Today I got to spend the day
with a group of amazing librarians from Hong Kong and various other places
around South East Asia as we all came together at School Librarian
Connection. The organizers, Dianne McKenzie (Renaissance College, Hong
Kong) and Katie Day (United World College, Singapore), two extremely knowledgeable
and passionate librarians, did a fantastic job in organizing the event. I
enjoyed the short presentations on a variety of topics under the main themes
curriculum support, digital resource management, visual literacy and research
skills and tools. As always after a conference or workshop, my head is buzzing.
So much to ponder about, so many new thoughts and ideas! Here just a few, that
will be at the forefront of my thinking, in no particular order:
Maker spaces – Both Nadine Bailey and Kurt Wittig spoke in their presentation about maker
spaces in the library. Nadine brought up the idea within her presentation on
digital storytelling, providing an example what this might look like. Kurt
introduced the Collaboration, Innovation, Creativity Club (CIC) he started in
his library, where students can choose from a selection of seven domains:
electronics, engineering, fashion, gaming, robotics, materials, and virtual
environments. Especially the materials domain got me thinking as students
create origami on the entrance level and work up their way to creating pop-up
books. I think, both ideas, a digital storytelling maker space as well as a
materials maker space, might be an opportunity to move our first attempts with
a maker space in our library (simply a table with origami books and origami
paper) to the next level without requiring much additional materials or funds.
iPads in the library – While I have already made use of iPads in the
library for various purposes, such as reading, information seeking, creating
and video recording, Tabitha Johnson’s presentation gave me additional ideas.
After her presentation I was thinking that iPads are a great tool to use also
at the beginning of the school year, for example, as students explore the
library and reacquaint themselves with the organization of materials and the overall
set-up of the library. Younger students could simply take pictures of what they
see around the library to gain understanding of the purpose of a library, the
resources available and so on.
“Making the invisible visible” – Katie Day, Barbara Reid and Nadine
Bailey shared some great ideas on how to make patrons aware of a library’s
digital resources, my favorites being books on walls and wheels (posters of
teachers’ book shelves on hangers for easy browsing), amplified shelves
(through QR codes links are provided to author or series information), and
placeholders (through QR codes patrons get linked to the catalog to see whether
there might be additional copies elsewhere available).
I also loved
the idea of attaching student book talks (or other digital content) to book
posters with the help of Aurasma. Once we have iPads in our library, we will
have the opportunity to make more and better use of QR codes around the
library.
COETAIL (Certificate of Educational Technology and
Information Literacy) – I had heard about this program already from others but checked it out
for the first time today after Dianne introduced it. I had known that it was a
program around educational technology but hadn’t been aware of the information
literacy component – and these are the courses that I would be especially
interested in: Information
Literacy and Ourselves as Learners, 21st Century Literacy Ideas, Questions, and
Issues, and Visual Literacy: Effective Communicators and Creators. Will have to
check whether it is possible to take individual courses.
EasyBib & Diigo – While I was familiar with these resources, having used both already,
I knew little about what these resources can do besides the basic citation and
book marking features. Dianne McKenzie demonstrated how both can help students
during the research process, in annotating and organizing their notes, creating
citations and reference lists and even take advantage of them EasyBib as an
add-on in Google Documents. I would love to get a subscription to EasyBib for
our libraries, no doubt!
TRAILS – I
had trialed using TRAILS in Ghana as a pre-assessment tool of G3-5 students’
information literacy skills at the beginning of the school year to guide me in
which skill area the emphasis needed to be. I remember finding it extremely
helpful and relatively easy to administer. Fiona Collins’ presentation was a
good reminder to make use of this assessment tool again.
Visual literacy through powerful picture books
– Megan Lindsay’s presentation gave me ideas on how to move our picture book
explorations forward. And the timing couldn’t have been better as I just began
looking at picture books with our fourth graders last week. Megan gives her
students a visual literacy check list as they explore the books so that
students become aware of all the features. I will definitely incorporate this
in our picture book explorations.
Visual notetaking – I loved Shirley Chan’s presentation on visual note-taking for all
ages, as she demonstrated how she uses it with her primary school students. Recently,
I have heard and seen quite a bit on visual note-taking, especially from my
friend Nicki Hambleton (check out her blog).
Through images, students make their thinking visible while at the same time
retaining key information more easily. I am keen on finding out and learning more
about it, especially on how to use it with younger students. Therefore today’s
presentation was just perfect, getting me even more excited about the idea of
introducing it to our students. I have already downloaded one of the
recommended titles: The Sketchnote
Handbook, which was available in Kindle format. As Shirley recommended,
learn it first yourself (there is a large number of online tutorials available),
and then introduce it to your students, focusing on the three main elements:
text, images and structure. Since she stressed several times that the focus
here is on simple images, I feel I can give it a try even though I can’t draw.
(If you would like to
explore the individual presentations, they are all available through the School Librarian
Connection website.)