Work Placement Days 3 and 4

So...I have actually done some "real work" at the library!

Yesterday I learned how to process newly accessioned resources (for the non-librarians, that means how to get new books ready for the shelf!). I then spent the afternoon working through the pile that had been building up because the library technician has been on holidays. I got all the way to the bottom of the pile - yay me!

Today my supervisor checked through a whole lot of new arrivals and started a new pile...

Also, Joanne got me working on a metadata project that she is supposed to have finished by tomorrow. It involves choosing some keywords that will be used as search terms when prospective students are searching the website for what course they would like to enrol in. I was doing the Electical Engineering courses, an area in which I have absolutely no expertise! I read through the course description and career options for each course, then added funky keywords and phrases like "special class electrician" and "technical officer". I really hope that when new electrical-engineering-type-people search the database they are successful in finding the information that they need!

So, what have you been up to?

Work Placement Days 1 and 2

Wyong TAFE campus reminds me a bit of the High School that I attended. It's very low-rise with bushy surroundings. Here's a picture taken from the car park. The building behind the yellow car is Block J which houses the library.

So far I've spent most of my time learning about the procedures used and services provided within the library, in the hope that I may soon be able to contribute by doing some actual work! (I have used the "wand" to check in some books!) Tomorrow I hope to do some processing, which is fancy library talk for sticking barcodes on books and covering them with contact. On Thursday and Friday I might be involved with a special project adding keywords to some records in a database of course information. Then next week the students will descend upon us for library orientation tours and other "Reader Education" sessions. There are also many students who don't have access to computers and/or internet at home, so will be using the library as a study space. Some of the students may be new to the college, and so will need a lot of support initially.

I'm really appreciating all the time and effort that my supervisor, Joanne, is putting in to make my experience as valuable as possible. I'll update you again soon.

I am becoming an ICT nerd.

I've been having a busy few days exploring some new online applications that I hope will be useful in my everyday life.

First, I signed up for LibraryThing. Do you use LibraryThing? I'd heard of it, but I didn't really know what it was. Then when I visited The University of Technology Sydney's library for my study visit, one of the presentations was about using social networking in the library. They mentioned Facebook, Twitter, and LibraryThing. So I thought I'd give it a try.

LibraryThing is pretty fun! I've started adding books to "My Library", and you'll notice on my blog sidebar I have a LibraryThing widget. If you click on any of the covers, it will open up a window with a catalogue record of the book, including my rating and review if I've written a review. Cool huh!?

Second, I decided that I'd have a go of Evernote. I blogged a little bit about it here, and I decided to take the plunge and try it out.

So far, I LOVE IT!!!

For my MEd, I have to construct a portfolio which contains a critical evaluation of my learning during the course and an assessment of how this learning will enable me to be an effective teacher librarian in the future. I'm going to need to collect a lot of information to write an excellent portfolio, so I've decided to use Evernote to facilitate this process.

Here's a screen shot of my Evernote window:

On the right hand side is the "note" that I was most recently working on, which happens to be a text document. It's some ideas about what themes I will concentrate on when I'm writing my portfolio.

In the centre is a list of all the notes that I've made so far. On the left hand side is a toolbar for managing my "notebooks".

What is super fantastic about Evernote is the simplicity of doing anything that I want to do with just one or two clicks. I emailed my theme ideas for my portfolio to my supervisor straight from Evernote - no middleman needed! I also grabbed the screen shot that you see above in Evernote, right clicked on it and chose "picture" so I could import it straight into this post. And that leads me to my next discovery...

I get a lot of great information via Twitter. I follow quite a lot of librarians and teacher librarians, and I know that I'll be able to use lots of the links and information that they tweet in my portfolio. I needed to find an easy way to grab tweets that I like and store them in Evernote. And along came Seesmic.

Seesmic is a platform for Twitter so that you don't have to use the Twitter.com website to access your timeline. It has the excellent function that I can highlight a tweet, click the Evernote icon on my toolbar, and it sends a copy of the tweet as a "note" to my Evernote account. If the tweet contains a link to a website, when in Evernote I just double-click on the link and it takes me straight there! Sweet :)

Yes, it's been time-consuming to set up these new applications, and yes, I'm still learning how to get the best out of them. But I'm loving it!

