Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM)

When introducing change into an organization, the aim is to get meaningful acceptance and saturated use throughout the organization. Many professional development programs fail to take into consideration the needs and concerns of the teachers.

Attendance at a training session assumes that teachers are ‘trained’ and that change can then commence in the classroom.  The CBAM provides a framework to define and follow teacher’s attitudes and behaviour towards the technology being introduced.

The CBAM model:

• Accepts that professional development is a journey, not an event (Christou, Eliophotou-Menon and Philippou, 2004; Hall and Hord, 2011).  The change process may stop and start depending on the concerns of the group.
• Focuses on the individual as the most important part of the change process (McKinnon and Nolan, 1989); PD must be client-centered, using evidence to guide decision-making.
• Regards change as a personal and potentially threatening experience for most people, therefore teacher librarians (TLs) need to work in an adaptive, yet systematic way to stay in touch with the progress of individuals within the organization to alleviate their concerns. (Hall & Loucks, 1978) 
• Evidence based practice (Todd 2003) where methodologies can show a clear improvement in the level of understanding and acceptance of the introduction of a new type of technology in the workplace 

Pinterest for Teacher Librarians

There are an incredible amount of pinterest boards by Teacher Librarians.

I am not sure whether it is because it is so easy just to quickly view, evaluate and pin while watching TV or the fact that there is that voyeristic curiosity when you flip through other people's cuttings.

ACCELN Hangout

I try and catch the ACCELN hangout when it is on, as there is such a buzz in watching the conversations in real time and being able to add to the conversation.

I am kicking myself that I missed this one tonight (the kids didn't want to go to sleep!).

The use of a Learning Management System in schools is a topic that is very close to my heart having taught IT in schools for close to 20 years, experienced a range of management systems.

Is your learning management system really a content management system or a classroom management system?



Is forcing every teacher to put their assignments online a good use of a learning management system?

Tune into ACCELN every monday night for some thought provoking discussion.

Thinking outside the Bus

Our school will be embarking on a new building which will house the K-12 library. But there will be  period of about 2-3 years where the Junior Library will be relocated and the senior Library will be squashed up.

I came across this link via an article in the UK Guardian and thought "yes" ...

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Just think of how much fun you could have with this library?

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I love the amount of light that comes into this space ...

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I think that often we take our library spaces too seriously and forget that for kids they are a place to dream and imagine. So why not transport them into an environment where they can do just that.

Display ideas for Libraries

My daughters school is moving most of their fiction collection out of the library into learning zones throughout the school as part of their strategy to encourage recreational reading. Students will be able to   check out and check in books via RFID technology.

The primary school library will then evolve to host the non-fiction section with a focus on information literacy.

At my secondary school where I work as a teacher librarian, we have a calm reading program in the library. English classes from Years 7 - 10 spend a lesson every fortnight in the library reading. "But they could do that in their classrooms" I hear you say! But coming to our library gives them access to the entire fiction collection, specialist librarians that can assist with book choices and try and build a love of reading.

One way to create atmosphere is to build displays that inspire students to pick up a book, or even better, borrow and read one. One of our librarians is quite skilled at creating interesting displays that encourage recreational reading. Her recent display, from book to movie is forever changing whenever a new adaptation comes out.

Here are some really cool links to some blogs and pinterest boards to inspire you.

• Pinterest Boards such as this one by Rose Greyson

• School Library Display Blog

• Creative Library Displays

We are slowly doing up our calm reading section of the library, so I had a play around on illustrator and made the following sign. I am initially going to print it to A4 colour and put it up above the shelf. But I could imagine that you could modge podge it to lumps of wood or canvas and create some depth to the sign. All crafty fun!

You can download the file through slideshare

What do you think?

Analogue Sunday

The irony of this post is that I would have had to touch a computer to compile and upload this post ...

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But I have managed to travel until 2pm without touching a computer.

• I finished a book.
• I spent inside with several people that I love.
• I played nerf gun wars ...
• .. and, I'm about to sit down at the sewing machine

Did you have an analogue Sunday?

A journey into Book Porn

The intention for this blog is that it remains "porn free", but a friend of mine pushed through this link to me and I had a to take a few minutes to record which images I find titillating ...

The prospect of replacing a whole collection with eBooks frightens me. I love my eReader and I use it daily, I also love the times when I can sit down with a book and flip back and forth.

