 |
  
Online
Conference - 2004
Information Literacy abstracts (last updated
17 December 2003)
Barbara Stripling (Director
of Library Programs, New Visions for Public Schools, New
York, USA)
Barbara Stripling has been
a classroom teacher, teacher librarian, school
administrator, and director of library grant programs at
two non profit education organizations. She has
written two books, edited two books, and published
numerous articles in various journals. Her latest
book (co-edited with Sandra Hughes-Hassell), published in
October 2003, is entitled Curriculum Connections
Through the Library: Principles and Practice.
Barbara has been president of the American Association of
School Librarians and currently serves on the Executive
Board of the American Library Association.
|
| Building independent
learners through inquiry (keynote paper) |
| Our information-age
society is placing high demands on our youth to develop
the skills to learn on their own, to pursue meaning rather
than collect facts, to use critical thinking skills to
solve problems and make decisions, and to apply what they
have learned in new and authentic situations.
Teachers and teacher librarians are responding to their
learners' needs by designing instruction that engages
students in constructing their own ideas through guided
experiences. Inquiry provides a framework for these
experiences by placing students at the heart of learning
and empowering them to follow their sense of wonder into
new discoveries and insights about the way the world
works. Inquiry skills and strategies enable students
to ask intriguing questions, investigate the answers,
construct new understandings, and share those
understandings with others. Inquiry is inextricably
connected to literacy; in fact, both involve many of the
same thinking skills and strategies. In addition,
students are motivated by inquiry to develop their
comprehension and writing capacities. Teacher
librarians can help classroom teachers, at all levels, to
design effective inquiry-based instruction in science,
math, social studies, and language arts that integrates
the literacy and inquiry strategies most important to each
content area. Through such collaboration, teacher
librarians foster a school wide community of inquiry. |
Barbara Combes and Dr Jan Ring
Barbara
Combes has recently taken up a contract at Edith Cowan
University. Since 2001 she has been the teacher
librarian at Sevenoaks Senior College, an innovative
experiment in the use of high-end technology to facilitate
the delivery of curriculum and support materials using
ICT. Barbara managed the Library and Information
Centre, acted as Webmaster and WebCT Administrator, and
collaborated with staff to develop a range of online
curriculum models and courseware to support
teaching-learning programs at the College.
 Jan
Ring has recently returned to Edith Cowan University from
Singapore where she spent two years at ICUS, a leading
corporate eLearning company, as Academic Director, and one
year at NIE where she taught the use of IT in
Education. Jan has designed and taught a variety of
courses using flexible delivery methods and is an
experienced online coach. She has been actively
involved in international courses, both academic and
corporate. Jan's interests are in the building and
maintenance of online learning communities.
|
|
"If you help us build it, we
will come!" - the role of the teacher librarian as an
online curriculum facilitator and innovator |
|
Interactive online learning can exploit
emerging technologies to provide alternative learning
experiences and resources, cater for diverse student
learning styles and individual differences, and create a
learning culture that integrates technology and
information literacy outcomes across the school.
Such learning environments create opportunities for the
development of lifelong learning skills and the teacher
librarian has a pro-active role to play in the design and
facilitation of such a learning culture.
This paper examines the role of the
teacher librarian as a facilitator for change and how they
can be instrumental in the effective integration of
technology into the curriculum.
To create a culture of learning that
integrates the use of ICT, current research has identified
the need for someone at the local level to take on the
vital role of ensuring that teachers have ongoing, 'grass
roots support' for the development of collaborative
teaching-learning environments. This 'grass roots'
person can ensure that all resources, human and physical,
are used in the design and creation of curriculum programs
that integrate technology and information literacy
outcomes into the learning culture of the school.
Due to their unique position, the teacher librarian has
overarching curriculum knowledge, experience in managing
curriculum resources across the school and a strong
collaborative background, making them ideally placed to be
such a key person.
In this paper, discussion focuses on
a range of online programs and courseware developed and
implemented in an innovative Senior College setting by its
teacher librarian in collaboration with subject
leaders. These programs use high-end technology to
create dynamic and flexible, outcomes-focused learning
environments. The collaborative partnerships forged
as a result of the programs and the preliminary results of
action research being conducted by a PhD Fellow working at
the school will also be discussed. |
James Henri James
Henri is an Associate Professor and the Deputy Director of
the Centre for IT in
Education, Faculty of Education, and is also involved in a
major teaching development project in the Department of
Architecture of the University of Hong
Kong. He is
a Vice President of the International Association of
School Librarianship (IASL)
and the Secretary of the Standing Committee of the School
Libraries and Resource Centers Section of the
International Federation of Library Associations and
Institutions (IFLA).
