Back in for a while ...

... After a Month on the Road

There's a lovely fresh and lighter look at Van Horne. This was our last stop on the city tour of school libraries. I think the photos are the best thing I've blogged so far and am well aware they are inspiring a much-needed energy to "lighten up" and weed the "dead stuff" in these stressful times in the VSB's annus horribilis. When times get tough, TLs weed (and get weeded, but that's another not-so-light story)!

Way to go, Dorothy, and assistant/mentors Maryann (who has a vested interest as a VH Kindergarten mother), Linda, Wendy, and Sylvia. Lots was done and learned in a very short period of time as Dorothy has only been there since January.


I won't be showing any photos of the cubicle that's waiting for me after our month of May Update sessions for Vancouver TLs. Know that my piles were only slightly less than these that were waiting for Maryann:

Here (below) am I with Renee, Primary Lit Consultant, down in Library Services as we are getting ready for our presentation at the online international conference on Reading, called YSL4 (YourSchoolLibrary, 4th event):

Our Session is to be an informal one. We are posting an emerging discussion called Reading the Word and the World: Shared Perspectives on Guiding Readers to Quality Literature. Do TLs have key points they want to see included? Why, yes they do. I'll be using our School Libraries and Literacies document you have seen in its finished form at the Updates. And nothing says I can't draw from comments received on my blog! (We learned it's okay to start sentences with And, But, or Because ... but that's never been a problem with the conventions of blog-writing, in my view.)My next appearance, while flying between outpourings of brilliance in the conference seesions I am attending and the discussions and upcoming interviews, will be at the same conference as a moderator for Stephen Krashen. Ain't I the important person!

Secondary TLs Make Appearance at SFU

I am dreadfully sorry I didn't take a single picture at SFU Bennett Library this week with most of the secondary TLs in attendance to hear the Writing expert (also named Renee) from the SFU Learning Commons identify the Top Ten Things Students Need to Know How to Do To Succeed with Academic Reading and Writing, a nice follow-up to last year's session about Academic Research. This team will be with us and some of our academic secondary department head colleagues at UBC later in June. We were delighted and send profuse thanks to Hope (my invitation said, There's Hope at SFU) and the team of librarians and we are quite convinced our colleagues will be greatly pleased with this session.

I am also sorry to say I don't have pictures of the annual year-end secondary dinner and gabfest, this time at Vita Bella restaurant in Burnaby. It was perhaps the loudest EVER! Who knew that they who apparently specialize in "shushing" could be so readily and enthusiastically influenced by Italian style and gusto. I think I needed that special night out with my specialist friends.

Bye for now ... won't likely be here at my usual blogspot next week as I am off to Edmonton to talk about Inquiry with Ross Todd, David Loertscher, Carol Koechlin, Sandi Zwaan, and more. Mmmm-hmmm. That's ME, important! We are going to be discussing our papers in relation to School Libraries as Learning Commons. Heather from Coquitlam and our Pat are going to be there too ... but I still can't say why Pat is coming!

Thanks, everyone. We saw TLs from all but about six of our school libraries at these sessions. That's amazing professionalism and dedication to currency and planning, eh? But that's what is so great about our TL community.

PSSSSTTTT: Be sure to check out the next blog and take 20 minutes or so to poke around in the TED site, if you have never been there before. Sir Ken Robinson's talks (this one is new and there is one from 2008) are amongst the most thought-provoking for us TLs as promoters of inquiry-based learning.

I Love the Colour of It All

Week 2: The Last Chapter, continues:

Through Castles and Jungles ... and More

The Sacred Places of Reading in the VSB

As many of you know, Maryann and I "hit the road" for most of May, taking our unfortunately-named May or year-end Update session -- The Last Chapter -- out to schools. The schedule at the moment is unrelenting ... and it isn't over. Add job-hunting and tackling the annual backlog of work to the package and I am sure you can appreciate that I arrive as required! Thanks for your beautiful spaces and kind thoughts, and thanks, MK, for taking over the snacks and other details that are all seeming a little overwhelming. I choose to blog it all out for therapy!

