Vision Blog Post #2

Learner Considerations

The Leigh LLC Webpage will be for the benefit of my learners and staff, and once I am better established… the greater school community. The wish behind my vision is to have a central location where information can be gathered and disseminated. 

A hub that is inviting, inclusive and informative. 

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I very much want to enable a gathering place for my school since we are in many ways designated to so many separate bubbles.

The student body
At this moment in time, I only see half of the school population quarterly and I have no contact with remote learners at all. It is a real loss to my students to not have access to the LLC resources. Foremost in my plans is to ensure easy access for my students to reach elements that would be beneficial to them:
- develop their skills at using the library catalogue to access our collection, see new titles, and place requests for books
- find reliable information via Destiny Collections built in conjunction with their teacher with specific projects in mind
- be able to find book reviews and recommendations
- engage in fun curated activities on the Leigh LLC Padlet for fun activities
- easily see and find notices for school events and book clubs
- continue to engage in digital citizenship

Image from Hatice EROL from Pixabay

Peers and Colleagues
Collaboration in regular circumstances can be difficult due to time constraints… now more than ever, I need to be flexible and able to support my colleagues in a way that matters. We had a lot of resources at our disposal during the shift to remote learning in the spring but many of those have shifted or are no longer available. Our focus changed to ensuring our in-school programs were safe and there were a lot of adjustments made in the fall. Now as my district asks our teachers to once again pivot to ensure online supports are in place should the need arise, many of my colleagues require a hand to reconnect to resources.
A webpage would:
- be a place to group resources or provide an index to them
- be able to provide resource highlights of digital tools
- have provisions of helpful advice, tips, how-tos
 
I feel like much of what I currently do is only seen by the people in the same schedule as me. I don’t want to “drop” half the school when I am not directly working with them. I am building skills with my students and building relationships with classroom teachers. A ten-week gap is a lot of time for these skills and bonds to atrophy. I plan to direct much of my teaching when I am with students, to go through the website so they will see and understands its components and its worth. With a platform that is engaging, maybe I can keep some of my audience and interest them to continue learning during this transition.

Vision Blog Post #1

The themes of connection and access have surfaced so much over our inquiry and discussions. At this juncture in time, it is of utmost importance to me and is really what is causing me the most strain in my work. Creating something that would alleviate this concern for this assignment is a win-win all around!

My biggest challenge at the moment is that I am not able to do my job to the best of my ability due to my displacement from my classroom (LLC) and the disjointed schedule I am working in. If I could harness all my parts and put them together into one location that is easily accessible and well promoted, I would feel more efficient and effective to the needs of the learners and teachers at my school.

1) I adore helping students find meaningful books. I am limited in my capacity to reach every class though, so a place where reviews, book talks or highlights of new items in the library would be wonderful. Also, tutorials for using the library catalogue to find and request these titles.

Image by Mary Clark from Pixabay

2) I know the teachers at my school are making use of a variety resources: outdoor learning, iPad apps, Adrienne Gear collections, new technology… I am helping them as I see it or if they inquire but I know there are far more that are not asking or whose classrooms I am not frequenting. Again, an easily accessible place to highlight new or existing resources with short FAQs or how-to’s would be so useful.

Image by April Bryant from Pixabay

3) Challenge and STEAM – I work with the gifted students at my school and safety precautions have greatly hindered the ability for me to meet regularly with them. Somewhere to showcase resources, have discussions or share interests would be beneficial.

Image by HensleyStudios from Pixabay

My goal is to create a digital space that will connect at school learners, at home learners and my fellow teachers at school. Having a library webpage would be my best bet. I like the idea of having my own digital space to share ideas and resources. While it was nice to be a part of every TEAMS during remote learning, it was difficult to post and ensure students were seeing my announcements.

Image by www slon pics from Pixabay

I have begun work on researching how to create a webpage, ideas for design, and which website builders to use. So far, I have been collecting articles and helpful articles that I will parse through this week as I focus and develop my plan.

Reflecting Back on Phase 2

 Connections, connections, connections!

That seems to be the on-going theme throughout Phase 2.

How to connect with students and staff to build a learning community centered around literacy and the love of reading; reaching out and connecting to local support groups and other TLs to gain skills and insight to develop in and around the LLC; connecting with staff to build-up their abilities and to collaborate; looking out into the world and seeing how places and spaces around the globe are working hard by forming alliances to help advance the ability of kids to read and grow.

