Learning for the Future
Working Toward National Standards for School Libraries in Canada
Paper Abstracts
Introduction
Liz Kerr and Carol Koechlin
Confronting the ‘Crisis of Significance” in 21st
Century School Libraries
The demands of life in the 21st century have evolved
dramatically, giving rise to the need for a complex set
of interrelated and interdependent skills in order to
cope with this complexity and to achieve success in
life. Unfortunately, there is a widening gap between
the world experienced and created by youth outside of
school and their in-school experiences leading to what
Michael Wesch has called a “crisis of significance”
(2009) facing teachers and schools today. Many would
suggest school libraries today are also struggling to
find their place and regain their significance in the
learning lives of students. How should schools and
school libraries respond to this ‘crisis’ and change the
learning landscape to better match 21st century
realities? This paper explores these issues and
clarifies the characteristics of 21st century learners and
learning, and provides ideas for re-visioning school
Ray Doiron
Part I: Student Needs
Faculty of Education
University of Prince Edward Island
550 University Avenue
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
Canada C1A 4P3 raydoiron@upei.ca
Marlene Asselin
Department of Language and Literacy Education
2125 Main Mall
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6T 1Z4 marlene.asselin@ubc.ca
libraries to meet the expectations for 21st century
learning.
Response to Young Canadians in a Wired World
Phase III: Teachers’ Perspectives
A recent Canadian research report published by The
Media Awareness Network provides another
opportunity for school librarians to speak directly to all
teachers about the future of learning and the role the
Learning Commons plays in facilitation of best
teaching and learning. This cross Canada study,
Young Canadians in a Wired World Phase III:
Teachers’ Perspectives, brings to the fore concerns
that we hear from classroom teachers right around the
globe, thus it is appropriate and necessary for us to
respond.
We have taken the key findings of the executive
summary of this report to frame our Response of the
Learning Commons Teacher Librarian April 2012
One Common Goal: Student Learning a report of
Findings and Recommendations of the New Jersey
School Library Survey Phase 2.
Professor David V. Loertscher
School Library Websites: The Bricks and Mortar of
the Virtual Library Space
New thinking about the school library as the centre of
a learning commons puts equal emphasis on the
physical and virtual space. School library practitioners
are actively engaged in transforming their physical
spaces, but many of Ontario's school libraries have no
digital home, or one that does not adequately serve
program and user needs. A strong, well-designed
library website is essential for today's school libraries
for providing access to digital collections, scaffolding
Anita Brooks Kirkland
School of Library and Information Science
San Jose State University
Twitter @davidloertscher
Carol Koechlin
Educational Consultant
Twitter @infosmarts
Website
https://sites.google.com/site/schoollearningcommons/
Published by the Center for International
Scholarship in School Libraries (CISSL)
Prepared by
Dr. Ross J Todd
Dr. Carol A Gordon
Dr. Ya-Ling Lu
B.Mus., B.Ed., MM., MLIS
Ontario Certified Teacher,
School Librarianship Specialist
Anita is the Consultant for K-12 Libraries at the
Waterloo Region District School Board, where she
supports library programs and services in 118
elementary and secondary schools. The district's [
http://library.wrdsb.ca/ Library Learning Commons
website, created by the region's teacher-librarians
under Anita's leadership, has received international
attention.
Anita was a member of the writing team for the
learning and providing ubiquitous access to the library,
its resources, programs and collaborative learning
spaces. There are lessons to be learned from other
library sectors about the role of the "digital branch".
The paper makes the case for creating standards for
well-designed, rich and usable websites, and the
support structures required to make them successful.
Ontario School Library Association's guideline
document, Together for Learning: School Libraries
and the Emergence of the Learning Commons
(2010).
Website: http://www.bythebrooks.ca
Twitter: @AnitaBK
Redefining reading and the role of the teacherlibrarian
The complexity of reading online impacts every facet
of education. As we trudge through our current digital
infancy we need to approach learning in these
environments as a new form of literacy. The role of
the teacher-librarian to facilitate the relationship
between text and user has become more imperative
than ever to the literacy of our students.
