New online book club for school library staff - What next?

Running an online book club

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

Well, it has been and gone. My first attempt to create some professional development for school library staff. After a sudden and inexplicably impulsive suggestion that I wanted to set up an online book club I found myself having to put my money where my mouth was. Too many of my twitter friends thought it was a great idea so I had to find a way to make it work. 

My plan, well I didn't really have a plan, and to be honest I still don't! Was to create a platform for book suggestions and provide an area for discussion. I have joined in several twitter chats and felt that this was something that I could do but also wanted to provide a platform for those who don't use social media. This was why Padlet was chosen. I was not sure whether to post the link open to all or keep it for those that asked for it and have currently decided to keep it closed.  I may be wrong but this feels like a little like signing up for it which gives it a little more status. If you want to join in after reading this, either email me at ehutchinson@library.gg or follow me on twitter @elizabethutch. Be aware that I don't automatically follow back so you will need to post a message to me saying that you want to join. At that point, I will follow you and give you the link to the Padlet. 

The first discussion took place on the 23rd January both on the Padlet and on twitter. We had chosen to read Reading by Right by Joy Court. After 2 hours of moderating I was shattered. I did learn a lot from the experience and will be making changes to the next one. I have also had some very useful feedback too that will be taken into consideration too. 

My thoughts on the first discussion 

• I need to consider my focus for my questions. Am I wanting to engage in school library discussion or more about the book? I think this was a little difficult with the first book Reading by Right by Joy Court as it had very specific chapters and it lent itself to linking what we do in practice. This meant that it was possible to join in the conversation even if you hadn't read the book. I don't think this will be the case with every book so will monitor as we work our way through the next few books. 

• I had far too many questions. 10 in an hour does not lend itself to a good discussion. I was moving to the next question just as an interesting discussion was starting on Padlet. On Twitter, I did not have time to join in the discussion myself as I was too busy getting the next question ready. I felt that I could not change this once it had started because I had already posted a link to the questions out on Twitter. I could, however, have some reserve questions in future! (Thanks, Janet!)

• I need to sit at a desk and not the kitchen table as I was aching after I had finished 2hrs of talking on the computer...

• Is the Padlet the best platform for this discussion? We had to keep refreshing in order to see other peoples comments and it felt a little disjointed although I am not sure if there is a platform that would give us what we need. I don't intend to change it for now as it may be that we just need to get used to it. 

• I also need to think about keeping a 'request only' link to the Padlet. I am not sure if it will get too big to have a proper discussion if too many people are involved. Will I have time to keep adding people? I think I will have to monitor to see how this goes. 

• Twitter, this worked well but I just need fewer questions and maybe someone else moderating with me. One person to ping out the questions and another to respond to comment might work better. Looking for volunteers :)  

• The books need to be reasonably priced, most of the time. I had not thought about this at all and chose the first one on book suggestions and votes. I don't want to be restricted by price all of the time as there will be some really useful books that we should be reading that will have a higher price. I will try to make sure that at least every other book is one everyone can afford to buy.

• This is a very useful thing to do and there is a need for this kind of #PD for school library staff

Where next?

I am very pleased with the enthusiasm for this book club. I do feel that there is a need to continue it. I hope that everyone taking part will suggest books or if not at least vote for what they would like to read. I don't want to feel like I am making all the decisions and so far that is not the case. 

If you have any feedback on the last discussion or any suggestions please feel free to comment below. This is very much our book club and I will try, as best I can, to make it worthwhile for everyone taking part. 

In house professional development for teachers. Start with your school library.

Photo by The Climate Reality Project on Unsplash

We all assume that teachers know and understand the value of school libraries. We would hope that they encourage their students to check out books, use the online resources and credit what they find. Although there are many teachers that do, there are also an equal many that don't. We regularly talk about advocacy in the librarian world, how we should be out there reminding teachers about the support they can get from the school librarian but there is only so much one school librarian can do in a school to encourage use. In many schools this advocacy is through talking to teachers individually which can be very time consuming. 

