Do students value their librarian?

It appears not.  Thanks to Sheila Webber for this link

http://projectinfolit.org/pdfs/PIL_Fall2009_Year1Report_12_2009.pdf


Few students in our sample consulted librarians about research assignments (e.g., developing a research strategy) (20%) or about the campus library system (24%) ey did not use librarians for help with a course-related research assignment.


A significant majority of students in our sample—8 in 10—did not ever consult librarians for course-related research assignments. Instead, instructors played an important role in coaching students through the research process—from figuring out a research strategy to finding acceptable resources to writing up their findings.


Looks like we really need to be proactive and push stuff out to the students rather than expect them to come to us

Also looks like we need to send stuff via teachers and students seem more likely to take notice of them

Collaboration then

Embedding a VLE

Just read this on Seth Godin's blog

Don't have any meetings about your web strategy. Just do stuff. First you have to fail, then you can improve.

I think this fits my ideas for working with Frog this term

I have decided to create one thing each week to show the functionality and try to wow everyone with that.

And then help others to create stuff for themselves
Will also do his idea of making note on whiteboard in staff room to show how much use people are making of Frog.

Just do it, is really what I always do anyway

And yes rather than But

I thought that I would try this one to try to stop creativity. How often do you suggest something or have someone suggest something to you and instead of giving it time and thought you immediately reject it by saying but....
So I am going to try to and yes response instead.
I will hopefully be able to report good results

New Year, what to change, what to aspire to

New year, new decade, new start
Like others I too am using the end of this holiday period to reflect and decide on my aims and goals for the coming months.

When I am off work I always start thinking about all the things I could start to do and get involved in but then I know that once I go back to work life will kick in again and lack of time will cause me to fail with many of these new ideas.

Consequently I resisted the temptation to buy wool for more knitting today.

So what do I want to do?

1. Revitalise the libraries. I feel as if they have been on hold for a good year (for various reasons) now I ought to be able to focus again.

2. Get Frog up and running by March!

3. Use Frog to push stuff to the kids.

4. Sort out my on line presence.

I think I will stop there as any other stuff is really just sub lists of these four.

Gut feeling often correct

Just read this report
http://www.suttontrust.com/reports/Sutton_Trust_Home_Education_Support.pdf
Evidence of educational support outside of school
and surprise surprise "The key overall messages are quite clear, namely that parental education is closely linked to the amount of reading children do, as well as their attitudes to homework."

It often seems the case that research just confirms one's gut instinctive response to a hypothesis.

What we do about it is the harder question to answer.

Apostrophes, when and where

Thanks to "Cliotech" for this link
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe
Must remember to share with teachers after the holidays

To blog or not to blog

I do find this whole blogging thing difficult to maintain, or even to know what to write about. Do I use the blog just as a diary, or should I use it to tell others about sites and things that I come across. I really cannot bring myself to be too open certainly not in the way I would with a written diary.

However listening to Buffy Hamilton's voicethread I do think that I ought to be contributing more and not just lurking and grabbing. That behaviour is just what I used to moan about teachers doing in the library, that is rushing into the library and grabbing a box of books and running back to the classroom.

Today I caught up with last week's TES and was fascinated by an article about a school in New York where computer games form the basis of the education system.

I need to take a further look at

http://www.instituteofplay.com/

http://www.q2l.org/node/17

Can't see how anyone at my school would even consider anything so radical.

I often think that schools where there are either low results or disengaged students it is easier to do something radical. While in an achieving school it is often easy to continuing doing what you have always done as it seems to work.

I was also struck by Helen Mathieson's comment

"I don't ask pupils; "What do you want to be?" I ask them "How do you want to live?" They need to think about what skills they will need and how they will adapt to jobs throughout their lives."

(Headteacher Treviglas Business and Enterprise College in Newquay.)

We are due to lead some career lessons with Year 9 in January as they start to choose their options for GCSE and I think I might tweek our lesson plan to include this idea.