The Fresh Breeze from Kelowna's BCTLA Conference

At the BCTLA Kelowna Fresh Conference in October, the new Points of Inquiry framework document was finally launched after three years under development. The new model replaces The Research Quest and offers TLs and classroom teachers a way of planning a course for students through their learning experiences in the school. Not only can teachers use the inquiry-based reading and learning model with content in their classrooms, the framework offers a way of working collaboratively with students, as well as teacher-librarians and school libraries, to create learning opportunities that fuse curriculum learning intentions with inquiry using an array of resources, technology, literacy goals, assessment for learning, and content, developed in a collegial planning experience. TLs are excited about this. For a downloadable copy, poster, and related working materials, including Michele's video accompaniment on technology and sources of information to support inquiry-based teaching and learning, click here (BCTLA website).

Keynote Dr Jamie McKenzie stirred up "the fresh breeze" and helped us look at ourselves. Teachers and teacher-librarians have been too quiet, he said, about all the things that TLs do. "Intellectual disarmament" -- that was what McKenzie called the act of replacing TLs with aides in these times, and he lamented the tendency of our educational policy-makers and leaders to offer simple words and simple solutions to what are really very complex problems.

We live in an age characterized by the "poverty of abundance," like google results; it is an illusion to think of the richness of information when you can't find what you need. You need to know how to use Advanced Search features and Boolean operators and how corporate affiliations influence search findings. We need to push past topical research and our fascination with gadgets.

TLs have many roles: TLs offer professional development, open new landscapes, and are strong teachers of reading. They provide professional support to colleagues about technology integration and new resources; they are reading and assessment experts; they develop curriculum materials; they coach; they act as pilot, navigator, and sage; they are infotech leaders; they have long-standing roles as archivists and curators of information and materials; in their schools and their learning communities, they are weavers, storytellers, magicians, inventors, and politicians.

Read more about the place of school libraries in the new visions for learning on McKenzie's website: FromNowOn

I also attended a workshop with Carlene Walter called Reading 2.0. She is the author of "50 Ways to Love your Library" (it's so good we posted it to the BCTLA website) and one of two Disruptive Innovators (with Donna Desroches) from Saskatchewan:

As we move towards Learning Commons (or "libratories"), we need to help students both "get stuff" and "do stuff." Digital and print resources will co-exist. New technologies -- docu-cameras, flip cameras -- and resources and tools will require our services, as we help our colleagues to navigate Jstor, Wikispaces, Pageflakes, edublogs, Creative Commons, Flickr, Wolframalpha, bibme, Shelfari, youtube, voicethread, diigo, Twitter, SlideShare, Facebook, Skype, bubbl.us, pipl, EverNote, Inspiration, Webspiration, Readability, Instapaper, Glossopedia, Google News, TED Talks, Wall Wisher ... all will need to be mediated for use with teaching and learning, along with all the new terminology. Using the 7 strategies developed by Fountas & Pinnell, Carlene showed how all of these tools can be used to support reading for deep understanding, supporting building prior knowledge, making connections, asking questions, evoking images, determining importance, inferring, and synthesizing. Hmmm! Pretty close to our Points of Inquiry model of Inquiry-based Reading, don't you think! Nice work, Carlene.

Fresh for me was the docu-camera as a daily classroom tool. I so want one. Carlene says they are about $800 to $1000. Have a look at this Educational Technology Network article about Document Cameras in the Classroom.

At the Kelowna Fresh BCTLA Conference, there were tons of "fresh" ideas. That Dr Art Hister was a breath of fresh air all on his own ... and held us all in fits of laughter at 3 pm on a beautiful sunny Friday afternoon with jokes and tips on staying in good health. He was the perfect ending to a lovely day. Thanks, Kelowna TLs, for taking us away and restoring our spirits ... and some who ventured thereafter to the wineries were, of course, more restored than others!

Planning for October 2010? Check this out:

KelownaFresh

2010 BCTLA Conference
October 21-22, 2010

The Central Okanagan Teacher Librarians' Association (COTLA) is proud to be sponsoring the 2010 British Columbia Teacher-Librarians' Association (BCTLA) conference, October 21-22. The conference will be hosted at Kelowna Secondary School (1079 Raymer Avenue, Kelowna).

In addition to a comprehensive conference itinerary and social events, there will be three keynote addresses:

Dr. Jamie McKenzie will outline the exciting new roles of the 21st centure teacher-librarian and talk about the stance, attitude and strategies required to turn challenge into opportunity.

Well known television personality, Dr. Art Hister, will talk about taking care of your health so that you can live with more energy, more happiness, and less stress.

The "Disruptive Innovators" Donna DesRoches and Carlene Walter will discuss how social media has redefined the role or the teacher-librarian.

