Australian School Library Association > Professional Development > Online 2006 > Powerful Purpose - abstracts

ASLA Online II: Visions of Learning Abstracts

The presenters and their biographical information are correct as at 7 March 2006. The organisers of ASLA Online II reserve the right to alter or delete this information.

Powerful Purpose - abstracts

Ms Liz Blumson (Co-ordinator, UQL Cyberschool, University of Queensland Library, Australia)

A teacher librarian for the last twenty years, Liz has many years experience in teaching English and Drama in independent secondary schools. Before joining the UQL Cyberschool team at the beginning of 2000 she worked as a Senior Project Officer with Education Queensland setting up libraries in new schools. She also tutors at Queensland University of Technology in the School of Cultural Language & Language Studies in Education.

Pauline McLeod (Co-ordinator, UQL Cyberschool, University of Queensland Library, Australia)

Pauline taught English and History in independent schools for many years and has worked as a teacher librarian for almost a decade. Pauline was one of the original members of the UQL Cyberschool team in 2000 before leaving for a position as a Liaison Librarian at the UQ Herston Medical Library at the Royal Brisbane and Womens'Hospital. She rejoined the Cyberschool team in 2005.

Deborah Turnbull (Manager, Information Skills and Community Outreach, University of Queensland Library, Australia)

Deborah has held a number of positions in the Cybrary, particularly in the areas of information retrieval and information technology and has also worked in the Library as a Liaison Librarian. She has worked extensively in the areas of Networking and Systems implementation. Deborah was jointly responsible for setting up the University of Queensland Cybrary's first Internet training courses for staff and students, and the Cybrary's first Silver Platter ERL Servers. Currently, she also co-ordinates the UQL Cyberschool, an initiative of the Queensland Cybrary.

From cloisters to cyberspace - the UQL Cyberschool
The University of Queensland Library’s UQL Cyberschool is a successful example of an outreach program to a learning community that school libraries may use as a model for online library services. The UQL Cyberschool was formed to provide a unique service to schools via the online electronic environment.

How do school libraries position themselves in the 21st century at the centre of the school learning community? How can school libraries reach out to the school learning community to provide access to the wide range of information resources available through online methods? Why should they do this?

School library services can take advantage of new technologies to get out of the library building and into the learning community. School libraries are in the perfect position to use their library web page to provide access to quality, selected information online to their students, staff, parents and other members of the school community. They can use their web page as the centre for teaching information skills in an online environment anywhere in the school or school community.

School library services have the responsibility to prepare their students for lifelong learning in an electronic environment. The development of information literacy skills can be enhanced with links to pathfinders or subject guides and information about evaluation and acknowledgement of sources, whether they are print or electronic.

School communities, in a restricted financial environment, have great difficulty in resourcing the demands of new syllabuses for senior secondary students in Queensland. Supposedly free Internet resources are often unreliable and of suspect quality. School library services are therefore needed more than ever to select these resources and make them available for easy access by the school learning community.

Mr Victor Davidson (Teacher Librarian, Birrong Girls High School, Birrong, NSW, Australia)

After graduating with a BA (Asian Studies) in 1976 and a Dip. Ed. (Primary) in 1979 Victor taught variously in Australia, Japan and Italy. He obtained his Grad. Dip. Lib. from the University of Tasmania in 1986. He taught relief until taking permanent employment at his current school. As a lifelong learner he has graduated from Macquarie University with a second BA and a Masters of Egyptology, and a Certificate IV in Horticulture from RYDE TAFE.

Challenging traditions: Constructing local paradigms in a global environment
As teachers, we often feel caught between the prescriptive needs of external agencies to achieve outcomes that conform to set standards and our innate sense of what the student needs to grow and become information literate. This paper is an attempt to present a model of how to bridge the gaps between the demands of the syllabus and the needs of the individual. I can honestly state that the teaching methods, which have been generated around my concept of information literacy (IL), have led students to explore and grow.

Dr Lesley S.J. Farmer (California State University, Long Beach, California, USA)

Dr Lesley Farmer coordinates the Library Media Teacher program. She earned her M.S. in Library Science at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and received her doctorate in Adult Education from Temple University. Dr Farmer has worked as a teacher librarian in K-12 school settings as well as in public, special and academic libraries. A frequent presenter and writer for the profession, Dr Farmer’s research interests include information literacy, collaboration, and educational technology.

