Librarians as Learning Specialists

If you want to hone your "21st Century" understandings about schools and begin to transform the teaching and learning capacity of your school library into a Learning Commons, you must go immediately to Amazon and order Librarians as Learning Specialists: Meeting the Learning Imperative for the 21st Century (A. Zmuda & V.H. Harada, Libraries Unlimited, 2008).  Regularly $40 USD, you will see that there is a discounted price and also a less expensive Kindle version.  Maybe now is the time to treat yourself to an e-reader device to enter the e-reading environment as well.  (Think of this as a direction for library improvement and use your own or school-based Pro D funds or your library's "slush" account; you can share the device and this book with your administrator and others as a collaborative Pro D tool and experience.)

THIS BOOK IS NOT JUST FOR TEACHER-LIBRARIANS

-- IT IS ALSO FOR ADMINISTRATORS!

In realizing that Vancouver has no clear blueprint for schools and teacher-librarians to design and construct Learning Commons for new and existing schools here in 21st-century Vancouver, I am in the process of gathering the building blocks, plans, evidence of the value, and any "blue sky" thinking to add compelling depth and colour to the design and to compile the definitive website. 

It is in this on-going context that I have begun to read Zmuda and Harada, supported with a Foreword from Wiggins.  I have finished Chapter 1 and want to share the following snippets with you:

I am a big believer in the importance of libraries with windows.  Writes Wiggins in his Foreword,

The [school library resource centre, or LRC] is more than just a space or resource .... It is a window into how well the entire staff understands learning and honors best practice.  If the staff understands how people learn, then the [LRC] is a hub of core activity.  If the school is committed to long-term mission-related goals, teachers and learning specialists constantly work together. (xi)

Zmuda and Harada make the powerful case that the advent of 21st century learning is also the time for learning specialists to move from the margins to the centre of learning, to leadership roles that move schools forward.  They believe that "what happens in the library is at the heart of the work of the school because it brings the world to the local community, inspires the curiosity and imagination of students, and brings people together to explore and communicate ideas." (xiii)

The words of Dr Ross Todd invite TLs, administrators, and teachers to re-vision the role of the school library in the educational community and in the learning opportunities we all create to engage our students in learning:

The hallmark of a school library in the 21st century is not its collections, its system, its technology, its staffing, its buildings, but its actions and evidences that show that it makes a real difference to student learning, that it contributes in tangible and significant ways to the development of meaning making and constructing knowledge. (xii)

I have finished Chapter 1 on creating whole-school commitment to a common purpose and to instructional adjustment to achieve the common goal.  I have reviewed Todd's 10 Learning Principles for School Libraries(2007), "Working for Knowledge Construction: Transformational Leadership" and have reconsidered the underpinning views of such leading educators as John Dewey, Michael Fullan, and Mel Levine.  I am firmly hooked on this book.

But just imagine my surprise when I looked at sample school library mission statements from Canada, the US, and Australia.  The only example from Canada reads, "Gladstone School Library Resource Centre is dedicated to creating a safe atmosphere that fosters self-esteem, creativity, and enthusiasm for reading and lifelong learning."  Whoo-hoo!  I remember the call to give permission for its use but I hadn't thought about this since. 

This Gladstone statement, by the way, derived from the exercise of creating the school's Mission Statement that the principal had undertaken with the staff.  A search of the school's website shows a nuts-and-bolts approach has overtaken its messages now.  I remember how galvanizing it was for us to all be on the same page in relation to our students, kind of like the thesis statement in an essay that keeps your writing on track. As I read the next three chapters on the role of the TL, instructional design, and robust assessment, I am sure you can understand that I have wholly connected on a quite personal level as well as a professional one and will read for deep understanding, with the key idea that a mission-based approach that works requires a school's staff, including its TL, to:

... know how students learn and how different students learn differently, how children acquire language and how to support language development, how to organize a curriculum that builds on students' prior knowledge and experiences, how to assess what students know and how they are learning, how to diagnose and meet the needs of struggling students, how to use a range of teaching strategies, how to motivate students and how to work collaboratively with parents and peers to reinforce learning at home and school.

