by Library | Feb 28, 2014 | Library News, Library reports
Library report February 2014
Successes
Staff training at Follett Workshops: On 20th and 21st January Ozlem, Lindsey, Serife and I attended the workshops run by Follett Corporation at Robert College. There were more than 30 people at the workshop each day, mostly from Istanbul but also from other cities in Turkey, Lebanon, Israel and Qatar. Follett provide us with Destiny, our Library management system, as well as sell us many of the books and ebooks we purchase each year. Day one covered many of the features of Follett Destiny. I was asked to present an overview of how our school uses many of the additional features of Destiny. I made this video (2.54 minutes long) to accompany this presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rjdIAzoihc – my first attempt at i-movie, thanks to the NL team for their encouragement and support to do this. Day two was more librarians presenting to each other. I presented a workshop I gave at a conference last July in Wellington, New Zealand about our library developing as an Inquiry Library. Both workshops were well received. As we reflected about the workshops we discovered that we do some things very well, such as using Destiny to encourage reading and we have systems to help students locate books. We would like to try some new ideas like using QR codes so students can access audio book reviews made by other students.
Love Reading Week: Thanks to the library team, Jen Gokmen and Sezai Kara and all of our colleagues and students who did extra things – readings in the library and ECC, decorating the stairs, posters, photos. There were some great initiatives, higher grade levels reading to lower grade levels, readers’ theatre and the book challenge from the primary teachers to mention a few. Our visit from Jo Hodgkinson was a huge success and it was fun to catch up with her, our students were especially delighted. I have requested feedback from colleagues but only 13 have replied so far. I will send it out again. Every time we have run this event we ask for feedback and have incorporated suggestions to add to the event. This was our third annual Love Reading week and I think the best yet. It was fun to see everyone express their enjoyment of reading in different ways. Below are just a few images from the week. There are more on the library blog http://library.iics-k12.com/
Grade 3 Digital Storytelling: Caroline Lewicky and I worked with grade 3 teachers and students as part of their Traditional Tales unit. The students created a short digital story to encourage their audience to read a traditional tale. Here is one about Pippi Longstocking We used Photopeach to create the stories as it allows comments at the end. This was a very successful unit combining all three New Literacies for effective learning. Caroline and I plan to make a short i-movie about this for the New Literacies website.
Challenges
Grade 11 Extended Essay: By the end of this week I will have presented the second workshop to this grade level. The first one was on Information Search Process to offer the students a structured approach to this large independent research task. The second workshop has been to create a good research question. While working on this workshop with the students I could see that very few of them were using electronic databases to research information for their DP subjects. This is a very important skill to develop for tertiary studies. Next week we will also be able to offer our school community, and these students in particular, the use of the ebrary electronic library resources. In addition to planned reference interviews for each individual student I will run workshops on using EBSCO and ebrary in the next cycle during their SDLT times. These will be optional so it will be interesting to see who will take advantage of this opportunity. It may be worthwhile showing secondary teachers how to use these resources as well.
I am using some specific reflection questions with Grade 11 to see how useful these sessions are and what their perceived needs are. It would be useful to ask my colleagues what they think their students’ research needs are. Comparing the two different perspectives may be interesting.
Opportunities
Thanks to Chris Andre for taking the Proposal: Student reading during extended homeroom session once a cycle 2014 – 2015 to HODs. This links in with the Language policy discussions and Mother Tongue initiatives in the school. Creating this proposal was also one of the library goals for this half of the year. I look forward to hearing about their response.
Noodletools and ebrary half year subscriptions: We are able to provide our staff and students with these electronic tools for the rest of this year and next year as well. Noodletools is an electronic research tool which provides students with a way to track their progress, make plans, take notes, keep bibliographic records and collaborate with one another and their teachers. Ebrary is a large electronic book library, remote hosted which has academic collections useful for our senior students. It will enable our students to access high quality resources to assist their learning. Once these come online fully I hope to find interested colleagues who would like to work with these tools with their students.
