AITSL research project – VicPLN reflection

Last year, some of you completed a survey for us exploring your experiences of the Victorian Personal Learning Network (VicPLN) courses. In this post, we’d like to share our findings.

The team at the State Library of Victoria applied to the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) to research the impact of our professional learning approaches, in particular the impact of networked learning in the VicPLN program.

We undertook surveys and case studies with questions based on Stephen Heppell’s framework for effective learning.

Our hypothesis:

That the online delivery of the Victorian Personal Learning Network course (VicPLN) through guided collaborative learning encourages sustained change in professional practice in schools and school libraries.

Despite considerable positive feedback over the years, we weren’t anticipating the profound impact the PLN had on many participants, their attitudes to learning and confidence with peers.

Truly it transformed me or maybe it turned me inside out […] – it allowed me to develop professionally with like-minded people. It allowed me to share with those people and beyond. It allowed me to find serendipitously things that I needed and that gave me more ideas.

[…it has changed the] way I think about trying to solve problems – so if I need something – I don’t know what I used to do, but now […] I’ll go on Twitter and I’ll ask or I’ll use a certain network of people […] you don’t Google it – you Twitter it.

Key trends – Case studies

Importance of sharing – Participants who took part with colleagues from their school or library found the shared experience made the learning more meaningful and immediately applicable in the workplace.

And in terms of the library I think it’s been profound as well, in the sense that we have restructured our library, we’re aware of the way libraries are changing and I think the PLN has given us confidence to move forward and I think, a little bit out of the box in terms of our approach.

Power of networks and the idea of an authentic audience for learning – For some participants networked learning was completely transformative, changing their entire approach to teaching and learning. It enabled them to become advocates for change in their schools and the broader professional community.

[…] what the PLN did for me was to see – was to give me a bridge to what I think all education should do […] almost a subversive bridge for the children, for the students out into the world […] – I was with true colleagues. […] It gave me and it affirmed that this is what a great teacher aims to be, out in the world, thinking, making connections, making possibilities, realising possibilities.

Key trends – Survey

The first place people share is with their colleagues, with 98.5% of participants indicating they shared their professional learning with colleagues and school staff.

It makes sense that educators, as part of deeply collegiate profession, look to peers before looking out to the broader online community. It also highlights the importance of PLNs in all their forms, be they local, international or something in between. The power is in connecting with others around a shared goal.

[The PLN is] probably the first time I’ve shared my professional thinking with anybody […] in schools, you might at a staff meeting or something, but that’s probably the biggest change in my mindset, the kind of thing that I try and get other people to do now is to realise that when you’re sharing you’re not showing off, you’re … trying to get reactions to help you learn more.

72% of participants surveyed indicated that the course gave them the confidence to share with peers. Developing the confidence and shared language to engage in professional discussions with peers is core to being an advocate for change in schools and libraries. Getting issues out in the open for debate supports organisational transparency and cultural change.

The PLN has given me a language to talk to other people […] although I tend to take ideas from it rather than give online, I do share those ideas with other staff. […] look it’s really worth everyone being encouraged to do it […] it is life-changing. In the sense that my teaching practice is different.

I feel as though I have the vocabulary now to ask the right questions, whereas before I did the PLN I didn’t even know what questions I should ask.

The PLN, for me, provided a space in which to explore possibilities […] it changed my relationship [with staff and students], it changed how I operate, that I became a more effective change agent.

The project was a wonderful opportunity for the PLN team and past participants to reflect on our practice and the impact the course has had on individuals and broader networks. One of the most interesting results for us was how sharing often begins with local PLNs including colleagues in schools and communities close by.

Our networks begin close to home and then with growing confidence and success, reach out into world.

 For information on our online courses, visit the State Library of Victoria website.

Image credit

Influence and Enchantment

As part of a new series on advocacy in school libraries, regular Bright Ideas contributor Catherine Hainstock shares her reflections on how school librarians can assert their place at the heart of the school.

