
Friday preview
Speed book review
Using book trailers
Read more series
Keep a read next list
Give them ownership
Talk books
This will help get you thinking about what could work in your classroom or library for the new 2013 school year. Maybe you just want to try one of the suggestions on her list or add one to the strategies you’re already trying. And if you like these ideas, share them with your teaching colleagues!
I’ve worked in the library at James Hargest College for over 12 years and I’ve loved every minute of it. I love the environment, I love the students, I love the challenge and I especially love the staff. They are an amazing bunch of professionals. So you may be surprised to hear that at the end of February I’m leaving. This was no easy decision, but I recognise a good move when I see one.
In March I’m beginning at a new school with new challenges, new opportunities and new collaborations. And my new role is getting me very excited! I will be joining the staff at Southland Boys High School in the new role of Research and Learning Coordinator, working with the teaching and learning team designing, planning, implementing and evaluating an embedded and coordinated approach to teaching information literacy and research skills in a digital age to both students and staff. This role also has oversight of the physical library and services offered there.
This is an incredible opportunity to progress my career in a new way, and for me combines the best of what it means to be a librarian with my absolute passion for education and working with young people (in this case young males!)
Needless to say, I look forward to sharing my new journey here on my website and I also look forward to continuing to work with you all in some form throughout 2013 and beyond.
A big thanks to all of you who responded to my recent blog post and survey on whether school libraries should be a quiet place for study during exam times. It was reassuring to read your many comments and discover that I’m not alone in being conflicted about which way to go on this issue and how to achieve the results I want once the decision is made.
If you haven’t done so already, can I suggest you take a look at some of the responses on the original post. They sum things up nicely. Generally some of the main points to come through were: that balance was difficult to achieve and then maintain; if possible have a separate area for those studying; need to make accommodations for group study where some chat and discussion is necessary. My favourite response was the librarian who responded: “Well, it depends on the time, on the day, and on how much sleep I’ve had the night before!” Classic!
I know some of you expressed an interest in the poll results so here they are:
As you can see, of the 141 responses, 61% of you thought that yes, school libraries should be a quiet place for study during exam times, which is a solid majority but not an overwhelming, resounding yes. There was certainly a lot of grey area, with many of you as conflicted as me when considering not only what’s best and juggling that with what the students want, but also how to achieve this goal without coming across like the wicked witch of the west on a bad day!
After my musing on this issue I opted for giving posters another try. This is what we have plastered all over the walls and doors of our library
Has it worked? Too soon to call I think, but I’m not sure it’s made any tangible difference. However, neither have we had anyone complain or comment on the noise levels (which to my mind, or should I say ears, has been bordering on excessive at times!). I’ve been deliberately taking a much more relaxed approach to this issue this year and my sub-conscious is obviously stressing about it as I’ve been experiencing some bizarre dreams around classes and control in the library in the past week! Believe me, this is not common. I don’t usually dream about my library so the two sides to Senga are continuing their warfare where they can.
But what about next year? I have decided to take a much more proactive and evidence-based approach to what will no doubt still be an issue at the beginning of term four 2013. Here are my three steps to hopeful success:
Run a survey for the Year 12′s and 13′s early in Term 1 to gauge how their experience of using the library was for this exam season. I’ll then see how this matches up with our anecdotal evidence and what we saw happening during this time to develop a tentative plan
Immediately after school exams in Term 3 we will conduct a second survey of all senior students about their intended use of the library during NCEA exams and what their expectations for using this space would be
Early in Term 4 we will publicise and market how students can use the library during exams to the whole school through assemblies, newsletters, roll call notices and posters. Our intention would be to repeat the survey from Term 1 2013 in Term 1 2014 to measure any difference in responses based on our attempts to satisfy our customers (i.e. our students AND our staff who still use the space for teaching junior classes)
Fingers crossed this will help us to achieve the right mix for our school community here at Hargest and leave me feeling as sane and serene as possible come November 2013!
When I recently presented a workshop on Digital Tools for Content Curation I spent very little time discussing how to go about actually becoming a curator. Being a hands-on, roll your sleeves up and get stuck in kinda session we went straight for the toys.
However, I would highly recommend this excellent presentation on Educators as Curators from Corinne Weisgerber and Shannan Butler, St Edwards University in the US. It is worth taking a look at in terms of clarifying the purpose for curation and things to think about before you get into curation boots and all.
These professors of communication clearly describe the “journey of a resource: from birth to bookmark”, the process from finding and selecting material through to sharing and tracking it. Most importantly from my perspective they share about how to editorialise the content.
It’s all very well saving a whole range of resources but you need to be able to identify why you saved it in the first place, reflect on it’s importance to your own practice or how you might implement it into your library programme. Document your thoughts on it at the time you discover it to make it meaningful to you and the others you might share it with.
RT @web20classroom: For students curation helps them understand how to organize their information and more importantly, the value in evalua… 2 days ago
RT @MaineSchoolTech: #edtechchat A1: For me, curation is also all about metacognition: why am I choosing this? Why does it fit with X and Y… 2 days ago
RT @web20classroom: Curation is more than just gathering. Its organizing, tagging, vetting, evaluating, and most importantly, sharing. #ed… 2 days ago
