Senior students at Mangaia School hooked into reading

Message from Tekau
The secondary students are taking books as well as reading them during breaks. We are impressed with this new move of the students particularly the girls. The boys take books too but some of them do not show their reading interest openly like the girls do during breaks. In the library it's different. They sit down and read their books. I'm talking here about the college students.
As for the primary they take books and I know most of them are just looking at the pictures because they bring their books 2 - 3 days after.
On Wednesday of this week, the College students went to the airport to welcome our Queen's Representative and his team. My sister told me that afternoon that she was impressed by the students reading their books while they were waiting for the plane to arrive. These students are mostly girls.
I have started training some students to issue and return the books from various classes except Grades 1 & 2 and Pre-school. I have also encouraged them to come back and change their books if they want before their library day. And they also come during breaks, in the morning when I get to school as well as after school.

Progress from Mangaia School

This is message from Sue, the Principal at Mangaia School

We are all back at school and students have started borrowing new books. Takau and Marilyn have processed all the new books and are starting on adding our other books to the collection. We have run out of barcode stickers. I have informed Kathy and she assures me they are ordered and coming soon.

The kids LOVE the new books.

We have colour coded all books
Yellow Non Fiction
Blue Fiction
Blue & Yellow Graphic novels
Blue & Red Picture books
Blue & Brown spot Sophisticated picture books
Blue & Green Quick reads

We have also used the old encyclopedias as large labels for the non fiction section, using English and Maori names. We have made new shelves for the sophisticated picture books.

The Quick Reads are side by side with the Novels. On the ‘A’ shelf novels on the left and quick reads on the right. Seems to be working well at the moment, we will see how it goes when we get all of the collection on the shelves.

At the moment we are only issuing new books so all the kids have a chance to take some home. They love them and we are promoting the new books. I have read chapter 1 from “I hate bunnies” to 2 classes and they loved it. Plus the senior students are enjoying Fleur Beale and Deborah Ellis, so am I.

Once Takau gets the ‘old’ books into the system they will be integrated with the new ones.


Thank you both for all the help and support you offered us while you were here. You are both great workers . Looking forward to seeing you both again.

Sue

Farewell to Dyane and Alice

The two day intensive workshop with particpants from various schools around Rarotonga was completed yesterday afternoon. Dyane and Alice managed to convince those who attended the workshop how important the libraries are to students learning, and these participants are willing to make changes to their school libraries as soon as Term 4 begins - very promising.

Needless to say, the lead teachers and I learned alot more about MUSAC and SCIS from all the practical work we've done alongside Dyane and Alice. They did tell us that during the attachment in NZ in May, our brains probably only retained 5% of the information from the workshop and I couldn't agree more. The information from the workshop in May, I am happy to say is finally sinking in.

I'd like to say MEITAKI MAATA (Thank You very much) to Dyane and Alice for your dedication, committment and tireless effort in setting up the model libraries and for working alongside our teachers patiently. We have learned a lot from the two weeks you spent over here with us. I'm in overdrive at the moment so I am taking half the day off to recuperate from all that overtime (I'm not complaining!) and start fresh tomorrow.

Dyane and Alice, I hope you two had a wonderful trip back home and be reunited with your loved ones. To all the team at National Library, thank you for your continuous support, I enjoyed reading your comments.

Ka Kite from the Cooks.
Kathy

Tuesday 7 October

Dear all,

It is another warm and humid dayhere. Yesterday Alice and I worked at Arorangi School which is a short walk from where we are staying. It is one of Peo's schools. Peo is now familiar with the SCIS and Musac system so we managed to achieve scising almost the 700 items and importing into Musac. The school internet went down for most of the day so we had to return to the MOE to scis the books. Prior to our arrival Peo had manually typed in about 700 titles, - and after scising realised how fast and efficient SCIS was.

Today I had a meeting with the audit staff here (Ana, Terry and John) and drafted a library checklist that they will use when they audit the school libraires next year. Schools are audited about every 4-5 terms.

Well this is about all for now. Hope the winds and rain haven't blown you all away. We manage to catch the TV1 news at night.

Photo of the bikes we were using at Mangaia to get to the school. I came off in the afternoon!

More photos

Just saw a whale blowing out in the ocean, - from the school here!

This first photo is sunrise - Mangaia.

Friday 2nd October

Dear all,

Thanks for your comments.. it is so good to hear form you. We are over on Mangaia the southern most island. Mangaia School is from grade 1-12. It is Takau's school, - and the staff are fabulous a mix of NZ , mainly Cook Island and even an Ozzi! The MOE Northland Manager is here with his wife. They are from (he was ex Principal) of Tauraroa Area School, just out of Whanagrei. This is their sister school. So this morning we had an offical welcome.. it brought tears to my eyes, - the singing was beautiful!.

