Blog Post 4: Technology Leadership Role of School Librarians

The standards for the 21^st Century Learners advocates equipping students to navigate technology while increasing critical thinking and collaborating skills (American Association of School Librarians, 2015).  Because of the nature of the library, it is imperative that librarians embrace these same philosophies.  The library is the one place in the school building where students are expected to function independently from teachers.  It is a place where inquiry learning is considered ideal. The holistic approach embraced by the 21^st Century Standards addresses personal and aesthetic growth, knowledge sharing and ethics, and inquiry and critical thinking (21^st Century Standards, 2015). 

The traditional library was mainly concerned with curating a collection of books and was happiest with all materials accounted for and tidily shelved.  A better use of a librarian is to focus on the student users rather than the collections.  The standards stress critical thinking skills because without them the use of technology is limited to prescriptive uses.  It is what the student user does with the new technologies that makes the difference between rote and inspired learning.  Typically, the education establishment ignores what students do outside of school, but teachers and librarians need to tap into the skills that students use regularly with social media and gaming to extend their understanding of how to use the library as a time saving and efficient resource (Jaeger, 2014, p. 5).  The education establishment must stop fighting the social aspects of technology and instead join students where they are comfortable.  Part of the responsibility for the bullying and rude behavior on social media can be attributed to educators ignoring the phenomena.  If instead, teachers, administrators, and librarians embraced it and taught students the educational and collaborative connections between social media and learning perhaps the negative aspects of social media could be minimized.  Generally when teaching students about technology, ethics is often overlooked in favor of manipulating and using the tool.  However, it is important as the standards suggest to “use information and technology ethically and responsibly” and the teacher-librarian can provide the perfect environment to practice these skills (21^st Century Learners, 2015).

Teachers are expected to accomplish so much every day grading, planning, classroom management, and communicating with parents and administration.  The collaborating required by current standards must be accomplished using online tools to save time and not create an added burden.  Librarian must create useful collaborative relationships in order to ease this burden and introduce easy to use tools to accomplish this in order to join in the curricular goals of the school.  Along the same lines, today’s employers expect students to be able to use 21^st Century tools to communicate and collaborate with colleagues in the next room or on the next continent.  Access to these skills is not available to everyone because some “children lack access to this new “hidden curriculum” outside the school hours and face policies in school that block them from exploring these emerging spaces for creativity and collaboration (Johns, 2008, p. 5).  Libraries can close this gap and provide the access needed so all students will have an equal opportunity to be successful.

The benefits the librarian can bring to teachers whose assignments include research is unlimited. It is time for the “research packet” and “fact-fetching” assignments to go (Jaeger, 2014, p. 5).  Students must follow a line of inquiry using primary source documents and write term papers that include non-fiction elements.  Librarians are very familiar with every facet of the research process and searching for information and as such are uniquely positioned to augment a teachers work in this required curriculum element.  Research skills will benefit students forever and a collaborative effort to ensure they are successful at it.

Finally, the most meaningful and life-long learning skill is the ability to be self-aware and reflective. Since learning is a reciprocal process, students must be taught to analyze the work they have completed to determine the next step in the process of whatever assignment they are completing.  This cannot be accomplished by filling in worksheets.  Students need the freedom to explore information with relevant skills and teachers need to collaborate with experts in the building to accomplish this goal.  Together teachers and librarians can push students to do their best work.

References:

American Association of School Librarians (2007). Standards for the 21^st-century learner.    Retrieved from:              http://www.ala.org/aasl/sites/ala.org.aasl/files/content/guidelinesandstandards/learningstandards/AASL_Learning_Standards_2007.pdf

Jaeger, P. (2014). Repackaging research: Rigor and relevance for 21^st-century learners.         School Library Monthly, 31(1), p. 5-7.

Johns, S.K. (2008). AASL Standards for the twenty-first-century learner: A map for student    learning. Knowledge Quest 36(4), p. 4-7.

Blog Post 3: Technology Implementation Strategies

Horan writes about the importance of putting technology in its place in the library writing center.  The technology itself is not as important as how it is used to enhance writing instruction.  The goal is to find the balance between technology and a student’s active participation in critical thinking.  The technology highlighted involves web based products rather than hardware.  The day of the jump drive is over replaced by Google Drive as the perfect familiar place for students to use to format their writing assignments.  Because it works similarly to Microsoft Word, it is easy for students to understand how it works.  The automatic save feature is practical because it will save student work even if something goes wrong in the building or the computer hard drive crashes.  In addition, the Google Drive storage cloud makes the student’s work accessible from any computer.  Students who are reluctant to write can use a voice recognition mode in the Microsoft Word program, which allows them to bypass an impediment that affects some students. Research work is enhanced by teaching the “Big6” a push in college circles that would benefit high school students. This list of literacy skills include task definition, information seeking strategies, location and access, use of information, synthesis, and evaluation.  In particular evaluation of resources is the key skill that all good research requires.  Cornell University library hosts a site that teaches users how to evaluate a website.  

The teaching strategies suggested in this article include the idea of a library writing lab and the direct instruction of using databases.  A writing lab that operates with extended hours especially during the research assignment that is typical in most high schools across the curriculum would support teaching standards and college readiness goals.  The opportunity to devote specific time to review and update the research skills of students would certainly support classroom teachers.  Another technique that would enhance the learning experience is direct instruction on how to use databases.  Most programs include this skill, but Horan extends this to the public library.  He encourages students to get a library card for the local library and teaches them how to tap into those databases in order to extend their research beyond the walls of the school library.  This works to teach research skills and to connect the student to understanding that research does not end when they graduate.

