While I was reading Richardson’s Why School?, many ideas popped out but one that remained in my mind was the aspect of ensuring that students were given the chance to create “real work for real audiences”. Heck, I want to make sure I was creating real work for real audiences!
"I'd rather know that my kids are creating something of meaning, value, and I hope, beauty for people other than just their teachers, and that those creations had the opportunity to live in the world. That they were thinking hard about audience. That they were learning how to network and collaborate with others." (Richardson, 2012)
What I feel was
missing this year was a lot of that connection. My ties to the school felt out
of whack with many of the normal school events not able to go on. I really wanted
to be able to bridge across the students and teachers I work with. But the
biggest piece for me was being tasked by my admin to ascertain the readiness of
our school should we need to go to remote teaching. Speaking with teachers and
students, then working on reviewing procedures and use of digital devices, I
found that I kept directing attention to the same tools and information that
were on multiple sites in our district. I was going from class to class and continually
having to have them find these tools; having a web page that harnessed them all
together and that I would be actively using with students felt like a win-win! I
would build it and use it with students getting them used to its features and
since I was learning too, their feedback will help me improve as we go along.
I read several useful blogs and websites to get general ideas of what to include on my web page. Overall, keeping things simple to start, easy to navigate and without too many bells and whistles seemed to be key. I read over blog posts from my peers to gather more ideas and then it was time to start.
My web page was built
primarily with students in mind. My goal for them is to:
- Become comfortable navigating our library catalogue (find books, place holds, see their account status)
- Learn about the features and tools for research at their disposal
- Navigating safely and responsibly while online
- Be able to harness their work together using Office 365 tools
- Have a place to see the going-ons of their peers
- Provide feedback to develop our web page into a school digital hub
My collaborative time
with teachers is quite minimal right now so I wanted to be able to collect some
resources for them but plan to be more active in that stream a little later on.
I chose to use the
free Weebly for Education platform as they do not have ads which I felt to be
very important. I looked over a few how-to videos but I found the easiest way
for me to learn was to get hands-on. For the most part, Weebly is quite
intuitive and the tools are easy to use. I did go into their support page
several times for information mostly on design aspects to get spacing, font,
and sections to my liking. I am quite thrilled with my results.
Click HERE to access Our LLC Webpage!
 |
| ourLLC.weebly.com |
I do plan to continue building this web page and improving as I use it with my students and later with teachers. I see it as a project that will continually shift with the needs of my school community. I look forward to developing it with and for them.
Some thoughts for the future:
- Adding a page for STEAM/coding - having my Challenge students collaborating on that would be a great project
- Adding "Outdoor Learning" resources for Teachers
- Having a page for student sharing - book reviews, Maker creations
- Developing some review videos and read alouds of my own (eek!)
This course has been
a good ride! I appreciated the times I was able to meet virtually and hear
about the happenings in other districts and with other TLs. I enjoyed being
able to choose and delve into matters of interest to me at this time so that the
work I did for this course was useful in my teaching world too. As this is my
last course towards my TL Diploma, I will miss the camaraderie and sharing the
most. My last few years working on this and other courses gave me the chance to
explore and develop myself in ways I did not know I would. My teaching has become
all the richer for it and I know that having seen all the myriad of wonders out
there… I still have a lot of learning to do!
References
LaGarde, J. (2020). BFTP: Creating GREAT Library Websites for
TODAY's Learners! [Blog]. Retrieved from https://www.librarygirl.net/post/bftp-creating-great-library-websites-for-today-s-learners
Moench, K. (2020). Website Building Resources for School
Librarians | Book Riot. Retrieved 4 December 2020, from https://bookriot.com/website-resources-for-school-librarians/
Paciotti, B. (2019). 6 Steps to Create a Great School Library
Website [Blog]. Retrieved from https://lookingbackward.edublogs.org/2019/12/04/school-lib-website/
Richardson, W. (2012). Why School? How Education Must Change
When Learning and Information are Everywhere [eBook edition]. Ted Conferences.
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