Another Look at PISA + Interesting TED Talk

Another Look at PISA

Suspect this response by Dr Diane Ravitch, New York University, is true for BC as well ... it's not simply the erosion of investment in resources and specialist teachers but the persistent failure to remediate the negative effects of poverty for children that so dramatically impacts academic success.

Also, thanks Elly for bringing this this amazing TED talk by Indian educator Sugata Mitra to my attention.  It's 17 minutes that will make you laugh AND think:



Mitra begins by noting that the best teachers don't go, and the best schools don't exist, where they are most needed.  Further, any teacher who can be replaced by a machine should be!  Based on the simple concept that children -- regardless of their socio-economic status -- learn what they want to learn, supported by Arthur C. Clarke's thinking that education happens when children have interest,  Mitra puts a single computer into a collaborative "discovery" environment and leaves the children to their own devices ... with astounding results.  Do take your prep to check this out for the New-Year inspiration you may be looking for.  The Future of Learning for 1 billion children, predicts Mitra, will be dramatically reformed with 100 million mediators, like the grannies, 10 million self-organizing learning environments (SOLEs), 180 billion dollars, and 10 years. Bring on The Granny Cloud!  

Holiday Time is Here!

Active artwork by one talented Vancouver elementary student
captures the joy and colourful nature of winter and play

It's Winter Reading Time:

Reading List Fever: this promotional youtube video reminds us of the importance of reading widely.

Check out Rex Murphy's Cross Country Checkup Annual Christmas Reading List for this and past years.

Browse the VPL's Staff Picks Fiction List for December or their Perfect Presents for Adults 2009.

If you have run out of reading ideas, try plugging the title and author of your last good read into The Book Seer for recommendations for your next book.

Want to catch up on professional reading? Here are some readings about assessment-for-learning.

How about the most recent (50th Anniversary) issue of The Bookmark? BCTLA members will be receiving the last-ever print version in the mail soon. Have you renewed your membership? Check for details at membersonline.

Into reading online? Try fora.tv's Programs on Books. While here, check many other programs about the economy, the environment, politics, culture, science, and technology to "feed your inner genius." Thanks for this website, Phil in HR.

Got an urge to brush up on some of the new digital tools and resources? Try the ERAC "EBSCO bundle" Toolkit, developed by TLs and featuring a great video with our Sylvia as "the star." Or have a look at the Smartboard information.

Why not consider the future of books and libraries with Doug Johnson's E-books, E-learning, E-gads! Thanks, Lana, for this one.

Here's one more promotional video for libraries and e-resources posted to BCTLA Forum by North Van's bookminder:

Otherwise, simply ...

Have a wonderful break!

PS: I'll be taking a break too but will be back
to blogging the school library scene in January.

Our Changing Landscape for Teaching & Learning

Student Inquiry

Remember the 5/Star Inquiry model and graphic organizer shared at the September Update? If not, check online for the pdf versions. Work continues and exciting new partners have shown interest in working with us. Student inquiry is, from the point of view of those who work in school libraries, the answer to meaningful understanding in the face of inch-deep, miles-wide learning of the bulletted learning outcomes that force teachers to "cover curriculum."

There is great student engagement in the inquiry learning opportunities TLs host; they integrate technology tools and resources with the print resources they know work; they work alongside their teacher colleagues to create, monitor, and assess student learning, scaffold that learning, and re-design it as needed, based on "just-in-time" collaborative work. They are trained in this work of hosting the joyful and meaningful learning events they know are important and lasting for students.

Talking about Assessment: More on Damian Cooper

On Friday, 600 teachers attended a Pro D day to hear Damian Cooper, the Canadian expert on assessment for learning. Cooper began by asking us to examine our own practice and see if what had to say resonates. How could we have missed the resonance when he referred, in what might be understood by classroom teachers as the intensification of practice under years of the tendencies of the accountability agenda (what Hargreaves calls "the third way") to exacerbate the need for numbers and measures and paperwork, to our tendency to say, "If it moves, mark it!" We are big, he suggested, on the cognitive and not so on the affective piece of learning. Just because we can test 'em doesn't mean we should. A single assessment, much of the standardized stuff we use to understand our students, is unreliable. We are dealing with children and are not a factory but a place where we help kids realize their potential. Do we need to sift and sort them by levels?