It's a jungle out there at Selkirk

Can you believe this?

An administrator is as excited about this "reading space"
as are the TLs here.

The Reading Chamber: Selkirk makes it all fun!
And on to Dickens:

You have to love the colour here
at Dickens

And quilt-art for the walls

We went to Henderson and found this:

Here's the art from our Carnavale:

We are in awe of Shaughnessy

Where the reading space feels almost sacred

Kids read online at Gladstone:

The garden fairy reads too:

And at Van Tech, there are miles of books to read ...

and new ones too:

The Last Chapter, continues next week:

After Castles and Jungles ...

What More Can There Be?

Great to be On the Road

Week 1 of the Update Road Show:

The Last Chapter

Am taking a break from serious, ponderous entries. Am set on capturing the images of the work TLs do and the beautiful places and spaces they have created for reading and student learning. Send in your photos please.

MK and I on the road delivering the annual round of Update sessions, ironically called The Last Chapter. Am doing the pieces about curriculum and directions for School Library programs, the new Points of Inquiry model hurried to these sessions for response and September implementation, maybe. Will deliver paper on this Inquiry model at the "Treasure Mountain" summit session of the CLA/CASL Conference, with Carol Koechlin and Dr David Loertscher, in Edmonton in June (hopefully not dates that conflict with job interviews). Will be joined on this excursion by Pat from Gladstone and Heather from Coquitlam. News about this forthcoming.

Will be busy applying for jobs ... and wondering how the TOC list might be. Ain't this a shame! Am worrying about news that some secondary school libraries here in Vancouver will have closures for the very first time that anyone can recall. Sorry, Dr Haycock, so so sorry. Where are you when we need you?

(It's May 2010, 9 years since the Haycock Report delivered Strategic Directions for Vancouver school libraries, all of which remain valid for programs and delivery of resources and services and most of which have continued to drive us to best practice and sustainable programs. One "direction" had recommended the creation of the TL consultant position and the School Library Resource Centre Consultative Committee made up of "stakeholders" in our programs, including parents. Not one "direction" intended to see erosion of qualified staffing, services, and resources to school libraries, the only programs in schools that provide direct support for reading and inquiry-based learning to all teachers and students in our schools.

It's ironic that, as technology enables inquiry-based learning, the experts in using resources and inquiry to integrate technology with teaching and learning, both as a tool and a resource, are being cut. This is expedient only in the short-run. No mentor or consultant can be in schools and available for all classes just exactly as teachers and students need the support -- that is, for scaffolding and providing the just-in-time learning we know is associated with becoming tech-savvy -- so well as the school's teacher-librarian who, when given adequate time to do the work, is quite simply only further ahead on the digital immigrant-native continuum for learning about the possibilities that technology enables with learning than most of his or her colleagues. I, like the blogger I have linked, am no fan of the Prensky metaphor that uses the binary opposite construction of digital expertise as immigrant vs native but do like blogger Don's expanded notion of our being shades in between, with roles better described as refugees, explorers, recluses, and so on.

Yes, no more ponderous outpourings. Read on for the joyful aspects of this work called school library.)

What's out there? Take a peek.

Elly as TL/Artist

Here is our French Immersion stopover.

Great interior design and furnishings.

Above, graciously hosted by Chatelaine TL Elly.

Isn't this annex school library beautiful.
We need to think about the wonderful model for annex TLs and their work that Karen has created here. She is right at the hub of her little school, all things to all classrooms.

We also enjoyed catering from Karen's Kitchen.

The Annex Stop:
Intense Interest as MK delivers the goods.

PS:

Have you signed up? Get your new Inquiry model, Gardening Tips from MK, and inset items to be added to your the brand-new SL Operations Manual.