I recently took part in a twitter chat about teachers Professional Development (PD) and the question was  "What professional development should teachers have to assure we are eliminating the achievement gap? #satchat" and my response was this:- 

All teachers should know and understand how their school library and librarian can support teaching and learning. Do you? #satchat

How can we achieve this? Once a year the school librarian should be asked to provide compulsory PD to all teaching staff to:-

·       Remind and inform teachers, who do use the library, about new resources and lessons available

·       Inform new teachers to the school about what the school library provides and to let them know  about the collaborative teaching available.

If this happens student attainment will increase. How do I know this? There have been several studies about this, this one especially is worth reading.  

Williams, D; Wavell, C; Morrison, K (2013) SCHOOL LIBRARIES on LEARNING. Robert Gordon University Institute for Management, Governance & Society (IMaGeS)

Teachers can't use something they don't know about so it is up to the senior leadership team to ensure that a resource they are paying for gets used to it’s full advantage. Not all teachers feel comfortable with using the school library catalogue or online resources and that is where the school librarian can support them and their students in the classroom.


Collaborative teaching with the school librarian can lead to impressive student learning, we just need to make sure that teachers know how to start the conversation with the school librarian and to open the doors of their classroom to extra resources and support and PD is the perfect starting point.

School's Library Service in Guernsey recently ran a whole inset day on raising accademic attainment through your school library. Read about it here.

Librarians and a teacher presenting at the British Isles Google Summit rocking Edtech and collaboration

Last weekend Angela Etheredge, Stony Evans and myself presented at the British Isles Google Summit held in Guernsey. Two librarians and a teacher working together. Why is this worth blogging about?

This was primarily a teachers event, it was about how to use all things Google from Docs to slides and Forms to Classroom so where did a school librarian fit into this? I have been using Google tools for a while now and personally wanted to know more about Google classroom.  More importantly though it was important for me, as a librarian, to attend this teachers conference as it would help me highlight the teaching side of my role. I have written about this in previous posts.

After applying for a place a  few weeks later I recieved an email from Lucy Witham arrived saying that there was only one local speaker signed up and if you felt you had something to share then you should apply for a speakers place. I realised once again that I had a chance to talk to teachers about what school librarians do so I decided to apply. Deciding what I would share was easy.

Which Google product have I used within a classroom setting in collaboration with a teacher?

This was easy! A year ago I helped Angela Etheredge, a teacher at St Annes in Alderney, connect her students via Google hangouts with students in Arkansas. We played mystery hangout with their students and were amazed at the impact that it had on everyone. I also had something else up my sleeve. About 6 months ago, Stony Evan, the librarian in Arkansas, asked me if I would be willing to join him via hangout at a conference he was presenting. I agreed and I joined his session to talk about our collaboration via hangout, so it was time for him to return the favour.  I submitted my idea and was accepted.

How did Angela join in?

At this point it was just Stony and myself until I went to run the inset training at St Anne's. During the day I shared a little about the hangout with Arkansas with all the teachers and as I talked Angela joined in.  I realised that to have a teacher join me in my session at the Google Summit would practically demonstrate how important and necessary teacher librarian collaboration is. So we had our team.

Creating our presentation.

As Stony was in Arkansas, Angela was in Alderney and I was in Guernsey there was no way we were going to be able to sit in the same room and talk about our presentation so we decided to create a Google Slide and work on it collaboratively, we also talked by Google hangout too. I did not realise it at the time but by using a shared Google slide and hangout we were actually doing what they were going to tell us about at the conference.

At the conference

We were not presenting until Saturday afternoon due to the time difference between Arkansas and the UK so we were not able to get this out of the way quickly. After sitting through some brilliant workshops by Ben Rouse, Matt Smith, Bogdan Copil and Jon Neale I was beginning to worry that our presentation was so different that it may not be good enough. Every other workshop was full of ideas and we were planning to share only one. Angela was very calm which helped but I still wasn't sure. I wanted to check out the technical side of our presentation but was unable to do this until just before our slot and that worried me too.