Alanna King
For just two years Alanna King has been the teacherlibrarian and Directions Team Leader of Informational
and Digital Literacies at Orangeville District
Secondary School in the Upper Grand District School
Board in Ontario. She describes the process of
moving from teaching English, media arts and drama
to full-time library as “coming home”. Her inner child
is very happy spending most of the day divided
between teaching information literacy and digital
fluency. This is her first time attending Treasure
Mountain Canada
Twitter @banana29
Part II: Evidence of Student Growth
Just a Little Thing: At the Heart of 21st Century
Learning Must Be Reading
John Oliver Secondary School in Vancouver recently
re-designed its school library as a learning commons.
If the rule for building a learning commons is to start
with the teaching and learning, this teacher action
research initiative explores guidelines for schools that
start with the facility. Where is the common ground?
In proposing to build a culture of reading at an East
Side Vancouver secondary school, teacher-librarians
consider the foundations for extending the invitation
for school-wide engagement with the reading skills
students need to find their places in the increasingly
Moira Ekdahl
Moira Ekdahl is presently a teacher-librarian with the
Vancouver School Board. She works half-time at the
John Oliver Secondary School Learning Commons
and half-time as the District TL Mentor for 150
teacher-librarians in 110 schools. Prios to this, she
was the District TL Consultant. Moira has a BA in
English and Geography from SFU, an MA in Social
and Educational Studies and a TL Diploma from
UBC. She is the BCTLA Liaison Chair, taught at
UBC, is a double winner of the Angela Thacker
Award, and loves to write. She blogs at the
TLSpecial Weekly Report
(http://tlspecial.blogspot.com)
Twitter @tlspecial.
digital worlds of work, play, and learning.
Beyond Google…a collaborative approach to
research
Evidence shows that the information literacy skills of
students are limited and insufficient to navigate the
abundance of information sources now available to
them. In our situation, the librarian and teacher
collaborate to embed IL strategies into already
planned assignments. Through this process, students
learn to search databases efficiently and effectively by
moving beyond keyword searches to develop more
sophisticated search strategies. Our experience
showed that our young people developed a
meaningful approach to research for learning and
integrated this learning into other class settings.
Cindy Jorge-Paul B.A.,B.Ed.; Marg
Baltzer B.Sc., MLIS; Nicole Alves B.A.
B.Ed.; Cathy Hird B.S.W., M.S.W., B.Ed.;
Greg Ladd OCT
The Books of Life Project, sponsored by the Ontario
Teachers' Federation in the 2011-2012 school year
was targeted at promoting awareness of the Ontario
Ministry of Education's First Nations, Metis and Inuit
Initiatives. The emphasis on story-telling in this
project seemed to make it a natural fit for the library.
This paper will discuss the opportunities offered by
the program and some of the lessons learned about
large library-based extracurricular projects.
Derrick Grose is a teacher-librarian with the
Personalized Inquiry for Secondary Students
This paper provides an overview of an "eureka
moment" during the implementation of a personalized
inquiry project with a class of secondary students on
contemporary teen issues. The focus strategy for the
success of the project was on providing sufficient
planning/preparation time for students to better
develop meaningful essential questions with real-life
Linda Shantz-Keresztes,
London District Catholic School Board,Ontario
Ottawa Carleton District School Board. A teaching
career that began thirty-three years ago has taken
him from a CUSO posting at Ujoelen Grammar
School, a high school in rural Nigeria, to Lisgar
Collegiate Institute, Ottawa's oldest high school.
