DuMont's Library

I spend a lot of time in inquiry. My current school goal is around learner agency ; allowing students to choose what they want to learn is a big part of agency, and inquiry-based learning is a great way to organize this for students and teachers. As teacher-librarian, I help many colleagues build inquiry-based lessons so their students can achieve a sense of agency. Traditionally, almost all of this work has been around structure. Teachers are willing to jump if they know they have a landing place, and students still require structure as they build skills within the curricular and core competencies . The teachers and I co-teach critical literacy skills so they are thinking about what they are reading online, skills around analysis and synthesis, communication skills, and how to ask questions. These classes run well, the students are highly engaged, they learn new skills and progress in others, and they drive deeper into content as well. My favourite inquiry-based pedagogy comes from Ka...

Introduction to CBAM and it’s uses The goal this year at Ecole KLO Middle School is to increase student agency through the use of inquiry-based learning. One essential aspect of inquiry-based learning is the application of research skills, which include information and critical literacy. Doing so specifically with respect to effective use of reference resources meets the first and fourths standards of practice for an effective school library learning commons (SLLC), which state teacher-librarians are to “facilitat[e] collaborative engagement to cultivate and empower a community of learners [and] foster literacies to empower life-long learners” ( Leading Learning Framework – Leading Learning , 2014, p.8). When working with teachers to evolve their practice it is important to remember it is a process, not an event (Loucks-Horsley, 1996). Teachers need time and space to express their concerns about changes over the course of the change process, which generally takes place over a few ye...

  How important is this topic?  Well, it’s report card season, and I just spent a whole day touring a rabbit hole of information about libraries and mobile devices in developing countries.  It’s beyond important. Here are the down and dirty facts to get your brain moving:  The cost to build a library and create a physical collection is extraordinarily high and certainly not available to developing countries 250,000,000 children in developing countries are not learning to read and write, despite being enrolled in school (this is due to a lack of reading resources - see the first fact) That sucks.  Those are huge numbers of people who do not have access to a human right!   But get this: Of the estimated world population of 7 billion people, 6 billion now have access to a working mobile phone. 4.5 billion people have access to a toilet (hmm…) (Image from bankmycell.com) Doesn’t this bring us to the obvious solution of using digital platforms to teach read...