Gold Coast - Lakeside

Jann SmallLiaison LibrarianHealth and Human SciencesSouthern Cross UniversityWhat your Teacher Librarian can do for youMargie WallinLiaison LibrarianEducationSouthern Cross University

Good afternoon thank you for the opportunity to share our video production project to showcase what a teacher librarian can do for student teachers on placement.

1

Regional university on the east coast of Australia established in 19943 campuses at Lismore, Coffs Harbour and the Gold Coast16,500 students, including 7,000+ distance education and offshore studentsOver 200 courses at undergraduate, masters and doctorate level

Just a little bit of background.Southern Cross University is a regional university originally situated at #Lismore, in far northern NSW. #It now also has campuses at Coffs Harbour, Tweed Heads and the southern Gold Coast.#We have some 16,500 students#and offer over 200 different degrees2

Coffs Harbour Education Campus

Margie & I live at Coffs Harbour 3

a lovely campus with lots of space.4

SCU offers a range of degrees in the field of Education, from Early Childhood to Secondary to Masters just over 1000 students across all programs.5

At SCU, the Education liaison librarian and academics have been trying to think of ways to encourage our students to visit and use school libraries, while theyre on placement.6

IASL Picture Gallery: School Librarieshttp://www.iasl-online.org/advocacy/resources/picture-gallery-links.html

In the lead-up to their practicums, local TLs would occasionally be able to come and talk to the students during lectures or tuts, but the logistics of coordinating schedules was a nightmare. Doing this across 3 campuses proved just impractical.7

Do student teachers visit your school library while on placement, beyond the meet and greet?

At the local teacher librarian network meetings, TLs were also commenting on how they rarely got to see our student teachers while they were in the school on placements.How many of you have students on placement at your school? [just a show of hands]Have any of you had more than a token visit from those students? [another show of hands].Maybe you can share your stories with us later wed be interested in how that happened!

8

Series of short video clips...Research ProjectWhat your teacher librarian can do for you

So, at one of the network meetings, the group discussed ways of solving this problem. They came up with the idea of a virtual option. The initial idea was for a series of short video clips, using an interview style with some of our local real life teacher librarians talking about real life situations and opportunities. Two other issues came to light during our discussions one was the importance of the support of school principals in library ventures. The other was the invaluable services that local libraries could provide for students on placement. So we decided to include input from both these groups.9

Found some volunteers

Local libraries as filming venues

Created a list of leading questions which would allow us to showcase key issues

FundingThe nuts and bolts

Now, how did the team go about this? Surprisingly, eight teacher librarians agreed to star in the clips, along with two of their school principals and four were happy for their libraries to feature in the clips. We decided to create a list of leading questions questions that would enable our interviewees to talk about all the things they ever wanted to share with pre-service teachers & never had the chance! The participating teacher librarians chose the questions theyd like to answer and all had input into how their own filming session was structured. Originally, the plan was for the project team to do the scripting, filming, editing well, everything really! But we were spared some of that as funding became available and

10

the team was able to engage the services of a professional video production team. There was relief all round and then 11

it was lights, camera, action! We had all the gear fluffy microphones, cheat sheets12

Each venue was different of course - we needed to deal with lighting and external noise issues in some clips you can hear playground noises / lorikeets in others the air-conditioner provides a background hum.13

Hints for filming

Whilst we thought that wine & chocolate would be great incentives, our participants had to be happy with lots of TLC, water, the ability to do multiple takes, and the promise that the bloopers would never be made public. 14

We planned for

2 film shoots, at 2 locations separate primary/secondary clips$$$6 clipsWe did

5 film shoots, at4 locationsblended clips$$$$$11 clipsThe need to be flexible

Things didnt go quite according to plan what a surprise! We ended up with more participants than wed originally thought which was great.Some participants had more to say than others again which was fine!And we ended up filming at more libraries than anticipated as this suited the participants. This too was great, but it did impact on the final cost. We also produced a list of hints & tips for anyone doing similar projects.15

Supportive principals

the library is an extension of the classroomthe TL is a curriculum leader & an information specialistthe TL is a cooperative learning partner with the classroom teacher

We thought wed play some short excerpts from the clips to give you an idea of we produced. Well start with some comments from two of our local principals. It was a highlight of the project to have input from principals who are so supportive of the role of TLs in schools. Our apologies in advance for the expressions it was a challenge to extract the relevant sections of the clips.16

Teamwork & collaboration

Despite volunteering, none of our TLs wanted to be filmed independently suddenly, they were all too shy! This is our first group 4 primary TLs who wanted to work together. They allocated specific questions amongst themselves and discussed how they wanted their clip to be filmed.This group features two of our local secondary TLs, Megan and Louise who teamed up at one film shoot, And, as you saw earlier, we had two sessions at other primary schools where the principal was involved they worked as a team with the TL.Lastly we have our City Council librarians.17

Lets start with Lyn..Tanya.Annie.Julie18

Segments on this clip include:

- words of advice- get a library card- recommended resourcesDont forget the public libraries

We wanted to include some content from our city council library colleagues, so we had two staff from the local council library work together to address specific questions. This is important as student teachers on placement will often need to access such local resources and we really wanted to make our students aware of this. A few words from Carolyn and Judy19

Its important to have a laugh

Some words of advice

For all those fans of wikipedia

There was much laughter during the project, & especially during the filming we thought wed share this snippet from Megan and Louise.