See the rest of you soon.

PSST:

Read next blog-posts on:

• a hot new video clip of other lively events in the City on Edge. What creative things did your school engage in during The Big One at Two? Start planning your Gotta Keep Reading Event for next year (and if this doesn't make any sense to you, you have fallen behind on the blog readings; see earlier posting about Oprah, the Black-Eyed Peas, and the middle school reading and dance team!)
  
• Kam at work on the other road show, the one TLs host for tech integration with teaching and learning. Thanks to Bruno, Pat, and Kam for their leadership roles at both TL Studio at Kerrisdale (the last session for this year was to be May 26 but is now cancelled) and at Digitally Yours at Gladstone. For my part, as required, I would do a quick review of blogging and an out-of-the-hat "sandbox" look at blogging for field news and views as well as wiki-building.
  
• a song I like and a line I like: The High Road may or may not be about education but you have got to love a line like "Come on and get the minimum" when you are looking at such deep cuts to public education as we are experiencing here in BC, cuts that eliminate and/or curtail delivery of programs and services in school libraries, music programs, arts and other elective choices, and special education and counselling.
  
  

What's New?

• eduTecher: It's a lovely uncluttered site with links, tools, and ideas for teachers who are integrating technology with teaching and learning.
  
  
• Readability: This is an amazing tool from Arc90 Labs -- once installed on your favourites bar on your computer, you can use it to "declutter" any page of online text you like so that reading it is less likely to be subject to the distractions of ads, pictures, and other parallel or inset bits.
  
  
• For more like the above sites, you need to get into Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators from Discovery School. One dimension of her rich website is the SOS Sites of the Week, of which the above sites are the two most recent. She archives these so go here to check back on what she has found. This isn't the first time I have mentioned this site!

• From EducationWorld: Why not share this "toolbox" with your administrator? Administrator's Desk offers lots of timely ideas for thinking about their practice, especially with using technology, including blogging the newsletter.
  
  
• Great TL Cafe at Moberly this week. Thanks, Kam and Gwen, for the organizing and supporting the new(er) TLs. The group moved on to the Elephant Walk for an in-depth look at school libraries in Vancouver.
  


• Andy Hargreaves ( co-author with Dennis Shirley of The Fourth Way) was back in Coquitlam to work with their educators; a number of us from Vancouver were invited to join them. Things work differently in Coquitlam. It's so nice to see Tom in the middle of such a lively learning community, and nice for the morning to be free to think about the great possibilities for education, given the severity and constraints we are facing.
  


• Next week, a group of Vancouver elementary and secondary teachers and TLs will convene at the Ed Centre for a discussion of e-textbooks and e-resources. We have been doing some reading:
  


• Plans are under way for the year-end VTLA dinner. Hope to see lots of our group there, as usual. This is always a fun evening.
  


• Have you signed up for the May Update sessions? 89 have. These Update sessions are the way we keep current on the rapidly changing nature of the work we doo. They are starting this second week of May with sessions for our Annex and for French Immersion TLs. We are bringing customized materials and do need to know which one you will be attending.



• The last TL Studio II (now called Digitally Yours) is to be held at Gladstone next week. The focus, building a simple website for your library. This focus has come in response to demand at the TL Cafe and will feature Weebly, used by Kam for the Fleming library webpage and some additional Web 2.0 tools, including shutterfly which is the one Ciara uses for Kingsford-Smith's library webpage. We are going to have to cancel the last TL Studio session scheduled for May 26 at Kerrisdale due to a conflict, so we do hope to see everyone at Gladstone on Wednesday this week for it too will be the last session of the year.
  
  
• And while we are on the subject of school library websites, take a look at what Joyce Valenza has to say and show you about school library websites. In her Neverendingsearch blog entitled "School Library Websites Part 1" for SLJ, she explores the instructional capacity of school library websites and suggests that TLs are the instructional CIOs (Chief Information Officers) of their schools.
  


