Over the hump!

I haven't blogged for a while because life became a little crazy in March! I had my daughters 21st birthday party to organise and then I went overseas to New York for nine days in late March. the party went well and we all had a good time and the trip to New York was great even though it was very cold! As you can imagine my study schedule was interrupted while all this was happening. I used the podcasts on my ipod to listen to the modules and downloaded as as many readings asap to take with me for light reading on the long flights! I felt as if Iwas at least keeping up with the current topics but I didn't get around to using the internt on my travels to blog,resarch etc. I was planning drafts of my assignment one in my mind and jotting them down on paper. But by them time I got back in early April I felt sure that I was way behind everyone else in the course and at times I began to panic. Fortunately my daughter who has just finished
Bachelor of Media and Arts course at Deakin uni, was able to calm me down and help me. Whilst I was madly trying to catch up with reading after reading, I began to feel confused, unsure -what were 'my own ideas"? Then I read these re-assuring comments in Kuhlthau " Tomorrow I 'll read this over and over and some parts will fall into place and some still won't...The mind doesn't take everything and put it into order automatically and that's it. Understanding that is the biggest help." Then I knew I wasn't the only one who had felt like this! Eventually I was able to clarify my ideas about the T/L role and I got asssignment one done, I was over the hump.

In retrospective

Whilst I was reading all the materials re ILSC and TL role I jotted down comments on paper because of a lack of internet access on my travels. So I am adding them here retrospectively.
I had experience working in a boys Secondary School College Library from 2006 to 2007 on a full time basis. More recently I have worked there on a casual basis and I have the valuable support of the library staff as mentors for my studies. In this college the library plays a central role in school learning programs and the library staff work cooperatively with the Principal, school leaders, administration, teaching staff and the 1400 students to the achieve the school goals. When I consider my experiences in this library I consider Sue Spence’s “ teacher librarian toolkit for an information literate school community’ to be a relevant and valuable resource which outlines practical and effective strategies that could be used to facilitate student learning outcomes and support teaching staff to enhance new technologies into their teaching methodologies.
'This process of understanding occurs within a culture that is more comfortable for students than it is for teachers because the processes of informing that dominate today did not even exist when most of today's teachers were born.' This quote from Henri and my observations of teachers in schools who are currently coming to terms with the challenges of new technologies, lead me to consider teacher resistance to change as a major obstacle to consider for assignment one.