Assessment Item 1

Social networking is the online sharing of information and connecting with like minded individuals and groups.
I enjoy using Twitter for professional development, I follow a number of teacher librarians and find their posts really positive for my own repetoire of skills. I also like to post content that I find interesting or of benefit.
I connect with friends and family on Facebook, however I'm looking forward to using this as a more professional tool in this subject.
I currently use Diigo to tag my favourite sites. I only use it for my own organisation of sites, however and would like to use it more for social networking purposes.
I also have this online learning journal that I use to record my learnings and experiences from my Masters degree, however I havent been very active in following others.
From this subject I would like to learn more about using social networking and media for my own professional development. I would like to be a stronger participant rather than observing. I would like to gain more ideas for implementing social media into the library and classroom.
I really love social networking and media and I'm keen to learn anything I can to utilise it more effectively.

INF506

I cannot believe I have oe subject left of my Masters in Teacher Librarianship. I spent my last school holidays doing study visits at a range of libraries in Melbourne. I was particularly impressed with The Melbourne City Library that used their space really effectively and was very user friendly.

I received a credit for my ETL505 subject. I enjoyed learning about the nature of cataloguing. I feel like I really need to focus on ensuring I practice the learning to keep working on my knowledge and skills in this area.

Looking forward to getting into it!!!

ETL505

I finished my ten day placement at the State Library of Victoria and feel like I now have a greater understanding of the world of resource and information organisation. It was good to be away from a school learning environment and mixing with other library professionals. There is such a variety of employment opportunities in this industry. I was delighted to be a part of the Learning Services Division and contributing to their work.

This week I begin Bibliographic standards in education. I've just finished module one focusing on the need for information oganisation and now I'm starting module two on information retrieval tools. It's all fairly practical learning. I would like to do some cataloguing in my school library to put new skills into practice.

The main learning I have experienced thus far is that we need information organisation to ensure we can access effectively and efficiently information.

E-portfolio

My ICT learning development continued in leaps and bounds this week when I did a bit of online tutorial work through Dr. Helen C. Barrett’s online modules that covered much content on everything I needed to know Web 2.0 wise.
http://electronicportfolios.org/web2/class/index.html#ref
Barrett’s step by step guide links to audio and video clips and was without unnecessary ICT jargon. They really assisted my understanding, I have even started using delicious bookmarking and RSS feeds! After completing the preparation work I then chose a web creation tool and developed my e-portfolio, which I am feeling fairly impressed with. I used Weebly to create the website. It was so simple to use and the end result looks really professional. I still have a bit of content to write and upload and will hopefully get to that over the weekend. Check out my portfolio at www.riacoffey-portfolio.com

Teamwork

According to Beck & Yeager (1994) a team is people coming together to work towards a shared mission. And it’s certainly true; when a team is working well they are capable of achieving great things. In schools and particularly in school libraries we find ourselves working as a team, however sometimes our mission is not a shared vision. Ensuring the team members are on the same path towards a combined goal is essential. Personally I find time constraints affect the ability that we as teachers and librarians have of working closely as a team. Time needs to be made available for teams to meet and work and ensure that teamwork is realised as an essential element of any organisation.

Law & Glover (2000) explore different roles of people in teams. The table they sourced from Belbin (1981, 1993) lists characteristics, qualities and weaknesses of different types of people. I could identify myself as an ‘Implementer’. Qualities include: gets on with the task, organising ability, hard working. This table would help people to understand other people in the team and their own role and participation in the team.

Beck, J. D. & Yeager, N. M. (1994). Making teams work: an underused window of opportunity. In The leader’s window: mastering the four styles of leadership to build high-performing teams (pp. 183-206). New York: Wiley.

Law, S. & Glover, D. (2000). Leading effective teams. In Educational leadership and learning: practice, policy and research (pp. 71-86). Buckingham, England: Open University Press.

Defining Vision Statement

Defining ‘Vision statement’

Before attempting to begin the task of creating a vision statement for a school library I began with some research into what a vision statement is. I asked the deputy principal of the school I work at for a copy of the school vision statement to peruse. I also googled ‘Library’ and “Vision statement” to see what other libraries were doing.
I found a great blog by Dr. Steve Matthews who defines :
“What will you dare to dream that your library can become in the 21st Century environment? Whatever it is – DREAM IT! – and make it your Vision Statement.”
http://21stcenturylibrary.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/21st-century-library-strategic-plan-%E2%80%93-vision-statement/

And so the task begins; St.Patrick’s School Library is about to be dreamt into the future.

Part A done- now for Part B

ETL504 has begun and with it a collaborative project involving me and supposebly four other students. (The number dwindled down to a group of three after two groupees pulled out). The task was to create a slideshow that "sells" an article we believe is important to publish to a specified journal. We targetted executive staff and our aim was to convince them of the importance of the role of the TL in strategic planning. My idea was for us to create a model and flowchart to show principles and methods of strategic planning. Our slideshow then defined each concept and specified how the role of the TL was important to this stage of planning. The collaborative work was really great, especially because I spend so much time working on my own, it was great to discuss the work and share the load a bit.

These were the principles for strategic planning for change we identified from our readings:

• Engaging people's moral purpose


• Building change culture


• Leadership for change


• Identifying priorities - internal and external


• Innovative influence on learning and teaching

These were the methods for strategic planning for change we identified from our readings:

• Define change/direction


• Build capacity


• Coherence of strategies


• Implement plan


• Evaluate and review strategic plan

For now I am on to Part B; an annotated bibliography and self-assessment of part A. I'm learning lots about working as a part of a team. Will post more when I'm done.