Our session

Time for worrying was over. A quick connection to Stony was tested and we were ready to go. We had a small group of teachers and I would have been happy to present to them but as we started talking more arrived which was great.  The presentation can be found here.

After all my worrying our presentation went really well with one attendee tweeting that it was the best session of the day! Funnily enough I had not realised that as we started Anglea got really worried when she saw who was arriving.  They were IT specialists from the College of Further Education and she did not think that we could show them something that they did not already know. However, that was not the case and our icing on the cake was our demonstration of how easy it was to connect with Stony in America. Having him in the room with us really went down well. People liked the practical application of our session, admitting that we were novices at this but were prepared to try it inspired our attendees to try it themselves.  By giving a clear demonstration of how it worked for us, even though we were clearly not experts, was well received.

Angela and I were on such a high after our session. It worked! We demonstrated something that not everyone is using and we were also able to show how the collaboration between the librarian and the teacher can lead to greater student learning. One local teacher came up and said he was really jealous  of us, when we asked why he said, because we had been brave enough to put ourselves forward to present and he wished he had taken the opportunity too.

Why is it important that you put yourself forward? 

In order for schools and teachers to understand what librarians do we must  talk to them about it. Whether that is in the school staff room or presenting at a teacher training day or even being brave enough to present at a conference. Unless we talk and demonstrate how we can support student learning, some teachers and schools will never know what they are missing out on.

Finally, one teacher asked me how we could help him to connect his students. If this is all we achieved that day this was enough. Helping one teacher to understand the impact that working with the school library can have on his students then we did a good job. You never know where this may lead. 

Inset training - How librarians can support teaching and learning.

This blog was written as part of the #futureReadyLibs #blogchallenge which can be found here. I agreed to write about professional development and hopefully have demonstrated how we did this by providing training for our teachers in their inset day. Enhancing their skills through using the school library and its online resources and demonstrating how information literacy linked with the curriculum.                                                                                                                                                                                    #FutureReadyLibs #bloggingchallenge

10-week #FutureReadyLibs #blog challenge, where librarians are invited to reflect upon the different cogs of the Future Ready Librarians Framework. Please join in on the conversations by posting your own blog responses and by joining the Future Ready Librarians Facebook group, where a new weekly blog .

Making changes

St Anne's school library in Alderney has undergone some big changes in the last few months. Schools’ Library Service (SLS) supports this school from a distance as we are in Guernsey which is a short flight away. This means that we only visit twice a term. On one of our visits, last year, we discussed how we could support the school library and help create a space that was well used by both students and teachers. We agreed to weed and renew the resources and gave them some ideas to move the library around to suit the needs of the school. It was lovely to go back a few months later and see how they had been empowered to change it again.

Creating opportunities

This led to conversations about the importance of information literacy and how it can support and encourage students to use the school library to become independent learners. Exciting discussions have been had about embedding information literacy into the curriculum, meaning that the school library, its staff, SLS and teachers will become a hub of teaching and learning for the students of St Anne’s.

Will you run our inset day?

Early last month Martin Winward, headteacher at St Anne's, and I were chatting about how we could ensure the changes in their school library could continue to have an impact on students and teachers. We both agreed that after the initial excitement and interest in the changes, it was important that we found a way to continue engagement. Martin asked me if I was willing to run an inset training day about information literacy and the school library because it was apparent that unless we had teachers on board, who understood what we were trying to do, nothing was going to change. We needed to share out vision.  I jumped at the chance, how often does the librarian get the opportunity to demonstrate the importance of the school library and librarians to teaching and learning. This was especially important as the new Guernsey curriculum is due to be implemented in September.  It is very much skills based curriculum and this is what information literacy is all about. it was perfect opportunity to talk to teachers about how we can support them and have an impact on student learning.

