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| Image courtesy of free downloads from https://www.trevormackenzie.com/ |
The last month of inquiry learning and blogging has been an invaluable experience. My feelings at the beginning were probably much like what our student's feel when we begin to introduce them to Inquiry Based Learning - simultaneously excited, curious, overwhelmed, frustrated (at times) and also motivated. The open ended nature of inquiry meant that even though we all had the same topic - everyone's blogs were so interesting to read. Everyone had a slightly different interpretation, found different resources and applied it differently to their own contexts.
Some of my key takeaways from the topics were:
- Building a reading culture takes time
My own inquiry focused on the importance of reading role-models in building reading culture and involving families in sharing reading in the library learning commons. I have been learning that this can be a tricky process as a teacher-librarian because I don't have the same opportunities to interact regularly with parents as I did as a classroom teacher. I am currently even the TL at the same school where I taught, so I have the advantage of already being known by families and students at the school... and it is still a slow process. I focus on building the relationships daily - a smile and hello in the mornings, a quick conversation after school, a note in the school newsletter. I am hoping that families will grow to feel more comfortable with me and the library learning commons space. In short, building reading culture is a long game. Not a short one. I keep reminding myself to be patient when I don't see progress or change as quickly as I would like. This is the topic that I really enjoyed the most because I feel like the process of sharing ideas and discussing challenges was so beneficial for us all.
Sarah Coull raised an excellent point in her blog post, Raising a Rockin' Reading Culture, about promoting digital and alternative texts to all readers in order to encourage reading in different formats. This inspired me to explore our ebook collection and discover that it is vastly underused by our student readers. So I am planning to book in my intermediate classes to give them tutorials on how to access them. I think that they will be excited by the potential to borrow books from outside of school.
Kaitlin Schellenberg mentioned the Little Free Libraries movement in her blog and discussed the possibility of starting one in a school context. I loved the community involvement potential of this idea and I have included it as part of my longer term goals for my school community.
- The power of a Personal/Professional Learning Network
My own personal learning network (PLN) has been rapidly expanded by participating in this course and also by following other teachers and TL's in my school district and across BC on Twitter and Instagram. Understanding and using hashtags correctly has opened up my Twitter feed to many new ideas. I have also started following quite a few children's authors on Twitter and this has exposed me to many newly published books that I think will be relevant and engaging for my school community. Harnessing the power of social media is something that I am now much more aware of and I hope to share with students and teachers in my school.
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| Image from Twitter @sylviaduckworth |
Some new areas for development in my personal/professional practice:
I have found the experience of blogging each week has pushed me to improve both my inquiry skills and my ICT skills. I have acquired new skills through watching YouTube videos and reading blogs with tips and tricks like this one from GeorgiaLou Studios.
- How to fix formatting on Blogger posts (this used to drive me crazy and it is SUCH an easy fix - see the video below).
- How to embed YouTube videos into my blog using html code.
I also want to expand my ICT skills in relation to creating a school website and also creating video tutorials for students and teachers to use. I plan to use Screencast-o-matic to create some videos explaining things that students and teachers come to me often about, for example, how to login and use our digital subscription services that we have available in the school district. Potentially, this is something I am hoping to incorporate into my final vision project over the next few weeks. I am feeling more confident about where to go to help me with these goals and also happy that I can consult the PLN within this course and the broader one I am cultivating online and in my district.
References:
Coull, S (2019). Raising a Rockin' Reading Culture. Thoughts on Learning Commons, Inquiry and Literacy. Accessed 02/11/2019 from https://bookroomdragon.blogspot.com/2019/10/inquiry-blog-post-1-raising-rockin.html
Schellenberg, L (2019). Little Free Libraries. LIBE 477. Accessed 02/11/2019 from https://schell03.blogspot.com/2019/10/little-free-libraries.html
Well done reflection post! You've done a great job discussing and reflecting on the key new learning for you and what you hope to achieve going forward. You did a good job outlining the highlights from your small group members and what you were able to learn from them as well. Overall, this was a very authentic and personalized look back at your learning so far with the intention of what you will carry forward and where you are planning to go with your final vision. Great stuff.
ReplyDeleteLoved reading your reflection post. You have reminded me of the potential twitter has with ones professional learning network. I never thought to follow certain authors of children's stories, but what a great idea. I have been focusing my professional learning on Instagram as this is a portal I use more frequently. After reading your blog I actually downloaded twitter and began searching for my favourite children's authors. I also looked them up on Instagram too! Looking forward to reading your final artifact blog post!
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