Beginnings

This year marks many new beginnings for me:
- A new husband (my first and only!)
- A new house
- A new job
These are all very exciting things for me, but of course the new job will be the focus for this blog. I have managed to land my dream job and I am so very excited about it. I am the teacher librarian on one of the campuses of a wonderful private school and can only see positives about my role:

- I am on the smallest campus (so much room to grow, and a lovely community feel)
- We have a healthy budget
- The library is looking a tad old and tired (with clear mentions of a major refurbishment on the cards in the near future)
- The teachers and staff are excited to have a teacher librarian on board (hopefully this means there will be some excellent collaboration)
- My position is regarded as a position of leadership, right from the start
- The leading library technician I will be working with is enthusiastic, on the same page as me, and ready to fight for what we believe the library needs
- My role has not been completely defined, giving me the opportunity to have a say in the shape that it takes on

Obviously the space is not perfect, the library has not had the recognition it deserves in the past and has not been able to play its role to its full potential, but to me all of the little things that are not perfect just mean that there is so much we can do to make things improve, and therefore to improve the learning of our students.

I am so excited about what the future holds for me, and for my new home library and its community.

Linking with this theme of beginnings, I would like to share this article which highlights that reading can be engaging and something that everyone can learn to love, and the importance of making this clear to children in their first year of school. It also points to the library as a place to get books for these children to enjoy whilst still working on their reading skills. 

I am hoping to have a whole range of teachers and students turn to the library for support throughout the year, whether they have done so in the past or not. 

Bring it on.

15 interesting facts about Wikipedia

I'm a fan myself, within reason. If it's important, it always a good idea to have multiple sources - that goes for any starting resource. Also, I think it's an amazing goal, and they/we have come an amazing distance towards attaining it.


[Source: OnlineMBA.com]

http://www.onlinemba.com/blog/15-interesting-facts-about-wikipedia/

Job uncertainty

cc licensed ( BY )  flickr photo shared by CarbonNYC

I am once in the position where I am not sure what I will be doing work-wise on the other side of the holidays. At the beginning of the year, it seemed like the next twelve months were laid out ready to go. It really is true: if there is one thing you can predict in life, it's unpredictability.

I have spent the last couple of years trying to keep as many doors open as possible, but I am starting to wonder: what exactly is it that I want to do? What kind of library do I want to be in? Who do I want to work for? What part does money play? Where could I make the most difference? What should I be doing now to help me get the job I want in the future? What kinds of job are likely to be available to me in the future?

Some of these questions I cannot know the answer to, and the rest I do not know the answer to - yet. I am living with the hope and trust that it will become clear to me before too long, and that I will end up in the right place...

If you think you can help me to know some of these answers, feel free to let me know!

How do you keep your page?

How do you keep your page?

I cannot stand it when people fold the page to keep where they're up to.

I cannot stand it when my bookmark falls out (or gets pulled out by my cat).

I love my book thong, which is a pretty ribbon that hangs out each end and can stay in my book while I read it. I do have to rearrange it though, and do tend to lose it sometimes. Also, said cat attacks it sometimes if it's moving.

These new Albatros book marks look pretty clever. You don't have to take them out at all the whole time you're reading the book. I wonder if they would actually be as easy to use as they look to be in the video: http://www.indiegogo.com/Albatros-bookmarks-1 

How do you keep your page?

Vokis

My students this term are writing a book each. We are focusing on the elements of a good story, and going through a step by step process to plan our story before we start writing. Last week and this week we are looking at characters in depth, and students are creating the characters they would like to include in their story using Voki. The Voki that I created to test out the process, and to communicate to my students along the way, is below:

 

How well do you use technology?

Wow, the school holidays are quickly coming to an end. I have been doing a few things over the holidays, checking emails and following TL news on the social networking scene, but I have not been as much of a participant as I could have been, and I have been terribly slack with my blog.

I am going to work on that. From now on, when I come across an interesting email that I think may be of use to myself later on, or to anyone who stumbles across my blog, I am going to share it here.

For a start, I am going to share a link to a website that provides outlines for rubrics to assess the level at which staff are using technology:
Doug Johnson's Website, CODE77 Rubrics
What an important thing for schools to use - rather than just assessing students, assess the staff that are teaching them, and ensure they have training to fill in the gaps. How important is our understanding and use of technology in this day and age?


cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by * Polly *

I felt encouraged to find that I was at level 3 or 4 for many of the sections :) Still have some things to work on though. I think I will make student assessment using technology a focus this year. Prepared assessment (too often I rush into an amazing unit, and the students gain a lot from it, but then it is difficult and time consuming to assess them afterwards, and to compare befores and afters).. I look forward to discussing and planning this with the TL I am job sharing with this year.

Where do you, and your school's teachers sit within such a rubric?

The end...?

My final assignment has been submitted! I am still a busy lady, with teaching work, tutoring and the rest, but I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I officially graduate in December, so I am not going to completely celebrate until then - but I am starting to wonder what I am going to do with this blog once I am no longer a teacher librarian in the making, but an actual qualified one... I know that I will always be improving my skills and increasing my knowledge, so I don't want to change the title of the blog too much, but I feel that some kind of change will be needed. Let me know if you have any ideas! I fully intend to continue blogging, and hope to make it more informative to potential readers, rather than pure reflection like it has been much of the time so far.

Ok, I had better concentrate on planning my next two days of teaching, and thinking about the rest of the term ahead...