Our final 'capstone' work for this course is to create a digital artifact - something that we are proud to send out into the world and could truly make a difference. No big deal, right? Wrong. First, let me say that I love that we are spending our time creating a product that will actually have some value. However, the fact that it is has value makes it that much more intimidating.
What?
The one theme that I haven't been able to shake throughout this whole course is the notion of collaboration and sharing our works. In my very first blog post for this course I brainstormed some ideas that I wanted to work with further and one of my key terms was collaboration. I've always felt that collaboration is key to making us all better educators, sharing with your neighbour or colleague down the hall can take a project to the next step - but how can we do it on a wider level? The digital world has made it much easier so I knew that a key component of my final project would include collaboration.
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| "Collaboration" from RedBooth |
Referring back to our text for this course, Will Richardson's excellent eBook "Why School", his very first tip for "relearning" (p.89) is to share everything - or at least something (Richardson, 2012). I wanted to take the idea of sharing something that we are already doing and pair it with collaboration in a meaningful way. The spark was lit with a comment on this blog post of mine where a classmate mentioned an online portal in their district for TLs. Aha! I wanted to create an online community for the TLs in district.
Why?
My main goal for the digital artifact is to create a single space for TLs in the district to go for access to resources, discussion, blogs to follow, display ideas and more - in short, a collaboration space. Our in-district TLs should be a core part of our Personal Learning Network as each district can vary slightly on policy and values. I explored the importance of the Personal Learning Network in this blog post, but Lisa Nielson's blog digs a little deeper into how transformative the Personal Learning Network can be.
As to why collaborate in the first place - a quick Google search on collaboration in education will yield millions of results (147 million, to be precise) with results such as "44 Benefits of Collaborative Learning", "6 Benefits of Teacher Collaboration", and "The Advantages of Collaboration in the Classroom". The results were pretty clear - collaboration is powerful, so we should be making it happen!
How?
I was initially planning on creating an online Moodle classroom for the TLs to be enrolled in that would host resources, discussion threads and so on. However, I was informed that the district was phasing out Moodle and moving towards Scholantis - a new-to-me software.....but what the heck, I'm up for a challenge! After learning about Scholantis I was actually pretty excited about what it has to offer, however I am getting off track so you can read about that on your own time here.
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| "Learn Something New" from Teacher Created |
I connected with the TLs in the district and have asked them what they would like to see in their online portal through a discussion post on the Scholantis page. For now, the page isn't as populated as it will be because it is a true work of collaboration. There are real Teacher Librarians and Library Assistants enrolled in the group already who have real resources and documents that they wish to select and display (or have me display), and I am going to respect their wishes. For now, my focus has been to establish the structure of the site including embedding useful links, creating separate resource sections, and adding features such as the Twitter feed. One of my first projects in September will be to create a rotating slideshow of each Library in the district, or a featured spot on one Library each month - I will let the TLs choose! In discussion with a TL at one of the high schools, we discussed how powerful it would be for the rotating Library Assistants to have all of the necessary resources in one place, and have some more consistency across schools. We also discussed that the Scholantis group page would be a good place to store documents such as the TTOC-how-to folder that could be updated as necessary. As the TLs are already on board for this project I am so excited to see where it leads!
Where?
Access the portal here - keep in mind that this is very much a work in progress !
Works Cited
Nielson, Lisa. (2010). "The PLN matures, the evolution of the personal learning network." [blogpost] Retrieved from https://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2010/08/pln-matures-progression-of-21st-century.html
Richardson, W. (2012). Why School?: How Education Must Change When Information and Learning are Everywhere. [ebook] TED Publishing.
Srinivas, H. (n.d.) ""44 Benefits of Collaborative Learning." Retrieved from https://www.gdrc.org/kmgmt/c-learn/44.html
Stutz, N. (2018). "LIBE 477 - Special Topics Reading Review Part A." [blogpost] Retrieved from http://readerzjourney.blogspot.com/2018/05/libe-477-special-topics-reading-review.html
Stutz, N. (2018). "Developing our own ICT Skills and Pedagogy." [blogpost] Retrieved from http://readerzjourney.blogspot.com/2018/06/inquiry-blog-post-2-developing-our-own.html
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