Anne Johnston's Library Blog

The whole world in the Library

Anne Johnston — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:10:33 +0000

I mentioned in my previous post that there was a School of Ambition event at the end of term. It was called “Around the World in 80 minutes”. The audience journeyed round the school to various performance areas which represented each of the continents, culminating in the Polar Lands. For the Library I wanted to have something to represent the whole world,not just one area, and had an idea about a big floor jigsaw of the world. I talked to Phil Robertson and Danny Gillan - our PTs of CDT and Art - and the result was a GIGANTIC jigsaw. During our Activities week this year, Phil and Callum, the CDT Technician, cut out the countries and students and staff (me included) painted them up. The end result is very impressive.

Review of the year 2008

Anne Johnston — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:12:26 +0000

At this time of year I am getting the Library organised and ready for the coming school year. Part of this process involves me reviewing what has taken place in the previous year. Last session seemed very hectic towards the end of the year with the School of Ambition event and a visiting student from the United States as well as the usual rush to issue textbooks and start courses when the timetable changed. So it is good to be able to reflect later on the successes and areas for improvement after a gap of a few weeks (and a very enjoyable if damp holiday in the Northern Isles).

Webquests, Treasure Hunts, Hotlists and Subject Samplers

Anne Johnston — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:55:25 +0000

I spent yesterday on a course which did what it said on the tin - “considered the pedagogy of collaborative learning, the on-line tools available and the practical techniques needed to engage learners.” The course delivery method was in the style of e-learning we would like to encourage in our students - an initial explanatory section, a session working on my own evaluating examples of hotlists, subject samplers, treasure hunts and webquests and then the rest of the day working in a group to produce a webquest. The day was organised by CILIPS and run by Netskills and had a mixed bunch of participants from school, public and university libraries. Interesting to see, yet again, that we are all dealing with the same issues when it comes to encouraging our library members to carry out research effectively.

I came away from the day with access to a half completed team webquest and an understanding of processes which must be carried out before starting to introduce students to the webquest. It is an effective way of providing a genuine collaborative learning experience which encourages student to locate, synthesise and evaluate information.

Spring has sprung - nearly

Anne Johnston — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:23:16 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I attended two days training for Glow mentors. It was good to actually start to build things on Glow. By the end of the two days my head was buzzing (pardon the pun!) with ideas we could try in schools. I am now trying to set up some glow group ideas to show other people the possibilities.

Transition

Anne Johnston — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:58:29 +0000

I recently visited the new Queen Margaret University Learning Resource Centre, together with several of the East Lothian school librarians and two of the librarians from Loretto. I enjoyed the look around the new campus and was particularly impressed by the use of thin clients instead of desktop PCs to provide IT access for students. Jo Rowley, Head of Library Services at QMU, is keen to offer opportunities to our senior students to make use of their resources. She recently joined us at a school librarians link meeting with senior librarians from East Lothian Library Service. We are already looking at possibilities for joint working to improve our students’ information literacy (or research methodologies - thanks Linda) and ease their transition from secondary to tertiary education. Next steps - school librarians will be talking to their HTs, guidance teachers and staff from relevant subject departments. Jo will contact East Lothian HTs and guidance staff .

Return of the Binge Blogger

Anne Johnston — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 18:37:49 +0000

I have been spurred into action again by two events recently. Firstly we have begun to work on putting together a team of students, staff and parents to run our school website. If I can show those who think they need to be able to write in “techie stuff” how easy the software is to use, we should be in business.

Secondly I spent a day at the Scottish Learning Festival. My colleague, school librarian at Preston Lodge High School, and I caught the ELC bus from Haddington at 7.00 am on Wednesday 19th September - definitley the most relaxing way to get to the SECC. Thanks to whoever decided to organise transport. I was signed up for two sessions on information literacy, which were as informative and relevant as I had hoped. I also manged to get into another session which I hadn’t signed up for. It was called Books 4 All and was an update on research by the CALL Centre of the University of Edinburgh on ways of assisting students with additional support needs. I came away armed with information about free or inexpensive solutions to make life easier for people. I intend to post my notes from the day on the blog soon.

Word

Anne Johnston — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 19:28:56 +0000

Loved Doctor Who on Saturday - a whole new level to the power of storytelling.

Goodbye “China”*

Anne Johnston — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 20:08:11 +0000

Our Chinese Language Assistant goes home at the weekend to Xiamen. She has been with us for a year and has introduced us to many aspects of chinese culture, both traditional and modern. She has given me a postcard of the library of Zhangzhou Campus of Xiamen University. It is a huge, bright building. Follow the link to see it and more pictures of the beautiful campus. It is an interesting comparison with the Saltire Centre I visited recently. Follow this link to find out more about Xiamen University.

*Glaswegian for pal or friend.

Peebles 2007

Anne Johnston — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 19:58:37 +0000

13th June was the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, Scotland (CILIPS) Branch and Group Day. This day is part of our annual conference and it is attended by people from all different kinds of libraries and other organisations. The day consists of workshops and seminars arranged by the various special interest groups of CILIPS. The day began with the Presidential Address - no, not George Bush but Christopher Phillips, President of CILIPS. My first session after that was on Developing Catalogues for Customers not Cataloguers. It did what it said in the tin, wasn’t overly technical and explained how new international cataloguing standards will improve access to resources for everyone, that is readers, borrowers and customers and not just librarians.

My next seminar was Running Successful Book Groups. We have had a book group for a number of years at DGS but I was hoping for some fresh ideas, which I got. Thanks to CArol Moug from St Saviour’s High School, Dundee for an entertaining and informative presentation.

Last session of the day was Falkirk’s RED Book Award. Again I got lots of ideas form this even though it was dealing with running an award as a whole authority.

National Information Literacy

Anne Johnston — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:31:15 +0000

On Monday this week I hosted a meeting at DGS to consider how school librarians in East Lothian can encourage our students to become more independent learners than they are at present. John Crawford and Christine Irvine from Glasgow Caledonian Uniiversity came to meet me and my colleagues from Knox, Preston Lodge and Ross to follow up discussions we had at the open meeting on The Scottish National Information Literacy Framework in Glasgow recently. We now have a clear plan of action to follow which fits the points of focus listed by Don Ledingham in his recent letter “A Curriculum for Excellence - it’s not about doing different things, it’s about doing things differently”.