2013-10-25   It doesn't have to cost anything

Post date: Oct 26, 2013 3:10:58 AM

Yesterday I took part in a really valuable PD experience. Rob, my HOD & I have both identified the need to improve the libraries online presence as part of our 2013-14 PRD targets. Our Line Managers are extremely supportive and we have been allocated time to work on this. Yesterday was our first session.

We included Yvonne in this session. Yvonne is a volunteer in my library who is studying to be a Library Technician. She is enthusiastic, willing and understands what we would like to achieve. My experience with Yvonne as a volunteer has been that once she masters a task she will independently produce consistently useful work. She is exactly what I need. I am incredibly fortunate to have her as a volunteer. 

The other two participants were library staff at the secondary campus who are also capable and willing to provide input into collaborative teaching and learning sessions such as this.

We were looking at how we can use and standardise our LibGuides and integrate them in the most user-friendly way with FROG (our Virtual Learning Environment), Oliver (our Library Management System) and the school webpages. I have been using LibGuides for more than two years now, but because of lack of time, probably in a very basic, as needs must, kind of a way. The other four were novices.

Rob & I outlined what we hoped to achieve as an end result. We then brainstormed how we might reach that end. Rob drew rough diagrams of the pages that we want and we discussed how these might be linked. We looked at examples from other schools.

I gave a brief overview of how to create and copy pages and then we were ready to experiment.

Yvonne had already been playing at home the night before and is developing a LibGuide for our Middle School Novel Knockout Competition. She was keen to perfect a book scrolling widget. Working together, using HTML, problem-solving and persistence we finally worked it out. I recalled some great advice from our colleague, Katie Day in Singapore, to make a LibGuide of boxes that you want to use again to save repeating the process. Great advice. Page made! I was able to share with Yvonne a tip from Linda Twitchett, at the Australian International School in Singapore, to use Blendspace to neatly embed YouTube videos. Yvonnes page is looking great and I was so pleased to have learnt so much in the process of developing it.  

I have been using HTML to put tables into my LibGuides. Bae showed me how to do use tables without using HTML as she developed a page for Wider Reading Lists. Azwina and I looked at different ways to make buttons for our pages.

Rob and I spent time looking at FrogOS and finding ways to provide single sign on facilities for users and keeping copyrighted resources secure. We also concluded that it may be best to purchase some icons & images to use on our pages to ensure quality and continuity.

We all learnt so much in these four hours. I think we were all keen to go on experimenting and ultimately producing something that we are proud to share with our school community.