Martin sent me an outline of the areas he wanted us to cover. Improvements in the school library, Information literacy and the framework, resources and tools to support learning and examples of best practice. We also wanted to demonstrate how this all fitted in with Educations ‘big picture’. After a couple of conference calls I started to create my presentation and shared it with Martin and Wendy, deputy head.  Luckily for me, Wales is currently creating a new curriculum and have decided to incorporate information literacy into it so I was able to incorporate their slides into my presentation. It was important for me to make sure that the day was full of information but hands on too so I made sure it  included :-

• Innovative games/ideas that they could use in their own lessons
• Google Hangouts
• How social media can have an impact

Inset training day

I felt It was important to start the day by demonstrate that this training and message was not just coming from me. That schools all across the world are using their school libraries successfully alongside the internet and that the two can and should work together, it is not about one or the other, it is both. It was also important for me to show that there are many school librarians out there doing inspiring things and working with teachers so I started with a demonstration of how social media was important to me and my own personal learning. I explained that I had sent a message out to my followers on twitter asking the following:-

I had some wonderful responses which I shared with the teachers but the one that I finished with was this one. A brilliant message!

I then moved onto information literacy and how the framework SLS are currently using links and supports the new Guernsey curriculum. We were able to show how the framework and SLS staff can support students to becoming independent learners through using the school library. We demonstrated how we could support and train teachers to use the school library in an innovative way, opening their eyes to the countless possibilities of using resources that were already in their school and just waiting to be used. All at no extra cost to the school and with full support and training included.

Kahoot

We played Kahoot an online quiz that you can create yourself. We wanted to demonstrate how easy it was to create a quiz but also use it for our own purposes. Our quiz made sure teachers knew about the support available from SLS and how to use the school library. It caused some great discussions especially around the thorny issue of using pictures without credit. We will be following up with some guidelines on this for teachers.

We had planned to play breakoutEdu after break but we began to realise that we needed to help the teachers understand what was available from the school library and how to access it otherwise they would not be able to play the game so we spent some time showing them how to find their way around the resources that we provide, how to access and use their ebook collection and their school library catalogue. We explained that they needed this information to play the next game.

BreakoutEDU

Julia created our breakout game for this inset day. Breakout is based on a gameshow in America where contestants had to break out of a locked room. As it is not appropriate to lock students into a room this game has been adapted by school libraries, especially in America, to challenge students to unlock a box, using clues.   Ours was set up to ensure that teachers used the school library in order to work out the clues but teachers can use this game for their own subjects too.  They had to work as a team in order to get into the box in under 30 mins. It was great to see how fully engaged all the teachers were.

The box is in the middle of the teachers!

They managed to breakout in 23 mins...

Photo's by Martin Winward

Google Hangouts

I am very lucky to had made some very strong connections with librarians from twitter, so we decided to invite a couple to our inset day through Google hangouts. It was important to demonstrate how easy it was to connect with others around the world but also to help them understand how other school librarians support teachers in their schools. We invited Stony Evans a library Media Specialist at Lakeside High School in Hot Springs, Arkansas and Caroline Roche , a school librarian at Eltham College, South East London to give a 15 min presentation about how they collaborated with their teachers. Both gave really interesting presentations and shared lots of idea with us. We were very grateful for their time and enthusiasm in sharing their best practice with us.

Stony, talking to us at 7am in the morning!  

Photo by Stony Evans

Finally

The day ended by giving teachers the opportunity to feedback on what we had covered during our inset day and to decide how they would include any of this in next term's lessons. Several teachers commented on trying to use the Kahoot and Hangout within a lesson. There was also a lot of feedback on using the SLS website more and asking for support.

“I feel more confident to take a more immersive approach to topic work. I will utilise the SLS website and will liaise more closely with them.”

"Loved the cross curricular approach / opportunities…. MORE / MORE / MORE PLEASE" 

We look forward to supporting St Anne's more in the future. We are very grateful for this opportunity and for your enthusiasm throughout the day.

How a librarian from Guernsey got invited to present at Practical Pedagogies Teachers Conference in Toulouse. Here is my journey

Connections through twitter

At the beginning of the year, I was contacted by Russel Tarr @russeltarr a history teacher at the International School of Toulouse, through Twitter, who asked if I was willing to present at the Practical Pedagogies conference in November. At first, I did wonder why me but thankfully Russel put my mind at rest and explained why he wanted a librarian at a teachers conference. It was about sharing best practice within a school so that included anyone involved in teaching and learning too.

