Collaboration through Making

I am preparing to facilitate another meeting with our school's new teachers the focus of which will be ways the library learning commons can support their teaching and students learning. My focus for this meeting will be about Making. The guiding question to my presentation is: "How can making help my students learn?" I hope this opportunity to talk with the new teachers -- not all of whom are new to teaching -- paves the way for increased collaboration with colleagues and use of our innovation lab.

I have put together a "what if you asked your students to..." thought experiment and outlined it in these Google Slides:


 The teachers will be visiting the Innovation Lab for the first time since their orientation at the beginning of the year. Since then, I have collaborated with a few of them when their students were involved in research projects -- always in the teacher's classroom. The focus of our work on those occasions was accessing databases, savvy Google searching, and citation protocols. I am hoping that today's conversation inspires new ideas about what personalized learning means and how the library learning commons space can support all learners and teachers.

I appreciate any thoughts you have about library advocacy, working with new teachers, and helping high school teachers infuse making into teaching and learning.