I also saw the importance of connection in our learning group. Seeing how my classmates navigated through the modules we were exploring helped me evaluate my own thoughts. From Bill, I saw the generosity of spirit in putting out resources to share with other educators near and far. From Jennifer, I read about the importance of strong support networks and having a common vision to advance learning goals across a district. From Laura, I was inspired to create more opportunities in my school for teachers to have meaningful ventures in their professional learning whether it was to bring sources into the school or to create a platform for sharing what we know and what we want to learn more about. From Linda, I saw the honesty of acknowledging that sometimes putting ourselves out there can be a daunting task – we are seeking others out who may not yet want us or value our skills because they don’t know what we have to offer. From Katy, I was reminded how small things set in motion can carry to so much more - an accidental buying of several copies of a book leading to class book clubs and then school-wide initiative that carried even through remote teaching; providing connections when we were apart.

I feel now more than ever, I need to push to work with my colleagues. My school is divided due to timetable constraints, the usual avenues for teachers to talk together, work together and plan together are few or non-existent; the connections we use to have are not presently there. I recognize that this is not for the long-term but even in the short-term, the strain is being felt. While I don’t have the luxury of seeing the whole school at one time as in previous years, I am seeing half the school and therefore, half the teachers concretely over quarters. I hope to be able to bridge some of that lost connectivity while seeing this half population. I want to be able to highlight the amazing teaching I see from one classroom to the next. Laura spoke of creating a platform to share resources, a blog or a social media account for teachers to follow. Hers was specific to professional development opportunities but it could equally be a place to showcase the going-ons in the classes, successes and accomplishments so we can all celebrate together. As a part of my school-wide events to promote a strong reading culture, I ensure having students see what each other is doing. There is always a portion where they see beyond their classroom – lining the halls with other classes to read, an assembly together to see an author presentation, or showing their artistry by adding their work to a bookmark contest display. They want to see the happenings of others in the school, they want to know that they are connected and sharing things together. Now more than ever, the staff and students at my school need to be reminded that we can lean on each other and we are not on our own. I hope to help by working on a sharing forum and filling it with these highlights and pops of positivity.

References

Bosch, L. (2020). LIBE 477: Inquiry Blog 3: Supporting Teachers' Professional Development [Blog]. Retrieved from https://laurarbosch.blogspot.com/2020/10/libe-477-inquiry-blog-3-supporting.html

Dekens, K. (2020). Peruse Joyfully [Blog]. Retrieved from https://kthlyndk.wordpress.com/2020/10/12/peruse-joyfully/

Kroeker, J. (2020). Searching for Network Connections [Blog]. Retrieved from https://learningtolib.blogspot.com/2020/10/searchingfor-network-connections-libe.html

Mei, L. (2020). LIBE 477B: Supporting Teacher Professional Development of ICT Curriculum and Pedagogy [Blog]. Retrieved from https://transdisciplinaryinquiry.wordpress.com/2020/10/19/libe-477b-supporting-teacher-professional-development-of-ict-curriculum-and-pedagogy/

Trickey, W. (2020). libe 477b – Inquiry Blog Post #2 [Blog]. Retrieved from  http://blogs.ubc.ca/libe477b/2020/10/18/libe-477b-inquiry-blog-post-2/

Developing World Libraries

I started this week looking at the challenges faced by school libraries in developing countries. Shonhe's (2019) study brings up the following deficiencies:
1) Lack of library policies
2) Poor staffing practices
3) Lack of adequate funding
4) Poor ICT infrastructure
5) Poor library facilities
6) Lack of awareness of the significance of libraries

Thinking upon these and of technology and developing countries, I remembered coming across One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) in my early years of teaching. I was looking up information for teaching my computer class and stumbled on an article. I remembered how intrigued I was by it and how amazed I was that such a formidable goal of providing a cost-effective device to every child in developing countries was generating steam. I am pretty sure I brought it up to my grade eight students and we discussed the magnitude and significance this might have for those learners. Then, it faded away and other things came up. From time to time, I would think about that little green and white computer with a hand crank but I never really followed-up.

