Custom Course Material readings

After reading through the custom course package there are a few bits of information and insights I thought I would share.

The first article by James Henri, Understanding the Information Literate School Community about creating informational literate schools. The focus should be upon teaching students to think and reason interdependently, and to place priority on transforming information into knowledge and knowledge into information. I am still vague on what this really means. What did strike me while reading the article is the description of a ‘selfish learning’ school or a school that does not share information and knowledge-a what NOT to do list:

-Multiple teachers preparing the same lessons
-New teachers having to develop lesson plans without recourse to a database from which they can retrieve previously used materials
-Teachers attending professional development courses without reporting their learning, and its potential application, to the wider school community


Focusing on NOT doing these practices is great place to start. I can develop opposite practices and begin to share information and knowledge, and model information literacy to the school community. Rarely have I seen team teaching or sharing of information and the above list seems to be the norm. I will spend some time thinking about what the counter practices of each of these items are as I develop my role as a Teacher Librarian and use this list as a guide to keep myself in check.

Within the article there are concrete examples of mapping progress as an information literate school such as having students build electronic portfolios, or logs of evidence of the level of information literacy, and learning they are experiencing. This is something I would like to explore. Also, encouraging student collaboration in many aspects of their learning. This is something that does not happen very often and can be very disruptive if students are not used to working in this way. I have found that some classes have had no experience collaborating with each other. He also suggests that a TL fight for an unscheduled library timetable and maintain an open-door policy for information seekers. I have only seen this done to any extent in one library where the TL left the afternoon blocks open for classes or individuals to come in, and for collaborative units. However her designation was .6TL and .4Prep so she was able to keep the library open full time.

He talks about Constructivist learning, which is a study in itself, and I would like to learn about some concrete examples of lessons and activities that encourage this type of learning. How does this look in practice?

Constructivism
The term refers to the idea that learners construct knowledge for themselves---each learner individually (and socially) constructs meaning---as he or she learns. Constructing meaning is learning; there is no other kind. The dramatic consequences of this view are twofold;
1) we have to focus on the learner in thinking about learning (not on the subject/lesson to be taught):
2) There is no knowledge independent of the meaning attributed to experience (constructed) by the learner, or community of learners.