This week I was looking through the Mighty Little Librarian's blog for ideas about technology integration when I came across her post from September 22, 2016. The title of the post is "Beyond the Poster." I decided to choose this post to focus on this week because I have never used S'more before and The Mighty Little Librarian used this this app to help teachers with technology integration within their lessons.
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
Information literacy has always been important, "fake news" has always been around for thousands of years, but suddenly in that past 2 years these topics have become a part of daily conversation. It is more important than ever for educators and librarians to work together to with their students to help them recognize what is legitimate news. When I was in high school and I was learning about research and which publications to trust and not trust, we used the term 'not a legitimate source.' In the past years the term has now turned to "fake news." No matter anyone's political views, our students are being faced with the term "fake news" from many different areas throughout their lives.
We need to not just tell our students on how to recognize non-valid sources, but actually work
with sources and practice with them on how to view a news or journal source. This takes time, this task cannot be achieved in just one lesson. Infographs, like the one here, are great to have around for students to reference as they work. As information professionals, we have the duty to help our students sort through sources and help them understand if they are looking at a valid source or not. Communicating and collaborating with teachers is the first step to helping our students comprehend information presented to them in all areas of their life.
PCmag. (2018). Image retrieved from https://www.pcmag.com/news/359747/study-fake-news-spreads-faster-on-twitter-than-real-news
APUW. (2018). Image retrieved form http://www.apwu.org/news/deptdiv-news-article/fake-news
Helen R. Adams article "65 Years & Counting: AASL and School Librarians- Still Champions of Intellectual Freedom" really got the gears in my brain going about privacy and censorship of information. The new AASL (American Association of School Libraries) standards that came out in the Fall of 2017 for the school libraries around the country focus on the need for students to have the opportunity to inquire, include, collaborate, curate, explore, and engage with knowledge, technology, and peers around them.
If the community, administration, teachers, or librarians are censoring what information students have access to whether it be on the book shelves or on the internet, then we are limiting our students from being able to fully work with the skills that are necessary for them to be successful in the 21st century global world.
By using the ISTE (International Society of Technology in Education) standards for school technology, we as librarians can teach students about digital citizenship and why it is so very important. Just as Adams mentioned, once students start to comprehend digital citizenship and their right to information, then they will have more freedom to take pieces of information to engage with in the AASL standards. There is no doubt there will be censorship on the school internet networks, but that does not mean we need to censor what is in our library collection. Students need to have access to different cultures, viewpoints, and people to help them grow.
Adams, H. R. (2016). 65 years and counting AASL and school librarians — Still champions of intellectual freedom. Knowledge Quest, 45(1), 34-41.