There have been several stops along the way
including Oxford House and Thicket Portage in
northern Manitoba. He is a member of the editorial
board for the OSLA's Journal, The Teaching
Librarian and the editor of School Libraries in
Canada, the on-line journal of the Voices for School
Libraries Network of the CLA
Linda is currently an Education Consultant,
specializing in school libraries transforming into
Learning Commons. She has over 30 years of
teaching experience, with the majority of her
professional teaching career as a K-12 Teacherlibrarian. Linda has been a district Curriculum
Specialist, responsible for developing quality school
library collections, and a Teacher-Librarian
outcomes.
Consultant for an Alberta Initiative for School
Libraries project on "Revitalizing School Libraries:
Building Information Literate Learning Communities."
Linda is an Adult Education Instructor for the Calgary
Board of Education for the Workplace Library
Assistants Training Program. She has provided
workshops, speaker presentations, and webinars
locally, provincially and nationally. Linda continues to
offer Learning Commons webinars through the
Calgary Regional Consortium.
Part III: Evidence of Teacher Growth
Collaborative Teacher Inquiry and the School
Learning Commons
In the Peel district School Board, teacher-librarians
have been engaged in a number of collaborative
learning networks. This paper is a brief description of
teacher-librarian networks that were established in the
South, Mississauga West, and North Field Offices, as
well as a collaborative inquiry in its second year
involving intermediate ESL teachers and teacherlibrarians.
Jeanne Conte
Blog- Fieldnotes
Judith Comfort started her online secondary school
library practice in 2005 with the goal that it perfectly
reflect and enhance her day-to-day program at Dr.
Charles Best Secondary School in Coquitlam, BC.
Twelve years later it provides an open, transparent
record of her process. Judith has created a site to
guide us through it.
http://www.judithcomfort.ca/tm/
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact
Judith at jcomfort@sd43.bc.ca
Judith Comfort
Teacher-Librarians – There are many ways to lead
Melissa Jensen
Instructional Coordinator/
Educational Librarian
Curriculum and Instruction Support Services
Peel DSB
Judith Comfort, Teacher-librarian
Dr. Charles Best Secondary School Library,
Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada
Action Research is always happening in the library
Teacher-Librarian
Trillium Woods E.S
SCDSB
TL Peeps WRDSB
Five Teacher Librarians: one burning question...
How do we as Teacher-Librarians deepen and
enrich student research projects?
https://sites.google.com/site/tlpeepswrdsb/
Jenny Taylor
Hugh Beaton Public School
Research Question: What impact will implementing
differentiated technology opportunities have on our
student’s achievement and engagement in writing?
Collaborative Inquiry Team: Chris
Konrad, Teacher Librarian, Margi Savoni,
Classroom Teacher, Elizabeth Jinks,
Classroom Teacher, Derek Lappalainen,
Classroom Teacher, & Dana DiVincenzo,
Instructional Coach.
Teacher Librarian
Sir John A. Macdonald Secondary School
WRDSB
Greater Essex County DSB, Ontario
Brock Elementary School and J.L. Forster
Secondary School
Inquiry Question: How does the pairing of
mainstream students with English Language
Learners (ELL) impact on social, oral, and academic
skills?
Collaborative Inquiry Team: Barbara
White, Secondary Teacher Librarian;
Marianne Brown, Elementary Classroom
Teacher; Margaret Stanley, Secondary
Classroom Teacher
Glenwood Public School
Inquiry Question: How does using technology in the
learning commons impact the development of
phonological awareness skills in Early Years
students?
Collaborative Inquiry Team: Amy
Vreman, Teacher Librarian; Sharon
Johnson, Instructional Coach
John Campbell Public School
Inquiry Question: What is the impact of teacher
collaboration on grade 6 boys’ engagement and
achievement in non-fiction reading and writing?
Collaborative Inquiry Team: Liz Laporte,
Instructional Coach; Debbie Finnerty,
Grade Six Classroom Teacher; Tracy
McDonald ,Vice Principal; Stephanie
Douglas, Teacher Librarian.
