Deputy Principal

Research is a Powerful Tool

I was sitting at home this week, trying to do a university assignment that involved  searching for definitions of the same concept from two different sources that were given to me. I did not have a choice but to use these sources. 

Sounds simple I know, but after three hours of searching and becoming frustrated at the lack of progress I was making, my wife who is a teacher librarian got home. Sensing my frustration as soon as she walked in the door, she came over to help. She taught me tricks in terms of research that I did not know, or that I just did not remember. When was the last time, I thought, that I had learnt how to research. 

What I discovered at that moment is that looking up something on Google or in ChatGPT is easy. However, how reliable are the sources that we are finding when we do those searches. I tried to look for my definitions using ChatGPT. On the first attempt, I just asked it for a definition; it came back with references from Wikipedia. While these references may have been solid, if they are from Wikipedia, you really need to check their authenticity. The second time I searched for references from a particular encyclopedia, ChatGPT produced nothing and referred me to the actual website I had been searching for originally.

In a world where information is at our fingertips, spending up to 5 hours to source just two definitions really tested my resilience in the end. How dependable is the information that we are finding that seems to come so instantly? Asking for help from my wife, a teacher librarian, made all the difference. 

We are blessed at this College to have a wonderful Library Services Team. We have three teacher librarians. Our Head of Library and Information Services, Mrs Jessica Lonard, leads her team that includes Ms Natalie Stafford and Ms Helen Gibson. They are ably supported by Mr Lachlan Hemmert and Ms Anne-Marie Cremen. They have incredible skills and collaborate with your sons in classes and during Recess and Lunch breaks. I wonder though, how many students do not go in and ask for help and just copy and paste directly from sources or just use ChatGPT. ChatGPT certainly has its place and Mrs Lonard is a leader in this field on how we can use it to benefit our learning. 

Libraries have changed so much from when you and I were at school, and they were places where library staff enjoyed the power of asking people to ‘not talk.’ The McGlade and Westcourt Libraries are places where students can learn, students can collaborate, and students can feel safe. In a world where there is so much information available, now is a time when we need the expertise of our library staff more than ever. Thank you to our whole library team who do such an amazing job, supporting our staff and students.

Adrian Byrne

Deputy Principal