Information Literacy - the beginning

Whist doing the initial readings for information literacy from Langford, L. (1998), Abilock, D. (2004), and Herring, J. and Tarter, A. (2007) I thought to myself it seems very familiar, fairly self-explanatory. I kept thinking back to teaching English and Science, having to write my assessment pieces from scratch, identifying what I wanted the students to achieve, did my task allow that? Then scaffolding it in steps so the students could see the different parts and when explaining it, working through the different phases as they did the task to make sure they were doing what was expected. Then I also remembered the students that had difficulty, that they required more scaffolding, more structure to achieve it and remembered the basic questions - what are you looking for? what do you know or need to know? Where do you need to be at the end?

Then I remembered doing this exactly with my Year 12 English group on Frankenstein. I think it seems that some students 'get' the process without being told the name of it, but as a teacher (or teacher librarian) we need to be aware of it for the students that don't know. Looking at my schools we have a large ESL population, a lot of these students wouldn't know the process, or where to start, even our learning support students would need to know the steps but we mustn't forget that other students will need the process when they do come up against something that is new and different and they think they don't know where to start. So explicit teaching of a process is important - what process? that is something that needs to be decided considering all the different ones out there. It is a process that needs all staff to be on board with and doing in all subjects across all year levels and not left to the TL to teach it during their library lessons.

Page's Paper

I found Page's (1999) paper very enlightening,  I love the way they broke down the way to adopt a collaborative approach at a school. I could actually see myself implementing some of these applications at my schools, again the reinforcement of administrators being critical to the success of it was highlighted but I also liked how they indicated that teachers were critical to implement it. I found this a key aspect about teachers - in my schools if the teacher is not interested in collaborating then it doesn't happen. I even have it where a teacher is interested but as I am only there one day a week it makes it hard to set aside time - even our own. But back to Page (1999), the first Phase of "Establishing Systems and Structures" (p. 208) where it is important to identify the strengths and weakenesses of your own area then the other aspects of school and it identify the 'key' people. Then to look at what you have versus what you want it to be and define your role to the staff in a number of ways. The concept of the plan and using topic sheets was something that I could utilise in my schools, I had started it in a very informal way through email and mentioning it to staff at meetings but to actually have a sheet that identifies the topics for the term in the different key learning areas that all teachers fill in and then indicate if they want planning time for cooperative learning I thought was a great way to start. It also added to records to keep for referring to.

I also thought the communication aspect was vital in my position of only being very part time in my schools, it is something I am trying to improve upon and it was great seeing how important it is in establishing this collaborative plan. But the best thing I liked was the concept of starting small - it was something that most other papers didn't recognise (whether they thought it was implied or not needed due to a whole school approach) as in my position I can only work with one teacher in this detail and for the time required to begin with so to actually have a paper point this out and say it is where to start and not try to change everything at once was great.

This paper is something I can see my future plans revolving around, I am looking forward to outlining a plan using the different phases and components of the phases for my schools. Also to be discussing this with my principals - it gives me somewhere to start specifically. I feel more positive about implementing a collaborative approach now than I have with previous papers.