OLPC's XO laptop, Creative Commons

This week’s blog post gave me the chance to go back for another look; an update to the story of that green and white laptop. Unfortunately, it hadn’t turned out as glorious as I had hoped. According to Robertson’s (2018) article in The Verge, it was too lofty a goal to attempt to keep the cost of each laptop to $100 each and that created a lot of hardware and software issues to overcome but I think the largest hurdle was as Robertson writes, “thirteen years ago, OLPC told the world that every child should get a laptop. It never stopped to prove that they needed one” (2018). As important as internet devices are in our daily lives, these tools are not miracle workers that will suddenly enable children to becoming lifelong learners; they still require much guidance. OLPC still exists today but on a much smaller scale than its beginning.

Following up on OLPC did lead me to two other organizations: Library for All and Room to Read.

Library for All does not focus on getting devices into the hands of children in developing countries, rather, the organization wants to “help turn access to tablets, smartphones, and legacy phones into substantially improved access to content at resource-starved schools” (Quillen, 2013). Their idea is to formalize a central repository of information curated from free resources on the web for teachers to use, many of whom may be in the early stages of learning how to use technology themselves. The repository features a simplified format with less graphics to save on bandwidth which is often at a premium in many remote locations. Their hope is to be able to tailor these resources to the specific needs of developing countries – teacher comfort, language, subjects, reading levels. The Library for All platform is designed to operate on devices already in the developing world, specifically mobile phones that are more prevalent and accessible and to that extent, they have worked with national telecommunications companies in each country to ensure that users incur zero data charges while reading on the platform (Stephans, 2015). The most important part in my eyes is that this organizations works with local educators to ensure that content is relevant and work with local curriculum and offered in the language of that region. They “believe having access to culturally and linguistically relevant information is crucial in allowing people to lift themselves out of poverty (Stephans, 2015).

Meanwhile, “Room to Read works with local authors, illustrators and designers to create and publish books that reflect the experience and culture of the children learning to read in their libraries. The stories have lessons from local life and culture, relying on fewer and fewer translations of Western stories about hot dogs and snow” (Truong, 2019). The child-centered, friendly and approachable setting of the libraries built by this foundation creates safe spaces for children to explore, develop a love of reading and invite their families into their learning. Further there is funding to empower girls by covering their basic needs so that they will be motivated to develop more academically. I love how in the Vietnam story shared by Truong, a field manager for Room to Read, after encountering a boy who was teased for loving flowers, she brought it to the attention of her team and they are developing more diverse stories, including one of a boy who loves flowers and others to deconstruct stereotypes.

Finally, I found an opinion piece for Tech for Impact, it was noted that COVID-19 has really highlighted a disparity of technology especially in low-income communities across Asia. In it, Sayres points to leveraging cloud technology to give more free access to education and using smart phone apps can be beneficial as those devices are usually most common for access in developing countries. The article also highlights some older tech; many governments and organizations are using broadcast technology, radio and television, to get lessons and educational programming out as well. The article finishes by stating “[a] layered response, of old and new, remote and physical, is the way to truly bridge the digital divide” (Sayres, 2020). I have found the need for this balance in my own school library. We need to be attuned to what our students have accessible to them in order to be able to facilitate what we can.

References

Bernard, S. (2008). Room to Read: Building Libraries, Schools, and Computer Labs in Developing Countries. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/global-education-libraries-developing-countries

Cameron, J. One Laptop per Child. Retrieved 1 November 2020, from http://one.laptop.org/

Knight Foundation. (2015). Library for All [Video]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/135565695

Quillen, I. (2013). Mindshift Library for All: Free Digital Content for Developing Countries. Retrieved from https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/29339/library-for-all-free-digital-content-for-developing-countries

Robertson, A. (2018). OLPC’s $100 laptop was going to change the world — then it all went wrong. Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17233946/olpcs-100-laptop-education-where-is-it-now

Room to Read. (2014). Room to Read | Learn More in Under 3 Minutes [Video]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/qNhLgn1VsG4

Sayres, N. (2020). Tech can drive equality in education. You can help. Retrieved from https://techforimpact.asia/tech-can-drive-equality-in-education-you-can-help

Shonhe, L. (2019). A consolidation of challenges faced by school libraries in developing countries. Library Philosophy And Practice. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/2467

Stephans, K. (2015). Library For All breaks down barriers to knowledge in developing world. Retrieved from https://knightfoundation.org/articles/library-all-breaks-down-barriers-knowledge-developing-world/

Truong, L. (2019). Libraries Changing the Margins of the World | Room to Read. Retrieved from https://bittersweetmonthly.com/stories/room-to-read#