Libraries are not just books

Desna Wallace, Librarian Fendalton Open-Air School
Twitter @edna33, booktrailers4kidsandya.wordpress.com

We all know teaching and learning are changing everyday but it is not just in the classroom that changes are happening. When was the last time you had a good look at your school library and the changes happening within?

Libraries are no longer just a place to house books with a gatekeeper glaring at you the moment you start talking. Today they are vibrant, often noisy places with full-on learning and activity. While students are able to borrow books as always, they now can borrow e-books and audio books. A good school library management system and OPAC provides access to so much information, much of it through databases not otherwise publicly available. EPIC databases, for example, guide students through an array of information with the hard work already done. For younger students the advantage is that the sites are safe and secure.

A modern learning library environment offers the flexibility of movable shelves, open spaces, use of Ipads, laptops, smart phones and the like. QR codes plastered on the walls or inside a book can take students with just one click or swipe, to reviews of the book, or websites with further information. School library blogs and websites can offer support both at school and home. Lunch times in a school library might hold book clubs, creative writing classes and even knitting clubs. Both classroom teachers and librarians need to work together with the new technologies to provide the best opportunities for our students to learn and encourage a love of reading. 

A good library needs a librarian who is willing to support students in their search for a great read, a new author or help in navigating the Internet. A good librarian knows their stock and knows their students and can match child and book or website together. A good librarian offers support to teaching staff, often being ahead of the game with content curation and compiling items, websites etc in readiness for a topic. So it saddens me that there are many schools without a librarian. It saddens me more, that some schools do not even have a library. 

For some schools without a library it seems that books will be placed throughout the classrooms or learning environments (which is great as classrooms should always have plenty of reading material available). However, sadly there is still no special place to visit. A library is far more than just books. It is a safe haven for those students who don’t do sports, the child who struggles with the social skills to fit in but feels safest in the library, surrounded by books and a librarian who will watch out for him or her. 

Having spoken to a number of teachers from different schools, there is a distinct feeling that the school library is such a special place to visit that the loss of a library would be devastating. I asked them, would they take time in their busy day to sit in a corner of their class and look at the books and encourage children to take some home. Their answer was a unanimous no. They love visiting a library , checking out the displays, new items, and the chatter as children pick up a book, talking amongst themselves over the latest Guinness World Records. Choice does matter, serendipity matters. A five year old relegated to only the books in his class may miss out on the opportunity to find a book that will be one he remembers for a life time.

Keep your librarians, and keep your libraries. We all want the same thing at the end of the day; children who grow up literate, able to learn, able to take ownership of their own learning having a love of reading.

Popcorn and poetry for National Poetry Day - from: http://library.fendalton.school.nz/

Information and Research in a Digital World

Preparing students for academic research that goes beyond Google.
Cathy Kennedy, Library Manager and Teacher with Library Responsibility, St Andrew's College

 
Recently the School Library Association made available a unit of work for librarians to use entitled Tertiary Transition. This unit is intended for Year 13 students and to prepare them for the world of academic research. Universities and Polytechnics are telling us that students are arriving with skills ranging from none to some to getting there! This is a great unit and it is fantastic that SLANZA have made this available but I can help a niggle in the back of my mind that such a unit shouldn't be needed – surely we have had these students for the last 8 years in primary school and 5 years in Secondary school to prepare them for tertiary information seeking? I have no doubt that we have all seen this lack of skill in our students, an over reliance on 'googling' and a research mentality that lacks depth in their variety of sources or an inability to identify a credible source or evaluate a source with confidence. Why has this come about and what can we do about this 'google' generation who think everything they need is just one quick search away and will appear in the first three results on the first page of the search? (By the way, don't think I don't love Google – it makes my life easy and I'm a big fan but there is a 'time and place' for using a general purpose search engine when embarking on research for open and complex questions.)

 
Here's my unscientific take on it and below some of things we are doing to try and turn the tide! None of this is earth shattering or new – just my current journey which still has a long way to go.
WHY? They think they know – They don't think we know – We think they know    

They think they know
Just because our students are confident in a digital world it does not mean they are competent. They have grown up surrounded by the digital landscape and are assuming that they are carrying out research competently – their own confidence and comfort in the world of 'google' (or general purpose search engines) means they don't think that there is anything else - but you don't know what you don't know. They are confusing finding popular information with finding academic information and that they way to do each of these is the same (see graphic from Massey University). Students are confident in their approach to research and if they can't find what they need, they assume it's not there to be found! Their very confidence (but lack of competence) in searching is their very downfall. We need to ensure that we explicitly teach how to carry out academic research (appropriate for the level) and all the critical evaluation, note-taking and synthesising skills that go along with it from the early school years.

