Learning Commons Episode 8: Designing the School Library as a Garden

SUMMARY: To explore learning and change, the idea of the school library as a formal garden is cultivated. A model floor plan that is adaptable by many school library spaces is presented, designed to apply models of inquiry and the concept of the learning commons.


What's in a Name?

Many in the school library profession have agonized over the name we should give to the space we work in: school library, information centre, school library information centre, library media centre, resource centre, or just plain library. The belief is that the name should reflect all that happens in the space and the person making it happen— teacher-librarian, library media specialist, school librarian etc.

I am not too worried any more about such terms but more interested in how the space/vocation nurtures  learning and change. As I continue to use this blog to plant the ideas of models of inquiry and the learning commons developed in Together for Learning (OSLA, 2009), I want to cultivate the idea of the school library as garden and the school librarian as gardener.

The Formal Garden

Chahar Bagh Islamic Garden Garden Design

Now bear with me. Here's my fanciful argument. In (re)designing a school library space, we need a model that is both traditional and innovative. One that is organic, dynamic, and wholistic. We could consider one of the oldest organizing maps: the formal garden. 

A formal garden was specially designed to highten the pleasure and instruction of all who walked in and around her.

The visitor could:

Hillwood Gardens, Washington D.C.

• get to know and distinguish new and familiar objects
• understand the principle used to organize things 
• reflect in a setting conducive to private experience 
• converse socially with others about a common experience
• relate one area  to another for greater understanding
• remember what had been experienced
• appreciate and sensually experience beautiful surroundings 

An education indeed! And if you think about it, these are all qualities we would hope for in our school libraries.

For all the above reasons and a few others, the library as garden is more than just a metaphor. I am not saying we should move earth and fountains into our school libraries (though a few more flowers wouldn't hurt).

The School Library as a Formal Garden

A Formal Plan for the School Library

So let's consider planning a school library, elementary or secondary, as a kind of horticultural learning commons that

• organizes knowledge for meaningful activity and talk
• develops private reflection and social learning through story, inquiry, and conversation
• supports a  model of inquiry and its many features and phases
• allows for rearrangement to meet new challenges

All this within an interior space where form follows and suggests function.

I have chosen a typical layout, often found in elementary schools, to map this library garden: two classrooms knocked together. If my idea works at all, a good test would be if it could work with such a commonly found, if unassuming, architecture. Your own library space may be grander, differently shaped, or better appointed. For instance, my template's entrances, exits, workrooms, and seminar rooms may not match your layout. All the better challenge to see if this design works for you.

Notes on the Design

1. Storytelling, reading, and conversation are all central to the design. The design accommodates a strong storybook program in elementary libraries, as well as a dramatic book talk approach in middle and secondary libraries. Even the process of inquiry might be considered a variation on the telling of stories. On the other hand, a story could lead more naturally to an inquiry activity in the surrounding spaces.
2. The four quadrants reflect the inquiry process outlined in Together for Learning. The design encourages you to walk the talk as it were, just as you walk a labyrinth to experience the mystery at the centre.
3. One area is related to  all other areas within a wholistic context of knowledge and experience. There are epistemological implications here that run deep in the practice of librarianship. 
4. The furniture arrangement in each different areas seeks to reflect the diverse activity in that area. For instance, group work and individual work may look different in each area. I have stuck to low tech options for a start. You may have other ideas depending on experience and budget. 
5. Computers as such are minimalized only because I believe such devices as tablets and PDAs will provide greater flexibility, portability, and social connection, in line with current student practice outside the library/garden.
6. Book shelving is somewhat problematic but the idea is that low shelves encourage space and vision, tall shelves allow for traditional collections (for the present). Imagine different uses for low shelves (e.g., storybooks, reference, media, and displays of student work). Putting castors on low shelves increases flexibility for the whole room, suddenly opening up some areas while defying others.
7. Monitoring meaningful learning behaviour is relatively easy in a formal space such as this, with good sight lines and traffic patterns.
8. The ubiquitous whiteboard is more a metaphor for inquiry-based activity than a preferred technology. Note that it is a common feature in each of the four quadrants.
9. I have imagined the window light shining in particularly on the first and last stage of inquiry and the story centre. I like the symmetry of inspiration here.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoy talking about this idea and forwarding thoughts and variations. Feel free to borrow this idea formally or change it to suit your needs. As Juliet said in Romeo and Juliet:

      What's in a name? that which we call a rose

      By any other name would smell as sweet.