The thought of attending a teachers conference rather than a librarians conference did scare me. Conferences are usually places where you learn and share knowledge about your specialist field and for me, I have always enjoyed going along to librarians conferences, not only to learn about something new but to hear that what we are doing in Guernsey is as good, if not better than elsewhere in the world. However, I had become more aware of the importance of sharing my own knowledge and expertise with teachers rather than librarians about using a school library across the curriculum. As much as this was definitely a little out of my comfort zone it was where I felt I should be speaking.

Writing for CILIP Update

I had recently had an article published for the CILIP update magazine based on my masters dissertation about collaboration between teachers and librarian and the difference it could make to students academic attainment. Through this, a librarian from Newcastle University, Andrew Shenton, contacted me and said that my article had inspired him to also write something along the same lines but was going to try and get it published in a teachers magazine and not a library one. His argument for this was that within our own field we are preaching to the converted. How right he was! This is one of the reasons that I decided that this invitation to talk at the Practical Pedagogies conference was a perfect way to start talking to teachers about school libraries.

My workshop

My workshop and message was simple. Talk about what we are achieving within Guernsey, looking especially at the information literacy framework we are using then give examples of best practice and inspire teachers to work alongside their librarians within their own schools.  I explained that we work within the classrooms co-teaching. The teacher is the subject expert and we are the skills and tech experts and together we support independence and research skills. Alongside this, we are also supporting the teachers and the use of new technologies within the classroom. Our blog, created by Schools' Library Service, Guernsey describes the ways in which we have worked alongside teachers to create exciting lessons. My main message was that planning with the librarian was essential. If they could invite their school librarian along to their planning sessions great ideas can happen. My research had shown that librarians and teachers working together made a difference to academic attainment and my own experience reflected that.

I was a little worried when the librarian of Toulouse International School herself said that she would be attending my workshop. Thankfully she was lovely and really interested in what I had to say so all was well. She explained that her school has only just re introduced books as the school had wrongly made the decision to remove all books in favour of the internet. Books are an essential part of learning and this is what was found once they had removed them all. The job of retraining teachers and students to use the library is far harder when a library is reintroduced as the skills have to be re-taught.

The teachers who attended were interested although not all of them had access to a qualified librarian so we discussed other opportunities that they could possibly take advantage of, such as working with their public library staff. It made me realise the importance of the support we give within Guernsey schools, especially to the primary schools. Without access to a librarian, they will find that their libraries become places to exchange books and not necessarily places to teach independent learning and research skills. You need a champion for the library in a school and unfortunately, teachers just do not have the time.

I received some lovely feedback from my session and the others all began to follow me on twitter. It is great to be expanding my network of support and expertise.

What came next

After finished my session I was able to talk to other teachers about their own sessions which led to some interesting conversations about mine. I met a very inspiring Headteacher, Simon Hinchliffe @sh_hinchliffe from Bradford Grammar School who talked to me about how to engage students and teachers in their very well stocked and newly built library. We talked about the status of their librarian and embedding information literacy within his curriculum. I look forward to continued conversations in the coming months. I also met John McCarthy @jmccarthyeds who asked me if I blogged. I actually responded that I didn't as I had not kept this blog up to date in a while. After looking to create something new I decided to update what was here and thanks to John I've been inspired to start writing again. He made me believe I have something worth sharing so thanks to him here it is and I'm sure we will stay in contact.

What I learnt

Although my session was not hugely attended I have realised that the situation in Guernsey is a unique one. All our schools have access to a qualified librarian and when I am talking at teachers conferences I must not make that assumption. My reason for presenting at this kind of conference is to help teachers understand the role of the school librarian if they have one but to also encourage those that don't to ask why. I also believe that if teachers understood the role they may be encouraged to collaborate more.