A former recipient of the ASLA Citation, James has
published extensively and his current research interests
include: issues in information literacy, information policy in
schools, collection management issues, and innovative pedagogical practice online. |
| Building an
information literate school community: Putting teachers
first |
| How much are school
changing to meet the needs of the new millennium? Are they
changing at all? Is it a change in substance or an
exercise in reorganising the deck chairs on the Titanic?
The shift in focus from teaching to
learning; the shift in focus from stand-alone-subjects to
integrated learning; the shift in focus from one teacher
30 students to flexible teaching teams and student
groupings; the shift from assessing knowledge to assessing
learning; the shift from classrooms (and teachers who are
in charge of classrooms) to learning spaces; and the shift
from individual foci to a whole school focus represents a
revolution in thinking about schooling.
Schools that are serious about
substantive change and adopting a 'learning to learn'
paradigm are encouraged to construct and mould information
literate communities where teachers are themselves
information literate. This shift in thinking brings
with it many shifts in practice and has special
implications for the role of the teacher librarian and the
purpose of information services in schools. When the
information literacy focus shifts from students to
teachers then the role of the teacher librarian and of the
principal as information leaders must shift too.
Teacher librarians must shift their services and their
allocation of time towards teachers. Principals must
make that happen by driving school policy and rewarding
school practices that reflect these changes.
This paper will raise issues
concerning the role of the teacher librarian as an agent
for change in teacher practice in schools that are
pursuing a culture characterised by a desire to cultivate
autonomous and information literate learners. The
paper will address key teacher deficits and issues that
act
as road blocks to change. The argument in this paper
is that schools that take information literacy seriously
demonstrate their commitment by placing emphasis on
building an information literate school community.
This argument is framed in terms of five issues: learning
to learn must be more than rhetoric; reward what matters;
'photocopy learning' is not learning at all; seek focus;
and plan for success. |
Mary-Ann
Salisbury and Maureen Twomey
Mary-Ann
Salisbury is a teacher librarian with over twenty-five
years experience in secondary school libraries in
Queensland. She is currently President of the
Australian School Library Association (ASLA) and immediate
Past President of the School Library Association of
Queensland (SLAQ). She is a qualified trainer in Dimensions
of Learning, and has been influential in the
introduction of this program and the training of the staff
at Runcorn High School, Brisbane, Queensland.
Maureen
Twomey is Head of Faculty - Library Services at St
Joseph's College, Gregory Terrace, Brisbane,
Queensland. Maureen has worked in primary and
secondary schools in both the public and private education
system. She is President of the School Library
Association of Queensland (SLAQ) and a qualified trainer
in Dimensions of Learning.
|
| Thinking Through the
thing you do: creating a thinking culture |
| 'There is little
evidence that changing the curriculum will improve the
level of student outcomes unless there are significant
attempts to change what teacher do' Ramsey, 2001)
The role of the teacher librarian is
a unique position in an educational community. A
major part of the work of a teacher librarian, through
co-operative planning and teaching, is the designing and
developing of curriculum units and assessment in
partnership with teachers. In facilitating student
and staff information needs and the integration of
information skills into the curriculum, the teacher
librarian is strategically placed to work as a change
agent and to develop learning communities.
Information literacy skills are the
'what skills we teach', but with technological
change and new directions in curriculum we also need to
ensure a pedagogy that promotes lifelong learning - we
need to focus on the 'how' of teaching.
Learning outcomes are best improved from both improving
the curriculum and improving pedagogy.
A program that incorporates the best
of what we know about the learning process; that puts
students at the centre of what we do; that supports the
best in instructional strategies and dovetails into the
outcomes approach to education as well as strongly
supporting the development of information literacy skills,
is a framework called DIMENSIONS OF LEARNING (DOL).
This paper will discuss the
implementation of Dimensions of Learning in two
different school settings and the significant role played
by the teacher librarian in this implementation.
Discussion will include some of the practical issues that
each school faced, the various models of staff training
and curriculum integrations support trialed, and possible
future directions. |
|
© ASLA Inc., 2003
Prepared
by: ASLA Webmaster,
Last
updated: 17 December 2003
|
|
|
|