This final LIBE 465 assignment has provided an ideal opportunity for me to dream big. With such an expansive mandate, I felt free extend myself “beyond the four walls” (Kirkland, p. 1) of my library’s physical space and to create a “blended” learning commons environment. I use the term “blended” because, while I support Loertscher’s (2008) vision of the learning commons as a “warehouse” (as cited in Kirkland p. 1) of digital materials, I believe strongly that a well-maintained collection of physical resources is essential in any school environment.
As proud as I am of the École Davis Road library, it provides little visual fodder for such a bold undertaking, so I sought inspiration on the internet. I spent considerable time browsing images of learning commons and happened upon a photo that really sparked my imagination. It was a picture of the Douglasdale School Learning Commons in Calgary. In 2012, Douglasdale School received funding from the EducationMatters organization to undertake a huge transformation of their library. The resulting physical space is amazing and it is this facility that I have “hijacked” for the purposes of my assignment. For all other school details, I continue to use my own school, École Davis Road Elementary.
According to Joyce Valenza,” the 21st century virtual school library will have as broad an influence as its physical counterpart” (as cited in Kirkland, p. 2) With such a state-of-the art facility, I expected the Douglasdale library to a have a cutting edge, learning commons-style website. Shockingly, it took extensive digging to even find a library catalogue! I have included the school website here for your perusal: http://schools.cbe.ab.ca/b346/
“The virtual learning commons, according to Loertscher, is both a giant ongoing conversation and a warehouse of digital materials – from ebooks to databases to student-generated content – all available 24/7 year-round” (Kirkland, p. 1). My final project endeavours to embody Loertscher’s learning commons principles and to meld these with my own conviction that, in a school setting, physical resources still have a critical role to play. With this perspective in mind, I have created the type of website I feel the Douglasdale School library should have launched when they opened their brand new facility.
Before embarking on my web design, I spent some time reviewing the principles of good information architecture (IA) that were discussed in Lesson 7. As Dr. Cho states, “the success of IA is almost like telling a grand narrative story”. In order to work through the key elements of “website flattening” (Lesson 7), labelling, and navigation; I created a taxonomy similar to that in Assignment # 3. Here is the result:
You will note that my model does not itemize the individual teacher pathfinders. This is for the simple reason that, at this point, I had not yet determined what these pathfinders would be. I feel this taxonomy represents good “storytelling” (Lesson 7) for a number of reasons:
1. There is minimal click-depth to prevent confusion.
2. Navigation is intuitive and labelling is clear.
3. Linkages have an obvious hierarchy from broad keywords to more narrow ones.
I pondered for some time whether to put Research Tools, Web2.0 Cool Tools, Pathfinders, and Dewey for Kids on Level 1 of my site. Ultimately, I decided it was more logical to group these under Do Research. To ensure clarity however, I created a site map with direct links to these pages.
In order to assess the “usability” of the EDR Learning Commons site, I subsequently tested it out on anyone I could corral into the office: my husband, my daughter, my father etc. Even my Dad, who is 82 years old, seemed to find the site quite intuitive and straight-forward!
Now is probably an appropriate time to address one very frustrating technical difficulty I encountered while creating my website on Wikispaces. When I first established the site, I was waffling between calling it a Library Media Centre and a Learning Commons. This dilemma stems from my above-mentioned “blended” vision of virtual and physical spaces. Initially, I wondered whether such a vision entitled me to call my website a learning commons. Further research, however, reinforced that many learning commons environments, particularly those in elementary schools, embody a similar philosophy. This point is underscored by Kirkland when she quotes Janes (2008): “In an increasingly digital world, the idea of the library has to be somewhere and everywhere: real, physical locations as well as ubiquitous access. Neither alone will suffice in meeting the varied and expanding needs of our communities, and neither alone expresses the true nature and usefulness of what a ‘library’ is and can be (and ought to be and has to be ) in the 21st century “ (as cited in Kirkland, p. 4). Unfortunately, when I originally created my website I called it the Davis Road Library Media Centre and Wikispaces does not take kindly to those who change their minds! Sadly, I can change the name but I need to wait 15 days to do so. For this reason, you will notice that, while the official name of my site is Davis Road Library Media Centre, I refer to it in all other contexts as the École Davis Road Learning Commons. Similarly, there are a number of webpages that have incorrect headings, as these are the titles I started with, and Wikispaces will not allow for revision. The correct terminology is that used on the navigation bar.