Standards are not the same as standardization. Always seeking metaphors to assist our understanding, Cooper assured us that his way did not lack rigour. Pilots in training are given multiple opportunities to practice; do you want to fly with the one who got 50%? We need to get rid of mediocre thinking but we can't expect all students to have "demonstrated proficiency" the first time round.

Scores don't make kids improve; descriptive feedback does. It is important to examine practices that have the opposite effect to that which is intended. Are we discouraging students with our assessment practices? Ultimately, we need to work hard to "put ourselves out of work" and have kids do it themselves, using peer- and self-assessment. Once in a while, we need to "play detective," pull in the evidence and "crunch rich data" for reporting, in order to "convict the student of learning." Assessment, suggests Cooper, is an "imperfect science" and we need to look at stopping the delivery of judgements and defense of measurements to two decimal points. We need to trust ourselves in the important application of teacher professional judgement.

In another analogy, Cooper compared assessment that promotes learning to sports. Drills, like quizzes, are evidence of memorization, not thinking. They are not "the game." Think team, coach, practice. If we want kids to learn, we need to turn the score off. Quizzes, instead of being for marks, can be ungraded to provide immediate feedback and evidence for students engaged in meaningful self-assessment of the mistakes they need to learn from. When we use rewards, we turn students into Pavlovian "dogs" salivating for marks and right answers. Alfie Kohn says the same thing, that when we reward behaviours, we risk their extinction.

When we assess using multiple choice, we are assessing knowledge, not skills. What, asked Cooper, if driving were only assessed using multiple choice? Kids want relevant, engaging, authentic, and current learning challenges instead. Can we make their work look like the work of "big people," that is, publish it, practice for game quality performance, and so on.

Yep, lots of resonance for everyone in the room, I think, judging by the crowd and the excitement. For more VSB-suggested readings on Assessment for Learning, click here. Call me if you are interested in following up on this topic.

Happy Easter Holidays!

We here at the Mothership wish you all
a well-deserved long weekend,
as well as bouquets and a here-to-stay Spring!

(free photo in the public domain from morguefile)

It's spring -- when the world is puddle-wonderful!
-- e. e. cummings

GiggleIT Project

In need of a little fun for your students between now and June? Have a look at the GiggleIT Project, and join educators from around the world working with children ages 10 to 14 who are searching for fun. Have your students meet Gigglecritter who loves to laugh and searches the world for tall and funny stories, gags and jokes, limericks and tales of the weird and wonderful.

Let's help make Vancouver the first funny young Canadians! To register your funny class, click here. And some of you may remember Australian TL Pat Carmichael, hard at work behind the scenes here, for her session about Sproosejoos and "just doing" collaboration during the 9-day conference in February!

World Digital Library

Also on the world scene is the anticipated launch of the World Digital Library on April 21, 2009. The project, co-sponsored by UNESCO and several national libraries, "will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research."

Writes California TL Tom Kaun (whose wonderful Bessie Chin Library at Redwood High in Larkspur, CA, I toured last summer), it looks as though there will be some cool tools -- translation, audio transcription, etc. -- of the documents in the database. We can all be looking forward to exploring what looks like a really rich resource for the international community.

Interesting Bookmarks, Libraries, and Bookstores

Thanks, Donna, from North Battleford, Saskatchewan, for this lovely link that, besides surely being the most comprehensize site ever on bookmarks, provides links to stunning photographs of the world's most interesting bookstores and libraries. Now that I have viewed these and found none in Italy, I will simply have to scout out Italy's most beautiful bookstores and libraries. Mercifully, one library in the photo gallery doesn't require a lot of travelling for us here in BC. And thankfully, these ventures to magnificent libraries are always part of the IASL Conference agenda. Anyone coming along to Padua (near Venice) this summer with me and Chris?

Bulk Buy = Digital Storytelling by Jason Ohler

Maryann is compiling a bulk buy for the Digital Storytelling book Dr Ohler introduced us to at Technology Day in February (see also blog entry, March 8). Did you get a copy of the order form sent out to Pro D chairs and administrators? I can fix that. Are there staff members in your school who attended and who wished they had picked up a copy of this book? Perhaps you need to see your Pro D chair about purchasing one for your school library's Professional collection? All orders, with COA numbers or cheques, are due to MK in MLST by April 29.

