Future Vision Project: Design Considerations

Image from https://llsop.canadianschoollibraries.ca/ 

I have spent a lot of time in the past few weeks thinking about what kind of product I would like to make for the final project in this course. 
Some of my initial ideas have been:

• Build a new school library website which will be our virtual learning commons for the school.

• Start a YouTube/Vimeo channel and begin to create short, instructional videos for teachers and students with answers to frequently asked questions like, "How do I access the online reference resources that we have subscriptions to?"

• Create a digital presentation - possibly a PowToon video, Piktochart or Sway (Office 365 tool similar to PowerPoint) about the literary merit of graphic novels as I think this could be valuable for many teachers and students. 

While I would love to achieve all of these ideas one day, I think that the school website is the one I keep coming back to. I have long been wanting to revamp the school library website for my school so this is a great opportunity to put some time into it. 

I also feel as though our school library needs to continue with the transition that we began in 2014 to a Library Learning Commons model as outlined in the Canadian School Libraries document 'Leading Learning: Standards of Practice for School Library Learning Commons in Canada'. Having a functional virtual learning commons is an important part of our infrastructure. I found that Appendix 6: Building a Virtual Learning Commons of this document is particularly useful to guide my planning process. 

Early in this course, I conducted some research into the idea of the virtual library learning commons (VLLC). A summary of what I discovered can be found here. I will use those references that I found to guide my process of creating my virtual learning commons.

However, I am concerned about the complexity of it all and whether it is realistic to try and create a website in the next few weeks. Although I think that part of my issue is not the website creation itself but rather my lofty aspirations of what I would like it to look like and achieve! 

I think that it is possible for me to create a basic website but I need to be clear about the the most important elements that I will focus on creating first and then work on tweaking the details later.

So far, I have been playing around with a few possibilities for my website host
This article was quite helpful:

14 Best Website Builders 2019: Each Tried and Tested by Robert Brandl
Based on the advice in that article, I played around with both Wix and Weebly templates.

Wix 
The templates are very easy to modify and visually very appealing but some of the features are only available in the paid packages. The free package also include ads for Wix, which is not ideal. They also did not have specific template for a school library and so I chose a school website template and this is proving somewhat time-consuming to modify. However, it is definitely a possibility.

Weebly 
While their website templates are visually very appealing, they do not seem to strike the right amount of simplicity and clarity needed for very young learners. However, Weebly Education has potential as they provide free website templates (with no ads!) aimed at classroom and school settings. I am going to look more into that possibility this week.

I also thought about using a blog template from Blogger as I am already familiar with this platform from using it to blog during this course. Sometimes the formats of blogs can be restrictive though and the blog posts are the main focus when you open up the home page. I am not sure if this is good thing or a bad thing. I need to think more about what I would like to be the focus on the homepage. 

This week I also created a separate Google account for our school library as I would like the website to be separate from my own login details. I am hoping this also means that I can leave this information for future teacher-librarians in this space. 

Next Steps: 

• Decide on a website host and start to build the pages of the website. 
• Ask school admin for access to our school website landing page so I can update the information for the library and eventually create a link to the virtual learning commons website.
• Use the resources I have gathered to help me plan and prioritize the elements of the website (pages, links, gadgets) that I want to include.
• Take photos of the library learning commons space that I can use in the website design.

References:

Canadian School Libraries (CSL). 2018.  “Leading Learning:  Standards of Practice for School Library Learning Commons in Canada.” Available:  http://llsop.canadianschoollibraries.ca