Portfolio Ticket
Module : 7 Artifact: LLC Annual Report
1.) Explain how this artifact shows growth towards becoming a TL:
I developed this LLC Annual Report after reading about some of the advocacy examples in Doug Johnson’s The Indespensible Librarian. I chose to work on this annual report because I do think that this is an advocacy piece that is often underutilized, and although it wasn’t one of the choices, I knew that this was an important document for me to work on. In submitting one last year to my administrator, I felt like it was a reflection of all the hard work that I had done during the year that might have been not noticed, so I was “making the invisible, visible”. I strove to enhance this version with a new digital tool, where I could embed photos, links and make it visually appealing and widely shareable with administrators, staff, students and their families. Not only would this document show that I am an innovative teacher librarian, willing to try new technologies, but it would reveal the collaborative environment that I am aiming to develop in the LLC and across the school environment (by sharing the number of students engaged in collaborative learning, but also collaborative and open by sharing statistics and budgets). It is also student-focused, which is a recommendation of Chelsea Sims in her article, "Communication Tools: The School Library Newsletter" (29).
SIMS, C. sims. chelsea@iowacityschools. or. (2016). Communication Tools The School Library Newsletter. Teacher Librarian, 43(4), 28–31.
SIMS, C. sims. chelsea@iowacityschools. or. (2016). Communication Tools The School Library Newsletter. Teacher Librarian, 43(4), 28–31.
2.) Describe the progression of creating this artifact (attach drafts, feedback, and final project):
I completed a basic annual report last year, on the recommendation of our district Library & Information Services Coordinator during one of our sessions for new librarians. At first I didn’t realize how valuable this one little piece of paper would turn out to be. I included a few items (such as number of books checked out and some collaborations that happened), but didn’t realize how important some other pieces might be to give some transparency and open it up for the admin and staff to share in this knowledge (i.e. sharing the budget, numbers of students utilizing certain services, etc.) I feel that in working on this project, I was able to reflect on my previous work and think about what might be useful to further share in this report. In this version, I chose to include a link to a video that might show what students are doing in the LLC, photos of student engagement, and sharing my vision statement and some other statistics that might be relevant. I also love the word cloud addition to show some of the events that have taken place in the library. My first version can be found here. I ended up adapting it after considering how it could be more student-centred and what students and parents might want to know. I took out circulation statistics, replacing them with some highlights about the Makerspace and new work stations. My final product is something that I could see easily adapting to make use of in the future, to fully advocate for student learning in the library. I could see this type of document being easily adapted to different audiences (administrator, staff, students and families) but I feel that I struck a balance in this final version to engage with all stakeholders.
3.) Explain why this artifact reflects higher level thinking (Bloom’s Taxonomy chart):
Through the development of this resource, I moved from identifying some of the key statistics (Knowledge) to reveal in an advocacy piece like this to selecting the some of the best highlights to include based on my readings and previous experiences in the LLC (Comprehension). Then, by producing this resource on infogram (Application), I realized that I had to change a few of my ideas in order to fit the format and narrow down my focus and reconstruct the document (Synthesis). When I re-evaluated this and compared to my previous year end report, I decided to fine tune it further to make it more user-friendly, and more student-focused, thus taking me to the final evaluation of my work.