• Do you want to be a "tribe" with a micro-mag? Check out Seth Godin's blog entry. I attended an online conference with Godin this week on the future of education. I am no clearer about what that might look like. It was pretty "quick" stuff recommended by our own MK -- that is, it made me feel slow!

Congratulations are in order!

The TL Scene / Seen:

It's the busy time of year. That's my excuse for slowing down with the posts ... and besides, I need you to catch your breath on the school library roller-coaster ride. We are moving along at quite a clip and it's hard to take it all in.

There are a couple of national awards of interest to Vancouver TLs ... but I am overstepping the official CLA / CASL announcements next week and can only suggest you stay tuned. We remain Haycock's Legacy! By the way, I saw Ken two weekends ago at the BC Librarians' Conference in Burnaby. Look for more Haycock by summer's end.

All kinds of events for the BCTLA are recorded by our President Heather Daly on her BCTLA blog In Circulation. Read, for example, about:

• this year's Distinguished Service Award recipient Coquitlam principal Ross Davidson who supports literacy by making sure his school has a strong school library program with full-time staffing and by continuing his involvement in the partnership of principals and vice-principals whose Hog Wild About Reading motorcycle ride campaign has, for the past nine years, raised funds for Coquitlam's school library collections. Yay, Ross!
  
• our VTLA President Chris Evans' receiving this year's BCTLA Ken Haycock Grant for Professional Development to help defray costs of coming to the 2009 IASL Conference in Italy. Mary's in for sure, and we have three others considering coming.
  
• Michele Farquharson and Chris being elected to the 2009/10 BCTLA Executive, joining me and Sylvia from Vancouver as well as the retired Val H who, when not geo-caching, continues her web-working-wonders for TLs.
  
• this year's TL of the Year, Victoria's Karen Lindsay, our BCTLA second VP, particularly well-known for her work in advocacy for school libraries and for promoting DEAR: Drop Everything and READ.
  
• now retired Richmond TL phenom Judith Kootte who won this year's Val Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award. Judith continues her fine leadership role in learning resources and technology learning with ERAC.
  
• the new BCTLA Position Statement on Book Levelling and School Library Collections which is to be ready next week.

Amazing morning! See you Tuesday for Tea ...

Earlier this week the Churchill school library, a-buzz as ever with herds of students, was filled with rookie TLs, most of whom couldn't be distinguished from the kids. The 30 or so of our newest TL-colleagues were delightful to work with -- I know Maryann, Katharine, and Linda will agree -- and Mark Roberts too, as he has shed his "rookie" mantle after the first year back in our ranks from several years in a classroom. It was crowded but the energy and enthusiasm was fantastic. Thanks also to the VTLA, Kam at Fleming and Gwen in particular, who have identified the need for our new TLs to have the support of seasoned TL colleagues and time to talk. Don't miss their invitation to have tea and share experiences and ask questions ... May 5, Fleming School Library. See you there!

The Final Chapter / May Year-end Update Sessions

Still more than 50 need to sign up for these important in-service sessions to prepare you for the busiest time of year, June, and for what to expect in September. The first session is scheduled for Thursday this week. Sign up online please if you haven't done so. Contact ME if you need help organizing to attend. An important workshop for a number of you will be Bombino's Inventory Basics as well, scheduled for this month.

Very Last Minute Notices

Perhaps if you are checking this and if I finish in time, you will want to rush down to the CWILL Spring Hatching event at the VPL ... that is, if you didn't get the notice sent out earlier this week --- or to the Histori.ca Fair event at the Museum.

On things historical, by the way, I loved every minute of the presentation made by Wes Knapp at the Kitsilano workshop to share the DVD and teaching package for 1907 / Vancouver / 2007. Now every high school has the kit and there are two sets for lending at Media Services. Elementary teachers are using it as well. All this has been funded by the Vancouver Historical Society and is an amazing resource for Vancouver students. Wes and Charlie Hou will be presenting this again in October.


