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.
No comments:
Post a Comment