They don't think we know
I have come across resistance in students who believe all they need is Google and Wikipedia and they are set. I've been openly challenged (all be it politely) on what would I know? "You didn't grow up with the internet, Mam!" Once again, their digital confidence (and in some cases, arrogance) can be barrier to learning new digital searching skills. Convincing students that even though we are 'old', we do actually know how to navigate the world of digital, academic information. I find it only takes one to two demonstrations and the appearance of just what they need for their research to convince students that there really is a 'deep web' out there that they can tap into.


We think they know (we could list many sayings about assumptions here…) I think this is one that is now changing but some of this came about from the 'digital native' tag. I know I was guilty of this one for a time assuming that these creatures of the digital age could navigate the world of digital information with more knowledge and competence than me and I was working on the assumption that students were accessing everything they needed. Feeding this was probably my own steep learning curve as the information revolution took hold. Of course, this digital ability by some kind of osmosis or courtesy of the year of your birthday is ridiculous. At the end of the day, information literacy skills have not changed - reading, critical thinking, evaluating sources, note-taking, creating citations are all the same but the places and way we search and the tools we use have changed dramatically. As I began working with students many told me that teachers always told them to make sure they had a variety of sources, "don't just google it!" but they had no idea where else to search – googling was their one and only default position. Don't assume our students are good at any of these information literacy skills (digital or otherwise) or that they will carry them over from year to year or even from topic to topic – they are complex and require explicit teaching and practice across all curriculum areas and all year levels.

 
Here are some 'stream of consciousness' thoughts about ways I've begun to fight the 'I'll-just-google-it' generation.

• Start with the teachers. Giving teachers the understanding of the 'deep web' and how to access academic databases is very powerful. For two years I ran a Professional Learning Group covering our own library catalogue and the secrets it could reveal, research databases, New Zealand Sources, our online Encyclopaedia, evaluating sources, how to 'google' better, note-taking, creating bibliographies and citations and the overall information literacy cycle. 
• Working with classes and target year groups – no brainer. Working with the Year 9's we have created a unit of work with the social studies teachers to work through the research steps and explore digital sources beyond a general purpose search engine. These were not 'one off' lessons but my input was part of a complete unit of work requiring a research component. These sessions included using our catalogue, accessing databases (via EPIC), how to 'google' better (Power Searching with Google), using a variety of search engines and evaluating sources.
• As above, I have worked with students from Years 6 to 13 when they are about to embark on an inquiry or an internal assessment with a research component. Reminding and demonstrating to students where these sources are and how to find them. Don't hesitate to show students again and again or give quick reminders. One of our history teachers noted that the students used a variety of sources very well in one internal but didn't transfer any of that learning (as expected) to the next internal! They do need reminding not to fall into the 'just google' habit. I know many students are probably sick of this mad library lady! 
• However, having said the above – teach them how to 'google' better. To hone my own search skills in Google I worked through the Power Searching with Google tutorial. This is an informative, self-guided and paced tutorial which gave me some key content to then share with students – would highly recommend this for anyone with an interest in information literacy. http://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com
• Make finding the 'deep web' easier to find and create a 'one stop shop'. Our Library Homepage has become the launch pad to a variety of sources with all the necessary password information that students need. If it's too hard to find or too many clicks away they will give up. I tell students that they don't need to remember all the different places I teach them to search - just remember the library homepage and that will lead them on from there.
• Provide a good online Encyclopaedia and digital library. We have subscribed to World Book Online and other World Book digital libraries. This provides a digital, credible and reliable source and a great starting point for a topic. When you don't know much about a topic, searching effectively or critically can be difficult. A simple overview of a topic can lead to the formulation of effective keywords and the ability to identify valuable information. Wikipedia can fill this role nicely as does Encyclopaedia Britannica which comes free as part of the Epic databases available to all schools.
• Start young! I begin teaching our Preparatory children as early as Year 4 about digital sources and start with our World Book Online. We use language like credible and reliable as early as possible and are showing our younger students what a 'variety of sources' truly means – not just lots of different websites they found on google!
  
• Teach how to critically evaluate a source. I have done this with classes from all levels and found it is best done as part of their inquiry, assignment or internal. There are many acronyms out there to help students think about sources. For many years I resisted using CRAAP but it's clear and students remember it! http://library.macewan.ca/craap_test
• Start all talking the same language. In our Preparatory School, I have been involved in the team re-working our Inquiry model. At times we might think we are re-inventing the wheel but it means that students will year after year, hear the same language and messages around research from teachers – it's all about teachers being on the same page which impacts on student learning.

