It's a long time since I last posted, more than 2 weeks. Our 3 week, extremely short half-term is over and we are now on holiday again for Chinese New Year. It was quite a hard 3 weeks, students were very unsettled and several either did not come back at all or left early for the next vacation.
As well as launching the new website and starting my new Library monitor activity, I published the Library skills programme that I want to start after Chinese New Year. It is very clear that the students need help in understanding how the Library is organised, some basics on book selection criteria, introduction to Non-fiction and the Dewey Decimal System and some research skills.
I have also been preparing for Book Week in the middle of March and have quite a few activities lined up. Nury Vittachi has confirmed that he is available to visit - I just need definite confirmation from the school that they cash will be available to pay for his time, accommodation etc. This is an area of concern as most of my purchase orders have not been placed and seem to have disappeared somewhere in purchasing. The purchasing asst I have been working left just before Chinese New Year so I am not quite sure what will happen now.
The Oliver system is installed but still not running properly. From the feedback received from Softlink Australia, this seems to be caused by technical problems at the school's end. We have tried to get these resolved but without much success at the moment. It is highly frustrating as we need to have functioning OPACs to stand any chance to teaching our students how to search and research effectively.
Seems like many of the items on the "To Do" list just seem to sit there at the moment with no resolution. Hopefully a number of these issue will be resolved when we return to school after the break.
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
Sunday, 11 January 2009
End of Week 1
Strange week this week, children were very fidgety and hard to settle. Always difficult after a 3 week vacation but the atmosphere generally was a little unsettled. Quite a few students have left over the holidays and there are several more leaving at Chinese New Year with only a few new students coming in. Added to this, there are only 3 weeks until the Chinese New Year holiday and it makes for an unusual atmosphere.
On a more positive note, the website is coming along nicely. Launched it at the Monday Staff meeting and have started to add in topic links and get feedback from the teaching staff. Also introduced it to my new Library monitors at our Tuesday afternoon activity and they seemed quite happy. I have 9 students who spent their time on Tuesday drawing maps of the Library layout. It was a very worthwhile exercise and they all agreed there was much more to the Library than they had thought at the start. Next week, we are going to look at alphabetical order.
Last thing on Friday the Oliver conversion data came back so the big task for the coming week will be to get the IT techs to install it and see what it looks like. Fingers crossed it will be okay and we can get going any hiccups sorted out before CNY. Then there will be some great opportunities to share the OPAC with the students...they've never used one here before!
Couple of great parent helpers this week motivated me to start covering the new books. Between us we must have covered around 50 so the pile on the work table doesn't look half so daunting now. If we can get Oliver up and running, I can catalogue the new books and let the students borrow them which would be excellent.
Other exciting event next week is the first official meeting of the Shanghai Librarians Group. We will meet Rego and hopefully there will be about 6 - 10 attending. It will be brilliant to get things off the ground and start a professional network.
On a more positive note, the website is coming along nicely. Launched it at the Monday Staff meeting and have started to add in topic links and get feedback from the teaching staff. Also introduced it to my new Library monitors at our Tuesday afternoon activity and they seemed quite happy. I have 9 students who spent their time on Tuesday drawing maps of the Library layout. It was a very worthwhile exercise and they all agreed there was much more to the Library than they had thought at the start. Next week, we are going to look at alphabetical order.
Last thing on Friday the Oliver conversion data came back so the big task for the coming week will be to get the IT techs to install it and see what it looks like. Fingers crossed it will be okay and we can get going any hiccups sorted out before CNY. Then there will be some great opportunities to share the OPAC with the students...they've never used one here before!
Couple of great parent helpers this week motivated me to start covering the new books. Between us we must have covered around 50 so the pile on the work table doesn't look half so daunting now. If we can get Oliver up and running, I can catalogue the new books and let the students borrow them which would be excellent.
Other exciting event next week is the first official meeting of the Shanghai Librarians Group. We will meet Rego and hopefully there will be about 6 - 10 attending. It will be brilliant to get things off the ground and start a professional network.
Tuesday, 6 January 2009
New term, new website
Back to school yesterday. Thankfully all the displays had survived the cold weather - I had expected to come in and find much of the display work on the ground but thankfully not.
Have been playing around with netvibes.com and started a new website to promote the library, http://www.netvibes.com/sris#SRIS_Primary_Library After a couple of visits from the IT team I have managed to make this the home page for the Library computers. It involved downloading Firefox onto all the machines as the graphics wouldn't work with IE6.
Netvibes is really easy to use, got lots of handy little widgets to add in feeds, weblinks and other useful stuff. Only hiccup at the moment is the inability to add in data files like excel or work but I am sure there will be a way around that.
Predictably lots of students have forgotten books but it is still busy with kids popping in and out throughout the day.
I am plagued by an annoying dry cough which is making story telling a little hard, I have had to resort to Tumble books today but the kids seem to like it.
Starting my first Library Monitor acitivity this afternoon - should have 8 year 5/6s who want to learn more about the Library.
Have been playing around with netvibes.com and started a new website to promote the library, http://www.netvibes.com/sris#SRIS_Primary_Library After a couple of visits from the IT team I have managed to make this the home page for the Library computers. It involved downloading Firefox onto all the machines as the graphics wouldn't work with IE6.
Netvibes is really easy to use, got lots of handy little widgets to add in feeds, weblinks and other useful stuff. Only hiccup at the moment is the inability to add in data files like excel or work but I am sure there will be a way around that.
Predictably lots of students have forgotten books but it is still busy with kids popping in and out throughout the day.
I am plagued by an annoying dry cough which is making story telling a little hard, I have had to resort to Tumble books today but the kids seem to like it.
Starting my first Library Monitor acitivity this afternoon - should have 8 year 5/6s who want to learn more about the Library.
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