All posts by Tania Sheko

My name is Tania Sheko, and I am a teacher librarian at Melbourne High School, a selective secondary boys’ school 9-12 in Melbourne, Australia. ‘Teacher librarian’ usually requires a bit of an explanation. I think it’s a ‘School Librarian’ or ‘Library Media Specialist’ in the US and Canada. Often people are not sure what my role is, and it’s not easy to define. I like to think of it as the focus on ‘skills’ and ‘passion’ which exists in the spaces between the teaching of curriculum which is the domain of subject teachers. Some of my areas of focus include all sorts of literacies (information, digital, critical, network, etc.), collaboration with teachers as a kind of third hand (curating resources, differentiating learning, experimenting with blogs), and connecting people to ideas and an understanding of self and others through reading, discussion and debate. Most of our students go on to university, and we are always thinking about how we can best prepare them for the world of university and work. I’m interested in the educational environment, behaviours and directions of tertiary institutions, particularly as they move from traditional to innovative practices with connective courses. Connected learning makes sense to me, and I’m concerned that schools are often still envisioning learning as a passive consumption of content delivered by individual classroom teachers. With so much research-based evidence about student-centred, interest-driven and collaborative learning, and with the findings from the NMC Horizon Project, identifying and describing emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education, I really think it’s time we woke up to ourselves about the anachronistic nature of our educational practices and took action. I learn from my colleagues, but also from my online network, reading their blogs, interacting with them on Twitter, exploring the wealth of their shared expertise online. This is what excites me about learning – connecting with people globally for a shared purpose.
Children's books, Web 2.0

unreal bookshop

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zoomii

Originally uploaded by tsheko

Two fun ways of looking at books are with Viewzi and Zoomii.  Viewzi is a gorgeous visual search engine offering a variety of searching options. But more about that later… If you choose the Amazon Book search, you get a deliciously large image and synopsis of the book. Zoomii takes book searching one step further – it’s an online book shop, displaying books on shelves under different genres. You can move through the bookshop, browsing through books and clicking on them for information. Even if you don’t end up using Amazon’s book buying options, you will still enjoy this virtual bookstore experience.

humour, Web 2.0

Getting dressed in 1805

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[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/eO_4PnO8KDM" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

When muttering profanities under my breath whilst trying to remember usernames and passwords for various Web 2.0 applications, I like to remind myself that, while many things have become complicated by technology of our times, there are some things that have been simplified - thankfully.

Children's books

Why Young Adult?

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New York books

Originally uploaded by tsheko

Read Alert has a fascinating debate about the place of the Young Adult label in fiction. To whet your appetite, here’s a section of what Frank Cottrell Boyce says:

‘It used to be the case that you moved on from children’s fiction to adult fiction, from The Owl Service, maybe, to Catcher in the Rye. There were, of course, some adult authors who were more fashionable with teenage readers than others – Salinger, Vonnegut, Maya Angelou. But these were chosen by teenagers themselves from the vast world of books. Some time ago, someone saw that trend and turned it into a demographic. Fortunes were made but something crucial was lost. We have already ghettoised teenagers’ tastes in music, in clothes and – God forgive us – in food. Can’t we at least let them share our reading? Is there anything more depressing than the sight of a “young adult” bookshelf in the corner of the shop’.

Read the string of comments for a satisfying debate on the issue of Young Adult fiction – is the category YA ‘ghettoising’ or ‘the most flexible, challenging and dynamic genre in publishing’?

play, Web 2.0

Wordle

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wordle Hitler speech

Originally uploaded by tsheko

My first go at Wordle, the word cloud generator using text, has resulted in a rather strong example of the interesting possibilities with this application. Using Hitler’s speech delivered in Munich in April, 1923, the wordle has created a powerful, visual summary of the text, revealing  points of emphasis.

It would be an interesting experiment for students to enter chunks of text in order to visualise main concepts and ideas at a glance. You can also play around with colour and font. I’d be interested to know what other ideas anyone has for this application in the classroom.

Education, Teacher librarians, Web 2.0

Brave new world: learning to connect in new ways

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This video (3 in one) of the forum at Stanford University, "From MySpace to HipHop: new media in the everyday lives of youth", delves into a subject that I'm compulsively drawn to - social networking and the implications of these new ways of connecting. The questions that come out of these presentations are vital to our understanding of youth in order to evaluate and re-evaluate our teaching and learning programs. Some of these questions are:

  • Are we seeing an evolution to a new kind of engaged community?
  • Should we be enthused about the ubiquitous nature of digital media or should we be deeply concerned?
  • As educators, how can we spark the same engagement and motivation that we see on MySpace and Facebook?
  • Are young people changing through their participation with digital media?
  • How does this change their relationship to school and home life?
  • Why do they participate in digital communities rather than real life?

 Although the research study presented here doesn't tell us what to do, only what we need to know, I think that it's vital to realise what we need to know. Our familiarisation with Web 2.0 applications is only the beginning of a new direction in education. More importantly, we need to understand why we are doing this and what else we need to find out. One of the speakers points out that we may be at an inflection point where change is accelerating and old ways disappearing, where systems are no longer working, indescribable innovation is becoming possible. If this is true, then we need to understand it and we need to understand the good and the bad, and we need to harness it.

I've spoken about the significance of audience for young people. The first speaker makes an important point - Web 2.0 and what young people do within this environment is inextricably tied with who they make it for and with. MySpace and Facebook enable deeply social activity not driven by the technology itself. Network publics are an extension of youth's existing publics. How does this change young people's relationship to school and home life?

I'm going back to the question I was asked at my recent interview: how do we get to know adolescents?

This question is at the heart of the research presented here. The goal of the research is to understand these changes from the point of view of youth themselves. As the first speaker said, before we can design our own adult-centred agendas for education, we have to try to take young people's agendas and experiences seriously on their own terms.

Have a look at Heather Horst's submission to the website Digital youth research. I found this link on Hey Jude. Thanks.

Web 2.0

Regional libraries

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2nd Spider Web – 5

Originally uploaded by meeyauw

In search of a Web 2.0 presence at my local library, I eventually discovered an impressive array of things. I say ‘eventually’ because the link from the homepage was not outstanding in any way. Apart from clearly written explanations of Web 2.0 applications, as well as links in each section, the library boasted the following:

  • a readers’ advisory wiki
  • a training wiki
  • Facebook profile, including a catalogue search
  • Librarything-generated book cover images and tag clouds
  • MySpace youth forum (to meet online and discuss music, reading & movies)
  • Podcasts author talks
  • Links to Second Life resources and directory of virtual worlds by category (eg. for kids, for techies, for teens, for newbies, for artists, for 40+, etc.)
  • YouTube (list of popular video hosting sites

That’s a great start, and I think the problem of attracting users here is the same as in school libraries. There is a lot of great stuff there, it’s a matter of marketing to users.

Education, Teacher librarians, Uncategorized, Web 2.0

The web will never replace human interaction

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Restoration… Hagia Sophia scaffolding

Originally uploaded by annpar

Every day I’m reminded of the importance of the human presence behind the use of technology in teaching and learning. We need the good old-fashioned teacher to support the resource-based and student-centred learning more than ever. Before, during and after the research or learning process, we need, more than ever, the educator to explain, inspire, moderate, explain, encourage, supplement, support, explain …   Otherwise the joy and understanding will go right out of the student’s assignment and the student will loathe the assignment and loathe learning. These are my thoughts as a teacher, teacher-librarian and parent.

Here’s what someone else had to say  – scroll down to the halfway point.

It’s not a dichotomy – the old fashioned teacher and the 21 century teacher – it’s the same teacher.