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.

Advocacy for school librarians - Training and Personal Learning Networks PLN

Helping teachers set up their own Personal Learning Network (PLN)

As a librarian I am never sure what I am going to be asked to do next. My own skill set is broad and this being the case I am able to do many things which includes training. Recently, after a conversation with a teacher about Personal Learning Neworks (PLN) I realised that my own skills in setting up my  PLN enabled me to support this teacher and potentially support him to train other teachers in his school.  Is this an important part of my job? Absolutely, teaching and sharing my own best practice,  enabling and inspiring teachers to find the information they need themselves is essential. If  I can work alongside teachers to enhance their learning it allows me to talk to them about their students learning too. Raising my profile and skills set helps me to raise awareness for the school library. I can't be in every classroom but I can teach and up skill the teachers which is very definitely my role.

My own personal learning journey. 

It started in 2009,  I had qualified as a librarian in 2003 and after chartering in 2008 it was time to take responsibility for my own development and learning rather than having to do it because I was studying. My own reading, at the time, started and stopped with the CILIP Update magazine but I needed more and really had no idea where to look.

My decision to use social media for personal learning was for two main reasons. Firstly, I had children who were wanting to use Facebook and twitter and at the time I felt that I did not know enough about these resources. Rather than saying no you can't because they scare me, I realised it would be better to find out about social media and how it worked. Secondly, I was aware of the potential for using social media for more than following your favourite pop star and was interested in finding out if I could use them for work. I was particularly keen to know enough about social media so that I would be able to talk to students about it.

In the beginning I decided to use Facebook for friends and family and twitter for work only. This has changed overtime and my Facebook has expanded to special interest groups to share knowledge too. Twitter has enabled me to learn more and connect with people around the world that I would never have been able to otherwise. Some of the most exciting things that I have done in the last year has been because of Twitter. Trips to Toulouse to present about using school libraries across the curriculum, talking to librarians in Arkansas via Google Hangouts and  requests for articles all have come from my PLN on twitter.

So how did I start? I set up an account, worked out how to follow a few librarians and teachers and then I lurked. I read the threads that came through and have to admit that not much of it made any sense. Hashtags and @ and bad English was what it seemed to be all about. I was not sure how this would help me but then I became aware that some of the people I followed were sharing articles that were very useful and because of this I began to read more.  The idea that other professional have read something and thinks it is worth sharing is very powerful. I then became braver and began to retweet and share articles that I found interesting. Finally I took the plunge and sent out my first tweet. It makes me smile when I read it now as I can't stand anyone who writes about that they are about to do.  I do think there may have been a little sarcasm in my first tweet. I had to start somewhere and this was what I chose to write:-

I used the discover twitter to find this. I admit I did get a little distracted by putting in some of my twitter friends in and laughing at their first tweets. Nearly all are as bad as mine :)

I slowly  began to understand how powerful this tool was. I began focusing on the group of librarians and teachers I was following and started making decisions about unfollowing those who were tweeting rubbish. I did not have time to waste so my focus has always been quality. If someone is not useful to my goal I unfollow. This leaves me with a quality group of people who I have learnt so much from. They share their best practice with me, answer questions that I could not answer myself and through this I began to grow in confidence. It gives me a place to share my ideas and enables me to learn about new teaching practices and help me grow as a professional. My PLN is essential to my role as a librarian which enables me to learn and discover more every day.

Where can I start?

If you are looking where to start here are a few suggestions from my social media friends.

PLN on Pinterest

Twitter tools

Twitter for teachers

Education chats on twitter

Educational hashtags

Let's start at the very beginning: 3 simple steps to raising academic attainment through your school library

Ok, so I have created several posts recently about how Headteachers/Principals, teachers and librarians can work together in order to make a difference to academic attainment.  If we are to effect change I do believe it has to come from the top. There are, however, many teachers out there that have never worked alongside a school librarian and have no idea what we can do for them or their students and we need to find a way to change this ourselves too.  Which teacher would say no to free help and resources within their classrooms? Not many, I'm sure, so this has to be down to a lack of knowledge and understanding of what we do and this is where we can all do something. So whilst working towards change at the top, librarians need to find a way to start collaborating with those who never use the library and encouraging those who are already working with us to start sharing their best practice.

Why do some teachers not use the school library? 

I began to wonder why every teacher is not demanding to have a good school library with a qualified librarian? Is it because of their own experience or lack of school libraries as they grew up?  Did they ever get the opportunity to use their own school library as children and teenagers? It got me thinking about what I remember of my own school library experience. I do remember my middle school library well, both for choosing fiction and being taken to the library  to find books for research during classes, but once I got to secondary school my memories of the school library are non-existent.  I was very lucky, however, to have Jesmond public branch library that I was able to go to on a Saturday that supported the way I feel about libraries today. If I hadn't had that would I know how important libraries are?

Is this the missing link? Does our own experience of school libraries effect the way we use them as adults and teachers? It is even possible, for anyone going on to university, to use the library without ever having to go anywhere near the physical space or speak to the librarian. If you then go onto teacher training it is likely that your course does not even mentioned the school library or how you can access it. My two boys are both teachers and the only encouragement to use the school library has come from me and this is difficult with everything else they have to do to add this themselves.  It is understandable, therefore, that if a trainee teacher thinks that the school library is only about books and have never experienced the support and expertise of a school librarian why would they even think about collaborating with one. This then will effect how they encourage their students to use school library too.