Greater Essex County DSB, Ontario
Greater Essex County DSB, Ontario
Greater Essex County DSB, Ontario
Lakeshore Discovery School
Inquiry Question: How will digital readers enrich the
Grade 5 reading program to impact overall student
learning about and development in reading?
Digital readers (for example, the Kindle from Amazon)
are a tool for literacy instruction in the classroom.
Digital readers make books more accessible to all
students and allow for better understanding of the text
through the use of the text to speech feature and the
built-in dictionary. Using digital readers in literature
circles, during independent reading and for class novel
studies will improve student engagement and
achievement.
Collaborative Inquiry Team: Michelle
Lachine, Teacher-Librarian; Trevor Stanley,
Grade 5 Teacher; Tracey Oliver,
Instructional Coach
LaSalle, Kingsville, Amherstburg and Northwood
Public Schools
Inquiry Question: Do the use of wikis, web 2.0
applications, high interest texts, and explicit teaching
increase student engagement and develop higher
level responses within the literature circle model?
Teacher-librarians and intermediate teachers from four
schools, LaSalle Public, Amherstburg Public,
Northwood Public and Kingsville Public felt their
students were disengaged in their literature studies,
and were not creating high level responses. The team
hypothesized that using wikis and web 2.0
applications, explicit teaching, and high quality,
appealing texts in the model of literature circles would
improve both the quality of the students’ answers, and
their reading engagement. The five test classes were
very different in terms of clientele, interests, and
experience with both wikis and literature circles.
Each group used the same wiki and literature circle
formats, but depending on student ability and interest,
book choices and quantity of work differed. Results
showed clearly that using the wiki helped many
Collaborative Inquiry Team: Martha
Martin, Teacher Librarian; Liz Golden,
Teacher Librarian; Adrienne Reaume,
Teacher Librarian; Bernadette Morencie,
Grade 8 homeroom; Tammy Bachmeier,
Grade 7 homeroom; Erin Holt, Intermediate
SERR; Laura Braithwaite, Learning Support
Teacher.
Greater Essex County DSB, Ontario
Greater Essex County DSB, Ontario
students complete their work more successfully. The
web applications increased the enthusiasm for the
project in all groups. Explicit teaching of higher level
responses resulted in varying degrees of improvement
depending on test groups. Overwhelmingly, being able
to choose their text from a collection of high interest,
high quality newer fiction was the key component in
raising reading engagement.
Queen Victoria Public School and Forest Glade
Public School
Research Question: Can the Forest of Reading
program and the use of technology help improve
student engagement in reading?
Collaborative Inquiry Team: Claire Kenno
and Jillian Authier, Teacher Librarians
Talbot Trail Public School
Inquiry Question: How can the strategic teaching of
the research process using a variety of technologies to
engage our grade 3 students impact the writing
process and the understanding of non-fiction texts?
The purpose of this inquiry was to determine if the
strategic teaching of the research process using a
variety of technologies to engage our grade 3 students
would impact the writing process and the
understanding of non-fiction texts. We discovered that
after exposure to variety of nonfiction texts, students
felt more confident to use non-fiction texts to find
information. We can conclude that the strategic
teaching of the research process did impact the writing
process and the understanding of non-fiction texts.
After spending a significant amount of time
researching, evaluating and recording their facts, the
students were able to easily transfer their information
from their jot notes to write a first draft. As a result of
this research, we recommend the strategic teaching of
the research process to students of all grade levels.
Collaborative Inquiry Team: Carly
Burkhart, Teacher Librarian; Amy Allison,
Classroom Teacher; Johanna Lawler,
Learning Commons Instructional Coach
Greater Essex County DSB, Ontario
Greater Essex County DSB, Ontario
Victoria Public School
Inquiry Question: How can the Blue Spruce Reading
Program and its related activities
be used to promote reading enjoyment in our grade
two students?