So for the last 2 days we have been weeding, scis-ing, putting onto Musac, and pd on literacy and this afternoon on searching strategies. We have introduced Te Ara, Living Hertiage, LibraryThing and links to Fionas Librarything fab teen site as they need more direction in level 2 wide reading. We have made really good progress I feel.

We are enjoying paypaya and local sweet bananas..

Attached some photos. Alice and I went for an early morn walk this morn, and took some photos and Alice even swam!

Photos from the Cook Islands - Day 1

Dear all,

Day two today and it has dawned hot and humid after down pours of rain yesterday.

We worked with Kathy, Liz, and Peo yesterday in the morning finding out what had happened in their schools since May. So much work and enthusiasm! At Liz's school they had painted the library making it look fresh and inviting and with beautiful floral curtains.

Yesterday after noon we went through the blogging process again then straight into the SCIS- ing process. There is no Internet access in the library in most of these schools so we had to do the SCIS-ing in 2 stages. Scan the books onto word in the library, then save onto flashdrive then walk up to the office and work through the SCIS process then save and back to the library to import into Musac. We managed to SCIS approx 100 books and worked through a powercut and then the office closed, so no internet access.

Alice and I took 3 boxes of books back to our apartment last night to scan theISBNs into word to hasten the process.

We also a assisted Liz in her library to weed the fiction collection to make way for the new books ( I think she is to have a bonfire in her backyard)! Fiona and Rosemary you did a great job on selecting the books!

Off to Peo's schools soon so will add the photos and hope to post again tomorrow. Hope you are all well!

Dyane

Of Wearable art and other things...

Kia orana,
Just back from a great weekend in Wellington at the Wearable Arts show (3 1/2 hours long with no break so we had some very sore body parts!). http://www.worldofwearableart.com/category/image-galleries/winners/2008-winners

Wellington was beautiful, windy, wet and then beautiful again. I treated myself to a very exotic facial and massage which involved chilled jade stones and a suggestion that I try Botox!!

On the work front, Rosemary and I had a great day yesterday at Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate. We were supposed to do a collection assessment - a daunting prospect as it is a 0-13 school with few sequences separated for the different age ranges - but the librarian knows her collection really well and had already written a list of the gaps. So that made life a lot easier.

Hope you're all well and enjoying lots of lovely fresh fruit.

Lisa

delicious

first meeting...

Welcome Dyane & Alice to the Cook Island and thanx for the rain.....

Kia orana to everybody in Cook Islands for Stage 3

It's one of those sparkling spring days people wait all winter for here in Auckland- actually it's a little cool and cloudy. But... Anyway we hope the travellers have arrived and wish you all the best over the next two weeks. Keep them busy won't you. We're looking forward to hearing your news, so got in first.
From the team (sigh) back here.
Ra manea

Pride Presentation at 9th Regional Workshop September 2008

Pride Presentation of Cook Islands School Libraries

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This presentation was given by Elizabeth Jones in Fiji as part of the Pride Confrence. September 2008


SlideShare Link

Guided learning for rich learning

Kia orana everybody,
I've wondered what to put into Runanga Marama for July- I've only just made it!- and we decided to report on the two big seminars held by Dr Ross Todd in Auckland and Wellington. All the Library advisers and about 300 other people attended, teachers and school library people. It was an exciting seminar.
Dr Ross Todd is Research Director at the Centre for International Scholarship in School Librarianship (CISSL) and Associate Professor in the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies at Rutgers University, USA; he is an Australian who has taught in New Zealand.

Ross talked about rich learning- the sort of learning that takes place when students are actively engaged in learning, in the "information to knowledge" experience- and what needs to take place for this to happen. He calls it "guided inquiry". Students (and their teachers) need to know what information they need and why. Research shows that most of the time when teachers and librarians think about the Library they are thinking about finding information. But what do they do with it once they have found it? He talked about squirrels who hoard stuff- is that all that inquiry learning is about? (It got me thinking about other animals- ants who just seem to move stuff from one place to another- like kids who just copy pages into their books; or pigs who wallow in the earth- learning should be absorbing; or birds who find things to build a nest with- learning should be useful.)

So learning should be purposeful. It is the job of teachers and librarians to help children to think about what they need to know. And then guided learning involves helping students to manage themselves and their learning environment (the information resources of people, places, books and internet, etc.)

Libraries need to keep pace with the needs of rich learning, and teachers need to know how to guide students as they learn, how to set up an inquiry and how to intervene when students need encouragement or help with learning.

CISSL has a very useful website that tells us more about the thinking and research of Dr Todd and his colleagues. Have a look at: http://cissl.scils.rutgers.edu/guided/guided_inquiry/ constructivist_learning.html

Over here we are just about ready for the end of winter, so we are thinking about you in the tropics. Welcome to August and ra manea, from Rob

Many Answers Tag Cloud

We have added a new dimension to our blog!!

