LIBE 465: Assignment #1

I feel it is very important to revisit your vision of what it means to be an effective TL as your gain new knowledge and experiences. From experience I have found it is easier to set short and long term goals and be able to prioritize your tasks when you have an articulated vision of what you want to accomplish. Being a reflective practitioner requires that you look at what you do, why you do it, evaluate how effective you are and question if there is a way of doing it better.

Experiencing LIBE 465 has provided the opportunity for me to connect many more dots in terms of how I see my role as a TL.  As a TL I feel that my main purpose is to provide and increase access to relevant and varied resources that will support student learning and provide the opportunity to help students develop information literacy skills.  Ultimately, I hope to be able to provide resources and experiences that will help students make meaning of their world and provide them with the ability to access resources and information to navigate and meet their information needs in the future. 

Through reading Loertscher’s article “The School Library Learning Commons” I found it helped set the stage about deconstructing our current/historical practices and re-evaluating them through the lens of why we do what we do and can it be done better. With the potential that the internet offers with respect to the enormous quantity of information and variety of resources available and the social mediums developed to provide collaboration and collation the question if we can  do things better is almost certainly – yes! 

For me have been a few overarching concepts which have emerged throughout this course.  Firstly, the continuous and significant changes in the opportunities that the digital world can offer layers another level of necessity for a constant reflection of how we provide access and ensuring it is relevant and effective for our students.  Most significantly, participation in this course has broadened my understanding of how the organization of resources both in house and digitally can have a profound effect upon my ability to increase access to resources that are relevant and useful to support student learning.  Examples of such organizational tools that allow for the streamlining of resources would be utilizing and maximizing the school library’s webpage, developing digital mini-libraries, and social bookmarking.  Each of which can be built  resulting in a rich, diverse (varied formats), current collection which would be relevant for students and support them in their learning and development of information literacy skills as they are gently guided to rich resources and are encouraged to use the varied materials in order to make meaning for themselves.  Organizing information and resources so that you harness the potential of the internet in that the information is available 24/7 from anywhere that has an internet connection certainly allows for increased access in terms of availability and in breadth and depth of resources available for students and teachers, which has changed my focus with respect to directing my attention to providing increased access to the digital world.

There have been several events throughout this course which have had a direct impact upon my learning and practice as a TL.  Struggling with the cataloguing using AACR2 and MARC records provided the information to better understand  standards and importance of standards in records.  In addition, the appreciation of adding extra information that would be valuable to my school community in order to increase the likelihood that they would be able to assess the relevancy of a particular resource and conduct more effective and efficient searches was very beneficial to me and a practice which I immediately put into practice using the 520 and 650 taglines.  The document “Accessing Information Cataloguing Guidelines for Manitoba and Saskatchewan School Library Personnel” will continue to be useful when cataloguing resources in formats other than text.

The discussion forum was extremely helpful during the preparation for assignment #2.  Reading about other students struggles with the material, helped me stick with the process because I didn’t feel I was the only one confused, and somewhat overwhelmed.  It was this camaraderie that enabled me to keep working at it, and reading others contribution sometimes help clarify ideas that were being presented in the readings.  This experience illustrates from me the importance of integrating this type of learning for our own students by developing a blog for course work which could serve as a venting and sharing medium to help support learning. 

In addition, I had not developed a website before assignment #2 and gauging the positive comments from our discussion forum about using Weebly, I decided it was worth the try and if I got in over my head there was support from other students and the professor.  Again, a valuable experience to bring to my students; when facing a challenge, or a very new task, students (of all ages), need to feel they will be supported and that their struggles are not unique to them alone.  It is the step by step guidance that can make the difference between working through the struggle or giving up. 

Throughout the course, there were many websites that I have archived that I will continue to use and refer to in my everyday practice.   Documents which I found particularly useful were “Evaluating, Selecting and Acquiring Learning Resources:  A Guide”, and “Achieving Information Literacy:  Standards for School Library Programs in Canada”, both were very practical and offered guidelines and principles to help form an informed vision of what it means to be an effective TL.

I would rate my participation in this course very good in that, I actively engaged with the learning modules through the notes and readings, and the discussion forum as I tried to integrate new ideas with my experience into my practice.  It often took me longer to process the new ideas than the course calendar outlined, but that simply was a result of the depth from which I tried to understand and make meaning of new ideas and strategies introduced.  All of which has helped me provide better and increased access to relevant resources for my students.

As a result of this course, I have acquired the ability and confidence to develop a web-site, create and maintain a blog, use social bookmarking as well as have a better appreciation of metadata and how this affects searching skills.  I feel I am better equipped to help my students access information efficiently and effectively; provide venues for students to critically and competently use resources;  help them search for relevant resources that support their learning and have meaning for them personally.