Final Blog

            Over the past few months I have learned a great deal about library resources.  Many of the resources that I have learned about, in all honesty, I never really knew existed.  When I become a teacher librarian, I am going to have to work extremely hard to become very familiar with all the resources available to staff and students so that I can educate them on how to use these resources successfully. I would also have to work hard to try and make sure that our library resources, print, on line and computer programs, provide an up to date assortment with varied reading levels. As a teacher, I would have been extremely grateful to our teacher librarian if she would have provided me with and educated me on the many on line resources available to use through the Vancouver School Board.

            Secondly, after reading about evaluating school libraries I have come to the understanding that our library is situated at the below standard level.  I believe our library is in this state due to the fact that we have not had a qualified teacher librarian in our library for a long time now.  The school board’s policy is to place people into the open positions, whether they are qualified or not.  Because of the position, take by the board, we have had many different people in our library who had no real idea of how to run a library never mind be aware of the numerous other things that go along with the job of teacher librarian. The budget may play a part but I am convinced that it is because we do not have a qualified person working in the role of a teacher librarian. I know that the primary fiction section of the library has been weed in the past years but I do not think any of the other parts of the library have.  The teacher librarian took it upon herself to weed out the books that she thought needed to go without consulting the primary staff.  Many of the books that she weeded out were used a great deal by the primary teachers.  Many of our books, in the non-fiction section, are older than 10 years.

            I have learned about the many available on line resources offered to us through a school board purchase but I am not too sure if our school has their own actual on line or computer program resources.  If we do, I have never been introduced to them.

            A teacher librarian's job is a difficult one at the best of times.  With the budget and time reductions the job just seems to get harder and harder.  So much to do and so little time.  This is especially true when it comes to working collaboratively with other staff members.  Working only fifty per cent of the time as a TL makes it that much harder to get together and collaborate to build up learning resource based units.  I see this as important so as a TL I would work hard to make sure that this got done.

The Role of the Teacher Librarian

The role of the Teacher Librarian in our school does not even come close to the role outlined in the Greater Victoria School District.  Over the past four years, the Vancouver School Board has placed teachers into the role of Teacher Librarian at our school.  We have had about six different people in our library and not one of these people placed in our library have even taken one course towards the Teacher Librarianship Diploma or Certificate.  In my eyes, they are not really qualified to take on the role of the Teacher Librarian.  Although they work very hard and do their best, they just cannot seem to fulfill what is really expected/required of a Teacher Librarian.

                Our Teacher Librarian works in the library about fifty per cent of the time.  The rest of the time she is at school she is expected to be a resource teacher as well as a classroom teacher.  Due to her limited time working in the library, as well as having to plan for resource and classroom teaching, I believe that all aspects of the library program are affected.  When working in the library, our Teacher Librarian spends much of her time organizing the library and ordering resources.

                Despite budget cuts and time restraints, I believe that the Teacher Librarian needs to work collaboratively with the other staff members to assist the students in developing effective information retrieval and critical thinking skills.  Children will need these skills throughout their lives in order to become life-long learners.  I also believe that it is important for the Teacher Librarian to provide leadership and promote strategies for teaching the children how to effectively use the wide variety of learning resources available to them.  To be able to have a wide variety of learning resources available, the Teacher Librarian must try and keep our resources as up to date as possible. It is also imperative that the Teacher Librarian build up a bank of parent and student volunteers to help with the daily tasks in the library, such as checking in and shelving books, in order to allow more time for the Teacher Librarian to focus on other tasks.

                After reading through pages 90 – 94 of Evaluating, Selecting and Managing Learning Resources: A Guide, I was surprised to find out that the school should have a Learning Resources Committee with the Teacher Librarian as one of the key members.  In all my years at the school, with qualified and non-qualified Teacher Librarians, we have never had a Learning Resources Committee.  Whenever we needed new resources, the teachers involved would get together and decide amongst themselves what was needed.  The Teacher Librarian takes it upon herself to order new reference and fiction books for the library.  She will often ask teachers what they would like to see purchased but she makes the final decision.  As for the library budget, the Vancouver School Board provides a specific amount in the school’s yearly budget.  I know this because I am on the Budget Committee.  We often discuss whether or not the library’s budget is sufficient and whether or not it needs to be supplemented.  If there is money to supplement the library’s budget the Budget Committee will assign a certain amount but more often than not there is no extra money to add to the library budget. There was only one year that the Teacher Librarian participated in the Budget Committee and advocated for money for her library.

Directories-Internet Sources

            This past week I had the opportunity to use UBC’s journal databases as I had to find articles for a research paper that I needed to write.  The task was not a difficult one but it proved to be very time consuming.  First I had to log in to the library site using my campus wide log in.  That was the easy part.  Once I had logged in I started my search.  I clicked on e-resources and then on online indexes and databases.  I started my search under the letter e for EBSCO.  “E” listed a bunch of educational journals and searches so I added them as well.  This allowed me to search more than one index/database at a time.  One thing that I found frustrating more than difficult was choosing the wording to do my searches.  The articles that were listed for me to look at depended on the words that were typed into the search bar.  A few times I typed in a few words and I was given a long list of articles that had nothing to do with what I wanted.  So I quickly learned that I had to be more specific in my searches for articles.

