Thing 16 Collaboration Tools

I do know Google docs and use it all the time as my school has adopted it as the regular way of communication between teachers and students.

At the beginning there was a bit of reluctance to use it but in a year everyone has familiarized with it and now is our best tool for work. Google drive allow us to classify our documents and have it available quickly. The only con is that at my country we are used to have frequent internet issues and even if these are solved then power goes off and we are left with nothing but our own creativity and resourceful skills.

Time ago I discovered Linoit which is an app that gives you a digital board to stick your notes and save them. I found it very useful and now I depend on it. I have it classified in year groups and write down the name of the books I´ve read to each school year. It´s useful because I can easily see what I have worked with each group and also read any suggestions I need to remember or recall for the next day I see them. Remainders and also links can be stuck on the board.

Recently I asked Year 7 students to open an account in Linoit and post information about Charles Dickens. They all contributed and the result is great as you can have a panoramic view of lots of Dickens facts of his life. There are also pictures and animation videos stuck to the board. 

I like the idea of Doodle and will give it some time to try it out. I have already recommended it to some people that I know struggle with setting up meetings with groups of people. In my school we use Google calendar.

Here is a picture of my board in Linoit.

Thing 15 Advocacy for Libraries

ooks

Librarians are versatile.

I can see that many of the advocacy campaigns have used  the ability to upload photos and I really love it. It is so creative and shows the interest that people puts on doing this. And pictures show a so many things at the same time. Looking at smiley librarians in different scenarios makes me think on how versatile is our profession and how everyone enjoy their different roles. There are thousands of little posters talking about library´s values and that´s exactly the number of  possible appreciations, everyone has its own.

Libraries never have been more seen and think about them than ever before and I do feel proud of being part of this group of people that encourage others to get closer to literature and to get to know such pleasant way of growing to be a better human being.  I love to be part of this group of people who think that libraries are almost sanctuaries where memory and future blend to provide us a sense of  identity and community at the same time.

The illustrations from Library A to Z  are fabulous and I´m so glad they´ve come to me just in time to be used  in the book drive campaign happening at my school soon.

Thing 14 Augmented Reality

I haven´t used AR, knew a little about it but didn´t learn more because it seemed to be too futuristic! I guess we´ve arrived to the future!

While I was watching the related videos many ideas came to my mind about how all these innovations could benefit libraries. Could libraries be the center of technologies like AR in every educational institution? Or, on the contrary, apps like this one will just accelerate the moving of research, knowledge and information out of the library and into the movable devices that can be some other place and not necessarily in a library?

I think it all depends on how things develop. Years ago the textbooks that included a DVD were preferred over the traditional ones. But that didn´t last long, links for the internet did a better job than downloading the content a DVD and increasing trash.

I can imagine a library loaded with possibilities such as those presented by librARI and I´m sure it would soon become a very popular place to visit, or at least it will definitely attract more people and more will get engaged with reading. It looks like a great way to solve circulation issues inside the library too.

Undeniably it is a great pro for education. Having the opportunity to see all science topics coming to live in front of us is revolutionary for the teaching learning process.

At present we are already looking how the insertion of technology is switching the classroom scenarios and are still struggling to deal with their associated issues of students getting engaged in social media instead of using their devices for educational matters when being at school.

And now comes AR to add more content to this incredible fascinating world of learning.

On my end I think it will take a bit longer to have it in our classrooms but anyhow I will play a thing or two to get initiated!

Thing 2 How I became a Librarian

This Thing must be done before I go any further. I started being a librarian since I was 23 after gaining a position at the National Library in my country. I only had a technological preparation for it as there were not librarianship university degrees at that time. After one year cataloguing I was moved to be part of a new project that involved a book bus being taken to unprivileged places surrounding Quito. It was a demanding job because we didn´t had a limit of hours to dedicate to our tasks every day. We were so excited with this activity that usually got commited more hours than those in our work contract. We not only gave on loan books but organised festivals and projected films at night. I greatly enjoyed that time and now I can see how influential it was for my life because from that experiences grew my love for books and libraries. The relationship and the magical connections between books and children were so clear and marvellous that did drew the path for other things I´ve done in my life.
The book bus project ended due to lack of budget and after that experience I worked in a bookshop, then as an editor in several publishing houses and finally as librarian at my current job in an international school. Three years ago I had again the opportunity to get enrolled in another book bus experience, The Bisee Book Bus, and travelled to different parts of Ecuador with students to promote reading  and implement small reading corners in little schools in need. Once more this project went down due to budgets and administrative problems in Ecuador and at the moment we are trying to find a way to make it work.
Lately I´ve started to teach primary students, since this year because my school can´t afford having two librarians. It´s new for me but very enriching and I really enjoy it. Every time I can I find myself looking for a nice short story to retell the children and thinking how to make it more attractive and interactive. Teaching library skills to primary students is also more easy than to secondary students. Maybe sec students are more into more complex studies and I feel they need to learn things that will help them immediately. They are the generation that want all to come fast and be quick. With primary students there is more enjoyment, at least till now.
I also write books for children and teenagers, actually only two published, one for each group age. Having being recommended for publication after participating in the contests has brought happiness and a sense of accomplishment in my profession and my life. All these activities and experiences interwine and make me who I am.