The School Library Association of Queensland in partnership with the Queensland University of Technology has recently published research on the important contribution that school libraries and teacher librarians make to literacy development. This excellent report reinforces the findings of decades of research on the positive influence a well-resourced library with a qualified teacher librarian has on student achievement.

I read this report in tandem with Guy Kawasaki’s book, “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions”. His book is about promotion and customer service and even though a school library is not a business, I believe it’s a useful model to explore. At the end of the day, as a teacher librarian I feel I am here to help others. The better our service, the better the result. I am also interested in how we promote what we do because no matter how much research is released, how well supported a school library is, how well it is resourced, or how qualified the teacher librarians are, there is no immunity from decisions to down-size or side-line a library service.

We must make our contribution to school life and student outcomes evident and our influence felt by everyone who comes into the library. Kawasaki’s book helped me understand that my ultimate goal is not about improving customer service, it’s about enchanting people with our service.

[Enchantment] is more than manipulating people to help you get your way. Enchantment transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility. It reshapes civility into affinity. It changes skeptics and cynics into believers.

— Guy Kawasaki

Kawasaki’s book goes right back to basics (and that’s not a bad thing). He reveals the foundation of enchantment as ‘Likeability’. You can’t enchant people if they don’t like you or your service. (I still haven’t forgot the tyrannical librarian in the public library when I was a child!) Those lady-dragons in pearls may be extinct now, but we want students and teachers not just using our services, but raving about them. Here’s a short list of points from the book that I found relevant to school Library/Information Services (and check out this infographic for more):

  • smile (and be polite)
  • accept others (and sometimes give them a break)
  • get close (get out of the library and make contact)
  • project your passions/find shared passions
  • create win-win situations
  • adopt a Yes attitude

Kawasaki also points out that likeability only goes so far – people need to be able to trust you and your service. In a chapter on the importance of trustworthiness there’s some excellent food for thought about:

  • focussing on  goodwill
  • living up to and fulfilling promises
  • giving people the benefit of the doubt
  • the importance of expertise and competence  (like keeping abreast of basic ICT skills for us)
  • showing up (physically and virtually interacting with our clientele)

Reading these two publications at the same time brought into focus the influence we have (or can have) as teacher librarians and how important it is that we recognise and actively cultivate opportunities no matter how big or small.

We used to say the library was the heart of the school; a place for students to learn, inquire, read and enjoy. But with all the technological changes occurring in education, school libraries are no longer contained within four walls. Perhaps the focus can finally shift from the physical space to the real heart of the library – teacher librarians and the services they provide. Over the next few posts, I hope to explore the idea of teacher librarians at the heart of the school. I’d like to reflect on what that can mean for us and how we can continue to grow our influence.

Other posts in this series:

Image Credit: (ca. 1910),  Interior of The Queen’s Hall, showing a member of staff sitting at the Enquiries window, State Library of Victoria Pictures Collection.

Clip go the shares with eduClipper

The web is awash with curation and bookmarking tools that promise to help organise resources and links. Given the vast range of educational and teaching resources available, it’s not surprising that educators have embraced many of these tools, using them to organise personal libraries and share with colleagues and students. In recent times we’ve seen curation tools like Learnist and Edcanvas aimed specifically at education, and the recently launched eduClipper is another interesting entry into the educational collation field.

eduClipper helps users bring together their own uploaded resources and material from the web  into subject boards. These boards can be collaborative, making it useful for teachers who want to share planning or collate resources with a class (student accounts are available) . Popular file types (such as JPG & PNG images, PDF or Word files) can be uploaded manually, and web pages can be added as a bookmark or as a clip of specific text using the eduClipper bookmarklet. Google Drive files can also be added. Each eduClipper account includes 1 gigabyte of storage.