And the last word goes to Megan on Wikipedia! This came at the end of the clip dealing with information literacy and entertained the film crew as well.

20

SCU Library libguide for students going on placement / practicumhttp://libguides.scu.edu.au/practicum

YouTube http://www.youtube.com/libraryresources

TeacherTubehttp://www1.teachertube.com/viewProfile.php?user=Sculibresources

Where are the clips now?

Originally, the clips were designed just for our SCU students and staff they were incorporated into unit guides for students heading out on their placements. However, it soon became obvious that the clips had wider appeal so we uploaded them to YouTube and TeacherTube, and circulated the links to people we thought would find them useful.21

http://libguides.scu.edu.au/practicum

This is the libguide Margie has put together specifically for our students on placement. Links to the clips are embedded in unit materials, for both the primary and secondary placement units. Rather than trying to get a local teacher librarian to attend some of the lectures and/or tutorials, lecturers have played a number of clips in class time.One of the most viewed clips is the one where Lyn refers to the fact that teacher librarians are able to provide a DET username/password for student teachers to use while on placement. This is a really really big thing for our students because they are unable to access DET intranet resources in any other way they arent given access as uni students.22

http://robbo753.blogspot.com/2011/05/activity-21-teachertube.html

Our clips have also been noted in a couple of blogs great publicity for us! 23

http://jherring.wordpress.com/2011/03/

You may also be familiar with James Herring, a lecturer in teacher librarianship at Charles Sturt University. Hes made some positive comments about our clips.24

http://www.connect2tls.info/for-teacher-educators.html

Some of our clips are now linked from this new website, which is aimed at principals and teacher educators as well as pre-service and in-service teachers. The site focuses on ways to improve teaching and learning by connecting with TLs something Im sure is important to all of us.25

MANYthanks for sending these videos. They're excellent, much needed resources;We havenoticed a lack of promotionofschool and public libs inour BEd course. We'll pass them on to the BEd coordinator.We'll certainly share them with our MEd(Teacher-Librarianship) students. Dr Hilary HughesSenior Lecturer. Coordinator/Lecturer - Master of Education (Teacher-Librarianship); Master of Education (Information-Learning Connections).

These clips are fantastic.. I will place some links onto my Education Study Desk for students to access across all courses; Ill certainly be highlighting them during classes as well, as both information and motivational resources. Initially I thought we might want to do a similar series.. but I cant see how we could possibly improve on what youve already achieved... they are indeed generic and relevant across the board.Congrats to everyone involved on producing a valuable series - an educational and promotional tool .Ron PauleyFaculty Librarian for Education Library Services | Global Learning Division

And some comments from a couple of staff at other universities. Were delighted that the clips are also being used by other unis, with their own student teachers. 26

Schools are definitely the place to start making a difference so we hope that these resources will encourage our student teachers to take full advantage of the wonderful teacher librarians out there and the resources that school libraries provide to our younger students. Hopefully, then, this stays with them later in life & theyll continue to see the value in libraries and librarians whether its at university or the local public library.27

Louise Cleary (Teacher Librarian), Coffs Harbour Senior CollegeMegan Hart (Teacher Librarian), Woolgoolga High SchoolLyn Howlin (Teacher Librarian), Coffs Harbour Public SchoolAnnie Madden (Teacher Librarian), St Augustine's Primary School, Coffs HarbourDr Jake Madden (Principal), St Augustine's Primary School, Coffs HarbourTanya Molloy (Teacher Librarian), Woolgoolga Public SchoolJulie Morgan (Teacher Librarian), Tyalla Public SchoolAudrey Nay (Teacher Librarian), Sandy Beach Public SchoolTony Watts (Principal), Mary Help of Christians Primary School, Sawtell Mary Welsh (Deputy Principal & Teacher Librarian), Mary Help of Christians Primary School, SawtellJudy Atkinson (Children & Youth Coordinator), Coffs Harbour City Council LibraryCarolyn Elmes (Team Leader, Information & Outreach), Coffs Harbour City Council LibraryIndependent Productions http://independentproductions.com.au/ SCU School of Education staff and students

Special thanks to

Wed like to acknowledge all the people involved in the project & thank them for their time, enthusiasm & energy. 28

Thanks for the opportunity to tell you about our project. Were happy to answer any questions.29