At Motueka on Friday 29th May we hosted a group of students from Motueka High School. These students are the recently formed school book group that meet fortnightly with the Hish School librarian Anne Scaife. The purpose of the meeting was to get some feedback from the students as to how they felt the YA area could be improved and to ascertain what they would like us to offer in the way of reading programmes, and hands on sessions, etc.
The students came over in their lunch break. We were expecting perhaps 8 to 10 and were blown away when 16 arrived. (The food managed to hold out, just!) They were very enthusiastic and had a range of suggestions, including a whiteboard or teen notice board and teen reading programmes in winter around the school holidays. They were very keen for art/craft activities, such as designing posters, having best book blurb competitions and even cooking (might be a challenge). We were quite surprised by how keen they were to do book reviews. At the end of session, reading copies of Random House books were distributed and the students were able to keep the books in return for a review. If this is successful it would be great to put reviews on our website as well as being passed on to Random House for their website. Also, they liked the idea of being able to suggest books for purchase and having first pick of new YA books. Feedback forms were given to the students for them to discuss at their next school book group meeting. So we are hoping to receive more great ideas and also gauge whether the students would like to form a Motueka Library YA Committee in the future.
Yesterday, I had students from the senior Whanau class at Parklands School come and have a UiaNgaPatai demo on the APNs. UiaNgaPatai is the Te Reo version of AnyQuestions. A link to AnyQuestions can be found on the homework page of Kidspace on our website. AnyQuestions directs students to useful, accurate, online information for their homework. It is not a ‘quick answers service’, and is available to all New Zealand school students. Online librarians help the student to work out the sort of information they need and begin searching for them. The transcript and links from the session can be emailed to the student. The student ask a question, in this case the students were doing a project on their whakapapa. The online librarian ‘chats’, finds out more about the question and then guides the students to useful sites. I was really impressed with the students, one conversed all in Maori, with some help from his teacher. The operators easily engaged the students to chat, it was awesome. The questions were quite tricky as there was not a lot available online and we did run out of time. However, it was a very useful exercise and students and teacher seemed to enjoy themselves. One of the teacher’s comments was that it was excellent inquiry-based learning and he would be keen for the students to use it again. I really wasn’t sure how it would go, but the session exceeded my expectations and I can recommend the AnyQuestions/UiaNgaPatai as a useful research tool for school students. ManyAnswers is a database of previously asked questions and the answers and websites that were found.
Justice chatting online 
Matua Dean helping students use UiaNgaPatai
Mary
June 12, 2009 at 5:17 pm |
Tino pai Mary – so good to hear of the enthusiasm of the rangatahi. Sounds like a great initiative.
Isn’t the Parklands whanau class awesome? – they always blow me away with their confidence and accomplishment. V cool!
Ruth
June 13, 2009 at 1:08 pm |
Both sessions sound awesome! I always puzzle about how to quantify the benefits from things like this. How do we measure the impact on individual lives? I guess that’s always going to be our million dollar question. It’s so important and often lost from the sight of our funders and stakeholders.