Thoughts about Professional Development

The Value of Staff Development

After reading this article from the School Library Journal http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA254380.html here are few more suggestions. 

MORE...Ways to encourage staff development:

1. Put yourself out there: share something that you know how to do. Last year I sent out an email inviting teachers to think about creating a Web Quest for their next unit. I had about 10 teachers respond. Once they got the hang of working in wikispaces they were off and running. Sometimes teachers asked for help, but in general they just needed to basics and they were creating great Web Quests. Have a look at this webquest created by our global issues teacher: http://theplasticwaterbottle.wikispaces.com/

2. Start something NEW: We started a group (very loose) called Cherry Pickers. The name is just the idea that we pick a gem (cherry) to share with teachers. This group asks teachers what they want to learn and would periodically provide informal PD after school or in the mornings. It would be a quick 30-40 minutes of introducing something like wordlehttp://www.wordle.net/ , voicethreads http://voicethread.com/, or just some time to explore a web 2.0 cool tools http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/Research+Tools 

3. Ask your principal or curriculum coordinator if you can do a short PD on the library catalog at a faculty meeting. We have Follett Destiny but very few teachers have any expertise in using this great and powerful tool. Once teachers get a taste of Destiny, they come back asking for more and they bring their students. 

4. Invite teachers to start their own blog. Next invite them to use this format with their students to share, organize, and reflect on work. Eventually this may become your electronic portfolio. I use blogger www.blogger.com

Notes and quotes from readings

Some where back in week 4 when we were studying the subject of acquisition, someone on the forum mentioned the idea that this was not brain science. Much of what I am finding with this course (ETL503) is that I have been doing all these library jobs but somehow they come naturally. Now that being said, I have found the readings are always interesting and I am learning new and better ways. 
Right now we are studying budget. This has to be one of my least favorite topics and is an area that I can improve on. In Jakarta, I had Irin (a dear, great secretary) who managed all the budget items. She was meticulous with every penny and rupiah, plus I received monthly updates from the business office and we could check our accounting against theirs. In Jakarta, I worked to spend every penny of our budget because in June when the books closed, any money left was unavailable for the following year. 
I assumed that I would also be getting information from the business office in my new job and as a result have done no record keeping of my budget this year in Ghana. Being new and secretaries being history, budgeting was left as a task to be done sometime. In the last few weeks as the end of the year approaches, I was requesting  an update on our budget from the business office. I have come to find out that this can not be done and the BO has no idea how much money the library has spent this year. OOPS! How can this be? It is time for me to sit down with our business manager and ask questions. So...I have made it a goal to be very meticulous next year with book keeping and my reading that I am doing now will be my guide. Here are some of the highlights of budgeting...

A formula for calculating a budget is- the number of items form that collection size x the average cost of items)/10. 
We have 24,073 items and I would say our average item cost for just books is about 18USD. Using this formula our budget if all the assumptions are true should be about 26,051USD. In my budget this is almost right on the nose for purchasing books only. I still have a budget for licenses, periodicals, technology consumables, supplies, furniture & fittings. I think that at this point Lincoln Community School has a healthy library budget. I am not sure many state-wide school or Australian schools can make that statement at this point in time. International schools still value libraries and give money for budgets that reflect a belief that students and the community gain from this investment. It is important the the teacher librarian 

I had an idea to take my budget for next year and infiltrate the library with kindles and ipads. At this point we have had 4 kindles since December and they have been in great demand. Due to living in Africa, we are only able to receive a shipment of books every August. This means that right what I am ordering is due in August 2012. This seem CRAZY. With the kindles, if a student/parent or teacher wants a book that we do not have and it is kindle available, I can download it in 5 minutes. They can be reading the book by the end of the day. At this point, I am only buying ebooks that we do not have available in the library. 

Take Risks and update your electronic collection
Our library collection is in good shape, well weeded, shelves are full, and the needs of teachers and students are being met to the best of our ability. Therefore, I am inclined to cut my book buying in half next year and supply the library with 20 more kindles (at a cost of 2,800USD) and 12 ipads (at a cost of 7,200USD). Plus money for buying apps and ebooks. The 12 ipads would be a pilot program to see how teachers can integrate and use them in classrooms. The kindles would be divided in to groups of 6 each. The reason for this is that if you buy one book from amazon you can place it on 6 different kindles. 24 kindles would create 4 groups and they could have one group as fiction pleasure reading, another group teacher requests for literature circles, a third group of non-fiction and the last group could be professional development books for teacher book groups. I have no idea how other schools are managing kindles in their libraries and this is something that needs some research. I have been on a PLN ning that has a active group of teacher sharing how ipads are being used in schools. What do you think?

Don’t be passive:
The second idea I would like to share is how advocating for your library can work. In Jakarta all 4 librarians felt that we could do better and our collections needed updating. We created a presentation from our individual Follett Analysis to present an argument that the libraries needed a infusion. We presented this argument to the administrators, who love data. We were given 300,000USD over three year to share and update our collection. We called this our extra-ordinary budget and we divided the money equally per student in each school. At the same time all our yearly budgets were increased as a result of showing data of other Asian International School library budgets, which all were substantially higher than ours. 

