Saturday, February 23, 2008
Week 6: Thing 15
I have just read some of these articles, and agree wholeheartedly with what they have to say. At the same time I think "how does this fit in with the library that I am in now?" I work in an inner-city elementary school library. Most of these children do not have access to books, except through our library. Many of them do not hear stories read to them, except when at school. When I am feeling discouraged about how far behind we are, in our use of technology, I remind myself about how important it is for these students to become more literate through the process of being more engaged with literature. All of this technology is great, but most of my students do not own computers at home, and have far more basic needs.
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2 comments:
I think you are absolutely right about needing to keep the emphasis on promoting reading at your school, particularly at the elementary level. I do promote new technologies at my school, but it is predominantly to the faculty. I don't talk blogs and wikis and RSS feeds (oh my!) to students, but I do let teachers know about them, particularly when they start talking research projects. I am at a high school, so I don't know what the research piece is at elementary, but I imagine that it is not as universal. I can't imagine that this new stuff is going to change your focus, just how you present information when you need to.
Keep up the good work!
I agree with what you have to say about pondering how this fits in with the work of our libraries. Like you, I work in an elementary school in which a focus on books is very important based on our community needs. This is something I have to keep remembering when I want to push information fluency standards. Can't put the cart before the horse too much.
Library 2.0 skills are still useful to me to support my own work (del.icio.us makes my work easier), collaborate with colleagues (teachers, librarians and parents regardless of time and space) and to keep me focused on the big goal so I am aware of how far we need to go. I'm sure it helps the librarians in the district to have us focused on the continuum, even if what we do is a small part.
Bravo for the work that you do!
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