Lesson 12 - Reflection - Using credible websites

Encouraging the students to use reliable websites is an ongoing challenge.  The students simply want to ‘google’ the information they are seeking. Our district has purchased a number of site licenses for online resources.  I spend a number of lessons with intermediate groups outlining the ways to navigate the different online resources.  We even have at home access for these sites for the students.  For example the district has a site license for World Book Online in both French and English. Educating the teachers regarding the value of these sites is ongoing.  Our district has had the licenses for a number of years yet I always come across teachers who are not aware of them.

In addition to encouraging use of the district online sites I do mini-lessons with grade groups explaining the meaning of the URL’s in web addresses.  As I do the mini-lesson I explain the importance of using reputable sites.

Another way to encourage the students to use credible web sites would be to work with the teachers to create Delicious or Diego accounts.  The teachers could the pre-search the sites for the students.

As is the focus of our lesson, a great way to encourage the use of credible sites would be through the library home page.  I plan to link the digital resource library I created in Assignment 2 to the library home page.  As time permits a digital resource library could be created for any of the popular curriculum topics.  These digital libraries could be co-created.  The teacher teaching the subject could also be responsible for the ongoing checking of links, adding or deleting links.

When I first started thinking about the challenge of working with electronic resources I felt like this was just one more thing to do in my already long list of tasks.  However, in the long run the digital resources may be easier to maintain than the print resources.  It is a lot easier to incorporate a website on to a webpage compared to cataloguing a print resource. 

I believe as students see the benefits of using recommended resources they will become increasingly accustomed to using them.

Becoming a digital learning imprasario

In addition to my course work and crazy life I took on a new challenge and I am glad I did.  Our district has recently launched a huge opportunity for teacher librarians to become tech leaders within our schools.
There was an invitation sent out to teacher librarians to voluteer as digital coaches.  As a digital coach we would each recieve an ipad.  I volunteered and was selected.  Twenty five of us were invited to an ipad boot camp at the Apple headquarters in Richmond and given ipads.  We were to go off with our ipads and learn as much as we could in order to be a support person.  The next phase was an invitation to all teacher librarians to attend a dinner session about ipads and they too would also recieve ipads.  The digital coaches were there to support the new recruits.
This has been a huge learning curve in using the technology but also has been a tremendous door opening opportunity.  I am now on the 'techie committee' at school as I am now deemed to be in the know.  The tech. facilitator in the school suggested the big re-org in the library to facilitate greater use of the ipad. Additionally, I now have teachers coming to me to seek advice regarding the technology.  I am amazed how one little piece of technology has changed my role.
I truly applaud my district leaders for recognizing the power of this tool and the impact it will have on the way students and staff will be seeking information.  I feel fortunate to be in on the ground floor as we navigate our way into one of the new trends in the techie world.

Independent use of the online catalogue

My school population is just over 600 students, there are 32 teachers and 10 special ed. Assistants… and 1 of me.  Consequently, I encourage and attempt to facilitate as much independent use of the online catalogue and the collection as I can.  I believe all students in Grade 3 and up as well as the adults in the school should be able to independently use an online catalogue.  I believe Destiny, our school library program can readily support independent use if the users are properly equipped.  I think a program is only as powerful as the user.

Independence in anything does not come without some training or support.  I spend quite time going over the components of the online catalogue.  I explain the search screens, result pages and records.  Teachers as well as students need information about what the records mean.

For students I bring in laptops during a few of the library lessons.  Therefore, each student has an opportunity to search independently for items and navigated the catalogue.  For teachers, I do demonstrations at staff meetings (that has not happened this year :o) therefore I do not know about the teachers level of knowledge at this school) Most teachers appreciate the refresher when I have done it twice.

I explain to the students once they have mastered how to use an online catalogue it is a skill they will use all their school years. 

Once they have an understanding of the catalogue the interface for Destiny seems to be quite user friendly.  The students are keen to try searching and typically have success locating records for what they want. (The next challenge is actually finding the item in the library :o) The catalogue searches can be refined quite easily. The keyword searching is quite extensive.  Additionally, Destiny can be set up to offer results that include pre-viewed age appropriate web pages.  We had that option for a while and now we do not.

One drawback to the system is the lack of forgiveness regarding spelling as one classmate previously mentioned in a post.  This is a real problem for several students.  In my sessions with students I do mention and explain the necessity for correct spelling.  I combat that by offering to print out correct spelling when a student is having trouble finding something.  It takes me a few seconds to print out a word and then let them go search.  For example, a student came up to me and said she could not find anything on owls. For a topic like this, my first question is how did you spell it. She replied, “owells”,  I quickly wrote out the correct spelling and she was away.

One feature our district has offered is the remote access to the district school catalogues, ie from home.  I really promote this feature with all students particularly the Gr. 7’s.  I think this opportunity truly facilitates independent use of the catalogue.  I explain if they are working at home beginning their research they can look up the topic they are seeking.  They can readily determine if we have anything or they are going to need to set up an outing to the public library.  I explain the importance of this feature when they get to high school and have several projects on the go.

The Destiny program is a very expensive program particularly in the implementation stage.  When our district moved to Destiny it was a huge budget item. I am sure there are some other programs that may have more powerful features.  However, for the most part Destiny does meet the needs to facilitating independent use once the students have some education.