Web 2.0, Part 2: Online Conference June/July

Check here for more Henri/Lee Your SchoolLibrary Pro D, an online conference entitled Information Literacy and Web 2.0. This conference features our own Pat Parungao as a presenter alongside names like Mike Eisenberg of BigSix fame. If you "attended" the last one, there is a discounted price. There is also a group price. Let me know how many will be "coming" to this session which has more presenters and which runs from June 13 to July 5. Let me know ASAP if you are in for this one and I will set about negotiating our participation.


Educators to Watch

Maryann and I spent time together at the annual Fast Forward event which, despite the lack of ERAC participation, continues to provide public and academic librarians, as well as K-12 educators, a chance to pre-view and select DVDs and other related tools and resources for their patrons. I worked alongside Joan from Hamber and Steve from the VSB, as well as two of our French Immersion colleagues. We were all excited about some great programs that had been nixed or missed by the ERAC selection process. Mostly I loved the NFB videostreaming database ... you'll see this at the Update sessions. Oh, and lunch with a guy to watch ...

So we watched DVDs ... and then dashed to a lunch-time talk to hear Assistant Superintendent (West Van) Chris Kennedy's energetic presentation. Well, began, Kennedy, the world needs more librarians in the 21st Century (don't need to worry about hooking this audience) -- kids need to be taught how not to plagiarize, not learn by getting caught by mechanical plagiarism detectors. Using wikispaces as a presentation tool, he talked about the world-class product of our education system that we have here in BC, as evidenced by the PISA tests, measuring 15-year-olds for international comparison, that clearly place us at the top alongside countries like Finland. His District's literacy goals next year will feature Digital Literacy ... how much fun will that be! After the little shot of professional adrenalin to keeps us thinking about how best to work for our teacher-colleagues and with the needs of the children of the 21st Century in mind, we headed back to the viewing tables. Yes, it's all exciting stuff.

Budget Presentations

Kudos to the parents who are Friends of the School Libraries here in Vancouver, for the astounding level of support given to us in the recent budget process. Thank you, Trustees, for your support under the most trying of times, as well. It surely isn't the best part of your leadership role, having to cut the very services, resources, and tools that you know enable and empower our young learners to enter the adult world better able to read, think, learn, and prosper. It's been lean here in public schools for way too long now.


IASL Conference 2009

Planning-for-Padua Update

Are you looking for a great travel opportunity with fantastic company? If you haven't looked at the IASL Conference information, you may want to see what's up for TLs in Italy this summer. And we are so excited we have organized a group tour with our Italian travel consultant, Pre-conference Tour Organizer Francesca della Hastings (as in our Frances). We are pretty close to having a package together that we will send out for your summertime consideration. Vancouver and other TLs, educators, and friends might want to consider the 10-day Tour that brings us to Padua in time for the Workshop Day (August 31) with Dr Ross Todd and Dr Carol Kuhlthau -- I emailed for details which are too follow but they are pleased to hear a group from BC is coming! The Pre-conference Day, September 1, is fully posted. The workshops and papers have been selected so more detail on conference presenters will be coming soon. The actual conference, School Libraries in the Picture: Preparing Pupils for the Future, is September 2-4. Email ME for the information package.

New Issue of Teacher-Librarian, April 2009

This is the Best-of Issue (best fiction, picture books, websites, graphic novels, software, adult books for older teens, and so on) of Teacher Librarian and it includes the BEST from Canada's Resource Links 2008. Two articles I intend to savour: Tips from National School Library Media Program Winners for Success, in "A Recipe for Your School Library," and an article entitled "From Library to Learning Commons: A Metamorphosis." Great Advisory Board here everyone ... includes Ray Doiron, Michele Farquharson, Doug Johnson, Joy McGregor, Marcia Mardis and more. Try the magazine's TLToolkit for great websites.