            The other thing that I found quite frustrating was that you were provided with a whole list of articles but many were not accessible on line.  Some of the articles that were listed under the ERIC site were accessible.  Some had to be searched further on the UBC site and then I found that I actually had to go into the library to find the resources in print.  The third option that I was given was that I had to purchase the articles on line before gaining access to them.  This was also the same for EBSCO.

Databases

Databases

I would have liked to have known about the databases offered to our school via the Vancouver School Board when working on my LLED 469 course as they would have come in very handy.  Over the past 4 years we have had 6 different people working in our library, only one was a qualified Teacher Librarian.  Over these years I received a piece of paper that listed the databases that we had access to along with the log in information.  The only database that I ever use is Bookflix because someone actually showed me how to use it.  The other databases listed in the “Just for Younger Students” section would have come in handy when we were working on our animal resource based learning projects as many of the books in our library are between 15 and 20 years old.  Before I assign the animal resource based learning project next year, I am going to have to work through the databases to learn how to use them so that I can teach the children how to effectively use them in their research.  The databases that I will be using with the children, in the computer lab, are Kids Search Database, Searchasaurus, Starfall and the Worldbook Kids.  It would have been nice to have had some instruction or information on these databases from the Teacher Librarian.

Geographical Resources

Geographical Resources and Atlases

It was extremely interesting searching through the different geographical web sites.  Before reading Riedling’s Chapter7 on geographical sources I had no idea that these web sites existed.  Some of the sites were extremely easy to navigate and some were very difficult.  Most provided lots of interesting information however not all were up to date.  I particularly enjoyed navigating through The Lonely Planet web site.  I have now found a new site to use when looking for new places to travel.  It allows me to search for hotels, points of interest, restaurants and the various different ways to travel within the country.  All of the information posted on this site is between 1 and 2 years old.

This web site would be useful when discussing different countries and their people with the children at school.  I have a smart board in my classroom and this site would allow me to show the children the many different, interesting things about the different countries in our world.  This would be particularly useful when the children are discussing the countries that their families come from.  We could pull it up on the smart board and show everyone else in the class where their classmates came from and some of the interesting places within their countries.

Atlapedia would also be a very good site to use with the intermediate students if it were up to date.  All of the information on this site is from the 1990’s and therefore considered to be historical.

Encyclopedias

Encyclopedias

It seems that every time I read about the various different learning resources available to us I learn something new.  After taking LLED 469 I was made aware of the many learning resources offered to us online, some free and some for a fee.  I knew that Grolier, World Book and Wikipedia all existed online.  What I did not know what that Wikipedia was a free, online resource run by thousands of volunteers and made available to almost everyone on our planet.  It was interesting to read Grolier’s take on these volunteers.  The comments made by Panelas that the writers for Grolier were “busy and serious people who expect to get paid for their work” (Wikipedia and Britannica The Kid’s All Right (And so is The Old Man) Vol. 14 No. 3 March 2006) seems to imply that the people writing for Wikipedia are not busy, serious or important because they are not experts on their subjects and do not get paid for what they do.  If I were one of the writers for Wikipedia I would be insulted by that comment.  Just because someone does something voluntarily does not mean that they are not good at what they do.

I like the fact that whatever is written for Wikipedia must be verifiable and provide a neutral point of view.  I believe that it is important to be able to view the history tab and see exactly what has been happening with the article since the first posting.  I would definitely allow my students to use Wikipedia as a starting point to their learning based resource projects but I would not allow it to be the only resource used.  They would have to be able to verify the information found on Wikipedia with a minimum of 3 other resources.

Research Models

            Having just completed LLED 469 I have had the opportunity to read about the many different Research Models available to us.

I have found that the 4 different models that we were to read about seem to follow the same basic process. The wording and the explanations of each of the steps are different in each model but they still follow the same principles. All 4 models also include the elements "Information, Student, and Answer." (Riedling p. 5)

I prefer "The Research Quest" as it is written in a way that is easy for the students to read and understand. I found that the other 3 models are written in a language that is more teacher friendly rather than student friendly. I like the fact that it provides the students with many different examples of what could be done in each of the five steps. The five headings are also written in student friendly language.

Being a Grade 1 teacher, I have not had the opportunity to work as a Teacher Librarian and try any of these research models. In LLED 469 I had the opportunity to use "The Points of Inquiry" to develop a resource based learning project on Frogs. I found this model to be very useful as it is written with specific ideas and outcomes for each of the grade levels.

Before I start working on any research project with my Grade 1 students I introduce the students to the many non-fiction text features that they will encounter in non-fiction books. I get my ideas and lessons from Adrienne Gear's "Non-Fiction Reading Powers" book. I feel that it is important for the students to be able to identify the many different features and be taught how to use these features to gain important information about their research topic. The primary teachers at my school all use this book to first introduce the children to the features before they start their research projects.

After reading through comments on the research models, I also agree that the students are impatient and want answers immediately.  They do not really seem to want to work for their answers.  I like the idea presented that students should use 5 or 6 different types of resources to find their information.  I also like the idea of teaching note taking as it is something that is not really taught.  In grade one and two we teach the children to locate and identify key words.  They are asked to write down five or six keys words on the area that they are researching.  They then use these key words to formulate sentences about their topics.  They actually do a pretty good job in writing up what they have learned with their key words keeping them on track.