"The new web is increasingly the pen and paper for young people.  It's one of the places they experience and create narrative.  It's where reading and learning takes place, where recreational needs are met, communities are formed, and knowledge is created."

B. Kenney, "You 2.0" in School Library Journal, January 2007.

What is your purpose in creating this blog? 

Welcome to my blog for LLED 462.  I will be using this blog as a space to bring to your attention articles that I have found interesting that pertain to issues in a teacher-librarian's world.  This assignment has given me reason to explore deeper in to topics that we've been discussing throughout the term, as well as throughout my diploma.

I am currently on the last two courses of the Teacher-Librarian Diploma, and have learned much along the way. I find myself at a very exciting phase in my life today.  Not only will I be finished with my formal education here at UBC, but I will be starting a new job as a part-time librarian at a school in my very own community.  This job begins after Spring Break.  To add to the excitement of starting a new job, I am also begining a new chapter in my life as I will be getting married over Spring Break as well.  Needless to say, I will be very busy over the next couple of weeks!


Why did you include the specific elements that you did?
For this particular blog I am writing about 10 articles from professional journals. I picked them somewhat randomly.  A few of these articles came about after putting in certain keywords in EBSCO's search engine. Others were chosen by simply looking at the latest issues of Teacher librarian journals.  I was also drawn towards articles that were directed towards new teachers.

How did you arrive at your decision about the genre or format you are using? 

I am a big fan of reading blogs. More and more as well it seems as though blogs and wikis are becoming more prevalent in society.  As a teacher I have noticed more and more blogs popping up, edublog being one of them.  Here are a list of the best edublogs of 2010.  There is some very exciting reading here : http://edublogawards.com/2010awards/best-individual-edublog-2010/

A blog I check a few times a week is TL Special Weekly Blog:  "The Blog" here for Vancouver TLs.  It has served as an inspiration to me.  It is informative, often witty,  and up-to-date with current affairs for teacher librarians.

I have created a blog for previous course, so do have some experience with setting it up.  As part of the district wide professional development day last month, I decided to attend a Tech Conference where one of the workshops was on how to create a blog.  I am now more familiar with the fancy tricks such as adding a link or changing the colour of the words.  I also learned about the seriousness of copyright.  In my previous blog I had included several pictures for each post.  For this blog I added a couple but was cognizent of including the source, and in one case I used a picture from a site that offered free pictures, free of copyright rules.

 

What problems or challenges did you face as you worked toward your final product?

Believe it or not, one of the problems I faced while working on this assignment was remembering how to access my blog. I was always trying to go to Blogs which was under the 'more' dropbox on my gmail homepage.  I now know that by going to Settings in my Google account I can go to Reader and then to my Settings and pull down Google Account Settings.  Actually, I'm sure there's got to be an easier way -still to be discovered!!

What were your expectations about the process? Were there any surprises in its development?

I was expecting to read a lot of fun articles. I really like that teacher librarian jounal articles, by and large, appear to be written at a very comprehensive level.  By that I mean that most of the ones I read were written by teacher librarians FOR teacher librarians.  There weren't really any surprises in the development, except for that I must admit it seemed to take longer to create this blog than I expected.

What did you learn from this assignment?

In reviewing the multitude of articles, I began to notice several key points mentioned over and over again. These include such things as

l. Making sure our administrators understand our role in terms of student instruction.

2.Teacher collaboration is key to becoming more central to this process

3.Creating a library environment that is respectful of and inviting to all students

I also found that reading off an online journal page, such as School Libraries Worldwide seemed to more challenging than an isolated article in EBSCO for example.  I suppose it takes some getting used to, but as I say I prefer using the online database EBSCO. It seems much less "busy".
What would you do differently if someone else sought your advice about the process?

I might have tried a different blog spot. I would like to try WordPress for my next blog.

What is the next step or what would you like to do with your blog next?

As previously mentioned, I would probably use WordPress for my next blog.

In closing I can say I am proud of my blog.  I don't envision myself adding much material in the upcoming months, but I do see it as a learning experience and a springboard for my next project, whether it be a wiki or blog, or a website.  For now, I hope you have enjoyed my comments and that you leave some comments for me too!