TL Under Construction

The learning journal of a developing Teacher Librarian

TL Under Construction

Get eSmart-vsc — 2011 in Review

January 11th, 2012 · No Comments · Uncategorized

One of the projects I initiated and worked on for the year was our school’s digital citizenship website. At the end of the year WordPress sent out a very neat stats review presented in a very user-friendly way. You can see the report by clicking on the image above or the link:     http://getesmart-vsc.com/2011/annual-report/

It was not only fun to watch and informative but got me thinking about ways to improve the readership in 2012.

During Term 4, I worked out that we could insert an RSS feed into the school’s Moodle site that would run in the sidebar and have clickable links to the posts. That made it more visible to the in-school community, but as we tweaked the feed on the Moodle site just before holidays I have yet to see if it will boost readership.

Our subscription rate is low and that is what I really hope to boost. Not only is the rate low but half of the subscribers are from outside the school community. So next year I plan to:

  • post a bulletin on our school eWorkspace each time a new post comes out, using a one sentence hook or question as well as inviting people to subscribe to it.
  • have the library team introduce the site to all the new year 7 groups and encourage them to subscribe during their orientation.
  • email the H of D’s and Principals each time a post comes out inviting them to read it and subscribe. They had been invited to subscribe last year but none took up the invite. Advertise, advertise!
  • use more tagging of keywords in my blog posts for better search results. I’ve been slack about doing this.
  • share the posts out to my PLN to increase interest in that area too.

Gee, these almost look like New Years resolutions, but we won’t call them that, we’ll call them goals.

 

 

 

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Diving into Digital Fiction: The Year 8′s Try it On

December 30th, 2011 · No Comments · Future Directions, Teacher Librarian as Leader, Wide Reading

As stated previously, thank goodness for school breaks, what would educational bloggers do without them?

Photo courtesy: t-dot-s-dot Flickr cc

After all my digital fiction groundwork, a couple of meetings with the collaborating teacher (Leanne) and a few emails, we introduced her Year 8 English students to digital fiction midway through Term 4. We decided to approach it from an exploration perspective rather than an in-depth assignment. I was especially glad we had when the intro session discussion revealed that almost none of them were even aware digital fiction existed (we thought this might be the case).  Two of the students read manga online and one student had heard of fan fiction. None of them had used an e-reader although many were aware of Kindles (none had seen one). They all knew you could ‘read books on an iPad’ but none had tried this.  I should also mention the level of interest in reading was average or below average for this group; this was one of the reasons the teacher initially approached me.

After a brief discussion about what they already knew, I showed them several examples on the IWB (interactive white board) and talked briefly about the differences and about the idea of linear and non-linear stories. The teacher allowed them to explore the different types of online fiction and the stories on offer for the rest of the session. During the second session they were to decide on one to read and review. Because the students would have only two weeks to do this, if a longer piece of fiction was chosen the student was only required to review the equivalent of one chapter (to be negotiated with the teacher).

The literature review questions posed to the students covered:

  • their thoughts on what digital fiction is and how it differs from traditional novels
  • title, brief summary and the other titles they looked at before settling on the one they reviewed
  • discussion of the digital/interactive techniques used by the author, why they may have been chosen and the effect on the story (eg. distraction, add-on, enhancement, essential).
  • students overall opinion of their chosen type of digital/interactive/online fiction and some discussion on their preference between it and traditional novels.
Results were interesting. The teacher reported that interest and engagement were high. Students’ responses confirmed  our perception of increased level of engagement; Leane thought the written opinions were more detailed than usual. Most students chose to review Inanimate Alice and Choose Your Own Adventure stories. Was this perhaps because they were the most familiar forms? We should include a question next time about why they chose the stories they did. We should also include some exploration questions about the author to help students better understand their motives for using certain devices and techniques in their works. The biggest surprise? Many of the students expressed a preference for the traditional delivery of a story via a book over the the digital method.
The good news was that word spread amongst the teachers about using the digital fiction. I also collaborated  to introduce this with one of the Year 9 classes. We modified some of the questions and the teacher reported high levels of engagement for this class too. I did not get to debrief with the teacher but she was keen to do this again next year. I look forward to further developing this look at new forms of fiction in 2012.