Meet Phil Bradley

From Jo Anne at Tech comes this recommendation: Feb 1 09 issue of Booklist identifies Phil Bradley's weblog "where librarians and the internet meet: internet searching, Web 2.0 resources, search engines and their development." The first sentence of the review reads:
"There are plenty of people blogging about technology, but Bradley, librarian and Internet consultant, reports on developments as they relate specifically to libraries." Notes Jo Anne, it looks fairly extensive and very useful.

On looking this week (April 7), I found that Bradley features a cool looking tool which, if you like words, you'll love playing around with. It's called Visuwords, ... a graphical dictionary. Type in your word and you're more likely than not to end up with a graphical creation. You can hover your mouse over each definition and click to re-search the dictionary. The coloured links indicate useful information about the word and its relationship to other words. It uses Princeton University’s WordNet, an opensource database built by University students and language researchers.

There simply cannot be enough ways to engage our students and selves with text, right? Thanks, Jo Anne. So now we can all follow Phil now as I am adding him to the Related Blogs (left hand sidebar here).

Social Networking Sites
How Much Access? Who Decides?

Schools and Online Social Networking by Dr. Nancy Willard, Director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, as posted to Education World, provides some really helpful advice about approaching student use of social networking sites with educationally sound principles. You can also check out Nancy's Centre site.

Article Abstract: Most educators working with middle and high school students are aware of the explosive involvement of youth on social networking sites. Few are prepared to deal with it. Internet safety expert Nancy Willard discusses the risks and benefits of such sites and offers schools a comprehensive approach to addressing student Internet access. Included are advice for parents and teachers as well as online guidelines for students.

Wikipedia generation is lazy

Toronto Star Education Reporter Kristin Rushowy created quite a frenzy of comments in response to her article "Profs blast lazy first-year students" this week: TheStar, April 6, 2009. It's one thing for our high school students to avoid databases in favour of finding the "good enough" answers of Google (a technique called satisficing) as the only search tool of value and Wikipedia as a citable academic source. It's quite another to imagine our students heading off to do academic research not knowing how to find a book or even how to ask for help. Oh dear. Things, the article would suggest, are going downhill rapidly as students' skills are poorer now than three years ago.

What might be the causes of this decline? Do today's students' have a sense of entitlement, also called attitude issues? Are we seeing the effects of underresourcing in the public secondary school system? Is society inculcating leisure values and concurrently a poor work ethic? Have recent structural changes in Ontario's education system -- students are now coming a year earlier than before -- created this "blip," which would suggest the same is not true for other Canadian loci such as BC? Are we graduating students who lack critical thinking skills and the ability to work independently?

Interestingly, at a SLRCCC last Fall, we had asked our UBC and SFU academic librarians to survey those who work with our "undergraduates" in the university libraries. What, we asked, are the ten things our graduates need to know if they are to succeed with the demands of academe? The first drafts came in this week quite coincidentally as Toronto assessed its own dilemma. We are saving the answers for the Secondary TL May 28 pm Update at the UBC Ike Barber Learning Centre, formerly the Main Library and still that in part. Have you registered online for this event yet?

Assessment Webcasts are Now Archived

Should your teacher colleagues or administrators want to follow up (catch up?) with the Ministry of Education's Assessment for Learning Webcast series of three presented this year, they are now fully archived with print materials including handouts and powerpoint presentations for taking notes. While over two hours long, I think they are really worthwhile. Also archived in the same format are the six Informed Assessment Practices webcasts from the previous two years.

Virtual Bookmark

Looking for some professional reading this weekend? Have you checked out the Virtual Bookmark lately? Al Smith, TL extraordinaire from Kelowna, keeps us all up to date with news and features relevant to thinking educators who work in BC's school libraries today. Could be good for a quiet few moments over the holiday weekend.

Testing, used properly, can lay the groundwork for success for all (The Vancouver Sun, 18 Mar 2009, Page A11)

.
... better still, so can lots of reading! This blog post allows me to expound on my thoughts exactly on assessment for learning in school libraries, whether you like it or not!

