Nov 29 2011
Finding my voice
Well, I toyed with calling this post “Dumb and Dumber”, but decided against it! Some of you may know that I have been struggling with my health for some time. I was off work last year for some months and am now managing to get in every day, which is great. However, my illness has resulted in me losing my voice for about the last eighteen months. I can only speak in a breathy whisper and cannot project my voice at all. This is very difficult for a school librarian. No, we don’t merely sit behind a desk stamping out the occasional book! In my school, I was just beginning to develop some classes teaching research skills and supporting reading development work before I was absent. This has been extremely difficult to pick nup again in my present circumstances.
Also, without a strong voice, I have felt unable to speak in other ways. I have neglected this blog and have not written much or communicated with many of my friends – I cannot really use the phone either! As you can imagine, this is very frustrating and annoying – particularly for someone like me who loves to talk.
It has been difficult to watch classes coming in to the Library and know that I cannot engage with the students in the way I would like. In my first couple of years, I was beginning to develop some nice teaching materials and plans to use with them. So, I got to thinking about how I could at least try to do some of the teaching again, whilst being careful not to strain my voice until the therapy I am having starts to have an effect.
One thing that was very successful with our students was using a wiki to engage them in writing about their reading development. I decided that I would try to introduce this to our Year 7 and 8 students. I had made a PowerPoint a couple of years ago and wondered if I could manage to use this to present to the classes. Then, I had a brainwave – why not record my commentary and play it back to each class? That way, I would only have to do this once and I would be able to re-use it as many times as I liked. Also, I would be able to do the recording at home in peace and quiet and take my time over it.
I know there is a function on PowerPoint itself to record a commentary, but I like to do things a bit differently. One of the ideas I have had throughout this new job is that I try to model examples of Web2.0 tools in my own teaching so that our staff and students can see them being used in practical situations. I have already used VoiceThread to do online presentations and I thought that our students would quite like it, so I used it to record my comments on each slide. In the lesson, I showed the class where I had the VoiceThread embedded in the Library Online website, then I ran it as a presentation. Our students are generally great and they showed such patience in listening to my strange voice. And they were allowed to giggle a bit!
Anyway, here it is:
Introduction to the wiki on VoiceThread (I can’t seem to embed it at the moment, for some reason!)
Hello Anne
Good to see you back, I just happened to click on the site. I like your use of Voice Thread and how you are using the wiki. Its an excellent idea using it to save your voice, I get so bored repeating myself with very class so I shall consider trying it.
I tried a wiki for an Induction session last year but it wasn’t suitable for our year 9s.
I did the CPD23 course and I’m now trying out all these new tools and writing a blog when time permits. Great fun, but work keeps getting in the way!
All the best
Jenny
Hello Anne,
I’ve just been reading your blog and it’s excellent. I’m relatively new to school librarianship, but am at the moment trying to set up a wiki for book reviews. I wanted to create a space that students could share their favourite books in and also something that parents and teachers could access also.
I noticed that you use PBWorks for your Wiki. I had considered Wikispaces, but then got told by our IT department that it would be easier to use Sharepoint as the children would have more security and all the school’s library pages are based on it too (which I don’t really like as it’s horrible to look at).
I’m having a bit of a dilemma as I don’t want to use Sharepoint as no one really likes it at the school and it looks very uninviting. However, using Wikispaces would be more awkward as it would be harder to access. What I wanted to pick your librain about was basically how difficult have you found it to set up the Wiki and roll it out to teachers/students? Do you think it’s worthwhile setting up a wiki using a separate site like PBWorks or Wikispaces? There is always the possibility that I could just link the wiki from the library homepage.
I really enjoyed your powerpoint presentation and hope your health continues to improve. Any advice you could give me would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Lucy
Hi Lucy, Thanks for your comment. I’m not sure what to advise really. I am free to use a range of Web2.0 tools, partly because we don’t have a VLE in school and also because the Headmaster wants part of my remit to be demonstrating the use of ICT in practical situations. The wiki I use with our Year 7s and 8s is private to them and a few selected staff (the kids asked for this). I have given all of the English staff, plus my Line Manager and the Head access to it – the Head is very impressed!
The kids find the wiki very easy to edit – this is a main reason for using it really. They love the social aspect of commenting on each others pages. It is harder, though, to keep them on task and get them back to writing about their reading, rather than arguing about favourite football teams! It works for me because we are such a small school – I only have about 100 kids on the wiki and of those around 20-30 are very keen and edit it at weekends and evenings. I tend to check it at least once a week, leaving comments on the very active pages and just making sure that no-one is doing anything silly.
If you have never done this before and you decide to go down teh wiki route, I would suggest that you trial it with a small, able class first of all. See if they like it and get feedback from them. Then you could roll it out to a larger group. That’s what I did. I got our Two Year 8 classes to have a go a couple of years ago – they loved it so much that I decided to use it on a wider scale.
I also have ground rules in place – comments must always be positive – and don’t hesitate to delete anything that I don’t think is suitable, after a warning. I have made it clear to the kids that, although using the wiki is “fun”, it is still linked to their school work. In fact, I must write it in to our Reading Challenge next week. Our Platinum level will have a range of tasks to complete, including keeping their wiki page up-to-date!
Hope this has been helpful. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if I can help further in any way.
Best wishes
Anne
Hi Jenny and thanks very much for your comment. Yes, using VoiceThread has been very successful – maybe because our kids are very kind and don’t laugh at my silly voice too much! I am thinking of adapting some of my other presentations in the same way as I still haven’t done our inductions yet. As I was away so long last year, our Year 6 and 7 classes have not had inductions as I can’t sustain my voice for a whole lesson. I will think about it over Christmas as I need to give them some knowledge about how the library works!
Best wishes
Anne
Hi Anne,
Thank you so much for your response. It was very helpful. Luckily the english department are very keen to get on board with the Wiki idea so hopefully this term we can roll it out gradually to a few guinea pigs! Like your self we have a small pupil base as I work in a prep school so I think that the wiki should work well. I’ll let you know how it pans out!
Thanks once again for your advice,
Lucy