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Learning Commons Episode 7: Going to the Wall with Daily Inquiry

SUMMARY: School libraries need to encourage a continuous climate of inquiry. Ways to create dynamic spaces for inquiry are explored. Practical and creative suggestions to promote the inquiry process are offered, with a caveat.


The Basic Idea

Three weeks ago on this blog, my daughter Alice wrote of her experience at Waterloo University, where high school students collaborated on mathematical questions and problems, using gathering places with walls and boards to record their ongoing inquiry. Common in university settings, the idea could have innovative application in 21st century schools.

Template for Inquiry Wall 1

In particular, teacher-librarians could harness this idea in our elementary and secondary school libraries by creating special areas for ad hoc inquiry. Here students could work together over a day, a week, a month etc. on a question we pose to them or better still they pose to each other. This is often formerly done with a captive class. However, the idea here is to establish a place that encourages a continuous climate of spontaneous inquiry to develop self-motivated, reflective habits of mind. In other words, when students decide they have a question, they go to this area to collaboratively inquire about it.

Such areas begin the transformation towards the whole library as a learning commons.

Creating the Space

How do you start? Wherever you can within your library, create a learning commons/inquiry space that balances private work and public access. Sign it well. Make it inviting, beautiful, and functional, with a relaxed atmosphere to encourage social networking.

Centre it around blackboards, bulletin boards, flip charts, or white boards. Arrange chairs and other furniture to establish the space. You can create a virtual space, of course, on a school network through chat, wiki etc. but the visual display of simultaneous information sharing is optimum here. It captures the palpable excitement of real-time learning.

Template for Inquiry Wall 2

There are myriad ways to set up the writing and recording surfaces, depending on the question and grade level. Be sure to provide paper, stickies, coloured pens, and even cameras to record stages of thinking and sharing.

The recording of ideas, research data, conclusions, etc. can be done simply or you can get fancy. For instance, you could begin with an open-ended template (Slide 1). You could experiment with stickies -- even using different colours for questions, data, conclusions etc (Slide 2).

See if you can work towards implementing your library's inquiry model. Slide 3 is based on work done by the Ontario Library Association. (see my March blogs for details). Get staff and students involved in the enterprise by making their own templates for different situations.

Insist on rules that both preserve and respect everyone's contribution. Nearby, display some words of guidance or witty quotations about what makes for good conversation and problem solving. Set appropriate limits regarding language and graphics to focus on learning and meaningful talk.

Template for Inquiry Wall 3

Promoting the Idea

Whenever students, individually or as a class, come into the library, invite them to visit the inquiry/commons area and engage in the process. Make announcements each day/week etc. on the sound system, newsletters, or teacher notes about the question currently being posed, collaborations noted, and progress being made.

Celebrate answers and solutions reached with the whole school and follow up the inquiry with real action where appropriate. Inquiry counts!

Hold inquiry marathons for particular groups, timed for energy and fun. Perhaps invite an audience.

Organize part of a class visit around the inquiry area to get a larger project going. Whenever a small group asks a "library" question, take them over to the inquiry area and work through it on paper, modelling the process of inquiry for them.

Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate

Work with subject teachers, school club members, administrative teams, and parents to generate interesting and authentic questions for each inquiry. Share the process and your particular applications of it with local school librarians, administrators, and board personnel.

Write me a comment on this blog or better still tell us all about it on our library network at http://lcommons.org/. For more details and context about this network, please go to my blog post here.

Caveat

Inquiry is at the heart of the idea of the library as a learning commons. The heart pumps -- continually, loudly, and dynamically. Be prepared for active learning and enjoy new life in your collaborative learning space!

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Learning Commons Episode 1: Timeless Ideas in Ontario and Nineveh

SUMMARY
Examination of the concept of the learning commons begins with reference to Together for Learning from the OSLA. The ancient library at Nineveh provides a context for such concepts as organizing knowledge for power and civilization.


