Thing 12: Final Reflection

This is my fourth year participating in Cool Tools for Schools and every year I am blown away by the ever-changing world of education around us. There are always so many great tools and articles to read that it is hard to pick just a few topics. I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in Cool Tools allowing for me to learn at my own pace and complete topics and "things" that are relevant to my particular position. This is year four as a shared librarian although my first two years I was split between two very different districts the past two years I have been in one district and then the Media Librarian at our media library in our BOCES building. This has allowed for me to grow both as a librarian in a district and as a professional in the field. I am grateful for the opportunities to work with not only students but teachers and administrators.

Participating in this workshop allows for me to hone my skills for both positions. This year I was able to complete nine things and then my reflection. Each thing allowed for me to look at pieces for both sides of my job and to create a learning environment for myself that would benefit me throughout my year and next year.

I found thing 50 to be one of the most beneficial as it allowed for me to look at the new standards and to really begin to focus on those. As a newer librarian, I am still trying to build a curriculum that works well for me and I have found that it changes every year especially depending on the students. I am hoping that with the new standards I will be able to develop a curriculum that I am more confident in with my classes.

Overall, I have found Cool Tools to be a great experience. I always keep the website bookmarked so that I can continually go back to it all year long and find new ways to help better my education. Being able to pace your own learning is best. When you have the time to sit down and read articles and really focus on a project that is the best time to learn- or for me anyway. Self-paced PD really helps me as a learner and educator to focus in on the pieces that are most important to me. I feel that it is truly beneficial for students to also be allowed to work at their own pace.

I hope to continue to implement all that I have learned from Cool Tools this year into my both my professional and personal lives. Staying on task and being focused is very important for success and with the help of Cool Tools, I can do that.

Thing 50: The New AASL Standards

Standards are always a very overwhelming topic to think about no matter who you are or how long you've been in the field. Anytime you hear the words "new standards" are coming you cringe just a little bit or maybe a whole lot. New standards can be scary if you're not given to opportunity to view them and learn with them before being told you have to use them. It is very difficult to be handed new standards and expected to be able to interpret them and work with them all in one day. This "thing" is helpful in the fact that it allows for librarians and teachers to view the new standards, look at them and find the areas that they need/want to find out more about. 

I found the shortened link with key details to be the most useful. The common beliefs page with the six explanations along with the Standards Framework for Learners were the most useful for me from this document. 

I agree heavily with the six common beliefs. It is important to know about these beliefs and how they are broken down. This would also be a great piece to share with administration and teachers so that they are aware of what our standards focus on. 

The framework is broken into six foundations and key commitments with four domains and competencies. 

I find the domains/competencies to be fantastic. As a relatively new librarian (finishing year four) I find that having these domains will help me to connect to the IFC along with developing better learning objectives for my students. 

As stated in the article we are already doing a lot of these pieces of the new standards they are just worded differently or moved to a different part of the standards. It is important to take the time and go through and circle or highlight what you're doing, what you need to work on and what you need to start doing. I did this activity for just the Inquire foundation and found that almost all of those steps in the domains I am already doing and that there are a few of them that I need to focus on a little bit more. 

As I have been working on this BLOG post I have discovered that some of the other foundations need more focus a bit more than the Inquire phase and that is a great starting point. I can focus on creating my school goals for next year to incorporate the addition of some of the new pieces I am missing. This will help me to develop a stronger curriculum for the future. 

I will be getting my own copy of the standards book as right now I am just using the copy from our BOCES which has a professional library for our librarians. The book is definitely a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be although it still is not as big as the IFC 😅.  

I look forward to continuing to grow in my library field and this standards book will help me to do that. I will be able to learn and grow as I go forward in my career. The breakdown of the standards is simple and easy to understand as opposed to other formats.