Horan, T. (2015). Technology and your school library writing center. School Library         Monthly 31(6). P. 5-7.

Blog Post 2: Hand Held Devices

The use of hand held mobile computing devices in the classroom is still a rare occurrence in 2015 since the authors of this study could only find nine teachers to participate who were from Michigan, Tennessee, New York, Kentucky, and Mississippi.  The kinds of devices evaluated in this article includes IPads, personal cell phones, and e-readers. The kinds of barriers to this practice include the same kinds of factors that were present when computers began to be a normal part of educational equipment.  Unfortunately, many schools have banned the use of personal mobile computing devices due to concerns about distractions and security making the use of them for educational reasons impossible. However if the rules changed to include them, other barriers are still present including resources, training, and standardization.  Teachers most often complained that the school’s networks did not perform adequately to support the use of these devices.  Some teachers have managed to use the devices effectively but only when they received support from their administrative teams.  The most effective example was a teacher whose district issued an IPad to every student in the class that became theirs for the school year.  For teachers, record keeping was made mobile and fast with the use of personal cell phones or IPads.  Attendance and behavior issues could be recorded via text, photo, or video and recovered quickly for use in discussions with counselors, parents, administrators, and students.  The applications used most often were iMovies, Evernote, games, and PuppetPals.  Although the use of these devices in the classroom excited students, they are mostly used as a supplement to the regular curriculum instead of becoming central to instruction.

My hope is to integrate mobile computing devices into my library so students and faculty can use them creatively and often.  Distance learning for students with attendance issues due to health issues can be improved through the use of mobile computing devices.  These students with access to an IPad loaded with a reading application can have their reading and writing assignments in one place.  An e-reader can be used for reading assignments to use at home rather that dragging a pile of books to doctor’s appointments and hospital visits.  These students can write their essays and complete assignments and email them to their teachers who can use Evernote to annotate as they grade.  The average student can benefit from reading on an e-reader especially if it is equipped with a dictionary linked to the text, so students can quickly check the definition for unfamiliar words.  IPads in the library can be used for making movies and adding voice overs to PowerPoints  allowing non-test reader response journals. Students can use personal response systems to take quizzes during group library presentations to check for understanding.  Book discussions in the library can be enhanced with students sitting comfortably with an IPad or personal cell phone that they can use to look up events or unknown words mentioned in the text to improve their understanding.

Reference: Grant, M., & Tamim, S., & Brown, D.B., & Sweeney, J.P., & Ferguson, F. K., & Jones, L. B. (2015). Teaching and learning with mobile computing devices: Case study in k-12 classrooms. TechTrends, 59, p. 32-45.

Blog Post 1: Technology Strengths and Weakness

           The International Society for Technology in Education (2008) advocates a well-trained, forward looking teacher who can interface with multiple types of digital tools and incorporate them into authentic real-world lessons. This requires a teacher who has had access to the latest and most updated digital tools and who has been trained and can move easily between different types of formats and platforms.  Having been in the “trenches” of teaching for 14 years, I can say that these standards are very difficult to attain.  There will always be room for improvement because teachers are limited by the digital tools available in their schools, which are governed by administrators, school boards, and ultimately communities.  This is where creativity becomes the cornerstone to branching out of the comfort zone of the four walls of a classroom.  These standards cannot be accomplished all at once and therefore are a goal that should inspire teachers for all of their careers.

            My strengths center around “facilitating creativity,” “promoting digital citizenship,” and “Professional growth and leadership” (ISTE, 2008).  I truly want my students to tap into their own thinking abilities and have always promoted lessons that encourage this activity. Whether they were video recording Shakespeare scenes, or responding to discussion questions on our Blackboard platform, my students were actively engaged in incorporating technology into their learning.  As an English teacher, promoting digital citizenship is a primary directive.  Encouraging original work and avoiding purposeful and inadvertent plagiarism is the cornerstone of the English curriculum.  Looking for better and more effective ways to teach students all the skills they need to function in our modern world is what pushes me to continue to learn more about teaching and now to join this program for school librarianship.  My goals are to become better at adopting new ways of using digital tools to improve my effectiveness in my career in high school arena.

          Although I feel I have done a good job of incorporating digital tools in my classroom, I feel I can do better.  My weaknesses center on designing and adapting digital age learning experiences, and assessments and collaborating using digital tools (ISTE, 2008).  I feel that assessments should be different from pen and paper when given using digital tools.  While I had a student response system, it really only supported the old multiple choice testing format, which in my mind was not revolutionary.  The use of digital tools should highlight synthesized thinking and be much more than a redo of the types of assessments used for standardized tests.  Reaching out beyond my classroom walls to a global community is a new concept for the practices I used in my English classroom.  I am very interested in making every minute count and have felt that teaching under the block system limited my ability to do this.  While we engaged in reading across cultural and geographical lines, my students never participated in cross cultural or global learning experiences.  While I realize this is possible using digital tools, I have not engaged with this practice. I have dabbled in using digital tools for collaboration; however, for the most part my colleagues were not well versed in using these tools, which limited my use of them.  As a result, I feel unsure of my ability to use them easily.    I hope that this school librarianship program will help me to see the value of these practices of using digital tools to enhance assessment and collaboration and to reach beyond the walls of my school to the global community.

Reference: National Society for Technology in Education, (2008). ISTE standards: Teachers. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/iste-standards/standards-for-teachers

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