Reflections on ETL 503 Assignment 1

The assignments do have useful practical application. I liken it to a student teacher preparing a unit of lessons for an assignment and then having a resource to draw upon in their practicum or their later teaching. But just as an experienced teacher will complete and demonstrate a lesson without necessarily holding a fully annotated program in their hand as they teach, so our teacher librarians do their jobs without referring to a research paper or textbook to support their actions. Doing this now, helps us to understand the why, while talking or working with our teacher librarians helps us to learn the how.

I think that sometimes the readings and even the Kennedy text can seem too theoretical or academic and not enough like a procedure manual. Yet the assignments ask us to bring these two things together: the practical and the theoretical. This also compounds the problem of referencing. How do I reference something that I do? I make notes on each reading and yet I've still struggled to demonstrate wide reading in the assignments because they seem to ask us to describe what we did and what we'd do better, rather than discussing the thoughts of the experts. How do we know what is a better way? From the readings, I think – as well as advice from the librarian. In Assignment 1, it was easy to look up recommended books on SCIS or on a site such as the NSW DET syllabus support sites. This is what librarians do all the time. However, because I wrote my own appraisal (based on the selection criteria in the readings), without referring to this source and other reviews of the two books I included, my work was not as strong as it might have been.

The assignment and text did say to use these type of resources in your selection, so I have no gripes with that appraisal. However, it is important to write out each part of the task and the assessment criteria, if you want to ensure that you have covered everything. The nine-point criteria from Ashley for the collection development policy is an example of this. When they're written in a long sentences in the task rather than points, it is easy to miss something.