Geoff Johnson, a frequent educational editorial contributor to The Vancouver Sun Op Ed page, is a former colleague from my very first years in New Westminster as a teacher of English. In light of the comments of some of our colleagues that emerged from the recent BCTF AGM, I do very much appreciate the perspective from which Geoff's article (below) comes.

In schools, we teach children and everything we do is about building their chances of success. And aren't you glad that we teacher-librarians work in the best place in the school to stimulate the love of words, that we don't have to administer spelling tests, for example, or deal with zeroes and speculate on curricular dumbing-down -- rather, we know that assessment for learning (AFL) in our space means knowing each child well enough that you have no difficulty finding "just the right book for just the right child at just the right time."

Please read Meredyth`s lateliteracy blog this week (Teacher-librarians, April 4) as she describes the delight with which she viewed our Pam of Waverly in a frenzy of matching books and kids. To my Literacy colleagues I do need to ask, can you see it? Are there those places where you see classrooms committed to reading by using the school library program and you know that success in that building hinges on the relationships that have been developed to promote the love and culture of reading. Thanks, Meredyth, for this description. Oh, and for posting the very cool poster of Obama in the library.

Thanks, Meredyth, for this description of our super-colleague. Oh, and for posting the very cool poster of Obama in the library which I am blatantly borrowing because he belongs here too.

We know, and would love someone like Geoff Johnson to write about this phenomenon called school library, where reading improves with reading, and reading also improves spelling, vocabulary, grammar, writing ... well, Krashen argues this best, and I am preaching to the converted here! But for all the Ministry-driven rhetoric about improving literacy and student achievement, it still amazes me that decades of research correlating strong school library programs and student success, as well as free voluntary reading and student success, are ignored as we continue to face erosion of our capacity to administer the treatment that works best. Did I see a report that literacy scores are down, Mr Gorman? Stephen Krashen has something to say about that. Hello, is there anyone over there?

I am reminded of Krashen`s question: What, he asked metaphorically, if there was a country experiencing a drought and famine, and the experts deemed that the children there needed painful and expensive surgery? Everyone would say, no, feed them! Similarly, children don’t need painful and expensive intensive phonics programs (and perhaps I can add, more testing), they need books!

If you need to re-read about Krashen and his work, check my summary of his talk at the IASL conference in Berkeley this summer (Fall 2008 Bookmark, pp 10-11). And, Geoff, you were there in New West when Hooked on Books was what drove our instruction in English. I'll be in touch! Read Geoff Johnson (Sun, 18 March 2009) below ... .

---

Testing, used properly, can lay the groundwork for success for all
BY GEOFF JOHNSON
The Vancouver Sun
18 Mar 2009

It was 1968 and like every “ newbie” teacher in New South Wales, Australia, I was subject to inspection by a state-appointed inspector. And I wasn’t doing well. Grade 12 English in those days still included the teaching of spelling — thought to be an...read more...

Related:
Assessment for learning not â€�dumbing down’

Tech Tags: The Vancouver Sun newspaper Opinion

Best Wishes, Professional Reading, Online Resources, and Calendar

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Happy New Year and Welcome Back

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If you didn't get to this before or over the Holidays, now is your chance. Please check the upcoming events which I will keep current until posting again on January 16.

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Downtown
Bay Window

Hudson's Bay Company, 1916
Library and Archives Canada / PA-122005

Best Wishes

... for a restful and joyful holiday from the staff "downtown" who support strong school library programs in our diverse school communities:

ME, Diane, Maryann, Irinya, Thyrza, Donna, Jesse,
Fay, Ingrid, Mike, Larry, Sharon, Frank, and Val.

Where's Santa? Google for Educators is a great place for new ideas for information and tools to empower students and expand the frontiers of human knowledge. Or how about enabling kids of all ages to learn about geography as they follow Santa on his Christmas Eve journey around the world. Google works with NORAD to track Santa's progress (in six languages) on December 24, with daily updates and surprises until the 24th.

Mark Your Calendar: The busy season is coming so you will need to rest up! New professional development opportunities for January are now online. Many more events to choose from as well.

