Project to compliment my vision of teacher-librarianship

A large part of my job involves identifying and promoting French language resources that support exploration and learning appropriate for an elementary school.  This includes both physical resources but increasingly online resources and programs that can be used to promote French language learning and engage students in learning.  I still anticipate that a large part of my job will be managing physical resources, especially in an elementary school where being able to see and pick up a book allows a child to identify areas that might be interesting to them.  I don’t think this part of the job will disappear. Another part of the management of physical resources that will become busier is lending digital cameras, video cameras, laptops, and other technology devices which will allow students to create and utilize digital media.  However, I think it is becoming increasingly important to be able to connect teachers and students to reputable online French language resources. I foresee, identifying and promoting online resources becoming a larger part of my job.  I think by considering what the teachers and students want to access, my focus is on “all the things we librarians bring to the mission of our institutions”... rather than “worrying about the future of the library” (T Scott. 2012).  By providing services that help the teachers and students in my school, I create a future for my library.

 

To contribute to this goal one of the things I would like to do is curate educational French websites for students in the K-2 grade level. I identified curating websites as important task in my original post for this course (Beaudry 2014).  I have a couple of teachers in my school plus a third teacher in another French immersion school in my School District interested in K-1 student websites.  These teachers would like to have opportunities in their “computer time” to not only promote technology skills, but also French language learning.  So my topic is aggregation and curation of French language digital sources for young primary students.  Aggregation, curation and reference are basic library “functions that will probably continue to be needed, even in a digital world where all content is electronic.  … In fact … these functions are more critical than ever.” (Coffman 2013)

I plan to seek out online digital resources through my teachers, members of my Personal Learning Network (PLN) and web searches.  I will evaluate any identified resources, since curation includes the evaluation of resources before sharing. I will compare website content to the PLO's for these primary grades.  I will consider language ability of these immersion students.   For websites that meet these initial criteria, I will then share them with my small group of interested teachers to collect their opinions on website appropriateness.  If there is time I will see what the students think of the sites. The final set of selected websites would then either be purchased and/or linked on our Learning Commons webpage (insert link) with clickable links to make it easy for students to access them.

I have some experience already purchasing licenses for online French language resources.  I bought my staff a year’s subscription to a teacher resources website "Le jardin de Vicky”.  Purchases of online sites show a “library investing in learning environments … by purchasing the ability for (a teacher) to provide the experience she wants her students to have.” (Mathews 2013)

My final project will either be a database of the links that I can have our school website developer add to the school webpage, or I myself will add these to the school webpage.  The school webpage has recently been moved to Weebly.  The advantage of our school webpage is that it is easily available by other students in our District and beyond.  Therefore the final project will be shared with my larger teacher-librarian community.  The database will include rationale of why a site was selected or rejected, annual costs, hyperlink, subject area and grade level (K-2 range).  The database can also be published on this blog for the larger teacher-librarian community.

In the future, if these sites are received positively I will consider curating other French language resources for elementary grades.  As said by a UBC librarian “What will distinguish libraries in the future is not what we electronically license, but what we have in our collections that we make available to the world,” (Bates, 2012)  

References:
LeFurgy, Bill.  Oct 12, 2014.  Digital preservation: a role for public libraries.  Retrieved March 9, 2014 from http://agogified.com/tag/libraries. (image)

Beaudry, Leisbet.  Jan. 12, 2014.  Personal Interests and Issues in Educational Technology.  http://beaudrylibrary.blogspot.ca/2014/01/personal-interests-and-issues-in.html

Bates, Andrew, 2014.  Turning a Page: the changing role of the university library.  Retrieved March 9, 2014 from http://ubyssey.ca/features/turning-a-page-the-changing-role-of-the-university-library/

Coffman, Steve.  Jan/Feb 2013.  So now what?: The future for librarians.  Retrieved March 9, 2014 from http://www.infotoday.com/OnlineSearcher/Articles/Features/So-Now-What-The-Future-for-Librarians-86856.shtml

le jardin de Vicky, 2005-2011. http://jardindevicky.ca/

Mathews, Brian.  2013.  Curating learning experiences: a future role for librarians?.  Retrieved March 9, 2014 from http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/theubiquitouslibrarian/2013/09/05/curating-learning-experiences-a-future-role-for-librarians/

Scott, Tl 2012.  Comment on blog post “The future of libraries is”.  Retrieved March 9, 2014 from http://librarian.newjackalmanac.ca/2012/11/the-future-of-libraries-is.html

Teach Thought Staff. 2013.  8 ways the librarian of the future will keep themselves busy.  Retrieved March 9, 2014 from http://www.teachthought.com/literacy-2/8-ways-the-librarian-of-the-future-will-keep-themselves-busy/ (image)