Having said all of this I do believe that teachers need our support and want school libraries. One of my questions in my masters research was 'do you think the school library is important' and 100% answered yes. However, when asked if they use it themselves the number reduces dramatically. So where is it all going wrong? Life long learning come from the skill of information literacy and learning how to learn. If this is not embedded in our teachers how can they pass these skills onto their students? I recently found a study by Kasu and Demiralp where they concluded that teacher training programmes do not support teachers to up-skill life-long learning competencies (2016). If this is the case, how can teachers be expected support their own students when teaching. "Scheuch, Shouping and Gaston(2009) highlighted that even if pre-service teachers have the basic skills of the field they study, they still lack basic research and learning skills belonging to all disciplines"  (Kazu, H, Demiralp, D, 2016) and in my own experience I would agree. Teachers are so busy that they automatically go to Google themselves to find good resources for their students. They don't think to ask the librarian and they don't think to look in the school library and this has to change. 

How can we improve the relationship between teachers and librarians?

So what can we do about this? Apart from teacher training programmes seriously looking at how they should be working with school librarians we need to make it as easy as we can for teachers to access our skills and support  We need to encourage teachers to think about upskilling themselves and their students by using the library and librarian in their own schools and get them to understand what they are missing out on by not using their school libraries. The demand has to come from the teachers so let's enlighten them to what they could be achieving by using their school library. 

Teachers: your first steps on making a difference to your students academic attainment through using your school librarian.

Williams, D. Wavell, C. and Morrison, K., 2013. Impact of School Libraries on Learning. Aberdeen: Institute for Management, Governance & Society (IMaGeS), Robert Gordon University.

If you are a teacher reading this I have a couple of questions to ask...

1. Do you know what resources are in your school library for your subject? 
2. Are there books as well as online resources?
3. Are they good enough for you to want your students to access them?

If you are sitting here honestly saying you don't know then I suggest that the next time you are in school you find out. Talk to your school librarian and see what is there. On a basic level school librarians are there to provide good quality academic resources and if you use them for that and nothing else what an amazing step forward. Many teachers struggle to find enough resources for their classrooms and some even buy there own but have never found the time to look at what is in their school library. Many teachers spend a lot of wasted time looking for websites that are suitable for their subject and putting them in a files for their students to access. Did you know that this is what a school librarian can do for you? Are you frustrated that when you ask your students to do some research that many of them cut and past from Wikipedia? We know this is what is happening but how can we support and teach good practice?

We all want our students to become independent learners and unfortunately the idea of independence has been swallowed by our ability to 'Google' the answer. Google does have a place in society but I would argue that being able to search with skill and find academic sources is far more important, especially when doing homework or studying.  We don't need to teach our students how to find answers to non-academic questions, they have been doing that since they were little. We do, however, need to teach them to:- 

• know and understand what educational sources are 
• be able to decide/choose where they will find the best answer quickly using those sources
• access the information - using keywords
• reference and give credit to where the information came from 

This is where your school librarian comes in. By knowing what books and online resources are in your school library it is possible to start guiding your students to better resources and giving them the skills to access them. This is not spoon feeding them! they still have to independently decide which source to use and actually be able to find the information from it.

Teachers: 3 simple steps to getting the most from your school library and librarian

Let's start with encouraging your students to use books for research. You as a teacher know that there are several great up to date books on your next topic in the library. How?

1. You met with the school librarian the term before and together you selected and ordered the necessary books. (school librarians really want teachers to collaborate with ordering stock for the library, it should be based on the curriculum and if you change topic then the librarian needs to know) 
2. These books have been added to the library catalogue with some keywords that you and the librarian have agreed on 
3. They are now already sitting on your library shelves. 

You want your students to look at them but you want them to find them themselves. A really easy lesson is this:-

1. Explained to your students about the new topic and what you want them to create. 
2. Tell them that the information has to come from books only. 
3. Invite your school librarian into your class to demonstrate how the school library catalogue works. 
4. Together you will teach the importance of keywords and how your keywords can create a good question. 
5. With the librarians support, your students need to use the keywords to find the books in the catalogue and write down the information they need: Author, Title and class number
6. Take your students to the school library to find the books. Make sure that any books are borrowed correctly from the library. A good lesson in responsibility! 

Once the books are back in class remind them about their keywords and how to use the index to find what they need. You would be surprised at how many have forgotten how to use an index. Finally once they have found the book and the information that they want the librarian can also teach a lesson on note taking if needed.  Finally, the librarian can also teach them how to reference where they got the information from.

Ok so how does this process create independence?

• Using books from your school library is independence! Just because you are guiding them to the books they still have to make a selection. It is their choice about which book to choose and which information to take from it.

• This process has up-skilled the teacher and the students on how to use the library catalogue. This is a skill that needs to be used regularly and as you now know what resources are in your school library you can encourage them to borrow books for future topics. 

• The librarian can also add websites to your library catalogue so future lessons could include books and websites from the same search making less work for the teacher. 

If your students can use your library catalogue, which is a database, they will find it easier to search online journals when they get to that stage. Academic resources can't be searched with a question so the skill of keyword searching is a very important start the independence journey.

If you have read this far you are obviously interested in what happens next. Caroline Roche is a school librarian at Etham college an independent school whose website Heart of the school is full of amazing ideas of teacher-librarian collaboration. Take a look and share it with your own school librarian to start the conversation. 

This all seems so straight forward to me. If every teacher and school librarian were only doing just the basic, school libraries would be thriving, students would be using great resources, teachers would be less busy and academic attainment would rise.  There is so much more too...

Reference

Azano, A. (2014). RURAL: The other neglected “R”: Making space for place in school libraries. Knowledge Quest, 43(1), 60.  

Kazu, H. & Demiralp, D. (2016). Faculty members’ views on the effectiveness of teacher training programs to upskill life-long learning competence. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 63, 205-224, http://dx.doi.org/ 10.14689/ejer.2016.63.12 

Up-skill life-long learning competencies http://www.ejer.com.tr/0DOWNLOAD/pdfler/tr/hkazu63.pdf 

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.