I know we are all busy at this time of year so I wanted to give you a space to share something that you find useful for your own CPD. Do you regularly listen to a podcast? Do you have a favourite Youtube clip? Do you read a blog or have you recently read a great non-fiction book? If so please post below in the comments below and tell us why you find it so useful.
I am going to share something that I have signed up to. It is called The Teaching Space and is run by Martine Ellis who has a teaching background. I love her podcasts because they give me an insight into teaching along with some very practical ideas I can use in my own profession. I have had some interesting conversations with her and was also interviewed by her a while back. The interview can be found here.
That looks like a wonderful resource, Elizabeth! I've bookmarked it for future reference. I really enjoyed your interview, too. School librarians talking to teachers about what they offer is really important - as you say, so many have a complete misconception of the role.
I have quite a few resources I use regularly for CPD, but one that stands out at the moment is Teen Librarian (http://teenlibrarian.co.uk, ), run by Matt Imrie, who is a youth librarian in the USA and former UK school librarian. This web site is absolutely full of ideas and advice on all sorts of things from books for teenagers to library displays and all aspects of providing a library service for young people. There's also a regular newsletter, Teen Librarian Monthly. I find it's a great site for helping me keep in touch with YA fiction and school library issues while I'm not working in a school.
Thanks for highlighting Matt’s website Wendy. It really is full of useful content! I also like a newsletter published by Lucas Maxwell called The Portable Magic Dispenser. Worth signing up as full of practical ideas too.
I want to publicise the presentation slides that are now available from the JCS 2019 Digital Literacy conference that took place last week. I was very fortunate this year that my school paid for me to attend the conference. Last year, however, I was not so lucky and found the presentation slides an invaluable way of getting an insight into all the fabulous talks that took place. This year, as with last year, I have been particularly inspired by Dr Graham Gardner, Librarian at Abingdon School. To me he always has an innovative way of approaching things. Last year I took his approach of talking the teacher/students' language and have been re-developing my resource information and guides to tie in with exam papers and assessment objectives, rather than just subject. This year, I was fascinated at how he tackles the sea of blank faces when teaching fake news by getting students hooked first through neuroscience and social psychology with the ideas that we as a human race are actually completely useless at making decisions and shy away from standing out from popular opinion. The slides that I have looked at so far haven't come with accompanying notes (last year many did) but you can still get a very good idea of the content - and you can always email the speaker to learn more!
Elizabeth, in the transcript for your interview with Martine this statement has been inserted: The more students look online for information, the less skilled they get at actually finding what they really need. Is it a quote from the interview or is it from somewhere else? I'd like to use it as a discussion starter!
Hi
I had to have another listen to the interview myself and it seems that it is something that I did say. I don't think I took it from anywhere because when you listen to the recording it just seems to come out and I certainly didn't plan what I was going to say. I'm happy for you to use it as a discussion starter.