The other session I attended helped me to understand more of the frustrations that teachers have with using new tech in their classrooms and how important it is to promote this as one of the things we can support in our training. Teachers need to understand how school librarians are relevant to their curriculum and if we can use the hook of technology experts we may have more successful collaborations.  I also learnt a few tips and tricks that I will be sharing and using in my own teaching.

I plan to present at more teachers conferences as I do feel that it was a good experience not only for myself but for everyone I spoke to and not just in my session. My plan for the next one is to build on what I have learnt and to talk more broadly about how teachers can use school libraries and librarians. 

Training ideas for library services - Social Media for Marketing

In our office we have decided to run in house training sessions once every half term. This started last half term where we shared our information literacy programme CWICER that we have adapted from New York  Department of Education. We have had a amazing response from the teachers to this framework as it has allowed us to talk to the teachers in their own language at last. The staff enjoyed the training and sharing ideas so we decided to run another session this morning on social media.

This months DIY training is on Social Media for Marketing

We have decided to start using social media to promote our service but you can't do that properly unless you understand what the social media can do. I talked through twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and scoop.it as tools that I use on a regular basis.  There is still a lot of misunderstanding about what these resources are used for. Many of the staff still believe that twitter is about famous people or people telling you what they had for dinner. I tried to explain that my twitter page is purely for work. I follow librarians, authors, IT experts and anyone else that I think will make my life easier at work. My reasons for using twitter were:-

• My own CPD
• Gaining information to use in teaching
• Ask questions from those that know more than me
• Finding great articles for my MLIS

Why do all the hard work when someone else has already done it. Sharing is amazing and it has worked for me. Here is my twitter link @Elizabethutch

Scoop.it and Pinterest are great sources of information that I curate. I explained that I don't spend ages looking through the internet to find useful article but use these tools to do it for me. I use resources that others have shared and scoop them or pin them to my own pages so others can benefit from what I have found. I find that saving suggested links from twitter to my scoop.it page is a better   way of keeping what is useful and makes it easier to search. Have a look at my scoop.it page http://www.scoop.it/u/elizabeth-Hutchinson see what you think. Here is my link to my Pinterest page http://www.pinterest.com/slsguernsey/ I really enjoy keeping these pages full of information that is useful to me but find it fascinating that you can make connections with others who are interested in the same things as me.

I also use these tools to help me with my own study research for my MLIS. I enjoy using this as it not only is very useful to me but I can also demonstrate it's potential to the students I teach. I have always believed that in order to understand something you must use it. When Facebook first came out I was worried about my children using it as I did not understand how it worked I decided that using it was the only way to learn

Finally I do believe that you should have some social life on social media so I have a personal Facebook page that I keep private for friends and family. I do have a couple of  library groups that I am linked to but it is generally a fun tool.

I have challenged my colleagues to start using these resources before September so that we can consider using them as marketing tools for work in future. My worry at the moment is that if we were to start now I would have to organised it all myself as no one else really understands it's potential. I look forward to seeing where this will all lead.

I was just about to post this blog when my email pinged. I have set up Google alerts for 'social media' and amazingly this blog popped up  http://www.davidleeking.com/2014/02/13/social-media-skills-for-librarians/#.Uv9FOHkePwI David is saying, much better than me what we should be doing as librarians. The wonder of the internet! Having read his post I feel much better that I write as if I am talking as that seems to be the way to do this. What I have learnt from his post is that I need to spend time on my pictures. Will do that next time.

Finally, a colleague asked how I managed my time on social media. I had to be honest and say that I was addicted instantly and at first it was very difficult to not keep checking to see if anyone had read what I had written or commented on it. I still struggle to switch off between home and work life but I really enjoy it so does that matter so much? I will never be that person who can look for 30mins a day as it does not seem to work that way for me. I choose what I respond to when I am at home. What I have more of a problem with it allowing myself time to look when I am at work when it is for work purposes and not feel guilty about it.

I wonder what others have done to encourage others to use social media within the work place.

Next term we are looking at promoting reading for pleasure.