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Resolve to attend one or more of the following:

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January 21: Assessment For Learning and Descriptive Feedback, part 2 of the Provincial Webcast Series, 2008/9, at DT, 3:30 to 6:00 pm.

Each session will include the webcast program with experts and facilitated discussion, electronic copies of all materials, and handouts. Archived materials from earlier webcasts are available here. Assessment is a hot topic in the district so be sure to share this with your colleagues. Register online.

January 23: Family Literacy Day; consider registering your school. Break the Guinness World Record™ for Most Children Reading with an Adult, Multiple Locations by reading Robert Munsch. See email notification sent December 18.

January 27: After-school workshop at Gladstone: Strategies for Reducing Plagiarism; see Miscellaneous and register online. Invite colleagues.

January 28: TL Studio 1, Kerrisdale. Register online.

February 3: 4:30 to 7:30 pm -- Dr Leu on The New Literacies at the Italian Cultural Centre. For more information, contact Meredyth at mkezar@vsb.bc.ca. $65 includes dinner.

February 4: TL Studio 2, Gladstone. Register online.

February 10: Winter Tonic, Tupper. Watch for flyer and email details.

February 20 (am) Of particular interest for TLs at District Day:

Literacy Day at Killarney (check link from online registration under Literacy to view program and get registration information)

Technology Day at Magee. Alan November, keynote speaker. More information about sessions and speakers, will be available in January. Registration will be online.

PLUS

NEW! Online Conference for TLs: 21st Century Learning: Transforming school libraries with Web 2.0 tools -- 1 pm to 2 pm at Magee.

After Technology or Literacy Day events, you can attend the official launch of the 9 days of online sessions and discussions amongst TLs from Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and elsewhere. James "the Guru" Henri and Sandra "Web 2.0" Lee will be hosting more of what we saw in August. If you missed them at the VSB Summer Institute, or if you want more of the same, watch for details of how to pre-register in January. I will let you know when registration will be available online. Cost for VSB TLs ($60 per person) will be subsidized, and lunch will be provided.

February 25: TL Studio 1, Kerrisdale. Register online.

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Some Professional Reading for those Quiet Times

Linking into and from the BCTLA's Virtual Bookmark provides TLs with lots of reading for professional development in the quiet moments of the holiday. Here are a couple of articles posted by online editor and Kelowna TL Al Smith, with links to deeper reading on the topics:

Students Struggle with Information Literacy, by Justin Appel, Assistant Editor, eSchool News:

For additional relevant articles on eSchool News, check here: Measuring 21st Century Skills

Strategy for Overcoming Resistance to Technological Change, by Tom Haymes, Director of Technology and Instructional Computing at Houston Community College Northwest

If technologists just build it, they (the users) won’t come—you need to shape users’ behavior by acknowledging their world view rather than your own as a technology implementer; here is the link for the complete with the 3E strategy (that is, those charged with technology change need to build user awareness that the innovation is evident, easy-to-use, and essential) in EduCause.

Educational Leadership (Dec 2008/Jan 2009): Data: Now What? The New Stupid, by Frederick M. Hess.

An interesting read about assessment and accountability trends in the US, interesting in light of the recent FSA vote! "Educators have made great strides in using data. But danger lies ahead for those who misunderstand what data can and can't do." The New Stupid, writes Hess, is characterized by "an enthusiastic embrace of data [that] has waltzed us directly from a petulant resistance to performance measures to a reflexive and unsophisticated reliance on a few simple metrics—namely, graduation rates, expenditures, and the reading and math test scores of students in grades 3 through 8."

Launch of A Great New Online Digitization Project:

The British Colonist (1858-1910)

A great digital resource became available last week: The British Colonist Digitization Project is a joint effort by the Times Colonist, the University of Victoria, and a consortium of British Columbia libraries. The website covers the period from Dec. 11, 1858, to June 30, 1910, and offers 100,544 pages. Because the digitizing is only as good as the original or microfiche, you can try searching on the site but may also want to use the Index of Historical Victoria Newspapers.

NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English)

INBOX blog:

Most read blogs for 2008 Inbox on NCTE were about effective writing assignments and strategies for teaching nonfiction along with the summer series on 21st century tools for the classroom. Check out the IRA's ReadWriteThink Resources linked here too. For the rest of this excellent NCTE newsletter, click here. You can subscribe and get this every week.

Great Science Resources to Pass Along

Learning Science:

Here's a really useful site for online tools for teaching science. Collaboratively developed by teachers and Eucation faculty in Pennsylvania, it features the best science interactives and resources from around the world. SFU site-reviewer Linda Hof writes that Learning Science is divided into seven sections: Physical Science, Life Science, Science & Society, and more. Browse through teaching resources: web-based lessons, pedagogical tools, and links to external resources. Particularly good, says Hof, is the "Tools to Do Science" section: find printable rulers, a printable protractor, a stop watch, and printable graph paper. Or search the entire site via a convenient search engine and send along comments.

YT or no YT?

The New Media Literacies on YouTube is a video explanation of how various literacies enable students to have more skills and confidence that will prepare them for the 21st Century.

New Literacies for a New Age on YouTube is the history of how heffalumps brought new technologies to the education system and caused havoc as standardized testing benchmarks and students' abilities to memorize began to falter.

Education from the Outside on YouTube makes the case to bring the images from popular culture into classrooms to teach our students to read them and to learn ourselves.

Web 2.0: Cool Tool for Schools is a wiki full of social networking software programs that can be integrated with classroom learning processes and projects.

And finally, Teachers: Is There a Place for YouTube in the Classroom is the product of the research of a Toronto-area TL on the pros and cons of using YT in the classroom.

Storytelling and Booktalks
From the Honorary Ambassador for the IASL!

This list of suggested resources was compiled by Margaret Stimson, Retired Library Media Co-ordinator (Manitoba), and received via IASL post from Gerald Brown, Honorary Ambassador of the IASL:

Totlol. Developed by a Vancouverite, this video directory is intended for use with younger children, although more senior users like us will enjoy many of the selections. The site is moderated. It's powered by YouTube.

Book Video Ning. Visit or join the ning to find or share videos about books. The ning
was initiated by Joyce Valenza on December 12, 2008. As much as anything, the
ning serves to show us what is possible in the area of booktalks.

Speakaboos. If you like Storylines, you'll love this site as well. There you'll find online books, celebrity readers, teacher resources, and technology that enables kids to make their own recordings.

CogDogRoo Story Tools: This blog is more about making digital stories (or booktalks). Alan Levine offers 50+ web tools you can use to create your own web-based story. He provides several samples that have been made with each tool. In fact, the story of Dominoe the dog is told repeatedly using all of the tools.

Also from Gerald Brown in Winnipeg:

"I wish you a day of ordinary (library) miracles and little things to rejoice in.

Eight hands that go up to request the title you've just book talked.
A computer that goes for an entire day without crashing.
A less-than-successful baking experiment taken to the teachers lounge, gratefully
eaten before 10 am.
A child asking for another book "just like this one."
A software installation that does not cause another program to crash.
A parking spot close to the school door.
The principal saying a sincere thank-you.
An unexpected larger amount on your paycheck or a smaller amount on your mortgage payment.
A new book just published by your favorite author.
A student who is actually concerned about the quality of his work.
A dozen doughnuts as "thanks" for service above and beyond the call.
A quick and pleasant response from a technician.
A kid who wants to help you.
A human voice on the phone when you expected a recording.
A student who wants to become a librarian when she grows up.
A chance to show a tech-tip to a teacher who thinks you are a "guru."
A library with windows and sunbeams in the winter.
A request to use the library for a meeting because " it is the nicest room in the school."
A smile of accomplishment from a student who shows you how to do something on the computer. A quickly-answered reference question asked by a teacher.
A library aide you like and who likes you.
A student so absorbed in a book, he doesn't hear the bell ring.
A call from a parent about a lost book found while cleaning.
A student who wants to hold your hand.
Students who give genuine praise to each other.
A small space of time to read for pleasure!

What strikes me, says Gerald, as I read this list of "ordinary" miracles, is how we, ourselves, often make them happen. It is by treating others well that good is returned to us.

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Blogging off now for a rest from the pace.