I would now like to use this navigation bar as a jumping off point as I continue with my reflection.
I feel the Welcome to the École Davis Road Learning Commons and the Meet the Learning Commons Staff pages are fairly self-explanatory and their creation did not present any real dilemmas for me. For this reason, they will not be discussed further.
I would like to address the Find Resources page, however. I initially named this page Find Books but later felt this label did not sufficiently represent the variety of resources I envision in the EDR Learning Commons. Many of these are highlighted on the Find Resources page.
I chose to use Destiny Quest by Follet in my fantasy learning commons because, from what I was able to determine, it most fully meets the needs of our 21st century learners. The interface is visually appealing and seems easy to navigate. In addition, it incorporates many desirable features including peer reviews and “if you like this book” recommendations. Most importantly perhaps, it provides students a virtual space in which to interact and share their reading choices.
You will notice that Find Resources also provides external links to an array of open access and subscription resources. Whenever possible, I have created real-world links. For sites requiring subscription, I am making the assumption that the EDR Learning Commons will have funds allocated for the necessary expansion of resource options. Because I have provided so many links on this and other pages, I cannot possibly justify each one within the parameters of this assignment. This said, all choices were made thoughtfully and after considerable research. I will be highlighting specific links when I feel they warrant more in-depth reflection. One such site is TumbleBook Library. École Davis Road had a paid subscription to this site for a number of years. The big benefit of TumbleBook Library for the EDR Learning Commons is that it includes titles in both French and English. For this reason, I have included it under both French and English E-book categories.
Do Research is the most complex page on my site as it provides access to Level 2 and Level 3 pages. I felt it important to use this page, not only as a springboard to other pages, but also as an expression of the research philosophy of my learning commons and school. The philosophy statement is inspired by Guided Inquiry Learning in the 21st Century and the authors are credited accordingly. I have also included The Inquiry Process model here to inform and guide students and teachers during research.
The first link from Do Research is Research Tools. While the creation of this page was extremely time consuming, I had a blast! I had no idea there were so many amazing research tools! You will notice that I have included Web 2.0 Cool Tools for School under Technology Tools on this page and I have also dedicated a separate page to it. This is to underscore the importance of using Technology Tools not just because they’re “cool”, but to help support the research process. I really appreciate this site because it organizes tools into categories and provides descriptions for each. As Kirkland says, “the messy business of learning requires some well-designed and thoughtful scaffolding” (p. 3) and I believe Cool Tools does this very well.
A particularly time consuming task in the design of the Research Tools page was to track down appropriate research support for French Immersion students. . To do this, I relied somewhat on my own experience, but I also combed through many library websites in hopes of finding their French research “gems”. Perhaps most fun for me was the discovery of GlogsterEdu. I first came across it on the Barrow Media Center website . According to Wikipedia, “Glogster is a social network that allows users to create free interactive posters… It looks like a poster, but readers can interact with the content”. At first I thought the amazing Teacher-Librarian at Barrows had creating the Glogs himself. I then realized Glogs can be shared and embedded into external wikis and blogs. It was very exciting to make this discovery and to include three research related Glogs on my site.
I have already addressed Web 2.0 Cool Tools and so would now like to tackle my Pathfinders page. We discussed pathfinders in Lesson 9 and I feel they still have a vital role to play in organizing what Kirkland refers to as the “chaos” (p. 3) of web research. Dr. Cho describes pathfinders as bibliographies “created to help research a particular topic” (Lesson 9). He states that “pathfinders have evolved with the emergence of the World Wide Web and may now act as portals to information about resources in a variety of formats including books, encyclopaedias, bibliographic databases, almanacs, documentaries, websites, search engines and journals. Often used as curriculum tools for bibliographic instruction, the guides help library users find materials or help those unfamiliar with a discipline understand the key sources” (Lesson 9).