Collaborative Inquiry Team: Dani Hayes
& Debbie Demers-Hewitt, Teacher
Librarians
Greater Essex County DSB, Ontario
Part IV: Evidence of Whole School Growth
Making the Learning Commons Happen at the
Ottawa Catholic School Board
Sarah Murray is a qualified teacher-librarian, who
began her career teaching English 14 years ago.
She began her library career by building the library at
St. Joseph from scratch and is celebrating the 10th
anniversary of the school by piloting the Learning
Commons transition. Sarah is also an active OLA
member and is on both the Red Maple and White
Pine Steering Committees.
Donna Presz is the Library Services Supervisor
for the Ottawa Catholic School Board. Over the last
17 years she has worked in private, academic,
special, and mostly school libraries at both
elementary and senior elementary schools. Donna
ran the Derry Byrne Teacher Resource Centre for 7
years and is now the key contact for the Learning
Commons transition.
The Creation of the Edgewood Experimental Lab
&Learning Commons for 21st Century Learners
Teacher Librarian April 2012
Fran Potvin-Schafer has been a teacher in
Toronto, Ontario for the past 22 years, in four
different elementary schools. She has experience
teaching students in all grades, as a regular
classroom teacher, special education resource
teacher, and as teacher librarian. She has additional
qualification
specialists in science and library and currently has
the good fortune of teaching the wonderful students
of Edgewood P.S.
Tamara Mitchell completed her M Ed at the
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University
of Toronto and has been an educator for 19 years.
She has taught various grades throughout the
elementary
panel, including special education and Reading
Recovery. She is currently the principal at Edgewood
PS
The Learning Commons Landscape
Library professionals have been questioning the
transformation of the school library to a learning
commons for many years now. With the explosion of
technological resources, all that is new, impacts the
existing school library. It is about a conceptual notion
of a landscape for learning beginning within any
school and not bound by its walls. What is this new
learning commons? The purpose of this paper is to
examine the landscapes of the learning commons as
part of a whole. This paper will discuss a learning
environment including the school library learning
commons
Donna Grove
Creating a Strong Virtual Presence to build
Collaborative Knowledge Centers through the
Learning Commons
School libraries need to have a straightforward and
efficient method to create effective virtual spaces that
support learning, collaboration and engagement.
These virtual spaces may include web pages, wikis,
blogs videos, podcasts, tutorials, web 2.0 collaborative
spaces including shared documents and possibly
social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. This
short paper will discuss simple to use technologies
that allow school libraries to have a very effective
online presence.
Roger Nevin
Donna Grove is a teacher-librarian with over 20 years
experience in both rural and urban school districts in
Alberta. She has been an Alberta Initiative for
School Improvement Library Consultant (AISI) and
an AISI Learning Leader on a 21 st Century Learning
Project. She is currently a Learning Support Teacher
in a Gifted Education elementary school program
with the Calgary Board of Education. She has just
completed a Master of Education (School
Administration) program with Gonzaga University.
Her capstone project is on Transforming School
Libraries to Learning Commons.
teacher librarian at Adam Scott Collegiate Kawartha
Pine Ridge DSB, Ontario
rogernevin@trentu.ca,
Twitter: @rogernevin,
Website: engagestudents.ca
Planning Committee for Treasure Mountain Canada
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Carol Koechlin, Library Program Consultant, Speaker, Author - email koechlin@sympatico.ca
Liz Kerr, School Library Advocate, Education Director, OLA - email lkerr@accessola.com
Cindy Matthews, Co-Moderator for Voices for School Libraries Network,TDSB Instructional Leader - email
cindy.matthews@tdsb.on.ca
Ruth Hall, OSLA Past President, TDSB Instructional Leader - email hallruth@gmail.com
Linda Shantz-Keresztes, Co-Moderator for Voices for School Libraries Network - email LJShantzKere@cbe.ab.ca
Judith Sykes, School Library Services Manager, Alberta Education - email Judith.Sykes@gov.ab.ca
Professor David V. Loertscher , School of Library and Information Science, San Jose State University - email
reader.david@gmail.com