Research and Professional Experience.

The two subjects that I am enrolled in this semester could not be more different. EER500 "Introduction to Educational Research" is all about reading academic literature, posing research questions, and designing research projects. In contrast, ETL507 "Professional Experience and Portfolio" incorporates a study visit, a professional placement, and the making of a professional portfolio.

One subject is all about thinking, the other all about doing!

I've made good progress with both subjects today.

For EER500, I'm looking at the role of the teacher librarian in facilitating the implementation of ICT into teaching and learning. Today I've read and summarised a research article:

Schibeci, R., MacCallum, J., Cumming-Potvin, W., Durrant, C., Kissane, B,, & Miller, E. (2008). Teachers’ journeys towards critical use of ICT. Learning, Media and Technology, 33(4), 313-327.

This artlcle is about a research project involving 200 teachers in 12 Australian primary schools. It followed the teachers' progress from anxiety to confidence as they learn how to make the technology work, how to create classroom lessons with ICT that work, evaluate the effectiveness of learning and teaching with ICT, and investigate broader curriculum reforms.

For ETL507, I've tentatively organised a professional placement (read 'work experience') at a TAFE library near my home. More paperwork and solidifying of dates to come, but it looks good! It will be a great place to experience working in a library, and interacting with students, without having to be in a school, dealing with classroom management and the like. I'm excited!

Maccas comes to the rescue!

My internet connection is down at home. We are upgrading to ADSL2, which has just become available in our area, and apparently there is a three to four day turn-around period when upgrading. Which of course our internet provider didn't mention to us until we rang them to find out why our internet connection had been unavailable for several hours!

But never fear, dear readers. My local McDonalds has a McCafe and free WiFi connection, so I've set up my "office" and settled in!

Mmmmm... caramel latte and banana bread a la Maccas!

So, I'm sure you're dying to know what's been happening in my world lately.

Alana had her first dose of HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccination at school yesterday. This fabulous Australian innovation protects girls from infection with this virus which is implicated in almost all cases of cervical cancer. Of course, anything that involves almost 100 eleven-to-thirteen-year-old girls lining up to have injections cannot be without drama! Two of Alana's friends were unfortunate enough to faint after receiving their injections, one of them falling off the chair and onto the floor. Poor things! They have been sternly told by the nurse to make sure they have their needles lying down next time (gotta love the compassion of the nurses!). Alana even overheard one nurse say to another, "We should just make all the red-heads lie down, it's always the redheads that faint." Nice.

In more disturbing news, two of the boys in Josh's class have been suspended from school for fighting. I was shocked to hear this, and a little worried considering that Josh has been friendly with both these boys in the past. I gently suggested to him that though I didn't want to tell him who he could and couldn't be friends with, I didn't think it was really a good idea to hang out with boys that would cause physical harm to another (a third boy was hurt in the scuffle but was not to blame). Every day new stories of school bullying come to light. There is verbal bullying, physical bullying and cyber bullying to worry about. In my experience, the social world of school is something that each child must navigate for his or herself, with support from teachers and parents if there are any problems. I know that when Alana was this age, her friendship groups underwent a lot of upheaval, with sometimes almost daily changes in who was friends with who. For boys, full of testosterone and perhaps less able to talk about how they feel, it's easy for them to "get physical". It's a worry for me, because Josh is a sensitive soul who can get upset easily.

going...

As for me, I've been trying to get a bit ahead on my uni work before the semester officially begins on March 1.

I've been focussing my attention on EER500 - Introduction to Education Research. Unfortunately, I've been hampered by the fact that the subject forum is not yet available. The subject forum is how we students communicate with one another and with our subject coordinator. It's a great tool for asking questions, discussing issues, or simply "thinking out loud". I'm having trouble moving forward, because without the subject forum I feel very isolated and unsure whether or not I'm on the right track. I have emailed my subject coordinator directly with a couple of questions, but I haven't heard back from her yet.

My other subject, ETL507 - Professional Experience/Professional Portfolio,  has a list of readings and questions to consider (to be discussed on the as-yet-unavailable subject forum), but as yet no study guide to indicate what the assessment schedule or requirements of the subject are. So while I can get reading, and start to formulate some thoughts, that's about all I can do so far.

gone!