This past week was a wonderful celebration of the work of over half (about 31) of 
our elementary teacher librarians who gathered to share the projects they’ve been working on since the fall. I was lucky to be able to work with Michelle Campbell and Bill MacKenzie , who led Year One of this great project. I’m already looking forward to being involved next year!
There is a lot of talk at our board about the benefits of on-going, job-embedded professional learning for teachers and this project seemed to be a successful example of how this approach can work. In the fall, TLs were given a laptop to use for the year and they initially came together for about 3 after school workshops in order to learn a variety of new 21st century approaches, the main focus being:
- wikis
- blogs
- social bookmarking
- google tools
- voicethread
They were then asked to join teams based on their own particular passions or areas of interest, and they were given 2 days of release time to meet on their own and create artefacts of their work that could be shared with their own group and beyond. You’ll find their projects here on the UGLiWiki under Tech Coach Projects and I think you’ll join me in appreciating this wonderful group of teachers who, in many cases, were beginners to 21st teaching and have taken some giant leaps forward in developing and using wonderful tools and resources!
Great contributions UGDSB Teacher Librarians!
Learning Zone 
I’m so in. Let me know when and how I can get in on this!
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Seems kind of sad to restrict things to elementary librarians, doesn’t it? I don’t have a budget however…but I’ll share your interest with Michelle and Bill this week! Can’t hurt to ask!
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