Reading thought – in honour of Love Reading Week
“Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.” Hazel Rochman
Amanda Bond
Teacher Librarian
February 2014
by Library | Jan 13, 2014 | Library News, Library reports
Library Report January 2014
Successes
New Staff member hired and trained: Just before the start of the school year Ozlem Nguvu joined the Marmara Library team. Ozlem had no library training or experience when she started school but in the short time she has been with us she has developed expertise with our Library Management System and is working well with our students and staff. On the 20th of January Ozlem will be participating in a Destiny workshop at Robert College which will further her understanding of the LMS and give her the opportunity to network with other school librarians in Istanbul. Special thanks to Pla Sankham for her support for Ozlem as she learned ou system.
Growth Mindset goal developed: During the whole staff professional development day on Growth Mindset our library team met face to face for the first time. We used the time to develop our focus on browsing as a way to encourage students to have a growth mindset when choosing books to read. This also works in our continue focus on creating our Inquiry Library at IICS.
The library team together on Professional Development day
International Story Reading Event: Our goal is to have three of these events this year in the Primary School and develop a way to progress Mother Tongue reading enjoyment in the secondary school. Our first event was in November.
Embedded librarian concept explored: With the grade 8 multi-discipline unit at the start of the year there was an opportunity to have students using the library as an extra learning space and informally working with the teacher librarian as the unit progressed. This provided a good start to the notion of the library as a creator space and having the information expertise of the librarian available much of the time. This is also happening throughout the year with grade 5W and their passion place work. The next step for the grade 8 work is to contribute to the evaluate of the unit and future planning of this and other multi-discipline units in the MYP.
Seminars and workshops at conferences: In July I present at the School Library Association of New Zealand Aotearoa (SLANZA) conference in Wellington. I gave a workshop on developing an Inquiry Library which showcased the work we have been doing here at IICS. In January I will be presenting two workshops on the 20th and 21st for the Follett Destiny training days. The first will be how we use Destiny at IICS. The Follett representative for Asia and Europe asked me to create this as she sees our school using this technology in the most innovative way for our region. I have also been asked to deliver the Inquiry Library Workshop for this workshop.
Continued contribution to the implementation of the New Literacies Curriculum: I am working alongside my New Literacies team mates to continue refining and implementing the NL curriculum with our teaching colleagues and their classes. In November I contributed to the half day workshop for grade 2 teachers.
January – June 2014 Library Goals developed: This is a little after the fact of the start of the year but these goals will help keep us mission minded and purpose driven for the rest of the year.
Challenges
Possible schoolwide Information Process model: With grade 11 about to embark on their Extended Essay I am considering introducing to them and the staff members involved in supervising the EE a specific Information Search Process model to support their work throughout this task. I will discuss this with Fred to begin with and work from there.
Love Reading week in February: The feedback from last year’s love reading week was very helpful so the quizzes will continue but with acknowledgements of correct entries rather than first to finish. The Speech and Debate students will be invited to share their dramatic readings with classes in the secondary lunch hour. At present we do not have a guest writer with us. Our focus will be choosing a just right book. Other plans are underway – more to come on this challenge
Opportunities
Exploration and expansion of electronic database and ebook collection; It seems we have some funding available this year to explore the electronic library called ebrary. I have allocated money for this in next year’s budget as well. During 2012 we ran a successful trial of this collection and they offered us a very good price to subscribe. Unfortunately the school was not in the financial position to commit to this at the time. I will approach them to see if they are willing to negotiate with us and provide their service for six months and then for all of next year. Ebrary offers academic databases and ebook library which would greatly enhance the opportunities for our DP and upper MYP students as well as any staff who are undertaking academic study.
Primary students welcome in the library at lunchtime: Now that winter is upon us it might be an opportunity to explore welcoming upper primary students into the library during their lunch break and possibly their morning break as well. I know that outdoor play is to be encouraged but during days of bad weather the library may provide a useful quiet reading and learning space as an alternative to classrooms for student wishing to come by. This is something we can explore with Angela and the team leaders.
Library thought
“In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us how to swim.” — Linton Weeks, Washington Post, Jan. 13, 2001.
Amanda Bond
Teacher Librarian
January 2014
