Migrating to a new management system

My district is in the process of migrating to a new automation system. Although we've been working on this since March of last school year, things have kind of come together all at once. We are doing a series of trainings this week to get on board with the new system.

I'm excited about the new possibilities that the system should afford us. I hope it will have more opportunities for user interaction. It will certainly be more graphically appealing than our current system. A huge benefit is that results will now have a book cover image. That will make a big difference for our users. Our current system has pretty awful catalog search results and will no longer be upgraded due to being bought by a competitor.

I've got my fingers crossed for a smooth transition and a relatively small learning curve.

Self-Directed Learning

My district has announced a new initiative for this school year which I'm really excited about! We've used the Illinois Applications of Learning as a way to guide the effort to develop 21st Century Skills. The Applications of Learning are:

• Communicating
• Working on Teams
• Solving Problems
• Using Technology
• Making Connections

This year there has been another component added, Self-Directed Learning. The district has decided to encourage self-directed learning in both the students and the faculty. I'm super excited about this. It gives us, the faculty, the opportunity and responsibility to direct our own professional development.

We each will design our own learning project for the year. During our institute times we will have the opportunity to use part of that time to work on our learning projects, rather than participating in the usual blanket professional development. It was an attempt at one-size-fits-all training that really meet the needs of very few.

I have colleagues that are starting books clubs - some to focus on reading young adult literature, some to explore areas within their subject areas. People have the option of working in small groups or individually.

I'm excited by this opportunity but (big surprise here!) am having a difficult time narrowing down my focus. I think I am going to work on a project that can work in conjunction with my dissertation. Exploring student interaction with information in virtual environments is an area which will help me grow as a professional and will help me develop a library program that better serves students.

I'll keep updating this blog with my progress. Kudos to the administration of my district for having the vision for practicing what they preach. This is an exciting opportunity and gives me support within my district for what I do as a professional anyway, continuing to find ways to grow and challenge myself.

ISAIL: Get on board

I attended a session about ISAIL, Illinois Standards Aligned Instruction for Libraries, hosted by ISLMA (Illinois School Library Media Association) recently. I've been to a couple sessions about ISAIL to date. The project is really picking up steam and is a fabulous effort to coordinate school library objectives, goals, and benchmarks with ISBE content standards, AASL standards, and NETS standards. The document is in an easy-to-use format.

What really excited me this time around is the push for creating a mISAIL component, where schools can individualize ISAIL to meet their needs. As I am reworking the library standards documents for my school, I look forward to using mISAIL to help me do this. Down the road there is also going to be a wISAIL component where people will have a chance to collaborate and share.

I'm proud of the effort that ISLMA members have put into this project to date. This work is really help blazing a trail in the country. If you haven't seen this project yet, do check out the ISAIL wiki. All the ISAIL documentation uses Creative Commons licensing and sharing is encouraged!

More than just talking to yourself: Power of Self-Talk, Think-Aloud, and Talk-Aloud

I was reminded the other day of the impact that hearing someone talk through a process aloud as they are doing it can have in teaching and learning.

After getting a haircut, the stylist took the teachable moment and talked through the steps she was using as she styled my hair. I really appreciated that. Seeing her doing the steps and hearing her talk about what she was doing and why, really made the information stick in my brain. I gained some new insight and could replicate and adjust accordingly.

I lead a lot of sessions with students attempting to teach them how to do research and use information. I need to remember to share my mental process as I am searching even if it does feel silly. Most of the important stuff when a search is being conducted and the results are being evaluated is happening in the head of the searcher! If we don't model for our students what we think before we click and type, we are missing a huge teaching opportunity. Thanks, Sophia, for the powerful demonstration and for helping to remind me of a really critical technique.

Grant Writing Session

During our class five meeting, our focus was on Grant Writing for School Libraries. We went through a problem solving model in order to develop a grant program idea. We followed this up with a mock-up of key parts of a grant application for the project idea that we chose as the way to best solve the problem (building literacy, particularly in students who are English language learners) we identified in our mock school.

Below is part of our brainstorming for possible solutions that could lead to a grant project:


















Here is the the outline of moving our project idea into a grant proposal:

Research is Recursive

I was reading the chapter, "Modeling Recursion in Research Process Instruction" by Sandy L. Guild, and suddenly a light bulb in my head turned on. I know modeling of my thought process is important when demonstrating searching. But I realized that even though I know research is a recursive process and that I talk about it as a cyclical process, often times when I am working with students I present it in stages. The idea that it is linear probably causes a disconnect and additional frustration for students.
I really liked the way Guild connected this idea of teaching recursive thinking and laying it over the process models of information seeking. I appreciated having that aha moment! The short chapter gave me plenty of food for thought and helpful examples. I hope to incorporate these ideas in my teaching and work with students more formally in the fall.

Work Cited
Guild, S. L. (2003). Modeling Recursion in Research Process Instruction. In B.K. Stripling & S. Hughes- Hassell (Eds.), Curriculum connections through the library (pp. 141-155). Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.

AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner & Permissions to Use

I have been following with interest the postings that Chris Harris has been doing on his Informancy Blog about AASL restricting the use of the standards for the 21st Century Learner. Harris is raising several questions including pushing for the idea of adopting Creative Commons licensing or looking for some other alternative to allow those in the field to actually use the language within the standards in teaching situations and in discussions within the school library field.

This is surprising as it was a member-created effort and supposedly incorporated lots of input from school librarians. I'm curious about how this will play out. What do you think?