Clips can be taken added from Google Drive or a URL. Popular file types can also be uploaded. Details and tags can be added to a clip, and clips can be organised into subject boards.

eduClipper is designed for and limited specifically to primary and secondary educators and students. Several features demonstrate the level of thought that has gone into the design, such as the flag feature that can be used to identify inappropriate content. The eduClipper help page outlines the flagging process;

When you flag a piece of content, the following will happen.  It will be frozen from the site meaning that it is no longer able to be seen.  The user will get an Email notification that their content has been flagged and why.  Their teacher (if associated with an educator) will also receive an Email letting them know that the student’s content has been reported.

The student may enter an appeal for the content which will be sent to their teacher and eduClipper employees.

One exciting aspect of eduClipper is the citation feature, which uses the EasyBib service to provide a citation for each clipped resource. In our tests it worked very well when clipping links from the web. It would also be great to have an option to manually enter citation information for items that aren’t recognised automatically by EasyBib, so hopefully that comes in future updates. The citation feature was brought to my attention by Celia Coffa, who has also written a great post about how she plans to use eduClipper with her class. I look forward to reading more posts about how it goes.

eduClipper’s citation tool sets it apart from many other organisational sites

In my initial testing of eduClipper I did find some slight bugs when clipping items, particularly when using the eduClipper bookmarklet in Google Chrome. (Update: The bookmarklet has now been updated and seems more reliable. Here is Adam Bellow’s video demonstration of the bookmarklet). Some pages and boards also took a bit of time to load. This is probably to be expected with a relatively new web app  and we’d expect any bugs to be ironed out soon, but at this stage I wouldn’t recommend using it as your primary way of storing resources. We’re also yet to see how eduClipper will cover costs in the future, and the Terms of Service do list the service as ‘currently free’. As always, we’d encourage you to read these terms and consider the issues in using any free tool. eduClipper does include an option to export data out of your account, so that can give you some peace of mind.

My initial impression of eduClipper is that it is definitely worth testing out, although I do have some minor reservations related to a few bugs that should hopefully be ironed out soon. Already the growing community of users are sharing some great resources, and limiting the site to K-12 levels makes these resources much more relevant than what you’ll find on a site like Learnist. At this early stage eduClipper looks to be a valuable and promising addition to a growing field.

 

Bamboo Dirt: I need a digital research tool to …

Whenever we are faced with learning new skills or new methods we tend to focus on the tools. However, when we shift our focus from  the tools to what can be done with them, real transformation occurs. Mastery and success become possible; it’s the same whether you are learning to paint with oils or teach research skills at a 1:1 netbook/iPad/BYOD school.

Bamboo Dirt is an online registry created to help educators make that shift. Its focus is on research tools and the Bamboo Dirt search function is organised around the idea of purpose.

Bamboo Dirt’s home page offers lots of browsing categories based around tasks. Categories include:

  • visualise data
  • organise research materials
  • manage tasks
  • manage bibliographic information
  • communicate with colleagues
  • author an interactive work
  •  build and share collections

Users can also search or browse by keyword, tags, recommended resources, and new resources. Each result has a short description plus information on cost, licensing and platforms.

You can make the site even better by joining and contributing. Registration is free and members can:
  • add resources
  • review them
  • comment/describe how you have used a tool
  • recommend good resources and those appropriate for beginners
  • submit tips and tricks to help others understand the value of the tool
This service is an ongoing collaborative effort between Bamboo Partner Institutions (UC Berkeley, UChicago, UW Madison), Bamboo affiliates (University of Alabama, NINES), and individuals dedicated to helping connect people with digital resources. It’s a welcome addition to any educator’s  research toolkit.

 

Using search operators

Search operators are everywhere – embedded in searches without our knowledge. But with a little practice, you can improve and refine search results by actively choosing which operators you use. Google is a global search phenomenon, mainly due to its ability to simplify web search. They’ve achieved this in part by automating and hiding deep search operators, simplifying the user experience. Every time you enter more than one word into Google, it creates a Boolean search, inserting AND between each word. What this does is prioritises pages which include all of the words in your search. Although Google makes some refinements for us, we can still improve our searches with simple operators. Try adding the terms and symbols listed below to search engines, databases and catalogues to see the difference. It’s important to note some common operators won’t work in Google because they’ve developed their own terms for certain functions. You can find search tips in the Google search guide.