We added a tag cloud (to your right) that will be updated on a regular basis. By clicking on one of the words in the tag cloud eg health, it will take you to an educational website that relates to that word.

This is part of the NZ any questions and many answers project. http://www.manyanswers.co.nz/.

We have just learnt how to filch (steal) the tag cloud, - which means to take a copy of it from the source eg the Many Answers site and place it on a blog, wiki or website.

Let us know if it is useful!

Downloading SCIS records into MUSAC

Downloading Scis Into Musac

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Downloading SCIS records

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Hooray! The first library resource have arrived on the rock!

Kia Orana Team,

Updates from the Cooks. The MUSAC Installment Manual along with the barcodes for four of the five schools identified have arrived on our shores. Three other schools have been added to the Library project (Nikao, Arorangi and Mitiaro). Apparently the invoices that came through for the software, the shelves and the books were much more cheaper than what we have anticipated, with more dollars to spare, we were able to purchase the resources for the other three schools. We couldn't have done it without the help of the National Library Team. The computers for the five libraries will be purchased from the suppliers here in the Cooks.

Liz and Peo will be submitting photos of their libraries to the blog, I'll just have to show them how to do it. I have posted the photo of the first resource that have arrived.

Will be in touch

Kathy George

Different colour blues for shelving

Ideas for School Libraries

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Hopefully these slides will give you some good ideas particularly for shelving.

Actions from last Meeting

Kia orana , I have put up the minutes from our last meeting as a link but thought I would also put in the actions here so everyone could see quickly what we needed to do .
We also met to clarify a couple of the actions yesterday which I have included. Did all schools want scanners and MUSAC?
Also putting up photos of shelves as a slide show but not working as yet!

Actions
Resources ·
Fiona will email invoices to Gail Townsend- Done ·
Fiona and Rosemary to select rest of resources- Done
Action Plans
Cook Island team email a copy at end of the term ·
Cook Island team aim to do one task every month. . ·
Alice to put APs on blog
Phone coferencing ·
Kathy/ Gail will look into using phone conferencing equipment –Maureen ·
Nat Lib to look at Telecom costings from CI and from NZ end
Audit CheckList
Anna and Kathy to follow up
Alice to put copy on blog
Survey
Kathy - collate the results
SCIS F
Fiona check with Trish to start the process to get formal agreement - done MUSAC
Alice to ring MUASAC and get them send invoice to Liz, Takau and Peo? Scanner ·
Rob to ring Raeco about their scanners and contact Takau re: ordering ·
Cook Island team purchase scanner asap( did all school want to do this?) ·
Rob - check Photocopy instruction page on scanners ?( was this done?)
BLOG ·
All present accept invitations today while here- Done ·
Takau set up a new personal account - Done
Alice and Kathy – Mangaia photos up – Done
Liz photos – still to go up
Reading Conference
Kathy and Peo to confirm visit with Dyanne
Shelving ·
Takau will send plans for Mangaia ·
Staff take photographs of shape and place, and send measurements of heights - distances of walls, between shelves and windows. ·
Alice to up load photos of different shelving options ·
Fiona check cost of a Hydestor mobile unit- Done Cost $1107.00
Dyanne to follow up purchase of mobile unit

Working Party after 3 weeks ready to go!

Thanks for the lovely gifts : ))

National Library Advisers

Mangaia School Library

New Library of Mangaia School since the completion of the school complex in 2007

Action on return to the Cook Islands!!

Kia ora,

I am writing this from my Northland office on the eve of my vacation to the warmth of Australia. I am thinking of the overview of school libraries that we whizzed past you last week and the action plans that you drafted. Thanks for being such fabulous learning participants!

I am suggesting that you all post a review on this blog weekly on what you have achieved, - or what you are planning to put into action in terms of school library development for that week, month etc.

Please do not forget to ask for our advice, for our comments, guidelines, example policies etc.....

I am attaching a photo of one of my favourite new school libraries. It is Hurupaki School in Whangarei. The roll is approx 300 and it is a year 1-6 school. The decile is approx 8. The have the Oliver library software and they use SCIS. They have recently been reviewed by ERO with a focus on information literacy and their report can be found at; http://www.ero.govt.nz/ero/reppub.nsf/0/30A6AEF61B0D1CA6CC25743200149A77/$File/1018.htm?Open

Cheers Dyane

Meitaki Maata

With heartfelt thanks to the Team at National Library, I've learned more about the purpose of school libraries, actually, I've learned more than I anticipated. Now its just a matter of putting "what I've learned" into action. Thank you team and don't worry I'll be knocking on your doors for help.

I won't say anything on behalf of the other ladies, I'm sure they want to do that themselves. Meitaki Ranuinui kia kotou katoatoa (i.e. Thank you very much to everyone)

For Now