Category: Conferences

The Tertiary Prep Programme 2015

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TTPP SBHS Title page

It’s been a great learning journey to date.  Six years on and The Tertiary Prep Programme a la 2015 only vaguely resembles the unit designed in the fledgling days as I tentatively began forming my thoughts about preparing students for the transition to further study.

After presenting on the work I had begun at Hargest at the LILAC Conference in 2012 I had a whole new lens thrown across it when I began working at Southland Boys’ High School.  Two years of further thinking, trialling, talking and tweaking has now led to the development of a programme designed not for just one particular school, but for any school wanting a solution to bridging the gaps between secondary and tertiary study.

So at the end of last month, at a workshop presentation during the recent SLANZA Conference I launched The Tertiary Prep Programme to a group of librarians and teachers.

Why should we be considering this type of programme in our secondary schools? Recent research out of Massey University, published in the current SET magazine indicates areas of concern in how prepared students are for the switch to tertiary learning. Lisa Emerson and fellow researchers Angela Feekery and Ken Kilpin make some clear conclusions from their work with a group of secondary and tertiary teachers.  Watch out for a blog post on The Tertiary Prep Programme website about this article, Lets talk about literacy: preparing students for the transition to tertiary learning, in coming days.

If you are interested in learning more about The Tertiary Prep Programme, visit the website, check out the resources and follow the site.  I would like it to grow into a community of educators who can share ideas, thoughts and suggestions with each other.

If you’re interested in my next steps with tertiary prep or you’d like my brief summary of the issues and mitigating factors relating to the research article then be sure to take a look at my conference presentation on Slideshare.

And if you’d like support towards embedding a tertiary prep programme in your school, please don’t hesitate to contact me as I’d love to work with you!

Making a Lasting Connection with your School Community

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It was my absolute pleasure to be one of the participants at the SLANZA Winds of Change 2013 Conference held in Wellington last week, not least of all due to the beyond-conference excitement of landing in Wellington last Sunday (one of the last flights to get in for the day!) and encountering the first swarm of earthquakes this past weekend, though fortunately I arrived home mid afternoon yesterday so missed the severe one just after 5pm.

As promised to the wonderful group who attended my workshop on Wednesday morning, here is my presentation Making a Lasting Connection with your School Community, complete with all the links in it for you to go back to and use as and when you want.  I would be particularly interested in hearing from you about:

  • what you found most useful
  • whether there’s anything you would add to the strategies introduced in this presentation
  • what strategy you would consider trying first at your school or with your team
  • if you weren’t at the workshop, does the presentation make any sense?

Also as promised, I have included information about the Library Marketing Toolkit website by Ned Potter.

I welcome any constructive feedback, as that’s the best way to know whether the message is useful to those of you kind enough to take the time and make the choice to come.  There were so many wonderful speakers at this year’s conference and I intend to expand on my own conference highlights and take homes in another post in the not too distant future.

What if you could put Slideshare and YouTube together?

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This is exactly what is on offer from a new Web 2.o tool I came across yesterday through one of the people I follow on Twitter.  They had shared a link to The Next Web blog about Present.Me.

Present.Me allows you to take your slide presentation or document and add then add your presentation to it.  There’s a short and concise 1 minute tour that explains it simply and clearly.

I can see a wide variety of uses:

  • Explaining how to use a new tool
  • Recording tutorials for students
  • Practicing presentations for Conference.  This would allow you to critically evaluate your style of delivery
  • Sharing your presentation after the Conference
  • Students presenting a combination of power-points and persuasive or explanatory speeches

I can also see potential in using Pesent.Me for ways of delivering professional development within our schools, regions or even nationally and internationally.

There is a free trial package but if schools decided it was a useful teaching tool, it could be worthwhile exploring purchasing one of their packages.  It’s relatively cost effective so individuals may choose to have their own package.

LILAC 2012 Tertiary Prep Presentation

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Presenting at the LILAC Conference in Glasgow last month was a definite highlight in my career.  The whole conference was amazing and I intend to blog about the things I heard and saw as well as the people I met and spoke to and connected with in the next couple of postings.

 In the meantime, for those of you interested in my Tertiary Prep work, I have now uploaded my presentation to Slideshare. 

It really is just the bare basics and I’m more than happy to expand on anything you might want more information about.  Just make contact.

LILAC

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Today is my last day at work for the next three weeks.  I’m very excited about my upcoming trip to the UK, especially the opportunity to participate and present at the Librarian’s Information Literacy Annual Conference (LILAC) in Glasgow from 11-13th April.

LILAC is aimed at librarians and information professionals who teach information literacy skills, are interested in digital literacies and want to improve the information seeking and evaluation skills of  library users.

Also of interest is the CILIP-produced Journal of Information Literacy, which has many articles worth reading in this field.

I will be presenting on the work accomplished so far on my Tertiary Prep Unit as part of the theme of transition between secondary and higher education and I’m anticipating meeting all the amazing people attending conference from over 30 countries and learning so much from them.

If you have an interest in Information Literacy and you want to follow the conference “talk” then you can follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #LILAC12.

I’ll be blogging and tweeting as much as I can while I’m away but will also be reflecting on my return.