Wildcards

Wildcard operators let you substitute one of more letters with symbols. This lets you search for words with multiple spellings, singular and plural forms, parts of words or even words you don’t know how to spell. Asterisk * An asterisk stands for any number of characters and is particularly useful when you are searching around the root of a word. Here are a few examples:

  • pigment* – pigment, pigments, pigmentation
  • writ* – write, writes, writer, writers, written, writ, writs
  • myth* – myths, mythology, mythos

Question mark ? A question mark stands for one character and is very useful if you are uncertain of spelling. More than one question mark can be used for multiple characters.

  • relev?nce – relevance or relevence
  • ?nquiry – inquiry or enquiry
  • licen?e – license or licence
  • ?????ology – psychology, musicology, oceanology

Phrase

Quotation marks around a phrase or number of words prioritises results containing the exact phrase.

  • “Box Hill”
  • “oh my love is like a red red rose”
  • “Albert Einstein”

Minus

Minus is a very useful operator if you know that a word has multiple meanings in different contexts and you only want to get results from one of these areas. In Google the minus sign must be next to the word being omitted with no space preceding.

  • magpies -football will return results about birds and not Collingwood football club
  • batman -comic is more likely to return results about Victorian pioneer John Batman instead of the caped crusader…

Minus is very powerful as it tells search engines to throw out everything including the word you’ve chosen so use in moderation.

Proximity operators

Proximity operators look at how words appear on a web page, specifically how far apart they are. The assumption behind this kind of search is that the closer two words are together, the more likely they’re related. For example:

  • kangaroo NEAR kimberley finds results where the first word (kangaroo) falls within 50 words of the second word (kimberley)
  • kangaroo w/10 kimberley finds results where the first word (kangaroo) falls within 10 words of the second word (kimberley). The proximity number (n) can be any number you like. eg. (w/100, w/33, w/70)

Boolean AND/OR/NOT

Boolean search, incorporating the operators AND, OR and NOT, was common before Google, but nowadays it’s often dismissed as being too complex. This is a shame because Boolean can give you more control over complicated searches, refining down very quickly to specific results. It’s important to note that AND, OR and NOT must be in capitals for search engines to recognise them as operators. As mentioned in the introduction, Google already puts AND between words when you type them into a search, so you don’t need to include this operator in a Google search.  NOT works very like the minus operator, dictating what you want to omit. OR allows you to broaden your search to include overlapping areas between search terms.

  • dogs OR cats (this will find pages about either dogs, cats or both)
  • dog NOT cat (this will find pages about dogs that don’t mention cats)
  • dogs OR cats AND training NOT football (this will return results about training your dog or cat, but will exclude results about football clubs called cats or dogs)

Search operators are a great example of how we can be much smarter than search engines when we’re active searchers instead of passive consumers of Google results. A powerful idea for students in particular! For further information, the Gale Group has a great page on search operators and this guide to Boolean originally from the Syracuse University Centre for Science & Technology provides, includes some simple examples of search strings.

Image credit:  Alfred E. McMicken,(1936)  Interior of library, possibly Greenville [picture], State Library of Victoria Pictures Collection

Can eReaders Encourage Reading?

A recent study from the Pew Research Center focussed on the growing popularity of eReaders. The Rise of e-reading confirmed a significant increase in users – 21% of adults had read an eBook in the past year. Their research also found that eBook readers read more books (both formats) and read more often.

These are the types of results that catch a Teacher Librarian’s attention. Could this also be true for students? Might eBook readers be a way to encourage reluctant readers to read more and/or read more often? This might be the case.