Our new house, will have a 4 metre x 4 metre library space. In it there will be ceiling to floor bookcases and spaces to store all the little nicnacs that we have collected during our life. Our reading space is peaceful, evokes harmony but at the same time can accommodate an interested child with a thirst for knowledge.

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I still profess that reading is a physical act and for students, most require a tangible multi-modal experience when they read or learn. A sterile library environment provides no curious intent beyond the text. I can't count the amount of times that I have picked up a book purely because the front cover has sparked an interest. The mashable article on why printed books will never die, raises some interesting points.

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So why can't our school libraries be fun? Evoke interest, encourage discovery and celebrate the physical? Is it all too hard?

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Why is a modern school library seen as one that embraces eBooks rather than discovery or learning?

What are your thoughts, am I old fashioned?

The Last Bookshop

One of the greatest pleasures is to stroll through a book shop serendipitously discovering new perspectives, stories or ideas. I fondly look back upon the time before kids when my hubby and I used to visit Readings in Carlton multiple times a week.

Second hand bookshops have another layer on top of them. The smell, the feel of a worn book in your hands. The name of the last owner written on the first page. Sometimes you are lucky and the last owner might have left something in the book as a reminder of who they were; .an old tram ticket, movie ticket or receipt.

Reading is such a physical act. If the story is good you relax, if there is suspense then you tense up and I have found myself many times rejoicing, laughing and crying at the end of a story. So the environment in which you read matters. Comfortable, cushions, temperature have to be just right.

So what if the world was void of stories and physical books?

This lovely 20 minute movie imagines a future where physical books have disappeared.

Youtube link

I own a Kindle, I love my Kindle (except the DRM part). Since getting my Kindle about a year ago I have never read so much as I do now. The speed at which I can download via Amazon a new book to read is mind blowing. I have found that I struggle with concentrating on a non-fiction read as I like to flip back and forth; check the index, look at the contents, compare chapters. A lot of what I read relates to either my teaching or study so I tend to like to highlight, mark, use post-it references. I have tried doing this in an electronic environment, but for me, it doesn't seem to work! My Kindle was initially bought to read academic papers when I was a the start of my degree and even though the technology worked well, reading academic papers didn't work for me. I still read off hardcopy with a pen, a highlighter, post-its and a good cup of coffee!!

But there is nothing to replace sitting down with a cup of tea and picking up a good book (physical or ebook). I recently rescued some books that we weeded from the library; poetry and short stories. The incidental way in which I came into possession of these books, ones that I might not normally look at, has fuelled another interest and set me off on another reading adventure.

What do you think?
Will bookshops die off?
Will eBooks take over the physical form of books?

Neil Gaiman reminds us that we need to be dandelions

I love the tips and hints that Neil Gaiman gives us in his keynote for the London Book Fair about the changing face of authors and publishers.


It struck me that his talk was similar to the essay that John Perry Barlow wrote years ago about the impact of mp3s on the music industry. Both Neil and John Perry remark on the economy of uniqueness where people are willing to pay for unique experiences. In the case of music, it is the live experience and the limited band t-shirts.

How does this relate to our school library? People are willing to use the space if it offers them something unique, something that they can't get online. Atmosphere, enthusiasm, experiences. What feelings or emotions does our school library evoke when we walk through the front door?

Our Senior Library has a photocopier right next to the entrance. So you walk in and you are greeted with a grey giant that frequently has people making angry sounds in front of it. Where is the happiness in that?

But what if the entrance to your library held ideas, inspirations, give aways or opportunities? Just like a book store, your entrance should be inciting and should frequently change to keep people on their toes. What if we used costume to allude to the content of a book?

As part of the Teacher Librarian degree that I am doing, I wish that they had a unit on marketing and merchandising. Because it is not enough that you should "house resources", you need to create experiences for the students and teachers. Experiences to discover, learn and resolve frustrations. You need to understand what drives the human spirit to want to enter a space and engage with it. You need to create a dandelion ...

Playing around with a Research Topic

For Assignment 1 for EER 500 we have to propose a research topic and then we are going to deconstruct whether the question is good or not.