Debowski states that accountability incorporates three key principles: 

1. forward planning: collaborate with teachers and students, know units of study. 
2. rational application: all about selection
3. publicizing of outcomes: Celebrate what new!

Follett and other software make these principles much easy. An analysis can be done in than hour. How could it be that 7 years ago when I first worked as a teacher librarian, we were talking about the incredible time consuming process of creating an collection analysis/collection mapping. With this information at our fingertips it is much easier to manage and budget properly. Collection Mapping is HISTORY! Just think how many more hours I have available to actually teach! 

Add Kindles and ipads to the Mix?

  
  

Interesting the idea of acquisition of resources, especially recently at Lincoln Community School. In the past we have not had much choice. We do an order once a year and it comes in August. We have two small bookshops in town that can supply us with some items. They have an excellent African collection.

We recently brought 4 kindles and through word of mouth kids and parents have been taking them out. They are rarely available. The items I am downloading on the kindles are books that we do not have on our shelves that kids want to read. It is so satisfying to place a kindle in a student’s hand when they are excited that the next book in a series is instantly available.

All my orders are in for this year and I have already begun the next order. As I enter the new award winning books I am checking to see if they are kindle available and many are. I just can’t place them on the order and not download them immediately on to a kindle. If I wait it means waiting till August 2012 for that book or getting it now.

I plan on creating a proposal for next year to increase the number of kindles we have to 18 devices. The reason for this number is that every kindle book I buy can be placed on 6 devices. That means for around $10USD I get access to 1 book on 6 devises.  What a deal for creating a library for literature circles for students. We can have professional development for teacher in a book club, reading The Book Whispers.

The proposal may be that I spend next years library budget on buying electronic readers (kindles and ipads) and fill them with books and apps. My library shelves are quite full and this may be what is needed to stay more up to date with new ebooks and with the adding kindles and ipad to the mix.

Copyright in Africa? Is it anything like Indonesia?

When I got the Jakarta International School Library in 1992, there were books cataloged that had been copied from originals. I was told that it is so difficult to get books in Indonesia that sometimes we had to do this. The teacher librarians worked hard to replace these with original copies and delete all the copies of copies!
People think nothing of borrowing a book and having it photocopied for about $5USD. AND I have to admit that we brought many (100s) of video copy of movies and TV series and ps games.
So, what is copyright?
It looks like it is different in different countries. I never did search out the copyright laws in Indonesia even after being there 17 years. I just tried to do a better job at buy original resources for the library.
This may be something to look at in Africa, but more important what impact does it have on learning!
More later on this exciting topic.

How to obtain data for library collection

Activity: Selecting Resources 503

Consider how you as a teacher librarian could best obtain the data needed to provide a clear and specific understanding of these aspects of your school and current collection? Is it a task that you, as teacher librarian, could be expected to undertake alone?

Other ways besides Bishops ideas:

·      Ask teachers to send you their unit plan before they teach it. How can you help with resources or teaching collaboratively?
·      Stay in close contact with your director of educational Program (curriculum director)
·      Make yourself available to team teach with teachers during units, especially if they are doing research.
·      Invite teachers and students to create a Shelfari account to encourage and share what the community is reading. It also gives you a feel for what your users are reading.
·      Ask teachers if they would like to present their unit as a webquest. Create the webquest for them as they give you information. Teachrs loved the process of working together and learning as they went. 
·      Be involve in unit writing and find a place to use your expertise to fit in media/research skills and collaborate with teachers on lessons. 
·      Ask to be a part of the English/Humanities team. I always try and attend their meetings. and they welcome my attendance.
·      Make sure you are part of the leadership team at the school. Attend department head meetings. 

COLLECTION MANAGEMENT VS JUST KINDLES

Everyone in this village wanted a peek at what was happening. The World Reader Program has now be running for a few months and the children in this village school have about 500 kindles. Talk about skipping technologies. These schools have no books and now they have kindles. The study is to see if this will increase their reading levels. See the website: World Reader Program
Now how does this all relate to my new class on collection management? Giving these schools a 2003 World Book Encyclopedia set with H missing is a great gift. Chalk is a scarce resource and now they have kindle.
So if I think of Collection Management and Collection Development and what is the difference, before I read anything...let's have a go?
Collection Management must mean managing the collection you already have and weeding, evaluating, testing the collection to see how it meets school needs and at the same time creating lists of what is needed.
Collection Development seems to infer that we are talking more about selection of new resources and how to meet the short and long terms needs and filling and finding holes in the curriculum.
Now let's read to experts...
John Kennedy defines collection management as the "activities that focus on the selection, acquisition, evaluation, preservation (how do you preserve books in Africa, especially during the harmattan) and deselection (or weeding) of library materials.
So selection is in there! HUMP

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If you are a newspaper reader or a TV news watcher you are well aware that what you see is almost all the bad news. I always wanted to start a feel good newspaper, knowing very well it would NOT be popular. I actually found a feel good newspaper in Bali, of course! Than there is the onion news that you can read and watch at http://www.theonion.com/content/index This will give you a great laugh, but it is just making fun of all the bad news. Try  this video http://www.theonion.com/content/video/are_violent_video_games

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