With 31 distinct sessions covering everything from 21st century libraries and technologies to the art of writing and the culture of reading, the conference promises to be of interest to a wide range of teaching professionals.

For more information on the conference, its sessions, and registration procedures, visit the KelownaFresh conference site .

FNO on TLs and School Libraries: Yay, Jamie!

When district management and trustees consider the projected impact of cuts to non-enrolling staffing, including teacher-librarians, for the upcoming 2010/11 school year here in Vancouver and other BC school districts, we need to ask that they please consider this article by Jamie McKenzie: Why We Still Need [School] Libraries and [Teacher-] Librarians (FNO 19:4, March 2010) and the changing role TLs have in the new equations for learning. The article describes the role of the TL in relation to staff and students, with so many new tools, sources of information and resources.

The tech-savvy, highly engaging and engaged school-library supporter McKenzie writes,

Those school librarians who hold stubbornly to a 1950s definition of the job are likely to pass and be forgotten - extinct before their time. While many of the tasks that were important back then remain important in this decade, new challenges must be firmly placed at the core of any survival strategies. By embracing these new challenges and offering expertise not held by any staff members, teacher librarians can make themselves indispensable.

It is a terrible irony that, at the very time that what they do is so very important in this district and in relation to learning, there will be fewer who are enabled to:

• support adult learning about using new tools and resources to learn how to how to engage in and teach about finding good information and making good new ideas; to beyond the tools and information to deep understanding and knowledge; build inquiry skills and connect literacy development to authentic research; and lead teachers in creating resource-based learning opportunities
  
  
• support colleagues in building new approaches to curriculum, both by modelling and by providing quality resources and support
  
  
• partner with teachers and work alongside them as peer coaches to integrate new tools, resources, and ideas that make learning more engaging for students
  
  
• guide colleagues and give them the skills, support, and knowledge to become independent users of technology and digital resources, to connect with others about the best use of these resources, and to sift the information for what is best
  
  
• play a lead role in selecting, organizing, and developing technology and information applications, structures, and systems that work in classrooms with kids at appropriate times and levels and maintain congruence between digital and print collections of resources
  
• collect and display appealing and appropriate resources that have been collected
  for the particular purpose, including heritage
  
  
• lead teachers in collaborative communities of learning to shared understandings about purpose and direction
  
  
• share in the development and communication of the organizational account of a school as it develops its sense of itself in a rapidly changing world
  
  
• lead by "cooking stone soup" and moving beyond the tools and information to places of critical thinking and creativity, despite constraints of time and money
  
  
• continue the traditional roles such as encouraging the love of literature and reading, broadening interests, offering great resources in a variety of formats, staying current in new resource formats, making questioning and inquiry important, and working cooperatively with teacher colleagues
  
  
• lead the inventive effort in trying times
  
  
• be the best reading teacher in the school
  
  
• augment student performance and achievement where comprehension is important
  

McKenzie concludes that TLs must also be politicians and, by extension, engage in the politics of school libraries by supporting others in the promotion of school library programs as a key factor in the new learning equation that includes both teachers and students); he raps TLs on the knuckles for being polite in their advocacy and gives an example of powerful community support:

As a group, teacher librarians have been a bit too polite and reserved while their jobs and positions crumbled under the onslaught of school leaders intent on reducing force and programs. In many districts facing tough budget restrictions with the disappearance of stimulus funds, TLs and their programs are very much at risk. In many cases, administrators hand over the tough choices to staff members, forcing them into cannibalizing.

McKenzie writes that TLs:

• cannot afford to be silent
• cannot wait until administrators ask
• must be tireless advocates for smart, balanced, well-funded information literacy and reading programs as well as adequate and qualified school library staffing
• must build partnerships within broader community with a focus on those who mold, move and shake opinions and direction at the highest levels
  

A success story worth emulating, McKenzie continues, is the two year effort by Moms in Washington to convince the state legislature to formalize a commitment to school library staffing and funding. For the full story go to the article in the School Library Journal describing their campaign.

But then we TLs know all this. We are the converted. Share this with others.

AND be sure to share Jamie McKenzie's FNO.org with colleagues. This month's issue (May 2010) looks at teaching complex concepts like beauty and at teaching that integrates meaningful understanding of history with skills in the literacies and the best use of technology for the educational goals.

Jamie is the keynote speaker at the Fall BCTLA KelownaFresh Conference . See Al Smith's Comment for more details.

Time for a Break!

Time for a Break!

Rather than add to the size of your email with large summary email missives each week, I am blogging and will be sending out the link.

More Changes in School Libraries

The new TL at the Gladstone library is doing her course work in the TL diploma program and is rumoured to work part-time as well at Kidsbooks.

We will update the TL Directory in January to reflect the many changes.

I have a new assistant.

FPinfomart Training

The FPinfomart Training and Professional Services team will hold classroom training sessions in Vancouver on Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2008.

If you would like to participate, can you contact Moira before registering with Yvonne Yip at yyip@canwest.com.

If you are unable to attend, please contact Yvonne to set up an alternate virtual or phone training session. For more information on all of the different training opportunities, as well as details on the on-site venues, please visit the Training Schedule.

DVD: The Boy Inside

The Ministry of Education is sending out copies of this DVD for schools, as you will have seen in my earlier email today. We need to catalogue one copy be sent in for cataloguing. Can someone let me know when one is available. Remind your administrator that our centralized resource and expertise services are the best way to retain and promote resources in schools. If anyone should happen to get two copies, we could always add one to the district Media collection!

Lunch with Jamie McKenzie –

I can't tell you how great it was for me to be invited to share in the Nootka potluck luncheon with guest Dr Jamie McKenzie, former superintendent for the Bellingham School District. For those of you who want to find out more about his work in supporting teachers who are integrating technology with teaching and learning and in building strong school library programs go to his From Now On website. And the lunch was fantastic, especially the cream puffs!

Cancelled/un-cancelled/re-scheduled -- Workshop on Accounting --

As I drove back to the VSB from Nootka on Thursday afternoon, the snow appeared to be sticking so, on seeing that most were coming from the East Side, I thought it best to cancel the workshop. In addition to emailing, we phoned the schools. You will have seen the email -- several were also sick. But TLs are a hardy and dedicated breed. Six came, two by bike. And the snow turned to rain. So we had a small but successful workshop. I am planning another one for January as Accounting will still send someone.

Lunch with Author Hadani Ditmars

Author Hadani Ditmars and I had lunch this week ... I don't get out very often like this, I swear! She is widely published with a major article on the loss of culture due in the March issue of The Walrus.

Here is a link to her literary agent's page: http://www.tla1.com/Talent/Hadani_Ditmars/HADANI_DITMARS.htm.

Hadani is going to be available in January and February for sure and is well suited to social studies global issues topics. I have several schools already interested in setting dates. Here's the "blurb":

Hadani Ditmars’ Dancing in the No Fly Zone chronicles 7 years of reporting from pre and post invasion Iraq. She has read and lectured on Iraq internationally, from the Vancouver Public Library to London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs to Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. Hadani has had a particular interest in the plight of children and youth in war zones, having documented the experience of Lebanese “children of war” in post civil war Beirut, Somali and Palestinian refugees, as well as children in Iraq. Her work lends itself to elementary and secondary social studies. The chapter of No Fly Zone entitled “The Pool People” describes the plight of displaced children and their families camped out in an abandoned aquatic centre in a north Baghdad slum. “In Hospital” focuses on the Baghdad Pediatric Hospital – sadly in worse shape post invasion than it was under draconian sanctions that restricted the importation of basic medicine and supplies.

Iraq, like Canada, was once a secular, multicultural society with one of the best public health and education systems in the world. Today, infant mortality rates are on a par with sub-Saharan Africa and the literacy rate has plummeted. Baghdad’s libraries, museums, schools and public institutions have been burned, looted or co-opted by sectarian militias and a whole generation of children have had their education interrupted or severely curtailed.

Hadani’s book as well as her video and photographic presentations offer a very human and easily accessible way into the lives of average Iraqi men, women and children caught up in war and conflict, and can greatly contribute to widening the worldview of young people in Canada.

Awesome Stories

Membership to this databases of stories, audiostreaming, audio/video clips, online games, and virtual field trips is free. I am getting the monthly newsletters -- December features Beowulf, Who was St Nicholas?, and The Story of Peter Pan. There is a newly located Learning Tools section.

Check out the site, sign up for the newsletter, or subscribe as an individual member: http://www.awesomestories.com/. We could also subscribe as an academic group if there were interest.

SLRCCC (School Library Resource Centre Consultative Committee)

We had our second meeting of the year on Tuesday morning this week. The committee was pleased to welcome two academic librarians from the SFU libraries and will be joined by one from the UBC Education Library in January. The introduction of academic librarians to the committee structure is exciting for us. The "big picture" for our students who go on to post-secondary and for what happens to prepare their students who undertake practica in our schools to work with TLs is just a hint of the possibilities of conversations.

"The Role and Responsibilities" document (see Handbook, section 1, pages 10-16) was reviewed and we are now able to announce that it looks as though both VEPVA and VASSA will "endorse" the document as a statement of best practice for TLs. The first page (page 10) will be revised for The Handbook to include the following paragraph and to reflect the additional endorsements:

The “Role and Responsibilities” document is not intended as written policy; rather, it is a working document, a set of guidelines to help new teacher-librarians, those considering teacher-librarianship, and those who work with and support the work of teacher-librarians in schools. As a reflection of what constitutes best practice for Vancouver’s teacher-librarians, it can be used as a tool for assessing professional development needs and a framework for discussions of school library programs where it is important to have common understandings about the work of teacher-librarians.

