My iCentre presentation at SLAV’s Future School Library Scenarios conference

I presented the featured address at the School Library Association of Victoria‘s (SLAV) ‘Creating collaborative learning spaces: Future school library scenarios’ conference held at Victoria University of Technology on Friday in Melbourne.

The future of school libraries has been a hot topic these past couple of years in Australia as a result of the Building the Education Revolution (BER) fund, a range of online forums and conferences exploring the vision for 21st century school libraries, followed by the national Inquiry into Australian school libraries and teacher librarians (we hope to see the outcomes of this in early May when the report is tabled at Parliament).

These have all been significant ‘blips’ on the teacher librarianship profession’s radar, and it has resulted in much discussion at the local community, regional and education sector levels, as well as the Australian general public due to increased media exposure across radio and press outlets. Check out the Links section on this blog for examples of these.

This address explored some of the issues, concerns and potentials of school library futures in the past couple of years and examined how a TL’s own practice can contribute to building capacity for a sustainable future where school libraries become key learning centres of information, inquiry, innovation, immersion and instructional excellence. I introduced the concept of the iCentre and the ways schools can develop such a centre based on the principles of form, function and brand. This is based on the Commentary I wrote for ASLA’s journal Access.

I think the three principles of form, function and brand provide a useful framework for schools wishing to explore the convergence of facilities, resources, people, funding, policy, programs and services to develop an iCentre. TLs as information, technology and learning specialists can play a leadership role in building their school’s vision towards an iCentre approach.

I presented the iCentre model as one future school library scenario that could be considered by schools, and suggested that the form-function-brand framework can be useful in exploring what a school library might look like in the future.

Some useful references on future school library scenarios and the iCentre approach include:

Hay, L., & Todd, R. (2010). School libraries 21C: School library futures project. Report for New South Wales Department of Education & Training, Curriculum K–12 Directorate, School Libraries & Information Literacy Unit. Sydney:  Curriculum K–12 Directorate, NSWDET.

Hay, L. (2010). Chapter 9: Developing an information paradigm approach to build and support the home-school nexus. In M. Lee & G. Finger (Eds.), Developing a networked school community: A guide to realising the vision (pp. 143-158). Camberwell, Vic.: ACER Press.

Lee, M. & Hay, L. (in press). Teacher librarians and the networked school community: The opportunities. Connections, Issue No. 77, Term 2.

Hay, L., & Todd, R. (2010). School libraries 21C: The conversation begins. [Refereed]. Scan, 29(1), 30-42.

Hay, L. (2010). Shift happens. It’s time to rethink, rebuild and rebrand. [Commentary]. Access, 24(4), 5-10.

I’d really like to hear from any schools already planning for or implementing the iCentre approach. We need to start documenting some school experiences as case studies in 2011.

‘School Librarians’ and Libraries – Seeking Relevance & a Future?

As we are about to commence our first session of study for 2010, I thought I should get the ball rolling with some new posts. I look forward to sharing another year with my fellow blogger, Roy Crotty and our School of Information Studies students.

There’s been a lot of discussion among our US-based colleagues recently about AASL’s decision to use ‘school librarian’ as the official title for school library media specialists in all future correspondence, policy and advocacy activities of the association. This news was buzzing in January across a number of professional journals and websites, discussion lists and social networking sites – check out American Libraries magazine, School Library Journal’s Talkback, AASL’s blog, Cathy Nelson’s blog, Bookends blog, just to name a few, and clearly the debate continues.

It comes as no surprise that we struggle as a profession to come to consensus on this issue, whether here in Australia or in other countries, and the US is no exception. No matter what label an information specialist (my preferred generic label) adopts within a school, education system or state, the bottom line is that it is the daily practice and actions of the person holding this position that defines what the role is (and is not) to their school community!

A definite win for our US colleagues is this fabulous article published in Education Week yesterday which features a number of library media specialist movers & shakers. While David Loertscher’s ‘learning commons’ concept gets an airing, I was particularly struck by Joyce Valenza’s ‘take’ on libraries as “no longer [being] grocery stores where students can go to pick up ingredients, but kitchens, where they have the resources necessary to create a finished product.”

What are your thoughts on AASL’s decision to officially adopt the title ‘school librarian’ as the label for 21st century school library media specialists, and how might you use the ideas presented in the above article to inform the development of a vision for your school library and your role as a TL?

Remember: the future of our profession lies in the hands of those who currently practice.

All the best with your studies at CSU in 2010. 🙂

Pedagogies and Technology

I have just been reading an article that is based on the work of Dr Kathryn Moyle from the University of Canberra who has been researching how students feel about the electronic devices they use in the classroom, at home or elsewhere. She surveyed 1100 people, from primary age students through to pre-service teachers. There have been numerous studies on what technologies are being used by students but not studies in the affective domain.