Inquiry

Project continues. Inquiry TLs are invited for Monday morning to join SLRCCC sub-committee to look at IL Benchmarks and to consider project timeline and products for June. Academic librarians from UBC and SFU will join us for half the meeting. I am looking forward to this. Our TLs showcase so well!

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.

Lifelong Learning ...

If you have contributed to the tlspecial wiki, you will have recently noticed a spate of emails, for example, the ones from our dear Mary asking to be let in! Well, pbwiki underwent an upgrade and it seems to have upgraded every previous contributor to the status of administrator and reduced me to helpless bystander! So I have reduced you all to writers again and seem unable to put myself into the elevated administrative position again. I probably should have left one of you as an administrator so this could be fixed. Oh well. For any of the rest of you, including Fred at Byng who has since graduated from wikis to Moodle, check out the wiki to see what's new ... and please contact me if you need to get in to post some new stuff. Mary, any luck yet?

Old Crock

Adapted from Ted Covington.
Pics4Learning. 5 Apr 2009

The really annoying thing about Web 2.0 is that it rarely stays the same -- it is in a continual state of beta (that's a relatively new term for me -- it means "test" or pilot version). Did you ever think you'd have to know so much and then have to learn more ... at exactly the same time as your mind is so overloaded that stuff is going missing all the time! In fact, I am thinking my mind has entered a continual state of beta as nothing seems to be working the way it used to. I chose the photo above as it seems sometimes to make more sense to have technology that doesn't change. It's an old crock of a machine, like me.

Here's an example of what I mean: On or about the time of this my most significant birthday, I began bravely loading the OS on my new netbook. User-friendly stuff, unquestionably, or why would they let me do it? What, you ask, was I thinking?

Windows is the operating system (OS), now located behind a partition in your computer which I learned this weekend while trying to fix an unfixable problem; partition, you ask? Well, it's all different now and you don't get the recovery disks. Netbook? Very small computer. Reading my regular computer screen and loading the OS, I didn't read carefully and thought "Canadian French" meant the Canadian version of Windows with some French options (as, for example, l'accent circonflexe) which is exactly what it means on my regular laptop. Thereafter, I spent the entire weekend trying to reverse this irreversible decision and now hate the netbook and the company that made it that I am packing it up and sending it back, fingers crossed that all will go well and I will get my money back promptly.

But that's not all -- I accidentally paid the wrong VISA bill and now have to wait to get the money back after an "investigation" because I didn't take the time to read what I was doing and paid a card I never use. This does not bode well. I am awaiting my RogersRocket, annoyed by On-Star which gets in the way of my beloved Bluetooth, confused by Twitter and overwhelmed by Tweetdeck and astounded that anyone would want these, blogging furiously because everything -- in particular my timeline -- is going to the hand-basket, and mentoring JO's Gloria for technology integration with teaching and learning (she's building wikis over there). How ironic! I may have to go back and re-think my position that all the so-called digital immigrants need to become natives is more time!

What's Val up to? Read this.

What's Mary up to? If you are reading this Monday morning, she will be back behind the circ desk at General Gordon relaxing into her work after a very busy few months of not working. Right! We are so so happy to be back on Mary's priority list! Thanks, Mary, for all the work you've been doing behind the scenes to ensure you are back in a system with the strength it takes to thrive.

What else is new? A Vancouver TL has won the CASL/Follett National Teacher-Librarian Award and will be off to Montreal in late May to collect her prize! You have to guess who. Suffice it to say that referee Ken Haycock wondered why it had taken so long!

We are loving Inquiry! And here's what we are reading. We looked at the Ontario Exemplary School Libraries (2009) and the Saskatchewan Teachers' Association Teacher Librarians Supporting Student Learning (2006) documents. You can follow along with us on our Inquiry wiki.

Sign up now!

Have you registered for your May Update session? If you are a new TL, have you also registered for April 28?