Research and service learning in the library media teacher curriculum
Action research and service learning constitute increasingly important aspects of library education as they provide a reality check for theories and concepts taught in the classroom. The library media teacher program at California State University, Long Beach, provides several opportunities for students to engage in research-based service learning that informs their own knowledge base as well as provides data for research-based interventions for school improvement. Candidates regularly test theory by assessing local school and library settings, interviewing practitioners and observing information-seeking behaviors in natural settings. They also apply concepts and principles through collaborative instruction, programming, information services and product development, all of which contribute to the community. They also use their background knowledge and conduct action research in strategic planning – for management issues, technology and collection development.

Elizabeth Probert (Lecturer, Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland, New Zealand)

Elizabeth is the immediate Past President of the School Library Association of New Zealand Aotearoa (SLANZA), a member of the Professional Registration Taskforce (Library and Information Association of New Zealand) and was the teacher librarian at a large Auckland state secondary school for twelve years.

New Zealand secondary school teachers and information literacy: an investigation
International government and educational bodies have recognised for some time that all citizens need skills and processes to enable them to become information literate. This is also true in New Zealand, where the New Zealand Curriculum Framework states that all students should develop information skills. This paper reports on findings from a research project that investigated the understanding, knowledge and teaching of information-literacy processes of secondary teachers from five urban co-educational state secondary schools situated in various socio-economic areas. The inclusion in the national senior school qualification, the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), of achievement standards requiring the use of some or all of a research process has placed more emphasis on the need for New Zealand secondary-school students to become information literate. It could be expected, then, that New Zealand secondary teachers have a good understanding of the concept of information literacy and are explicitly teaching these skills in order to develop information-literate students at all levels as well as preparing senior students for assessment requirements. Little research exists in New Zealand, however, that has tested this assumption. Similar calls for more professional development in the area of information-literacy skills have been heard in other countries and it seemed timely, therefore, to investigate more closely the situation with New Zealand secondary teachers.

Rocco Servidio (Researcher, Department of Linguistics, University of Calabria, Rende, Italy)

Rocco Servidio, Pier Augusto Bertacchini, Eleanora Bilotta, Gabriele Lorella and Assunta Tavernise, are members of the Evolutionary Systems Group (ESG). This is an interdisciplinary group of Professors, Researchers and PhD students from the Department of Mathematics and Linguistics of the University of Calabria. ESG is interested in different disciplinary fields. In particular, since 1995, researchers are focalised in the use of technologies in educational contexts as creative tools to improve learning possibilities, augmenting students’ capabilities.

Investigating learning processes through educational robotics
Vygotskij (1974) affirmed that it is not possible to investigate the cognitive activity of human subjects without considering the artefacts that mediate it. His thesis has been confirmed by various researchers in the area of cognitive science (Hutchins 1995; Norman 1993; Zhang & Norman 1995). In particular, the constructivist approach studies the use of tools in educational contexts and considers the learning as the result of a process of acquisition and construction of knowledge through the observation of the effects of actions (Piaget & Inhelder 1970). Actually, many constructivist technologies (Papert 1984; Papert & Harel 1991; Martin 1994; Resnick 1994), such as the Lego Mindstorms kit, allow students to design, build and program artefacts, in particular, robotics objects (Bertacchini et al. 2003; Druin 2000; Arcella et al. 2003), providing the opportunity for students to learn problem-solving strategies. In this way, these technologies also encourage creativeness, self-esteem and create a link between the concrete experience and the educational aims (Miglino et al. 1999).

After preliminary lessons about some concepts of robotics and the Lego Mindstorms kit, students of a general psychology course of the University of Calabria, Italy, attended an 11-week robotics laboratory program for two hours a week.

One of the tasks of this program was to create groups who work together to design and build robots capable of negotiating an obstacle course within an arena faster than other robots built by other groups. During the laboratory activities, each group had to design, build, program and test the performance of their own robot; moreover, they had to document each phase of the work through reports, schemes, photos and videos, as cognitive fingerprints of their mental activities.

Elements detected as a result of this process included the following: