PTTLS: A Part to Play in Library Training

Why PTLLS?

PTTLS stands for Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector. It's a level 4 qualification which enables you to teach post 16 students and is a short course that takes about 10-12 weeks. I embarked upon the course as I felt it would be of great benefit to me and the students that I train in Information Literacy skills. I have felt for sometime that there has been a gap in my formal Library training despite gaining a MA in Information Management and also my Chartership and this gap had been Teaching skills. Throughout the course I have learnt how to improve my sessions, have gained new ideas for delivery and activities and also improved my confidence. I think completing the course will also help course tutors to have better confidence in my abilities to teach their students the skills they need to find information and research for their course.

 

Lessons Learnt

• Plan, Plan, Plan! Lesson plans are a great way of making sure you cover all the content you want to and also make it interesting by showing you at a glance whether you have included a range of activities and teaching methods.
• Reflect, Reflect, Reflect! Think about how your teaching session went, reflect on it and improve it for next time.
• LRC Jargon. Library staff a lot of jargon so make sure you always explain any jargon and don't presume your students understand it.
• Consider the different Learning styles, Visual, Kinesthetic, Reading and Auditory and mix up activities to cover them all.
• Remember your roles and responsibilities especially Health and Safety and the classroom environment. Give yourself time to set up and check the computers are working too.
• Embed Functional Skills in your session to improve students Literacy, Numeracy and ICT skills.
• Feedback is really important for students development and even though Library sessions don't involve formal assessment it is important that students get a sense how well they are doing and what they can do to improve.
• Evaluation! Feedback on your performance is key to your own development and improvement. You should always get students to evaluate the session even if it is just quickly on a post-it note.

 

Session Tips

• Use music at the start of your sessions to set the mood.
• Use Starter tasks and mini activities to focus and energise your learners.
• Ask tutors prior to the session to provide you with details of any students who have individual learning needs. This will allow you to plan differentiation into your activities and/or have support materials available in the correct formats.
• Don't do all the work. Encourage the students to do it for you.
• Always have a back up activity! If you finish too soon or if your technology doesn't work it's always good to have something else to call on. 

 

Ideas for Activities

• Ping Pong word association game
• Word Searches
• Definitions matching game
• Gaped worksheets
• Quizzes
• Pass the ball to answer questions
• Paper folding task to generate ideas with reluctant learners
• Call my bluff

Mirco Teach Quiz

As part of my Micro Teach I developed a Search Strategy Quiz which students completed in pairs on iPads. Not ideal for large groups unless you have lots of iPads but it worked really well with my small group. I also used a QR Code for students to link to the quiz which is easier than them typing in a long URL.

Hannah (Library Gossip Girl)

First experiences of Library Inductions

I'm sure a lot of you like myself and Hannah are right in the middle of the busiest time of the year...library inductions! I started at Guildford College as a library technician a year ago, I joined in an extremely busy time and spent my first few weeks trying to learn the ropes and watching my colleagues frantically carrying out inductions all day. Myself and James (another new starter) were so new to the LRC that it was agreed that we wouldn't do any inductions as we probably knew the same amount as the students we were inducting, therefore my other colleagues had to do even more inductions than usual.

However since I have now been here a year the time came to do my first induction. I was slightly nervous at first as I'm not very used to public speaking and have never really spoken in front of a group of people for longer than 5 minutes, let alone 25 rowdy 16 year old plumbers. Now that I have done quite a few I am finding myself less and less nervous and actually enjoying it (sometimes!!) As it is increasingly becoming an integral part of the librarian's role I wanted to experience the induction process and learn more about it.

The only difficulty I have experienced is the lack of interest of certain groups. It is great when you get a group of students that are really interested and ask lots of question, and who seem impressed by all the great services we can offer them. It is quite frustrating when a group of students simply look bored for the entire induction. Certain things can be done to try and interest them, like a great interactive quiz Hannah created and just by being friendly and chatting to them helps a lot. I have found it useful to gear each induction to the group you are getting e.g. higher level courses I would explain about our catalogue, e-resources etc. However we know that certain groups like the plumbers don't use the library very much, normally just to use the PCs. I have then been highlighting certain things that they might be interested in like our film and tv collection, suggesting things that might make them come into the LRC to borrow items.

I have enjoyed the induction experience and really feel like it has improved my confidence a great deal. It is also a great way to get to know students and show off all the great services we can offer them!!

Hannah has written a blog for COFHE LASEC about her experiences of induction this can be found at the following link, along with other people's experiences http://goo.gl/guB0B.

Dropbox saved my life...

Just seen what the new thing is this week for cpd23 and it is Google docs, wikis and dropbox, so thought I would write something about dropbox. I had recently been introduced to it as my laptop was slowly dying and was quite often not turning on at all! As I am doing my masters all my essays and assignments were stored on my laptop and no where else. In an effort to help my computer struggle on I decided to clear out all my old files in order to make my laptop a bit faster and yes I deleted all of my masters assignments! If it wasn't for dropbox I would have lost all my old work and the current assignment I was working on at the time. It was so easy to set up and it automatically saves any new documents that you create so you don't have to remember to upload it whenever you create a new document. I would definitely recommend it to anyone that has information saved on their laptop that they desperatly need, it was a quick and free way to backup all of my work.

Rachel (The Library Gossip Girls)

My route to becoming a librarian...

In response to Thing 10 of cpd23 I thought it might be helpful to potential librarians if I explained my route towards becoming a qualified librarian.