In order to create the Pathfinders page, the reviewed curricular topics in Science and Social Studies for each grade level. I then imagined working collaboratively with classroom teachers to help design pathfinders for a variety of curricular topics. While this page is currently a “dead end”, I envision it to have a third level of portals linked to a rich array of resources.
I would now like to discuss the last of the Do Research pages, Dewey For Kids. In keeping with my vision of a “blended” learning commons containing both physical and virtual resources, I felt it important not to forget about poor Melvil Dewey. In my experience, students really struggle with the Dewey Decimal System when seeking physical resources to support their research. My goal, therefore, was to create a page that would make Dewey more interesting and accessible to students, while providing an opportunity for them to hone their Dewey search skills. I was particularly excited to find the “Bob the Alien” and “Dewey Decimal Rap” videos, as they are both entertaining and informative. In addition, when students click on the “Dewey Decimal Review” icon, they can access additional information, practice sites, and games.
In a rapidly expanding digital world, we have fallen alarmingly behind in teaching the values of online citizenship to our students. As a result, many children and youth are ill-equipped to manage the realities of virtual interaction. The dual purpose of my Digital Citizenship page is to express the school’s philosophy on this issue and to promote digital literacy in its many forms. I spent considerable time searching for the many age-appropriate videos and resources on topics of internet safety, privacy, “netiquette”, cyber-bullying, and intellectual property, which are included on this page.
According to Kirkland, “the concepts of interactivity and collaboration are fundamental to the notion of the library as a learning commons” (p. 1). I agree with this vision and wanted to ensure that my site incorporated opportunities for knowledge sharing as well as information seeking. I created a Sharing our Success page in order to provide ongoing opportunities for students to engage in “giant, ongoing conversations” (Loertscher as cited in Kirkland, p. 1) about their learning and to include the greater community in their educational experiences. My image for this page would involve each class having its own blog where students could “explore, create and collaborate” with each other and with a larger audience.
In his article on site map usability, Jakob Nielsen (2008) highlights a major benefit of the site map: “to give users an overview of the site’s areas in a single glance” (p. 1). He further states that, “If designed well, this overview can include several levels of hierarchy, and yet not be so big that users lose their grasp of the map as a whole” (Nielsen, 2008, p.1). Although I feel my navigation menu is fairly transparent, I have chosen to include a site map to further enhance the ability of users to visualize my website’s information architecture.
I must end my final project reflection on a very personal and “real world” note. Staff in our district was informed yesterday that the School Board will decide Tuesday whether to eliminate secondary school Teacher-Librarians and replace them with clerical Library Assistants. This cost saving proposal is linked directly to the board’s new-found strategy to move “towards a library commons model and electronic access to our libraries” (School District #68 Nanaimo/Ladysmith, 2014). The fact that the district is even considering a “library commons model” without the stewardship of qualified Teacher-Librarians reflects its profound misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of the learning commons itself. Who will provide the “well designed and thoughtful scaffolding” (p. 3) that Kirkland speaks of when all Teacher-Librarians have been eliminated in favour of unqualified clerical staff? I am very grateful to have taken LIBE 465 during this very crucial juncture in the “life” of my school district. While I am saddened to find myself fighting for the very existence of Teacher-Librarians in Nanaimo/Ladysmith, I do so bolstered with a greater understanding of the critical role we must play in building order within the “chaos” (Kirkland, p. 3) of virtual space by creating “powerful, meaningful and useful” (Kirkland, p. 6) learning commons environments for our educational communities. If we don’t do it, who will?
Reference List
Glogster (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org
Kirkland, A.B. School Library Websites: The Bricks and Mortar of the Virtual Library Space. Retrieved from http://www.bythebrooks.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/TMC2012_Paper_ABK.pdf
Nielsen, J. (2008). Site Map Usability. Retrieved from http://www.nngroup.com/articles/site-map-usability/
School District #68 Nanaimo/Ladysmith (2014). Retrieved from http://www.sd68.bc.ca/Documents/2014-15%20Budget/ImpactStatements.pdf.
