How to start Collaborating with your Teacher Librarian

All of us in our blog 'wolf pack' are currently working while taking courses towards our Teacher Librarianship diploma. I have found this course to be especially useful and pertinent while I navigate the new teacher librarian role I started in October. The most powerful learning comes for me when I am immersed and have a chance to try out ideas in real time. What a great learning experience!

I am really excited to share my final vision project with you all (and my staff!) as I think it will be extremely useful in making the most out of TL collaboration time, benefiting both students and teachers. My last school followed the Reggio philosophy, which allowed us to work on yearlong projects that followed the interests of the children. A big part of why these projects were such rich learning experiences for the kids is because our school had a project coordinator that brainstormed, planned, and supported us in this work. I see the teacher librarian role in a similar way, we are there to support classroom teachers and students in following topics of interest and to help build important lifelong skills. Working with a project coordinator and being a classroom teacher myself for the last 6 years gave me insight into what would be the most helpful digital artefact to create. I believe that my final project lives up to (or possibly even surpasses) the vision I had at the beginning. 

Below you fill find both my infographic, ‘Steps to Collaborating with your Teacher Librarian’ and my google slides presentation, ‘How Can I Help?’  You can also access the link to the google slides presentation directly through the infographic PDF. I wasn't able to upload the infographic as a PDF in this blog post but I will be sending it to the staff as a PDF so the links are live. I have also created a google form which has a link embedded into both of these artefacts for teachers to access. I will explain more about the google form below.

The Canva design website was extremely user friendly and allowed me to create a polished infographic that is simple to read and navigate.  I chose to write the steps to collaborating with me so that the process is as simple as possible and teachers don’t have to wonder what comes next when working with me. After first reading through my infographic they will know to then look at my google slides presentation to help brainstorm possibilities. From there it is clear where we can go from there.

Using the google slides site to create my teacher librarian collaboration ‘menu’ has been a breeze to use. I love the functionality of the slides tools and how easily you can access the file from anywhere. Adding personal videos, youtube videos and hyperlinks is very simple. I have played around with how to share it here and discovered an embed function in the tools. I am really excited that it will be so easy to add it to it as my journey continues and I gain more experience collaborating and doing projects with teachers. I most definitely will be adding new slides over time and sharing it with whatever staff I am lucky enough to work with.

It was nostalgic for me to go into the depths of my external hard drive and look back at many of the projects and work I have done over the years. As I started to pull useful documents onto my desktop I felt grateful that I am such a computer packrat. As I was finishing the slides of the project ideas I have already done I started to think of all the great ideas I have come across since starting our course. I then created the ’new ideas to try together’ section to add new and exciting ideas that I am motivated to try which I have learned while researching, writing and reading our inquiry blog posts (like coding, story workshops, creating infographics and book trailers). When we go out of our comfort zone amazing things can happen. I also realized not everything I have done in the past can be translated into my new role but with a few tweaks there are so many possibilities.

As I started to compile a folder of personal files to add to my presentation that could represent my various teaching experiences I began to worry about student privacy. I had multiple videos I wanted to use but was unsure how best to ensure the privacy of the children I had worked with previously as this blog is a public platform. I reached out to Aaron who encouraged me to try altering the videos so that I could still include them in the presentation. He sent me the link to this youtube tutorial which explains how to blur the faces of everyone in a video directly using the youtube website. This was easy to follow and I was able to alter 4 videos and use them. Click here if you want to find this youtube tutorial. 

The last reflection I want to touch on is how incredible and helpful the network of librarians in my school district here in Victoria have been. I know creating and using a personal learning network is one of the main goals of this course so in this regard I am proud of the connections I have made. Just this week in fact, I was telling a fellow TL in my district (who is the pro-d and networking member of the GVTLA) about this final vision project and how I have created two digital artefacts to support the collaboration process. She gave me the brilliant idea of creating a google form for teachers to fill out once they have decided how they would like me to help them. So a ‘Teacher Librarian Collaboration Request Form’ was the last piece of the puzzle for my final vision. This will allow teachers to write out their ideas at a time that suits them and outlines all of the information I need to know to move forward. I have added the google form link to my slides presentation as well as into the ‘contact me’ step 3 in my infographic. It is all ready to send out and I can’t wait to share it with my staff this week. Here is a visual of the google form.

So with that I am going to sign off on my last LIBE 477 blog post. I look forward to seeing my fellow Wolf Pack’s final vision projects and I hope to stay in touch to continue sharing wonderful ideas.

It’s not goodbye … just see you later.

References

Animoto. (2018). Animoto video maker - Stand out on social media. Easily. - Animoto. [online] Available at: https://animoto.com/

Arneson, M. (2018). PHIS Library, Oh The Places You'll Go ... [online] Available at: http://phislmc.weebly.com/ 

Bathurst-Hunt, R. (2018). Wonder Wednesday: Story Workshop. [online] Rbathursthuntblog.wordpress.com. Available at: https://rbathursthuntblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/05/wonder-wednesday-story-workshop/

Canva.com. (2018). Amazingly Simple Graphic Design Software – Canva. [online] Available at: https://www.canva.com/

Code.org (2017). Maze Intro: Programming with Blocks (Course A-B). [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=32&v=4N0R16Y97l0

Eves, D. (2016). How to Blur Faces and Objects Right Within YouTube. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V4dlR2m5QQ

Jensen, S. (2018). What Your Teacher Librarian Can Do For You. [online Canva brochure] Victoria.

Lucid Press (2018). How to make a poster (free templates included). [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=80&v=RP7CpNVaQwU

Mac, H. (2018). Holes Book Trailer. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=I0wxCje-Z8c

Melly, C. (2016). Making Book Trailers Using Animoto. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk_eF3sa8t4

Storytime with Ryan and Craig (2018). CHILDREN'S BOOK | The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak | READ ALOUD. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEI6x3-Clpo&t=12s