Anne Johnston’s Library Blog

I was driving to work this morning enjoying the view from Whitekirk across Binning Woods to the Lammermuirs and musing about yesterday’s 4ureaders local editorial group meeting. Our group has an abundance of ideas for content for the site and BIll Plain at Knox Academy has a student editorial group which contributes regularly. There is a mix of staff from both the public library service and school libraries and we share the work amongst the group, with Bill as the keystone. He attends the national editorial group meetings and co-ordinates our ideas and contributions. It came as a surprise to realise that not all other authorities work in this way but that sometimes one person has to collect ideas from a group of staff and try to do all the work on his/her own. This collaborative approach is typical of our Library Service. As a result our students and staff now have access to a whole range of resources, in print and electronic/digital format, over and above those held in our individual schools. Our students gradually learn to appreciate that all of the libraries in East Lothian are linked and that they can borrow items from and return them to any library. We can also teach them how to search large databases of information effectively, simply by showing them how to use the online catalogue to check their borrowing record and reserve books. This is always a popular part of my course introducing the library to first year students. The catalogue is sometimes known as Elvis. Have a look and see why.

An interesting week and its only half way through. On Monday I attended the open exc-el group meeting at John Muir House (photographic evidence currently available on Ewan’s blog ) where the group morphed into the edubuzz open group. Tuesday morning at Prestonpans East Lothian Glow mentors got a first look at the new portal. Initial impression was that the look of the site hadn’t changed much. Thanks to further investigations by Tess at Knox Academy we now know that it has developed a great deal. I’m looking forward to being able to access the portal next week. Various colleagues in DGS and the Library Service are keen for a shufty as well.

Today’s best bit was the last period lesson. One of our S1 classes is in the Library to participate in Accelerated Reader, only many students in this class have severely underdeveloped reading muscles - can read , won’t read. We wanted to make sure that everyone had attempted at least one quiz to get them started, so tried a different approach. We read a short book to them and then everyone sat the same quiz. All seemed to enjoy the experience but the proof will be what happens next Wednesday. The relieved librarian will confess that she is really happy to discover that you can log twenty people on to the same quiz at the same time and it works - something she din’t think about until she was giving everyone instructions to log on. Nothing like forward planning!

This month I have been engaged in major tasks for both of the literacies in my remit - information literacy and the original literacy, i.e reading.

I was involved in two key information literacy sessions. We have a group of senior students keen to develop the school website. Their involvement will mean a much more interactive school site and I should learn a few new things about ICT too. I was able to arrange a meeting of the students with David Gilmour and Pete Gray, East Lothian Museums Officer and a parent, who has been the mainstay of our website for the past few years. Interested staff, including our HT, also attended. We looked at software possibilites for what we would like to achieve with our site. As a result we are shifting existing content which is still relevant to a new package then we will start to change the layout of the site and involve other students and staff in contributing. As part of the Schools of Ambition, Paul Raffaelli, our HT, intends to have a designer work with students to create a standard look for all school communications - a “corporate look”. The website will be part of this.

The second ICT event was a Ewan McIntosh session for school librarians. This was held at Knox Academy a couple of weeks ago. Ewan, I was going to say demonstrated, but he actually got us to do the work so we saw straight away how easy it is to use tools such as http://del.icio.us/and http://www.netvibes.com/ to track relevant information. I came away from the day with lots of ideas to try with students and staff. I am going to speak to the History and Modern Studies PT about trying a new way of helping Advanced Higher Students keep on top of research for their dissertations and I intend to approach our biologists to see if we can improve the way we already guide students to relevant information, not only at Advanced Higher level but across the board.

As for yer actual, real literacy, we now have several classes in S1 and S2 using Accelerated Reader. I was sceptical of this system when I heard about it first. I thought it was yet another reading system with graded readers but it uses “proper” books, i.e. ordinary published books. So any students reading for this scheme are being encouraged to read the same books as everybody else. It is clear from other schools in East Lothian, particularly Ross High, that Accelerated Reader does motivate students.

Coming Soon - “Libraries separate ideas”