Death to the Collaborators!

Shock horror! After having the importance of teacher/TL collaboration drummed into me by every article I've read over the past 10 weeks I stumbled across a recent article by Michael Eisenberg and Janet Murray, creators of the Big 6.

Eisenberg, M.B. and Murray, J. (2011) Big 6 by the month: a new approach. Library Media Connection, 29(6), pp.10-13 (Can you tell I'm in essay mode?)

I  quote: "Systematic, large-scale, comprehensive collaboration is just not possible given the number of library and technology professionals in most schools."

Well, that's a bit of a shock to a young student like myself. I think I'm suffering from Carol Kuhlthau's uncertainty principle, although I'm not sure if I'm in the Zone of Intervention yet. Can I just hide under a rock until everyone's made up their minds?

Actually, it's not all bad news from the Big 6 twins. They may have thrown collaboration out of the window, but you should still be 'connecting' with the curriculum, and they've put together a month by month programme so that all the TLs will be doing the same things at the same time and can share ideas, plans, etc. That still sounds suspiciously like collaboration to me though.

Time, Time, Time, see what's become of me..

Thank you Mr's Simon and Garfunkel for this week's catchy title. Your royalties are in the post.

I have a vague recollection of reading about time management earlier this week and it all seemed to make some sort of sense at the time. Time, however, is transitory and illusive. I know that time must be managed, but it is rather like herding kittens; you think you've got some time to do something, but before you know it it's gone and you're hunting around after some more.
Nevertheless, time is ticking on and the deadlines for assignments draw ever nearer, so it seems I must shepherd tasks into specific time slots and guard them diligently.

The next assignment for ETL401 is all about information literacy, and I read an interesting piece by some Finnish writers (Tuominen, Savolainen and Talja) who laid a heavy emphasis on the relationship between user and technology as a major part of this topic. Having just left my school and handed in my laptop I have to agree with them. My relationship with my old laptop is extremely strained and I am feeling significantly less information literate with every slow search and internet crash. I joke, of course, but it does highlight to me the need for decent technology access if you are to make use of these skills, which is probably still one of the biggest issues facing teacher libarians, and schools in general, today

The Web of Self-Deceit

I have a child in my class at the moment who is convinced that he is an awesome reader despite the glaring fact that he struggles to read anything longer than  a basic cvc word. The power for self-deceit is quite remarkable.
My readings this week have demonstrated that the Web lends itself to producing a whole generation of students convinced that they are fantastic researchers. After all, they can type what they want into Google and up pop hundreds of results. They can cut and paste to their hearts delight and hey presto... instant assignment. Barely even any need to know what you are researching!
Well, that may be a slight overstatement, but it does not seem to be that far from the truth. Students are over-reliant on Google, inflexible in their approaches to searching, and even those who demonstrate good reading strategies when using print-based text seem to abandon what they have learned when faced with online text. To cap it off they seem to have total faith in everything they see online. The innocence of youth may be sweet and endearing but has no place online.
The alarming fact is that this confidence in their own online infallibility seems to be developing at startlingly early ages. The onus is on those of us engaged in the early years of education to address these issues before the students becpme over-confident and cease listening to reason.
Here I come to save the day...!

Time and Time Again

While the pleasure of further reading on the benefits of collaboration is neverending, what I have taken away from this weeks' readings is that successful collaboration between a teacher and the teacher librarian is massively time-consuming and difficult to achieve, but ultimately worth it. the question I ask myself is that, if it is so difficult to find the time for a single collaboration, how can the teacher librarian possibly find time to effectively collaborate with all members of staff?
Todd recommends a 'Just do it' attitude. (Thank you Nike). I guess if you want it enough you can make it happen..