In this edition we have a most interesting variety of articles that reflect the diversity of our profession.
In our Interactions section, our Executive Officer Mary Manning, explores the Games and Apps challenge. This program offered SLAV members the chance to interact with others in the pursuit of improved levels of digital literacy and provided opportunities for students to develop skills and creativity.
Our Perspectives: Local section contains articles about collaborative relationships, digital literacy and the Victorian Curriculum and the ALIA library design awards for 2017. In the Perspectives: Global section Rob Castles shares his experiences at the Harvard Graduate School’s conference – ‘Library Leadership in the Digital Age’. All of these articles could in some way inform your own practice as they each contain ideas and insights that are relevant to school libraries. Synergy can be a very powerful professional learning tool.
Also in the Perspectives: Global section is a most interesting article by KT Lowe from the Indiana East University in the US on the difficulties of authenticating information online – relevant and timely conversation in a media world obsessed with the concept of ‘fake news’.
Of note in this edition is the last of Anne Whisken’s Learning Landscape articles. Anne has been writing this section since 2012 and the ongoing exploration of the design process behind the development of the Library in the Centre for Learning and Innovation at Carey Grammar has been insightful and fascinating. Anne is to congratulated for this amazing contribution to the library design discussion and we thank her for her time and effort in writing this section of the journal over the last five years.
Elsewhere in the journal Sue Osborne, in the Online Life section, looks at twitter as a professional development tool, Dr Carol Gordon looks at access and how we assess it in school libraries and a colleague from WA, Sarah Love, shares with us a great promotional activity in our strategies section – an idea that anyone could replicate with a little effort.
The research article in this edition is a refereed article written by Kasey Garrison and Lee FitzGerald. It describes their work exploring student reflection about the guided inquiry design process. It is fantastic to have such highly regarded academics published in Synergy.
We always welcome your thoughts and suggestions about the contents of Synergy, and we value your opinion. Please get in touch.
Dr Susan La Marca
Editor
synergy@slav.org.au