Research Topic Statement

The focus of my research is the link between the pervasiveness of technology and the decline in critical literacy writing skills as demonstrated by the rise in plagiarism (Gabriel 2010) and students inability to produce authentic writing, which demonstrates critical thinking.  The importance of this issue isn’t to turn back the clock on how we are teaching writing skills, but identify a way to work strategically with ICT in the classroom.

Draft Research Question

How can information technologies, engage teenagers to develop their persuasive writing skills and demonstrate critical thinking whilst minimising the opportunities for plagiarism?

Research Topic Statement

For many years the media has speculated about the decline in student’s writing skills, citing the rising issue of plagiarism in the classroom and at university (Gabriel 2010).  The current generation has been labeled the “copy and paste generation” due to high use of technology, different study habits to previous generations and the emergence of disruptive technologies in the classroom and home. Our school’s 2012 NAPLAN results show that our 2013 Year 8 cohort have shown excellent reading skills but have very weak persuasive writing skills. Year 8 teachers verify that the students have shown poor authentic writing ability in both Humanities and English.

The Pew/Internet report “Writing, Technology and Teens” (Lenhart, Arafeh, Smith, Macgill; 2008) confirms that although teenagers are writing more than ever, but their easy access to information and their unstructured approach often leads to laziness when it comes to more structure to their writing processes. This laziness and easy wide spread access to information can lead to plagiarism.

My research interest has come about from many years of teaching Humanities and seeing the way in which teachers use ICT in their classrooms without regard to how it might be impacting on traditional skill development. Often they are naïve to the implications of incorporating ICT into a task that might have normally been done offline therefore

References

Gabriel, T. (2010). Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age. The New York Times, [online] 1st August. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02cheat.html [Accessed: 25th March 2013].

Lenhart, A., Arafeh, S., Smith, A., & Macgill, A. (2008). Writing, technology and teens. Retrieved from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2008/Writing-Technology-and-Teens.aspx

Evering, L.C. & Moorman, G. (2012). Rethinking Plagiarism in the Digital Age. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56(1), 35–44. doi: 10.1002/jaal.100

McCord, A. (2009). Detection and Deterrence of Plagiarism in Online Learning Environments. In P. Rogers, G. Berg, J. Boettcher, C. Howard, L. Justice, & K. Schenk (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Distance Learning, Second Edition (pp. 604-615). Hershey, PA: . doi:10.4018/978-1-60566-198-8.ch087

Measuring the effectiveness of Guided Inquiry in the classroom

I came across this great article which has some interesting things in it about Guided Inquiry in Schools and Evidence Based Practice.

At the moment we are developing our Whole School Information Literacy strategy and part of it is showing the school community that we are making a difference.

"The project and case study are discussed as student practice, and as a means of gathering data about student learning using the School Library Impact Measure (SLIM) Toolkit, while highlighting the use of wiki as an organising tool. "

The School Library Impact Measure Toolkit can be found on the Reuters web site with some great examples of some reflection sheets.

I am looking forward to reading about the result of Fitzgerald's research and trying it out for myself.

References:

Fitzgerald, L. (2011). The twin purposes of Guided Inquiry: guiding student inquiry and evidence based practice. In Scan Vol 30 No 1 
http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/schoollibraries/assets/pdf/guidedenquiry.pdf

Welcome 2013

I probably didn't blog enough in 2012 to justify the presence of this blog, but I grant you that it was a very busy year!

January, marks the mid way point through my Master of Education (Teacher Librarianship) and the subject that I am doing this semester is EER500 Introduction to Educational Research. I am actually looking forward to it as I am starting to like the research process and the resulting writing and thinking that improves as a result of it.

I had coffee this morning with the thesis whisperer where we spoke about lots of issues with writing and research ability from "why aren't the kids learning this in high school" through to "why don't teachers use research to guide them". Lots of great ideas, thoughts and avenues for investigations.

If you haven't read it, download and read her ebook on how to tame your PhD (or order a hardcopy). Although I am far from writing a PhD, I found it useful and insightful in regards to my Masters.

Creating a vision for a school library

Here are some notes from the unit of work that I completed on creating a vision for a school library:

Vision 2013 - 2015

“The Library supports the school’s vision, value, teaching and learning programs through the creation of a physical and virtual collaborative ‘knowledge commons’ fostering creative, independent and critical lifelong learning skills, through the development of proficiency in information literacy, digital literacy and literature enrichment.”