Anne Johnston’s Library Blog

Friday afternoon at Knox Academy, I had my mentor hat on. I met three colleagues who are currently working towards their Charter - two School Librarians and the Young People’s Services Librarian. They are all graduates with either a degree in librarianship/information science or a degree in another subject and a PG qualification in librarianship. After a year mentored by a Chartered Librarian, following a personal professional development plan agreed with our professional body CILIPS, they must submit a portfolio for consideration to CILIPs. If this meets the appropriate criteria they will then become Chartered Librarians.

This was our second portfolio meeting. We will get together every few weeks to provide a focus for their work, otherwise it is all too easy to push professional development to the back of the queue of priorities. The purpose of chartering is to demonstrate that we are continuing to develop our managerial skills, keeping our professional skills updated and engaging in effective forward planning. We must demonstrate that we are assessing and evaluating not only our own work but the progress of our service. On reflection this is the way of working and the skills set we are hoping our school students will begin to develop as they engage in Extreme Learning.

At the Extreme Learning meeting on Thursday evening there was one of those moments where everything suddenly seems to mesh. My fellow school librarians and I have been trying to come up with ways to help students located all over East Lothian to improve their research skills. Don used examples of extreme learning projects from Macmerry Primary. Also at the meeting a teacher from Ormiston Primary who has several Extreme Learners in school, a teacher and the school librarian from Ross High. By the end of the meeting these four had plans in hand to pilot some of the ideas for progressing EL and the offer of a venue from East Lothian Library Service for the group to meet. Students from each of the schools will be given the opportunity to work together to design the next stage for Extreme Learning - variously described as simple, flexible and no teacher required, using a technique called agile software development.

Glowing successfully at home, having logged on to the new portal. Now to find some victims - sorry interested colleagues and students - to try out the new Glow tools.

Also on the trail of Extreme Learners interested in developing a virtual librarian.

I can’t believe we’re well into November already. The last couple of weeks have been hectic but in an enjoyable way (well mostly).

I have attended my second meeting of the 3-18 Learning and Teaching Strategic Group. I find the overview perspective this gives me fascinating. I have always kept up with developments and initiatives in DGS to make sure that the library provides relevant support to the school community. Now I have the opportunity to do so at authority level. As Field Officer for East Lothian Library Service I am able to feed back relevant information to my fellow school librarians and also to the SMT of the library service. There is a great deal of potential to be explored. The first example of this being the Extreme Learning project. The meeting at the Marine recently allowed us to begin considering in detail the relevance of our professional information management skills to the aims of Extreme Learning. 

In the same week as the 3-18 group and Extreme Learning, I also attended the briefing on single status and job evaluation, our McCrone if you like. Check Brian’s Blog for more details on support staff’s concerns.

Last Monday was another of those woman versus technology days - loser again! But the week improved. On Wednesday CRAW (our Creative Reading And Writing group) met as usual. We heard the third installment of our novel, courtesy of Ms Aiken. Chapters 1 and 2 had been written by students. Everyone in the group has to write a chapter and we will think of a title for it at the end. I can’t remember when my turn is. I hope it is several weeks away. The standard has been set high.

The new library space is proving  a suitable venue for all sorts of events. On Thursday we had an author visit by Keith Gray. Keith has visited DGS before. He gave a talk to all of S1 and S2 - an audience of over 200. This time we opted for a creative writing workshop which was attended by about 20 students. It worked well. I know this because we were supposed to finish at 12.30pm and most people were still there at 12.45 and having to be forcibly evicted! It was a mad gallop to Haddington to make sure Keith had time for lunch before he went on to give a talk at Knox Academy. Next month, thanks to EL Library Service and Scottish Book Trust, we will be visited by Beth Webb who will be talking about her new book.

Question of the week - from Thursday and fairly obvious. “Do you need a hand tidying up miss?” i.e. “Its 15 minutes to lunch. Do I have to go back to class?”

Apologies for the break in transmissions. I do intend to contribute to my blog more regularly than every 5 or 6 weeks. Not long after I posted the first entry my PC at home died quite suddenly after years of loyal service. At the same time we were experiencing network problems in school. Hence the gap of several weeks. I am about to try to set up wireless broadband tonight. I know the broadband works and since my PC can’t sit in the kitchen beside the main phone line socket wireless it is.

I attended a wheen of meetings during September -all of them important and producing benefits for our students and staff - but I am looking forward to spending a whole week in my own school. Continue Reading »