A Timeless Idea: The Learning Commons

Libraries, and in our case school libraries, are now examining the concept of the learning commons as a major theme for 21st century learning. Over the next weeks, I want to add to the narrative about the learning commons, both theoretically and practically, with reference to past, present, and future explorations.

I have already referenced the great work done by the Ontario School Library Association in Together for Learning: School Libraries and the Emergence of the Learning Commons. This 2010 document is having a global impact in its call for change:

A Learning Commons is a vibrant, whole-school approach, presenting exciting opportunities for collaboration among teachers, teacher-librarians and students. Within a Learning Commons, new relationships are formed between learners, new technologies are realized and utilized, and both students and educators prepare for the future as they learn new ways to learn (p.3).

I will be launching a new series on the learning commons in coming weeks. I will also be offering teacher-librarians a unique opportunity to join a special virtual commons that could help to realize this change. Along the way, I want to put this innovative idea within the context of past libraries: their history, purpose, characteristics, and legacy for our times. I'll start my narrative with the oldest western example we know anything about.

Western representation of the royal palace at Nineveh

http://looklex.com/e.o/nineveh.htm

The Library at Nineveh

I, Assurbanipal, within [the palace], took care of the wisdom of Nebo. The whole of the inscribed tablets, of all the clay tablets, the whole of their mysteries and difficulties, I solved. (Cylinder A, Column I, Lines 31-33, in Smith, George. History of Assurbanipal, Translated from the Cuneiform Inscriptions. London: Harrison and Sons, 1871: pg.6)

Ashurbanipal, now in the British Museum

 http://looklex.com/e.o/ashurbanipal.htm

The first great ancient library in the western world would seem to be Ashurbanipal's royal library at Nineveh. Ashurbanipal was the last great king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (668 BCE – c. 627 BCE)..While archival material had been kept by previous rulers, the young king Ashurbanipal had a cultural and political purpose in rigorously gathering world knowledge into one place. Knowledge was power. He commandeered, bought, stole, and had copied as much Babylonian material as he could. While he paid select Babylonian scribes to collect and copy texts, he is said to have chained others to their places. He seems determined to secure material that was already fading in human memory.

His library is known to us because of one the great ironies of history: the burning of the city of Nineveh by the Medes baked and thus preserved thousands of cuneiform tablets. The majority of these are housed in the British Museum which continues to research them. Read about the Ashurbanipal Library Project here and listen to an informative podcast from the BBC here.

Scholars now think that with the size of its collection of tablets, leather and papyrus scrolls, and wax boards, Nineveh's library surpassed the subsequent rival, Alexandria. While divination texts dominated the collection, mythological texts, literature, history, government archives and religious works were gathered in the thousands over a twenty-five year period. The king would brooke no rival, at the end of a pen or the sword!

Tablet of Gilgamesh found at Nineveh now in the British Museum

http://looklex.com/e.o/gilgamesh.htm

We do not know what the library looked like, though a romantic (copy-written) image here evokes its splendour. However, we do know it was an organized collection with genres in separate rooms perhaps. And thanks to the library, we have preserved the fullest copies of the epic of Gilgamesh and a pre-biblical version of Noah's flood.

Is Nineveh a Learning Commons?

While this is not the criteria for judging Nineveh's importance, three things stand out for me as I try to contextualize and construct the concept of the modern library/learning commons. Ashurbanipal's royal library

• established the library as a force for civilization by preserving both current knowledge and knowledge that was threatened by forgetfulness and loss
• recognized that knowledge was power — power to rule wisely beyond a particular time
• applied organizational principles to systematize vast resources to use them effectively

It was not a modern library commons mainly because of the absence of democratic access. It served only an elite, specific culture. However, we would do well to judge its importance in terms of our global hopes, not of domination but collaboration. If King Ashurbanipal had had the Internet, he would have embraced it. Perhaps in a wave of universal wisdom, he would have unchained his scholar-slaves and traded in their clay tablets for IPads!

Note: Thanks to LookLex Encyclopedia for my educational use of the images about Nineveh.

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