Back when I was 18 (seems like a long time ago!!) and I was deciding what degree I was going to do the thought of doing an undergraduate degree in librarianship or information and library management never even entered my mind (would have been slightly simpler and easier if it did). I didn't even know such courses existed, so I decided on a degree in English, something which I have a passion for and enjoyed a great deal.

After graduating it was time to put my student days behind me and get a real job! A friend of mine told me about a part time library assistant post going in a local university. I immediately thought that would be an amazing job and that's when I first started to pursue a career as a librarian. That first part time job was brilliant and I am so thankful toy boss for taking a chance of me and giving me much needed experience. Whilst working here I looked into what it would take to become a librarian, that's when I realised I would have to do a masters to become qualified.

By this time it was too late to apply for a masters and I felt I needed to learn more about the sector, this is when I applied for a Graduate trainee position at the Met Office library in Exeter. I would recommend a graduate placement to anyone thinking of becoming a librarian. I found it more useful than working as a normal library assistant, here my bosses knew I was applying for University and the whole year was based on giving me all the information possible on the library world. My boss was so supportive and would happily let me apply from university during work hours, she also allowed me to go on a number of visits to other libraries and was great at giving me time off to go on job interviews.

Now I am a year into doing my masters and I am working full time at Guildford College LRC. It is hard juggling a masters with a full time job and having a life too, but it is by no means impossible. I am studying at Northumbria university via their distance learning option, staff are so supportive as are fellow members of my course. It is definitely worth doing and hopefully this time next year I will have survived my dissertation and be a qualified librarian.

Read more library routes at http://goo.gl/cWQSk
Rachel (The Library Gossip Girls)

Benefits of Networking

Things 6 and 7 of cpd23 are all about networking, both online through social networking and through face to face meetings. Since starting my job at Guildford College almost a year ago and starting my masters in Information and Library Management (distance learning) I have started to notice the enormous potential of networking - both to improve my personal and professional development and as a way of engaging and communicating with our users.

The main forms of networking I use are facebook, twitter, LISPN, online discussion boards as part of my masters and now this blog! I find them all extremely useful, they highlight key meetings and conferences that I might want to attend and they also allow me to talk to other professionals that have similar experiences to me. I find my online discussion forums that I use for my masters invaluable as they ensure I can communicate with lecturers and fellow students that are based all around the world, without this networking and support it would make the distance learning course a lot more difficult to complete.

As I am pretty new to this professional I feel that the next step is to take part in more face to face networking and attend conferences, workshops etc.

Rachel (Library Gossip Girl)

Reflective Practice

Thing 5 for cpd23 is reflective practice and comes just a week after I found out I passed my Chartership! Whoop! I find reflecting comes easily to me especially as I am a bit of a perfectionist but I know this is not the case for everyone so here are my Top Tips for Reflecting & Chartering:

Reflection Tips!

• Be honest with yourself about how something worked.
• Ask yourself questions like what worked well, what didn't, how could I make it better next time, how is this relevant to the service as a whole, what was it's impact.
• If you need a kick start ask a colleague to peer review your activity or service.
• Get feedback from your users.
• Use best practice in other Libraries to inform and improve your service.
• Reflecting quickly by using a tool such as a Log can help you cut down on the time it takes and make it easier to refer back to.

Chartership Tips!

• Keep a CPD Log! If you don't have time to write everything up this is a perfect way of keeping track of everything you have done. Mine is a table with 4 columns: Date, Activity, What have you learned from this activity?, How have you applied it to the work place? This is one thing I will be keeping up post Chartership just in case I revalidate in the future...
• Visits are a great way of widening your knowledge of different sectors. You don't need to write up up lots use photos with short relevant reflections as evidence.
• Go to a conference! It's a great experience and fantastic for networking!
• Get involved and advocate the profession. Join a local group it's a great experience.
• Remember aanything can be evidence!
• Professional reading includes blogs :)
• And lastly remember to link your reflections back to the service as a whole.
• Blogging is a great way to record evidence... I wish I had go into it sooner :)

I hope these tips are useful and good luck if you are chartering at the moment!

Hannah

Staying up to date vs information overload!

Thing 4 for cpd23 is current awareness. How do we stay up to date without being overloaded! Well guess what technology is there to help us and for Thing 4 we were looking at Twitter, RRS Reeds and Pushnote!

I am already on Twitter and I use it for professional current awareness and networking with other information professionals, so that was a good start. I first set up Twitter for my colleagues to follow me at the 5th joint CoFHE & UC&R conference in Exeter and I found it surprisingly useful at the conference as you could keep up with the other workshops and connect with other professionals during sessions. It was a bit odd though tapping away on my phone and I didn't want the facilitators to think I wasn't paying attention! I love how twitter keeps you up to date but now I am following lots of people it has started to get a bit overwhelming especially if I don't check it regularly enough! I have set up a couple of lists to make it easier (e.g. for work colleagues) but I think I might need a couple more or I may have to start unfollowing some people to stay sane...

If you want to follow me you can find me at Hannah Bennett you can also follow my fellow Library Gossip Girl Rachel Sleeman

RSS feeds are not something I had previously utilised very much. I have set up feeds on databases for specific searches that are sent to my email and I encourage students to do this regularly. But my email fills up really quickly! I also set up a couple in my favourites at work but due to how the network is set up they kept disappearing. I really like the idea of Google Reader though and this should make things a lot easier. I have signed up to a couple of feeds so we will see how it goes...

Pushnote... well I haven't had much of a chance to look at this as we use internet explorer but I would definitely consider using this in the future.

Hannah