In their 2012 article
"Technology Swarms for Digital Learners," Annette Lamb and Larry
Johnson compare the librarian's current position with that of the honey
bee. Similar to the Colony Collapse of
the honeybee population in the past few years, school librarians are on the
verge of eradication unless we make changes to our practice to fit with our
student's educational needs. No longer
can librarians simply keep books and help students polish PowerPoint
presentations; we must look to meet them on their own playing fields as digital
natives and strive to incorporate engaging Web 2.0 tools to garner interest in
core subjects and teach 21st century learning skills.
A major point that
can be gleaned from this article is that there are six broad categories, or
"swarms" as Lamb and Johnson refer to them, of 21st century
students. Students visiting the library
are no longer just researchers or readers; instead, they are searchers looking for up-to-date information, curators bringing content together in one
place, inquirers taking dynamic notes and
keeping track of resources, socializers
connecting with others both academically and personally, organizers taking information and presenting it
in charts or timelines , and storytellers
creating content and sharing it in new ways.
Lamb and Johnson point out that librarians must start to see their
students in this way in order to help them connect with the tools and
information that they need. For example,
storytellers want to create for an authentic audience; librarians must be ready
with Web 2.0 tools such as the website Figment, for fiction stories, or
Animoto, for short presentations, that will allow storytelling students to move
from a simple teacher audience to one that is worldwide when their findings are
published online.
Regardless of which
"swarm" enters the library, a second major point in this article is
that today's students are most engaged by collaborative and dynamic web spaces
throughout their educational experience.
Whereas technology was first integrated into schools through word
processing software and eventually search engines that connected students to
static pages filled with unchanging information, today's students need to
interact with technology that allows them to connect with one another and the
constantly changing world around them.
Finding sources of information can now go beyond simply typing in a term
into a search bar to include dragging images into Google Images searches or
using Instagrok to show webbed relationships among ideas; editing a paper can
become a collaborative experience through the use of the sharing feature on
Google Docs. No matter which of the "swarms"
a student represents, this article proves that there is a Web 2.0 tool that can
help them collaboratively and dynamically achieve their goal.
A final important
point that the article makes is that it is up to librarians to make decisions
about the Web 2.0 tools that are used in their schools. As the educational culture continues to shift
toward 21st century learning skills, librarians need to increasingly focus
their attentions on connecting students with information through Web 2.0 tools,
defined in this article as tools that are dynamic, social, participatory, and
interactive. As this article points out,
there are many Web 2.0 options for teachers to consider, and as the person who
often has the most technology expertise in the building, it is up to the
librarian to help narrow options for teachers.
By using some of the questions listed in the article for evaluating
possible Web 2.0 tools (i.e. Is it subscription-based? Is the interface easy to understand? Can teachers easy track student
performance?), librarians can create a rubric and help teachers and students
select the best tools for their projects.
This task of selecting the best options for Web 2.0 experiences should
become a librarian's top priority.
This article lends
itself to several strategies I can use in my current classroom and my future
library. Something as simple as using
back channel chats, such as TodaysMeet, would be an interesting way to spin a
traditional class discussion and create a "silent chat" where
students could brainstorm ideas about their next writing topic or share
thoughts about a novel we just finished.
Teaching sound annotation skills is an important concept in 10th grade
English, so using a tool such as Twiddla, where students can set a website as a
background and collaboratively write over top of it, would be a way to get them
engaged in a new and interesting way.
Since my school doesn't currently offer a creative writing class or
club, I could encourage my creative students to use the Figment website to get
story starters and publish their writing to an authentic audience. On the other hand, students who have
difficulty writing could use tools such as Tom March's Thesis Builder to create
their thesis statements and then use Padlet to "stick" ideas together
and plan their papers. I could also use
a wiki to set up a project that would allow students from different class
periods to work asynchronously on a collaborative research paper. These are just the first few ideas that
occurred to me when reading the article; the possibilities for classroom uses
of these tools seem literally endless.
As a librarian, I
want to create a website with a subject guide for the subjects in my school so
that teachers of all different subjects have resources and sound Web 2.0
tools at their fingertips. By creating
this resource, I will be achieving several goals. First, I will be following this article's
advice in becoming experienced with a variety of Web 2.0 tools; in doing this,
I will be able to make recommendations and provide guidance to individual
students who come to me for help on various projects. Secondly, I will be forced to use my rubric
to evaluate the tools that I place in the subject guides, since I will only
want to recommend quality sites and tools.
Finally, I will open the channels for collaboration with teachers, since
I will need to consult with them about the types of resources they need, and
they will see the expertise I can bring to the collaborative table. By creating the subject guides, I will be
symbolically opening the doors to my library to the entire school and engaging
my students in dynamic and collaborative Web 2.0 tools; as this article points
out, achieving these two goals is the only way for librarians to avoid
experiencing a colony collapse like the ill-fated honey bee.
References:
Lamb, A. &
Johnson, L. (2012). Technology Swarms
for Digital Learners. Teacher
Librarian, 39(5), 67-72.
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