We wished my assistant well in her new year-long position gifts for our Media and Library Services support staff, as well as for the technicians who keep school libraries up and running, were delivered. We also were informed that there will be no change in the Systems Librarian position.

Handbook Revisions

I will begin to work with my new assistant on the latest revisions to The Handbook. The version in the portal is a little out of date but we are now downloaded and ready to go with updating in January. Input from TLs would be important. If you haven't printed out a copy, you could wait but access the electronic version for your own needs.

Get Carded Info

This is a reminder to those secondary schools who have not yet responded with the number of classes of grade 9s who would be involved with this VPL initiative that it would be important to respond this week coming. Thanks for your help.

Ressources: Encyclopedie Decouverte and World Book for Kids (French)

Always in search of resources to meet the needs of Vancouver's French Immersion students, we have been working with the World Book rep on pricing out the French version of the Discovery Encyclopedia as a district/French Immersion purchase. More information will follow. The actual copies are not due out until the Fall of 2008. The electronic database World Book for Kids (French) is due in February. This is not going to be a cost item to schools.

"That's a Family" DVD and Teacher Guide

The Anti-homophobia Consultant has ordered copies of this kit for every school. You may remember I announced at the multivendor display that we are participating, along with the Anti-racism Consultant, in this acquisition for all elementary schools. We will discuss cataloguing with our "catstaff" and then get them out to the professional collections of our elementary school libraries thereafter. We would anticipate that you will want to promote this engaging and significant resource at professional development opportunities and/or staff meetings.

And finally ...

I hope you have a wonderful, lively, and productive last week of school. Unless there is an accumulation of important news, I don't expect I will need to do a summary next week. Here's wishing you a lovely break and a fulfilling new year. Thanks for all the support you have given me. It has been a busy time but I think I'm getting a handle on the pace and expectations. Now if I could just adjust to life in a cubicle!

More on Jamie McKenzie

I did want to highlight for you the item in the blog below about being invited to go to Nootka to talk with Dr Jamie McKenzie, the former superintendent of Bellingham, now retired and working as a global consultant on technology and learning. His work underpinned a lot of what we were doing in the two-year district technology planning process for the 2006 Tech Plan. He works with several school districts here in BC which is why he was passing through Vancouver. All of our ICT Task Force committee members were familiar with his work.

Nootka VP Andrea had made an independent connection with McKenzie through her search for ways to enhance the school's capacity to build strong technological foundations for teaching and learning and her own course work, so he had asked if he could drop by as he was in the area. I was lucky enough to be invited by TL GS who is taking technology workshops I have been offering.

Nootka's Thrive program students made a lovely presentation -- twice, in fact, because I came in later, where they demonstrated and discussed online tools and programs that work well for learning. These students amply demonstrate that learning abilities are enhanced and activated by technology. Funding from outside sources also enables this group's learning. Amazing stuff, and McKenzie was the first to say so. Here's their webpage: http://nootka.vsb.bc.ca/thrive.

As we consider the future directions for building for technology in Vancouver schools, I would love to find ways to have more input from McKenzie, and he has an engaging presence too. It would be great to find a context to connect more formally with him ... as you can imagine from my position as disciple, McKenzie is also a very big supporter of the notion of school libraries as "hubs" for learning and TLs as support for technology integration in schools. McKenzie is a name that my merely mentioning brought on paroxysms of TL envy!

One interesting aspect of the discussions was on the recent trend amongst those who promote technology, a trend which casts students as "digital natives," by virtue of their having been born into the tech-rich world, and many educators and adults in general as the "digital immigrants." He has no time for this notion. Students may navigate with ease but they lack the capacity, without the guidance of educators, to apply the skills and understandings of the many literacies -- visual, critical, media, cultural, even traditional, to begin the multiliteracies list -- and need to have ongoing support for their learning. Anyone can learn technology -- but with the right support and investment in their learning, it becomes a tool for thinking, constructing knowledge, working collaboratively and more globally, and creating meaningful products.

Not one to mince words, he writes:

Those leading the digital surge are quick to exile older folks to a dust bin of irrelevancy simply because they were born before the iPod. Their point of view is harsh and ill informed. Their stance is unsubstantiated by evidence and is little more than digital delusion. They are guilty of "arcade scholarship" - analysis that is superficial and cartoonish.

This recent (Nov 2007) article in its entirety can be found here: http://www.fno.org/nov07/cov.html