In 2012, SMU conducted a study with middle years students who struggled with reading. They found that eReaders motivated students to read, but there were marked gender differences. While both studies were conducted in America, they are valuable reading for Teachers and Teacher Librarians making pedagogical and acquisition decisions as  Australian schools introduce 1:1 iPad and BYOD programs.

New Libguides from the State Library of Victoria

Librarians at the State Library of Victoria answer complex reference questions for patrons everyday, whether it be onsite, via email or on the phone.

After years of experience with the questions people bring to the collection, reference librarians have developed over forty library guides looking at specific research topics.

The guides are aimed as a one-stop shop for subjects like bushfires in Victoria, court cases in Australiaearly Australian census records and more.

Each libguide gives background information on the topic and the Library’s holdings, key resources and related web links.

Recently published guides include:

And if you’re wondering what a reference librarian at the State Library does when they get an inquiry, here’s a video about the process.

Save quotes instantly with Citable

Highlight text, click the extension and save the quote

The online document editor and storage service Google Drive is a great way to keep research organised, and a new extension has recently made it even more powerful. Citable lets you highlight web text and send it automatically to a Google Spreadsheet.

Once you’ve installed Citable you can select text on any webpage, hit the shortcut button and choose where you want to store the quote. Citable will automatically fill in the date & time accessed, author and address of the page. You can also add tags to help keep your quotes organised.

The extension works in the Chrome browser and doesn’t require a login. However, you do need to give Citable access to your Google Drive account, but like all apps you can revoke access at any time. You can download any files created by Citable from your documents and edit the document manually at any time. 

Visit the Chrome web store to install Citable. If you need help getting started then here is our step by step guide to installing and using the Citable extension.

Save quotes with Citelighter

Citelighter is a free online bibliographic management tool. It claims to be a simple tool that allows you click on a ‘Capture’ button every time you want to add a resource to your collection. This will then allow you to automatically create a bibliography.

After downloading the widget to Firefox, I ran into trouble right from the start – the Citelighter toolbar didn’t seem to let me login and the ‘Capture’ button didn’t seem to work. I tried logging off and logging back on but that didn’t help.  But after a few attempts I managed to get it going. Using the toolbar in Google Chrome seemed to work better. Despite the way Citelighter lets you save quotes with one- click,  I still have a few reservations about the extent of its usefulness:

– The introductory video mentioned that it “grabs most of the bibliographic information”. Despite this, Citelighter will not grab details of books. In this way it is less powerful than tools like Zotero or BibMe. Citelighter is not as efficient if we have to source and enter the missing information.

– Citelighter seems to rely on the user to highlight the text and also fill in several bibliographic details. This can be problematic for people who prefer to read from the printed text. This indicates that Citelighter is only capable of recognising websites but not printed resources such as books and journals. And yes, sure enough, you will need to manually add all the bibliographic details yourself – how inconvenient!

Citelighter lets you highlight and capture quotes

Overall I would say that Citelighter and the toolbar is a useful tool for keeping track of online quotes, but it is not as powerful as a tool like Zotero. But if all you need is a service that lets you save quotes and produce bibliographies for online materials, then Citelighter could be useful. Have a look at our guide to using Citelighter to see how to get started.

PLN short course builds your research toolkit

The next round of the Victorian Personal Learning Network has been announced, with the first ever Victorian PLN short course kicking off on November 12 and running for 4 units. The Research Toolkit course will explore reliable online resources, effective search techniques and tools for organisation and referencing.

The online course is self paced and will feature webinars with research experts. It’s a great way for teachers and library staff to brush up on their skills and keep up to date with new tools and techniques. Research Toolkit is also a good refresher for previous participants in the Victorian PLN course looking to reinforce and further develop many of their own research skills.

Image of research guide on census

State Library of Victoria Research Guides

Research Toolkit is a partnership between the State Library of Victoria and the School Library Association of Victoria. The course costs $85 per person, but group discounts are available for teams of six or more. For more information visit the State Library of Victoria website, or email learning@slv.vic.gov.au