Blog Post 4: Technology Leadership Role of School Librarians

Traditionally, school librarians have been seen as the ambassador of reading and helping students build a lifelong love of reading. While this is still true, they now have an additional role to help students responsibly and successfully access information through technology in the 21st century. The Standards for the 21st Century Learner (American Association of School Librarians, 2007) is a great guide to helping to plan and implement the teaching of information and technology skills for students. These standards help to build the gap between the traditional role of the librarian and the new role of the 21st century librarian.

School librarians have an important role in the implementation of technology in schools. They are leaders when it comes to use of technology. School librarians are in a unique position because they collaborate with colleagues and work with all students in the school. Because of this, not only can they directly implement the use of technology with students, but they can also provide support to their colleagues. School librarians act as a leader and expert in technology at their school. They can provide training for students, teacher, and parents. Librarians have an exciting opportunity where they can bring the latest of educational technology to both their colleagues and students. The library, itself, is filled with various technologies and provides access to all students, regardless of economic class. As the librarian, this is your domain and you are able to help implement these various technologies in a flexible, but meaningful way (Perez, 2010, p. 72).

In schools that are lucky enough to have an additional instructional technology specialist, the librarian can work closely with that person to seamlessly weave instruction to students and both teachers. As schools continue into the 21st century, it is crucial that students build these skills in order to become successful in careers that are probably not even invented yet. In order to truly become fluent in technology, they must be taught specific, useful skills. Teachers must feel comfortable using technology before they are able to successfully teach the skills. Librarians can work with the instructional technologist to help build those skills in their fellow colleagues. If schools have a high level of collaboration among their staff, the students are the true winners and become successful members of the 21st century (Johnston, 2013).

References

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

Johnson, M.P. (2013). School librarian + technology specialist. Knowledge Quest, 42(1), 70-75.

Perez, L. (2010). The role of school librarians in promoting the use of educational technologies. Teacher Librarian, 38(1), 72-73.

Blog Post 3: Technology Implementation Strategies

Summary 

• In this time of increased standards and seemingly limitless technologies, it is a challenge for educators to determine which technologies to use with our limited time and best prepare our students to not only read, but read online.
• Reading online is almost always to seek information. As more students have access to the internet, we must specifically teach students the skills to read online and bridge the gap between offline reading. The specific skills to teach students are: reading to locate information, reading to synthesize information, reading to evaluate information, and reading and writing to communicate information.
• In elementary classrooms, we can prepare beginning readers by introducing them to online technologies, teach students to teach each other, provide opportunities for online research, integrate online research with other research, engage students in collaborative online reading, teach students to critically evaluate sources, and use websites as a supportive text for reading.

Application to Instructional Strategies 

Based on the information presented in this article, the best way to teach strategies to students that will be most beneficial and authentic is to integrate online reading sources into our reading curriculum. Showing students that the information they find online can be used as an additional reading source. During a unit on expository texts, using supplementary resources online would be a good way to integrate this into your reading curriculum.

Modeling online searches for information and then having students use these skills to research a topic of their choosing is an excellent strategy to teach research skills. Having students do research for a writing project, such as a biography, animal report, or feature article would be an ideal activity for this. A mini lesson that could be included during these writing units would be to teach students to evaluate the sources to see if they are reliable and accurate.

Collaborative blogging is an excellent way to have students teach each other, engage in collaborative online reading, and teaching both online reading and writing skills. Having students post their reading responses from independent reading on a class blog and having them respond and discuss with each other would be an appropriate way to teach these skills, while also bridging the gap between online and offline reading.


References

Leu, D.J., Forzani, E., Timbrell, N. & Maykel, C. (2015). Seeing the forest, not the trees: Essential technologies for literacy in the primary-grade and upper elementary-grade classroom. The Reading Teacher, 69(2), 139–145