LRC Induction Lessons

 

The first few weeks of the school year are always wonderfully active and full of start of school year activities. This year as in previous years, the LRC Librarians worked with KS3 teachers in the English department to deliver a short but comprehensive LRC induction lesson. The discussions and activities were focused on how to use the LRC, the resources and activities offered onsite as and well services offered. 

Once the presentation was done the students spent the remaining time searching for books they were interested in, reading and sharing their reading with others. 

LRC INDUCTION 22-23 

Please follow this link to view the Flickr Album, 

Supporting Local Universities

 

 

Today the LRC Team had a visit from a group of Library Sciences students from the University of El Salvador. This was a follow-up session from a virtual meeting a week ago in which the students interviews the librarians about the LRC and its workings.

We were asked for a tour but prepared an experience for them that we hope not only illustrated many of the functions and purposes of the LRC in an engaging way but also, highlight ways in which they as future librarians can engage members of their communities through experiences which can be adapted across subjects and grades, at a low cost or no cost. 

This was an enjoyable experience for all and many important connections were made.

We have encouraged the students to keep in touch and keep us abreast of their professional endeavors.  We do hope that the students will take us up on our offer to support them as they move from university to their first library postings. 

It is a wonderful thing to hear that we are considered by many, including university professors to be the best school library in the country. The LRC has come a very long way since 2008 and we endeavor to ensure that the innovative learning, resource collections, community engagement, and support continue to develop and improve, in the benefit of our ABC and local communities. 

Please click on the link to view more photos from this event.

Redesigning Our Spaces

At the LRC we often find ourselves redesigning and re-purposing our spaces to fit the growing needs and interests of our community. We are currently working on creating a dedicated 3D Centre, which will house our growing collection of 3D printers, 3Doodler printing pens as well as laser engravers and cutters.

While we love our XYZ da Vinci: Duo, 1.0 and Junior Pro, we have recently invested in a collection of CR-10 printers from Creality. These are very versatile machines and fairly simple to operate and maintain. They also use open source software like Repetior Host and Cura and non proprietary filament.


 We are also making space to house our new Glowforge Pro laser cutter, which we hope to have up and running in the later half of August.

This 3D  Centre will be open for drop-ins, class sign-ups and regular ICT department lessons, as well as Makerspace clubs and activities. We look forward to seeing our staff and students make wonderful use of these resources.

We are in the process of building up our cooking resources and creating  a cooking centre/kitchen area. This project will eventually move to the front of the LRC, once we work out electrical access, shelving and an extractor for the area.

Despite this delay we have set up a provisional are for it outside the ICT/LRC office to facilitate Life Skills group visits,  and our LRC Cooking Club which runs each Thursday from 2-3.

During this term, we will be focusing on microwave meals and tasty toaster treats, as we support our senior students in their preparations for University in the fall.

Global Education Conference 2019 and Library 2.0

Each year we participate in each of Library 2.0 and Global Ed Con.


This summer we had the opportunity to present the ways we used emerging technologies in the Library at the conference. This was a short session that we ran with some of the team in El Salvador and myself in Canada. It was the first time I had done this on a Cell phone and I was happily surprised that it went so well, considering Melissa, our librarian had to the change the slides for me as I spoke into my phone from thousands of miles away.

The second conference we presented at was the Global Education Conference which is taking place this week.

Our presentation focused on the ways in which we and our students work on projects, and activities through clubs and classes that focus on the UN SDGs.  In addition to this it demonstrated the ways in which we  attempt to broaden our student's global perspective, help them grow as global citizens who can make an impact, no matter how small, their world locally,  while thinking about the global situation.

The presentation recording will be available shortly and  as soon as I can I will post it here.  For now I have posted the link to the Google Slides presentation deck here.

Something very special about this presentation is that it was undertaken by a large team of both students and teachers, 14 of us in total. Despite a few last minute technical errors and a few seconds of dead air at times, while we shuffled speakers around, it ran fairly smoothly and everyone did an amazing job.

It is always heart warming to get positive feedback from attendees who have sat through a1 hour presentation. One such attendee, took a moment to speak with us at the end of the session. She had many a kind word for our presenters and thanked us all for sharing so many wonderful ideas and tools with everyone through the  presentation.

We look forward to running more of these sessions with each new year and sharing them with the world.

Brain Awareness Week at the LRC

This week the ABC celebrated Brain Awareness Week in many different ways. In the LRC we wanted to mix things up a bit and in doing so prepared quite a few exciting challenges that we had not done before with students.  

Students and staff had a wonderful time before and after school, at breaks and lunches and even in tutor time in one case, as they challenged themselves and each other while exploring the different activities.

The activities that really stood out this year were Spero Robotics mazes and bowling challenges, 3D Pen Printing, Rubik's Cube and Checkers Games (We need to buy more of these as they are so popular that the students want to hold a larger competion!), 5 minute lego challenges, and Chess. 

The 11th grade students who are in their final days of practice for the annual ABC Circus performances, Thursday and Friday even found some time in their busy schedules to come in and play.

It truly was a wonderful Brain Week fulll of laughter, excitement and active learning! We can't wait to do it again, and really Brain Week is every week at the LRC. 
We fully expect all of these activities to continue throughout the year in different ways, as students and staff are now better aware of all of the great activities they can take part in through clubs, the makerspace and regular visits through classes and outside of lessons.

The following is the menu of activities we had available for staff and students to take part in as well as links to explore further.

Have  a Wonderful Week!

LRC Team

Brain Week Activities
Sphero Mini Robot Challenges
Sphero BOLT Robot Challenges
Merge Cube 3D Augmented Reality
Lego Wall Design
3D Design and Printing with 3Doodler Pens
Chess and Checkers
Rubik's Cube Game
Leap Motion Challenges
Makey Makey Input Challenges
LittleBits Circuits and Design Challenges
3D Magnetic Building Tile Discovery