Let's get serious - performance descriptors!

Well - my reflections now need to be "excellent critical and honest reflection". I need to show that i can "articulate critical incidents & essential learnings" that have contributed to my "professional learning journey" - OOPS! Looks like my blogs "need more work"!! I think I may need to edit some areas now that my blog is turning into my academic assignment!.. Anyway - online learning is a whole new ball game for this old sheila! - is that too descriptive? OK - just read Lorenzo - "Catalysts for Change: Information Fluency ........" - found it very relevant to my professional learning journey as I am not a "netgener" ( young person who has grown up with the Internet) but a Baby Boomer whose IQ is 15 to 20 points lower than a netgener. It may mean that I need to team up with a netgener to pass this course!! My brother is a casual teacher who went into a High School class to teach only to be told that their work was on Moodle - he hadn't a clue what they were talking about(he's a baby boomer)! However, thanks to this course I am now becoming more digitalised - i blog, i facebook, i wikispace, i wetpaint, i email, i forum - my information fluency skills are taking on another dimension! I am now using web 2.0 tools in my library space and i am becoming more dependent on the computer, more so than the phone, to communicate with most people at home. This course demands I go on the computer once a day for hours at a time. So I am now an "active participant" in the "participant economy". Or am i a virtual participant in a virtual world? - science fiction or fact?
I still have the cynicism of a Baby Boomer about technology takeover - however, i am a more willing participant these days. Fascinating to read about Wikipedia as "error-ridden, narrow minded, uninformative" as well as "highly informative", "valid" and "timely". So - critical literacy is paramount in discerning the truths, half truths and untruths. This seems a vital role for the TL - to help discriminate between the world of fact and fiction; virtual and real; reputable and disreputable; friend and foe etc. It is also interesting to read about Netgeners as "visual - based learners" rather than "text - based learners". Visual literacy is another area to be looked at carefully when designing our courses for our students!

not a tl but a tlr!!

After another reading - Penny Moore's "Teaching Information Problem Solving......" I realise i can't call myself a TL yet as i'm not qualified but i can call myself a TLR - a "teacher with library responsibilities" - that makes sense to me at this stage as i'm still learning so much. Learning how to divide my time between 2 subjects, 2 future assignments, forums, blogs , and my real life at school. Haven't been able to put the energy into school work yet as this course dominates my whole mental space and struggling to keep up with all you academics! Yes- i have thought about dropping out but trying to hold in this semester - i need some positive feedback from my next assignment to keep me going!!

Modules starting to blend.

Rather than specify responses to each module which seems like a routine like chore. I have decided just to comment when i can get a spare moment. I'm about to hit the sack with some more readings. Sometimes i feel that i am up against some tough academic competition out there when i go to other people's blogs and forum responses - don't know where they find the time - do they have a life other than this course? I enjoy finding out more about the importance of my new role as TL but feel daunted when I realise how vital it is and how much more work i need to do. The collection management side is very technical but practical - not good with technical stuff but will need to get into it. I'm about to read on topic 4 stuff for TL - theories about learning i think and info.literacy - am slowly getting back into it after the setback with my first assignment. I wish that Roy had something positive to say about my efforts - but it was very negative feedback and still feel like the recalcitrate child who missed the point. Really i am paying to learn and i always tell my kids that mistakes are our friends because we learn from them.

the life of a library nerd

Need to do more blogging etc but I have been busy juggling assignments, readings and catching up on forums. Blogging is new to me so I am trying to find a blog that feels right to write on. So far - this seems easy enough. I am enjoying reading up on the roles and responsibilities of teacher librarianship and relating all this new material to my new job as teacher librarian. I am also learning about reading recovery so there is much learning, reading, writing and sharing to go on in the next few years. My first assignment for Collection Management was a little awkward as I had not done any academic writing for over 20 years!! Anyway - i know that I made some mistakes in the first presentation and I am hoping to learn from those mistakes. The 2nd assignment for TL was easier in that it was less prescriptive in content and more open in structure. I think that I may have rectified some mistakes done during the first assignment in terms of layout and presentation. However - i am not confident yet in this form of on-line study - but am getting there. I had real problems using endnote - so gave up and went to the old school of manually doing things. Hopefully these hiccups will gradually disappear as I progress during the year!