Practical and theoretical issues

Dear I and A,

Here are some thoughts about our project; the presentation at NERA in March (A, I and E) and at the seminar in January (I and E).

We must find a structure for our work with the paper, to assure that what we present is interesting for others, according to the NERA conference theme.  In our abstract, we say that we “we compare similar – but non-digital – projects on literacy with our own literary blog project with regard to goals, design, methodological challenges and expected outcome of the projects. Relevant works to study are e.g. the literature project Listiga räven described in Alleklev and Lindvall (2003) and Beating the odds: Teaching middle and high school students to read and write well (Langer 2001), which show that schools that succeed in their work on literacy, tend to have teachers that initiate discussions about the texts and motivate the pupils to read by presenting a great amount of books of different kinds.”

We must share the work between us concerning studying the mentioned projects and the theory mentioned in the Abstract.

I think we must say something about what a blog is. The book A mentioned might be helpful here.  We must describe the design of our own literary blog project and discuss methodological challenges according to working with a literary blog in a fifth grade class, based on cooperation between teachers and librarians.  (I think Bartons use of the term literacy- literacy practices, literacy events – can be useful, and also Dressman’s article, The library Report, the book about libraries, the book about the multilingual man – among others.)

I have written down some thoughts and questions about some practical issues.  Perhaps we can continue our discussion on agnevings blog and create some more text to the paper.

Some facts 2008/2009:

The School library has a great amount of new books for children. The fifth grade pupils visit the school library once a week (on Fridays) in their school time, and they have the opportunity to visit the school library on Thursdays after School, two hours. The pupils are reading the books in class, at home and in the school library. In addition, they are visiting the public library twice this school year. The work in connection with the reading consists of conversation, writing book reviews, book presentations in the class (and other things?)

Organizing of the blog

Simplicity first! It is possible to extend the blog at need. Questions to be discussed:

• What kind of publications do we want to have on the blog?
• Who shall have the right to publish?
• Is there a need for one person to be the “Head Editor”?
• Do we need common “rules” for all the publishers?
• What kinds of categories are desired?
• What about password protection?
• What about anonymity?

Cooperation

The public librarian presents new books in the classroom and at the blog. The public librarian becomes a person the children know (a “significant other”). Questions:

• How often can the librarian come to the school to present books?
• How much of the librarian’s workingtime can be used to write presentations and comment on the children’s literary blogs?

The school librarian does the same as the public librarian. In addition, she creates a “users guide” for the pupils. Questions:  

• Time to do the work? (10 hours a week to do all the tasks; administer the library, read for the children, read new books and present them for the pupils and the teachers,  write and administrate the blog, – are not much!)

The teachers incorporate the blog in the “ordinary” work in class with reading, writing, listening and speaking.  Questions:

• How is the work with the blog connected to goals in the national and local curriculum?
• How do they organize the practical work on the blog, using pc’s in the classroom (or at “datarom”)?

Important question concerning all parts: What kind of organized cooperation (in planning reading and learning activities, choosing books etc) exists between teachers and librarians? What about the cooperation with the leadership of the school?

Content on the blog (in the start)

The children read books, write their book reviews and publish them on the blog. Others (pupils, teachers, librarians) can comment on their blogs. Questions:  

• Should there be a structure for the book review? Reasons for this?
• Should there be models written by the teachers? Reasons for this?  
• Should there be written rules concerning the comments?
• Shall the pupils use their real names or pseudonyms?
• How much time must be used on the blog at school to keep the blog “living”?  

We must now work with both the practical issues and the theoretical studies at the same time!

E