On the road to learning

Summarizing and Sharing Concepts Rendina (2015) | Renovated Learning My foray into the world of literature on makerspaces was an enlightening one. I started off browsing websites that helped to define makerspaces to seeing if research had ideas for how makerspaces could help promote literacy. There was a lot more research to sift through than I had originally anticipated. Rendina states that "you don't have to give up on literacy to start a makerspace - you add a new dimension of literacy to your library" (2017). As such, I decided to do a bit more digging around and refine some of my earlier searches to see if I could find articles or websites that were less generalized and more focused on makerspace ideas for promoting reading literacy. Further Review of Previous Resources Out of the five resources I had listed in my previous reading review post , my favourite resource is Laura Fleming's "Literacy in the Making." This resource not only high...

Created on WordArt.com As the younger generation of students continue to learn and grow in an ever-increasing digital age, how we, as teachers and teacher-librarians, approach the usage of reference services and resources has changed.  As Riedling states in Reference Skills for the School Librarian  (2013), "[i]nformation needs are growing and becoming more complex. The result is that there will be an increased need for experts, school librarians with skills in searching, accessing, using, and evaluating information efficiently and effectively." I'm often asked by friends who aren't teachers, "Why are you studying to be a librarian?" My answer is always, "To help students improve their literacy skills." The video below is something that I found on YouTube which provides a fairly accurate, quick summary of the topics covered in Theme One. For a 21st-century learner to be a fully functional member of society, Achieving Information Literacy...

Module 3 -- Supporting Learners Through the Library: Cultivating Life-Long Reading Habits Image by David Moss | Flickr The readings from this module really spoke to me. As a former ELL teacher working in China, one of the things that I struggled with was getting my students to read for pleasure in English. High school students in China were so used to being on their cell phones and browsing social media sites that they rarely read things outside of class. I found that few students read for pleasure, and yet Krashen argues in his lecture that "FvR, free voluntary reading, is the source of all of our literary skills" (Krashen, 2012). Sure, some students did read for pleasure outside of class, but the vast majority of this group would only read in their native language. While they have taken the first step to fostering life-long reading habits and developing 21st-century literacy skills, the challenge they have to overcome is reading in English, not Mandarin. Neil Gaiman s...

Literature Research and Data Collection As I was going about deciding what to focus on after my brainstorming session last week (see my previous blog post for my inquiry ideas), I was introduced to Stephen Krashen's lecture on "The Power of Reading" in another course that I'm taking concurrently. While long, I found the message shared by Krashen to be a very powerful one: a love for reading is something that can help sustain our children in a 21st-century environment. This message lies at the very foundation of my teaching and is something that I am often trying to impart to my students. My next thought is: well, how can I connect this with my brainstormed topics from last week? And thus, I embarked on a quest to find sources to help me inquire about a more refined topic: How can libraries establish makerspaces and use them to promote literacy? The Philosophy of Educational Makerspaces: Part 1 of Making an Educational Makerspace  by Steven Kurti, Debby Kurt...

Creating My Learning Curation Prompt I am not going to lie, I've been struggling on how/what to focus on for this assignment. This is mainly due to the problem that I have only just been recently picked up by the Delta School District as a TOC, and am not working full-time at any school. As such, there really isn't a school library that I could focus my ideas on and create my recipe for an ideal library learning commons. The previous school I was with in China is thousands of miles away across the ocean and hidden behind The Great Firewall as well - so what should I do? In the end, I have decided to go for what is realistic versus ideal: I shall focus my attention on the library that I worked with in China. To give a bit more background, I worked at a BC offshore school in China teaching Grades 10-12. The school population has been (and still is) steadily growing ever since I started working there, growing from under 500 to around 650 students in the span of two years. The ...

Issue, Interest, or Opportunity Identification and Key Word Generator The following are topics that I would potentially like to further pursue for my LIBE477B course's Reading Review assignment. 1. Digital Literacy and Citizenship As the Internet grows ever-increasingly faster, it is imperative that students understand how to navigate the vast space of the World Wide Web. The BC Ministry of Education defines digital literacy as "the interest, attitude and ability of individuals to appropriately use digital technology and communication tools to access, manage, integrate, analyze and evaluate information, construct new knowledge, create and communicate with others" (BC Ministry of Education). Schools now need to be equipped not only with physical resources, but also with computers, laptops, tablets, and other new forms of technology to help enhance and personalize learning. Not only is learning how to use these technologies important, but specifically how to engage wit...