The Fosil Group

JCS 2019 | Digital Literacy in Schools: building capabilities
2019-11-29 10:30 - 2019-11-30 13:30 (Europe/London)
Darryl will be presenting Not letting the technological tail wag the educational dog: the case for a framework of inquiry skills at JCS 2019.
As Marshall McLuhan famously said, “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”
This co-evolution is both inevitable and increasingly problematic – as our technologies converge on the computer, and the computer accelerates their ongoing development, so the risk of these technologies becoming ends in themselves rather than means to human ends increases.
This creates several challenges for schools, which include but are not limited to vision and strategy, initial and ongoing costs, initial and ongoing training for staff and students, and the tension between existing and emerging technologies.
Of particular interest and relevance to the themes of the Conference, and the focus of this talk, is the tension between existing and emerging technologies as they relate to skills. Given the rate of technological change, it is understandable that emerging technologies are determining the skills that need to be taught. However, this allows the tail to wag the dog.
In this talk Darryl will consider the value of a framework of inquiry skills – central to which are information literacy skills, and a growing number of which are dependent on “digital-age technologies” (Douglas Rushkoff) – to ensuring that the technological tail does not wag the educational dog.

School Library Association in the Republic of Ireland | November Conference 2019
2019-11-15 10:00 - 14:00
Darryl will be presenting on FOSIL at the SLARI Inspiration Literacy: Inquiry Based Learning and Philosophy in the Library Conference.
Seymour Papert – central to revolutions in child development, AI and computational technologies for education – highlighted that it is impossible to teach students everything that they need to know, so the best we can do is to position them where they can find out what they need to know when they need to know it. This is our increasingly urgent task, and it does not happen by chance.
The talk focuses on our efforts to reach this position by design through the development of a Framework Of Skills for Inquiry Learning (FOSIL). As a model of the inquiry process, FOSIL is based on the work of Barbara Stripling, but is further informed by the ground-breaking work of Carol Kuhlthau in describing the affective, cognitive and physical demands of inquiry in order to shape more effective interventions. The talk concludes with a consideration of the many and varied benefits of FOSIL, especially to students.

International Association of School Librarianship | 48th Annual Conference and the 23rd International Forum on Research on School Librarianship
2019-10-21 - 2019-10-25
Darryl will be delivering a keynote: Between the classroom and the library …
Ivan Illich argued that the principal lesson School teaches is the need to be ‘taught’.
While ‘this’ lesson may not be intentional, it is almost inevitable in an educational paradigm that is centred on ‘teaching’ rather than learning (instructionism). It is also a lesson that increasingly fails to prepare our students for the world unfolding around them.
What might an educational paradigm that is centred on ‘learning’ look like (constructionism), and what might it require of us, particularly in School?
Norman Beswick, writing about the Library-College movement that reached its apotheosis in the late 1960s, points us in the right direction – it is not the library that ‘supports’ the classroom, but the classroom that leads (or should lead) inevitably and essentially to the library. This is not to say that the library is more important than the classroom, but that the complex reality in which students have actually been positioned to find what they need to know when they need to know it (Seymour Papert) is the consequence of deliberate and effective collaboration between the classroom and the library, between teachers and librarians.
A community is the stories that it tells and the songs that it sings (Leonard Sweet). This is ‘an’ unfolding story/song about trying to locate learning in the space ‘between’ the classroom and the library.

CILIP School Libraries Group AGM and Training Day | The Power of Us: The Many Roles of School Librarians
2019-10-18
Darryl will be presenting on The FOSIL Group – Think globally, act locally – as part of Librarians Reaching Out Across the World.

Copthill School | Teaching for Independence of Learning
2019-10-16 | Copthill School
Darryl will be presenting on FOSIL to members of Senior Leadership from Copthill School and Highfields School.

Schools' Library Service Guernsey | Revisiting FOSIL in Guernsey
2019-10-08 - 2019-10-09
Darryl will be presenting on FOSIL to all staff from Castel Primary School and Forest Primary School on 8 October, and will be running workshops with Elizabeth Hutchinson for SLS staff, as well as primary and secondary teachers on 9 October.

IFLA World Library and Information Congress
2019-08-24 08:00 - 2019-08-29 17:30
Darryl will attending IFLA WLIC 2019 as a member of the Standing Committee of the School Libraries Section.
This will be an important opportunity to enlarge our perspective and build vital relationships.

World Leading Schools Association Conference | Education for the Human Condition
2019-07-18 09:00 - 2019-07-20 17:15
Darryl Toerien, Head of Library at Oakham School, and Chris Foster, Head of Student Research at Oakham School, will be presenting Future-proofing students through inquiry on Saturday 20 July.

CILIP SLG South East Training Day | Supporting post-16 students in the development of research skills
2019-07-09 09:30 - 16:00
Darryl Toerien will be presenting An overview of support for the Extended Project on Tuesday 9 July (10:30-12:30).

Successful Implementation of the Extended Project Qualification
2019-06-25 09:45 - 15:15 | Cranleigh School
Darryl Toerien will be presenting an overiew of FOSIL on Tuesday 25 June.
“The Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), the Higher Project (HPQ) and the Foundation Project (FPQ) provide excellent contexts for teaching students across the full age range to learn more independently, to engage in individual research and to develop their skills in critical thinking and creative expression of ideas.
…
This day conference will be of interest to all those who are involved in teaching, or thinking of beginning, the Extended Project, the Higher or Foundation Projects, or other project-based qualifications.”

LILAC: The Information Literacy Conference
2019-04-24 08:00 - 2019-04-26 16:00
Darryl Toerien, Head of Library at Oakham School, and David Harrow, Deputy Head (Academic) at Oakham School, will be presenting Information literacy: Necessary but not sufficient for 21st century learning on Thursday 25 April.
The presentation may be downloaded from here (and needs to be downloaded to work properly).

LILAC: The Information Literacy Conference
2019-04-24 08:00 - 2019-04-26 16:00
Elizabeth Hutchinson, Head of Guernsey Schools’ Library Service, will be presenting School librarian and teacher collaboration: Finding the hook to engage on Wednesday 24 April.
