Our national and state standards place information literacy (IL) at the heart of
what we do. If you're not teaching IL, what the heck ARE you doing? IL
encompasses the traditional role and everything else, up to and including blogs,
wikis, and podcasts. If you are waiting for others to teach the technology to kids
before you do anything with it than you probably are, or soon will be, irrelevant
in your school.
The key to IL is "just in time" instruction. You teach what kids (and teachers)
need to know when they need to know it. And that means that you don't know exactly
what you will be teaching everyday. Yesterday I taught photo editing, subject vs.
keyword searching, Dewey numbers, filling out online applications, ripping music,
writing a purchase request, and how to access tech support by phone. Most of that
was unplanned but all of it was urgent (to the patrons).
That doesn't mean we teach every aspect of technology. How could we? Sometimes we
just get people pointed in the right direction and let them go. Sometimes we
provide a reality check for teachers regarding what kids really know and can do
with technology. Many times we are the training wheels for a teacher trying
something new. But we are always ready to jump in and improve the teaching and
learning.
We do need to actively define our roles in the school. We need to make ourselves
not just resource managers, not just techies, and not just literature experts. We
need to define ourselves as instructional leaders. We need to jump out front and
show teachers how to integrate resources and engage students. We need to
continually show teachers (and administrators) that we can help them be better
teachers. Since most of our resources are electronic how could that not include
technology?
--------------------------------------------------
Tony Doyle, Library Media Teacher
CSLA Northern Section PR Chair
Livingston High School
Livingston, CA
tdoyle@MUHSD.K12.CA.US
Http://www.lhswolves.org/library/index.htm
Http://lhsblog.edublogs.org
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture; you just have to get people to
stop reading them."
Ray Bradbury
________________________________
-------Original post---------------------------
For those who question or oppose us teaching technology over our more
traditional role of reading to students, does that then make you a
teacher of reading? ...
Shouldn't WE actively (re)define what we teach and why we do it? ...
Any other thoughts on this?
Laura
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