The major finding is that the most important desire is for students and teachers to have good relationships. It rated above technology in importance for students.

“Students want their teacher to know who they are, to take an interest in what they’re learning and how they’re learning it.” According to Dr Moyle that is a reaffirmation about how professional educators do their job – and it’s not going to be usurped by putting computers in classrooms.

Her final observation is critical. “What is does mean is that we as professional educators need to rethink what sound pedagogies look like when they include technology.”

I think this links nicely with the Librarian’s 2.0 Manifesto in while many of us may not be comfortable in this new world of technology, our students are but what they want is what they have always wanted – a caring and understanding teacher. If we are prepared to embrace technology,even in a small way at the beginning, that link may be reinforced. Why not ask your students to show you what they can do with technology? I for one certainly learnt a few PowerPoint tips from my students. I could actually see their chests swell when they knew they were teaching me something.

Librarian’s Manifesto

As teacher librarians, what do we believe our role to be?  Are we teachers, librarians, somewhere in between or something else?  We know what many of our teaching colleagues may think.  Sometimes our role can be misunderstood while at other times our role is regarded as vital within the school and the learning environment.

Below is a link to a video on teachertube so it should not be blocked by system filters on what one teacher librarian believes her role to be through her manifesto of a Librarian 2.0.  It makes thoughtful reading, especially for me the idea of understanding how my studetns learn and working in that environment, even though it may be different than my own.

NLA Innovative Ideas Forum 2009

Yesterday I attended the National Library of Australia’s Innovative Ideas Forum 2009. The theme for this year’s forum was “The value and significance of social networking for cultural institutions”. I really appreciated the diversity of the program. Marcus Gillezeau’s (Producer/Director, Firelight Productions) presentation on the social phenomenon of Scorched.tv (cross platform tele-movie feature on Channel 9 in August 2008) really challenged me in terms of the power of social networking and an increasing blurring of the lines between fiction and reality in a world where info-consumers become info-producers.  At the end of the day as I debriefed with some friends, trying to ‘unpack’ the many complexities of Scorched as 21stC all-media storytelling, comparisons to the War of the Worlds radio play was noted a number of times!

The sessions by Dr Anne Summers (Author and Columnist),  Mark Scott (Managing Director, ABC), Rose Holley (Manager, Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program, NLA), Darren Sharp (Senior Consultant, Collabforge) and  Jo Kay (Freelance Geek, Designer,Facilitator, Second Lifer) all addressed in some way, the impact of social networking on our lives, both personally and as information professionals.

The National Library also encouraged audience participation using Web 2.0 tools throughout the day… it was great to see people tweeting on their laptops and mobile phones, uploading photos in Flickr and recording ideas and responses on their blogs. Keep your eye on NLA’s iif2009 website for the vidcasts and podcasts of each session. Darren Sharp’s presentation Library 2.0: Citizens Co-Creating Culture has just been made available. These will be great resources for all CSU TL students to visit, esp. ETL401, ETL411, ETL523 and INF5XX (the new social networking subject for 2010 that I have yet to write!).

This is the fourth year that the NLA has hosted an innovation forum. I am already looking forward to seeing the draft of the 2010 program!

Twitter goes mainstream

TODAY on Twitter

Anyone who woke up to Channel 9’s The Today Show on Monday morning would have seen Karl and Charlie’s segment introducing viewers to Today’s new presence on Twitter. Interesting to see this was about one month after Seven’s Sunrise program started tweeting. Sinclair’s recent article in The Australian provides an overview of how Australia’s media companies have ’embraced’ Twitter as another way to connect with their audience. What’s interesting (and not surprising?) is that a number of ABC TV & radio shows have been early adopters of Twitter, tweeting their news feeds to a growing number of fans over the past few months. Check out this A-Z listing of Australian media using Twitter – it gives you an idea of the breadth of media users to date.

So has Twitter gone mainstream? Only yesterday, a Twitter tag was added to YouTube’s suite of share tags. Methinx, it’s here to stay, for now. What I’d love to find out, is how many of our CSU TL students have Twitter accounts yet. If you are a Twitter user, please share with us the reasons why you have added this to your personal Web 2.0 toolkit.

Effective TLs as mavens, connectors & salesmen… which one are you?

In his book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000), author Malcolm Gladwell identifies three types of people who can make a difference: mavens, connectors, and salesmen.

US school library media specialist, Peggy Milam Creighton builds on the ideas of Gladwell in her School Library Media Activities Monthly article, Impact as a 21st-Century Library Media Specialist (2008).

She explores Gladwell’s 3 types in terms of the qualities and behaviours of exemplary teacher librarians.  Creighton’s article also challenges TLs to harness a range of Web 2.0 technologies to leverage themselves as ‘mavens, connectors and salesmen’. How do Creighton’s ideas inform your vision of what a teacher librarian ‘looks like’? 
To which do you aspire?