Information Technology Loving Librarian

I love this site! What a great resource for a teacher librarian looking to transform the library into a learning commons both physically and virtually. Check it out! One of my favourite links. Tons of great pictures to capture the great ideas. Looks as though it is constantly being updated as well. http://www.scoop.it/t/library-spaces  Once I return to work MONDAY.... I will look into adding our school to the registry on this site https://sites.google.com/site/schoollearningcommons/  I love that it is the year of the learning commons as I return! :D Tons of excellent resources on this site.

After reading the article by Brooks-Kirkland http://clatoolbox.ca/casl/slicv27n3/273brookskirkland.html   I'm becoming more interested with good web design principles as I noted in previous posts for this blog as this was something my school needed. I contacted Anita and will be in touch with her to ensure that I learn from her experience in this area. For instance, Anita writes "If our students are confused by what they see, they will go elsewhere. The website design needs to help our students connect to the right starting point for their research, depending on their information need, their prior learning, and their reading level." This will be important going forward in designing the website for the virtual library. We will want to ensure the highest level of access that students find incredibly user friendly and inviting. Teaching students how to use certain tools that will improve their research skills as well as teaching them how to properly source their work inc

This is an inspirational story. Chelmsford High School’s Learning Commons: From Program to Facility   http://maschoolibraries.org/content/view/609/294/ This librarian went to great lengths to get the funding needed to upgrade this high school library's facilities to further support all the great things that were going on there. This serves as proof to me that with the right intentions and determination, one can get funding to make significant changes to the library space. The "before" picture is rather shocking as the library resembles a jail!!! Third picture down. This clip (link below) shows the transformation that has occurred within the Library Learning Commons across all levels of education. I love that library programming is specifically centered around student need, that it changes based on what students are doing at various points during the year. Students are asked what they need and they are involved in the library. Students love to volunteer to work in th

The emergence of the learning commons suggests the following points to ensure greater equitable access to students... https://www.accessola.org/WEB/OLAWEB/OSLA/Together_for_Learning/The_Learning_Commons.aspx Examine the concepts behind differentiated learning and reflect it in your collection I will have to look into this as I have no idea if differentiated learning is reflected in the learning materials Develop a plan for purchasing both physical and virtual resources that meet the needs expressed by learners based on ongoing gap analysis Again another area where I am clueless as to what the purchasing plan for the school is. Encourage the placement of assistive technology and assistive devices in the Learning Commons Currently the assistive technology is located in the classrooms dedicated to the special education students. I think it would be great to have this technology available in the learning commons as well though I know studen

There were a lot of recommendations as to how to change the library environment. For instance from the T4L document • multiple spaces for individual, small group, and whole class learning • virtual library spaces for study, support, and relaxation available 24/7 • homework help from the school library webpage • management of student information resources and work spaces, both physical and virtual Some of these recommendations will be easy to implement - ex. homework help I have no idea what could/should if anything be done to the physical library space itself. Attached is a rough sketch of the library.    

I realize that I titled the last post Saturday because the truth is that I did write that information yesterday. It was today that I decided I would lob my learning through this blog - just to avoid any confusion for my readers.   Here's the website from my school http://dpcdsb.org/GSHEP   I see we have a twitter window at the bottom however this is the board's twitter profile and not specifically my schools twitter profile so this is something that we could do instead, to have our events being posted regularly on twitter. I know how to create a twitter profile so I will have to talk to the principal first to get the official go ahead to do this. I'd also like to get a Facebook profile going though I'm thinking this is going to be less supported by my board as we used to have many workshops being offered that pointed out the many hazards of having our how personal profiles on Facebook and were discouraged from being friends with students. This does make a lot of s

First step was to decide how to log my learning! I did a google images search of learning logs but did not find anything inspiring so I did a regular web search and Blogger came up as one of the top 5 learning log apps. ( https://edtechtoday.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/top-5-tools-learning-logs/ ) This is my first time using a blog which is awesome because I am always so in favour of using technology so not only am I learning about the module I am learning how to use Blogger at the same time.   I reviews all the sections for Module 5 and here are some of my thoughts... Prior to taking this course I had a very limited understanding of what the library was though this was probably because my understanding was based on a very outdated notion of what encompassed the library. The Section “Creating the Learning Environment” states that “Today’s school library space not only encompasses physical facility but also its virtual space” this is a more abstract sense of library space but is no