This week we focused on technology integration in school curriculum and how teacher librarians were put in the leadership role for this integration. Technology integration will not benefit students and enhance lessons in a successful way unless it is done properly through much pre-planning and everyone is on board. Technology integration will be unsuccessful if teachers and administration does not support the integration. Teacher librarians need to be strong leaders in the school or else teachers and administrators may not fully trust or support the ideas and resources coming out of the library. Many school librarians feel that when technology integration does not work it is due to unsupportive and uncooperative teachers and administration.
The Mighty Little Librarian used S'more to put a collection of tutorial videos in one spot to share with her teachers. These tutorials went over how to use different technology apps and websites to within a lesson. She shared her S'more with her staff because she knew many teachers were more likely not to try a new technology lesson enhancer unless they first saw what it was and how it worked. She took on the technology leadership role just like many of us as school librarians need to as well to earn the trust of our staff and S'more is just one quick and easy way to get information out there to staff.
Johnston, M. P. (2012). Connecting teacher librarians for technology integration leadership. School Libraries Worldwide, 18(1), 18-33.
Twitter Smore App. (2018). Image from https://twitter.com/smorerewards
Whitehead, Tiffany. (2016). Mighty Little Librarian Beyond the Poster. http://www.mightylittlelibrarian.com/?p=1453
From my experience as a classroom teacher I can completely agree with the statement you made about teachers being reluctant to try new technology. I know not every teacher is the same, but many educators are overloaded with responsibilities and often do not have much time to explore and learn about new technology tools. If the school librarian truly takes on the technology leadership role, he or she could help bring the tech tools to the teachers. Brief (and fun) demonstrations and tutorials could build enthusiasm in teachers and make them interested in learning more about a specific tech tool to use in their classroom.
ReplyDeleteWow, I am so excited to share S'more with the teachers at my school! There are so many cool things to do with this, opposed to doing a regular old paper poster. I will save the Mighty Librarian Blog for use later on as well. It sounds like a great blog to refer to in the future. I really like her tutorial videos.
ReplyDeleteI agree about your comments on technology integration. Technology leaders (media specialists, instructional technology specialists, etc.) have to introduce it to teachers ahead of time and allow them time to "digest" the information.