 
Where to from here – lots, lots more to do. Working even more alongside classes and teachers and formalizing programmes of work that ensure these skills are taught and practised is the big challenge for me. We've only begun this journey and there will be many of you out there who have got some great initiatives running in your schools in order to create students who are information literate in this digital world – I'd love to hear your stories!

 

Improving the learning with Web2.0 tools

By Robin Sutton, Senior Master @ Christ's College of Canterbury...
@suttonr2002 or rsutton@christscollege.com

The teaching profession is filled with good people, well intentioned people, people who want the best for the students that sit in front of them. These are people who would often almost literally give the shirts off their backs for their students.

Yet these are also all too often people who fill their daily working lives with practice based upon little more than mythology. Challenge it and the response is all too often that wonderful professional 'put down' - 'well of course it works, and you'd need to be pretty stupid to think otherwise.'

That observation leads to more than a touch of nervousness when I start to describe the impact of what we might call 'Web2.0' tools in the classroom. In between those bouts of Senior Management 'stuff' that fill my day, I teach two Level 2 Economics classes, and over the past 5 years I have progressively brought several new tools into the class repertoire. The focus of the work has been on developing students' ability to think critically, and to express that thinking in writing. It is no coincidence that the three external Level 2 Economics standards now count towards UE literacy (writing) in NCEA terms,  a commentary on the reasoning and writing expectations of these standards.

I now have a well established pattern of development through the year. Running in amongst the more traditional 'direct instruction' I begin by developing students' ability to reason and write with the use of online discussion forums. I moderate these carefully, giving every student detailed feedback on their posts (perhaps one of the more powerful differentiation tools?) before setting them to the process of constructing and deconstructing argument with each other.

As students develop confidence in their ability to argue, and to record those arguments in writing, I then transition them to more formal writing using GoogleDocs. I create a writing structure using the SOLO framework, ensuring that their written work closely matches the expectations of the NCEA standards and assessments. Each piece of work receives detailed feedback from me in writing.

While content tends to be developed through more than traditional direct instruction, I often use GoogleForms to elicit responses to content related questions. I gather this data under 'test' conditions. This provides a rich array of thinking, not all of which is correct. Students then take this response data (which I have shared back with them) and in groups co-construct the correct answers to a range of questions that help them to develop their understanding of subject content. Throughout all of this classes are engaged with the use of Twitter both inside and outside the class.

I am also teaching specific writing techniques (in particular the Statement, Explanation, eXample/evidence structure with which our English colleagues are enamoured).

Finally, because our external assessment system still requires students to sit examinations in which they write their answers using traditional pen and paper, I then start on the final transition to answering questions on paper.

What have I found? I can hear the voices (quite rightly) calling 'where's your data?' I have no reliable, authentic, replicable data on the outcomes.  I have some observations to make.

Consistent with international research (Goldberg et al), students in my classes write more and write better than they ever did before. Whereas 10 years ago on paper they might have written a paragraph of 5 lines, now they will write anything between 15 and 30 lines in explanation (mostly - there are ALWAYS exceptions). The reasoning is clearer (in general) and the examination results improved. The students are now more often writing responses  that I would classify as Relational and Extended Abstract as they respond to questions. A class taught without these approaches over the same period saw reasonably static results.

This year for the first time I ran an NCEA internal assessment using GoogleDocs. The results were dramatically different. The overall pass rate went from 55/75% to 94%. There is almost no evidence of collaboration (the task had to be completed independently). The answers were fuller in nature, the reasoning clearer and more accurate with most students. I have clear evidence of metacognitive thinking. As I supervised one of the 'in class' sessions of this assessment I watched over the shoulders of students as they used the comments function to pose questions of themselves on what they had written, ready for review later before they submit their work. Interestingly (perhaps??) this was not something I'd 'taught' them to do.

I see great engagement amongst students with both the class work, and the subject. The use of Twitter has been enlightening as students pose questions, offer answers to questions (both in and out of class), and tweet interesting resource material to me and the class. I run a unique class hashtag for each class.

Is any of this conclusive? NO!!! Is this any better than the mythologising of which I accused too many colleagues at the start of this post? Probably not.

It is quite possible that the results have nothing whatsoever to do with the technology. What is needed is some quality research. I'm a numbers man, I need quantitative data. I have little other than probably meaningless word and line counts (there are the NCEA achievement stats for both internals and externals), but I am not bold enough to try to suggest cause and effect yet. That's next year's Teaching as Inquiry project.

References

1. Goldberg A, Russell M, and Cook A "Meta Analysis: Writing with computers 1992-2002", Technology and Assessment Study Collaborative, Boston College.
2. Hattie J "Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning", Routledge, 2012.