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Professionally Engaged

November 26th, 2011 · No Comments · Teacher Librarian as Leader, Uncategorized

Photo courtesy: ganesha.isis on Flickr cc

I love being part of the TL professional community; knowing there are hundreds of TLs out there sharing, watching each others backs, advising and growing better together – it is such a buzz! I also enjoy writing so am pleased when I can combine the two. Writing opportunities have been coming in at a comfortably steady pace this year.

This term I’ve had three writing tasks on the bubble.

1/ Finding out and experimenting with digital fiction has been a focus for me this entire year. I’ve been blogging about it as I go (more to come in next post) and Pat Pledger of Pledger Consulting contacted me about the possibility of contributing to an upcoming publication. The book is a collection of practical ideas for TLs – things they can apply now to their services and programs. I’ve contributed a chapter explaining about Digital and Online Fiction, how to use it, why try it and many links to examples suitable for high school classes.

2/ FYI is a magazine published by SLAV (School Library Association of Victoria). They approached me about contributing to the next issue (Term 1, 2012). The theme for the upcoming issue is: Learning Communities so I wrote an article about the PLEs (Personal Learning Environments) I’ve been developing for the Year 9′s at the high school. We are about to launch this with them in a couple of weeks. Very exciting, more to come in a post and of course the article.

3/ I am also a freelance writer of teaching notes for HarperCollins Publishing. My latest assignment – writing teaching notes for an upcoming picture book entitled “Fearless in Love” — a story about one very lovable dog. Writing for picture books allow me to revel in all the fun I used to have with my students in a past primary school library job. Fun! You can find some of the other Teaching Notes I’ve written by clicking on the Teaching Notes tab at the top of this blog.

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Diving into Digital Fiction: Book Camp pt. 2

November 14th, 2011 · No Comments · Future Directions, Wide Reading

Is there such a word as ‘backblog’? If there is I have a serious case of it. If there isn’t such a word, I claim it as my own.

This photo courtesy: kodomut via Flickr cc licence

Last post I started to unpack the many discussions that took place at BookCamp during the Melbourne Writers Festival. I was eager to attend BookCamp to hear Kate Pullinger talk about her journey as an author with digital (in particular, transmedia) fiction. I was not disappointed!

The topic under discussion for the session she led was:

Why do we read? What do the new technologies offer to stories?

We first tackled the question of why we read fiction.

  • to escape, to relax, for enjoyment
  • to discover (empathy, other ways of thinking)
  • to inform

Included in this was discussion on what we want as a reader from the experience.

  • good writing
  • a good story
  • experience of being taken away – a connection to the writing

We then turned to the big question. What does that mean in terms of digital transformation? We identified books as a form of content management/delivery. Their advantage is one of minimal technology – no computer, no electricity, no downloading etc.. One still has to learn how to use them.

What happens when you take the content beyond the book? How do you retain that ideal reading experience?

Kate gave us a walk-through of a chapter of her transmedia fiction, “Inanimate Alice“. She spoke of how the work took on a life of its own (unanticipated) in terms of pedagogy/education. Schools were using it as a gateway into digital literacy and multimedia. Fanfiction popped up then started flooding in. We watched an example of some authored by year 5′s at a local school.  Kate spoke of some of the decisions she made while writing IA that addressed the ‘why we read’ issues.

  • the story is told in first person narrative – for engagement purposes
  • no representation of faces in the illustration side of the work – they trialled that and the reader response was not as good. Readers wanted to imagine Alice for themselves.