Thing 13 Professional Organizations

Great, I searched in Internet if there was a Library Association at my county and found their blog, Facebook page and Google circles page! I wasn´t aware of this. I do remember attending like a million years ago to a meeting of people thinking on founding an association when I just started working as a librarian. Lots of things happened in my life since then and although I´ve always been working with books, the last 13 years have been at an international school so I´ve been unaware of what they have being doing.
During these past years I´ve being in contact with librarians from other international schools and from time to time we organize a meeting to reflect on our jobs. It´s always difficult to get organized and find the time that suits everyone so we can get together.
I´ve got excited with this discovery and would follow them and maybe get to participate more actively. There is an event which they are promoting for November 10th which would be nice to attend, only that  it would have been better to be up to date with Rudai, then I would have applied for this event sooner. Probably I´m not going to obtain permission from my school... I´ll try anyways. People who attend to this event are considered members of the Ecuadorian Association of Librarians.
I´ve just skimmed the sites but already found an invitation to apply for a grant to attend the IFLA 2016 conference in Ohio!!

These are the links
http://aeb-nacional.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Aso.BibliotecariosEcuador
https://plus.google.com/114330356036953863765/posts

Thing 12 Attending Conferences

The most recent conference I´ve atended was the one organised by the school I work for at the begining of this academic year. It was called ¨Making Classrooms Better¨ and was lectured by Tracy Tokuhama Ph.D, who is an education researcher and Professor of Neuroscience of Learning at Harvard University. She has written many books about teaching and learning and works with 25 schools around the world among a long list of accomplishes in the education field.
It was a two day seminar where all teaching staff had the chance to meet and get to know each other. This year we had many new teachers coming from different parts of the English speaking world.
It was nice to listen to different points of view and experiences in education. Tracey focus ed on these main key messages

• How does the learning process takes place, Mind, Brain and Education involved
• The process to move from a problem to a question
• The flipped classroom

Was a captivating lecture and got us all initiated in a long time study about how to improve our practices at school.
I had a notebook to take notes and almost near to the end I realized that I should have kept drawing mind maps on my notebook as I always used to do. This prove to be more useful to me than just writing down some unconnected phrases. Sadly on this ocassion, as it was a long time I hadn´t attended to a conference, I forgot to do that and just wrote down some keywords that could help me find complete information on the Internet. The truth is I haven´t got back to my notes until right now.
So it´s a good opportunity to affirm my way of taking notes and also to get some reading about this fascinating theme.

Thing 11 Reflective Practice

I hate procrastination. I´m the kind of librarian that wants to get everything done because can´t bear having tasks on a cue. But being a librarian is just that. There are always things to do in the library, it´s difficult to find a moment where all the orders have been done, all the books catalogued, shelved, mended, outstanding books being recalled... there is no way to have an ¨ I´ve finished moment ¨ in any library. You might finish for the day but not totally finished. So, being a person who feels that everything should be done as soon as possible to avoid procrastination is not actually totally good. It might be good for your boss in terms of having administrative things done and on time but not so good for the mystic of librarianship. When you feel that is imperative to be done with those boring tasks before having the pleasure of browsing a new book or enjoying a nice reading moment with students or extending a chat with a patron or retelling a story to a child who requests it... you really need to stop and reflect on priorities. It will always be nice to have an assistant to help with those tasks but is not my case and from what I can see the trend is to reduce staff.

At the moment I´m in half term holidays so I can catch up with Rudai things and feel so glad to accomplish them. At one moment I just thought that I will never finish it and that anyway what was done until then was fine. But I keep progressing and getting over the shyness of being exposed which I feel is a strong impediment that holds me back in this process.  My plan for this holiday is to do at least one thing per day, if two are done I´ll be done by next Wednesday! I like the way how the Rudai team nurture us, this is a great experience and I´m very thankful!