Blog Post 4: Technology Integration in the School Library

Integrating technology into learning is an essential component of the modern educational landscape.  The role of the school librarian is to support that integration of technology by using the resources of the library as a technological extension of the classroom and by collaborating with teachers in promoting best practices of technology integration.  Today’s students are more tech-savvy and require of their instructors a different set of teaching skills than in the past.  In addition, with the ever expanding amount of information available to students via technological advances, it is now an educators job to not only teach his or her discipline, but to also teach the learning skills that a Twenty-first Century student needs in order to responsibly navigate the use of technology in their lives. 

One of the guiding documents provided to librarians, and educators at large, in helping facilitate the teaching of these technological skills, is the American Association of School Librarian’s Standards for the 21^st-Century Learner.  This document outlines four primary goals for 21^st-Century learners to achieve with the support of their educators.  As outlined by this document, every learner should be able to, “1) Inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge, 2) Draw conclusions, make informed decision, apply knowledge to new situations, and create new knowledge, 3) Share knowledge and participate ethically and productively as members of our democratic society, 4) Pursue personal and aesthetic growth” (AASL, 2007).  The job of the school librarian is to assist teachers and students in assuring that every learner have the ability to utilize technology in a way that helps them to enhance their learning and achieve these learning goals.

One of the key things that a modern school librarian can do in helping students to achieve their learning goals, is to establish the school library, or media center, as a hub of collaboration and conversation on campus.  As David Lankes (2012) says in his article, Joining the Conversation, “It is time for a new librarianship, one centered on learning and knowledge, not on books and materials… [where] we spend much more time in connection development instead of collection development” (p. 8).  Student learners, and especially those multi-tasking, tech-savvy modern learners, need a space where they can utilize technology in order to create conversations, deepen relationships and build collaborations.  Examples of this in the modern school library would be providing access to conversations with authors and other professionals via Skype, encouraging student collaboration through platforms such as Google Docs and Wikis, and providing outlets for student creativity and conversation through the use of various Web 2.0 tools. 

Along the same lines, professors of education, Eileen Schroeder and E. Anne Zarinnia, write in their article, Creating a Students’ Library Website (2012), that, “schools [must] move beyond focusing on teaching strategies to a deeper recognition of how students learn and develop new knowledge” (p. 29).  They go on to emphasize that people learn through inquiry and conversation, and so the modern library must be a facilitator of learning by creating avenues through which its students can find information, converse, collaborate and share their work and their findings with one another.

References

AASL.  (2007).  Standards for the 21^st-century learner.  American Library Association.  Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/aasl/standards-guidelines/learning-standards 

Lankes, D.  (2012, February).  Joining the conversation: School librarians as facilitators of learning.  Teacher Librarian, 39(3), 8-11.  Retrieved from http://www.teacherlibrarian.com/

Schroeder, E. & Zarinnia, E. A.  (2012, April).  Creating a students’ library website.  School Library Monthly, 28(7), 29-32.  Retrieved from http://www.schoollibrarymonthly.com/