We moved to discussing the evolution of story-telling. Stories in the 19th Century depended heavily on detail. Kate had a quote (must find out whose!) about literature from that time containing “a continual rain of detail’. With the advent of cinema there was a move toward economy of detail and a stronger emphasis on action/plot. Digital fiction removes the detail further by supplying the visual in a fashion not disimilar to picture books. Text and visual still need to work together. Visual literacy is necessary to understand the story.

We went on to explore the relationship between interactive/digital fiction and gaming. What gaming can bring to story-telling is the notion of play. Kate’s research found there is a divide between those who want to be told/given a story and those who want to have control and make choices over the story. Kate spoke of how they(creative team) worked hard on the design of Inanimate Alice so movem nt into more interactivity occurred pleasantly and inobrusively. They were aware of the importance of enhancement but not at the expense of the story.

The dicussion turned to the question of whether some genres or types of stories leant themselves to digitial/interactive story-telling better than others. The biggest barrier at this point it was agreed was the screen experience. As screen technology improves more people will be willing to experience stories from them.

 

 

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Diving into Digital Fiction: BookCamp: The Story of the Future

October 7th, 2011 · No Comments · Future Directions, Wide Reading

Thank goodness for term breaks! It allows us time to catch up on our blogs.

Back in September I had the good luck to run across BookCamp organized by the Melbourne Writers Festival and if:book Australia. It was described in the program as:

… an ‘unconference’ and its mission is to explore the future of new book technologies – and consider how storytelling can be supported or transformed by new media. An ‘unconference’ turns the centrally-programmed, top-down traditional conference model on its head. It’s a one-day, open, user-generated conversation where participants choose the agenda. Three international guests – Kate Pullinger (UK), Kassia Krozser (US), Hugh McGuire (Canada) – will act as provocateurs to spark conversation and ideas, while participants form groups to discuss, design, debate and create. Bookcamp is for writers, readers, typographers, cover designers, technologists, gamers, booksellers, literary agents, publishers and geeks – all those with a stake in the future of books.

It sounded intriguing and exciting (unconference!) and it was a chance to hear Kate Pullinger speak so how could I resist. Thankfully my school is very supportive and so gave me a PD day to attend.

A broad range of topics were suggested by the audience at the start (see photo) and I chose to take part in the following three:

  • Non-linear narrative
  • Why do we read? What do the new technologies offer to stories?
  • Social reading: The conversations that make books
I’ll blog about each but will break it into two posts for ease of reading.

Session 1: Non-Linear Narrative

This session attracted a large group of people. I went hoping to glean a bit more into the writing process of non-linear fiction and hopefully some new sites to explore. However, most of the attendees did not even know what non-linear fiction was and so I ended up showing them examples as we defined what we were talking about. The session was suggested by an author from S. Australia who is writing non-linear fiction for her PhD in Lit and was hoping to sound out an audience. It was interesting to hear her ideas and we also discussed why fiction might be written this way. Many in the audience questioned how difficult it would be to pull meaning from it. There were comparisons made to abstract art and projecting personal meaning that I thought was interesting. We also discussed new understandings of the brain and reading. Someone suggested we read Frank Rose’s book “The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue and the Way We Tell Stories” (it’s now on my wishlist).

Other sites and books that came up in the conversation:

‘This One Time …’ is a collection of surprising true stories, the sort of stories you might share with friends or hear from a stranger at a party. Someone tells a story, which reminds you of that time that thing happened to you …
Everyone has surprising stories, share them with the world on ‘This One Time …’.

Each mystery takes the form of an illustrated short story, with the reader included as a character in the narrative. The opening establishes the setting, characters, and the problem(s) to be solved. In the middle pages, the reader gathers data (“clues”) about the problem by talking to characters, performing experiments, and so on. The story builds to a “solve-it” page, where the reader is asked to submit a solution to the problem. Doing so directs the reader to an individual appropriate outcome and an exciting conclusion to the story (or in some mysteries, the next episode).

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