Comments on: Reaching out

By: Margo Jantzi

Margo Jantzi — Sat, 24 May 2008 09:29:14 +0000

Thanks for the inspiration. Your blog entry has put a gust a wind back in my library media sails. I am in the midst of setting up a brand new library media center for 488 PreK-5 students. Here’s my web site which is work in progress. http://www.rockingham.k12.va.us/CRES/library.html On Tues. 5/27, the Follett truck will deliver our “Opening Day Collection”. I’m so passionate about creating a 21st century learning hub for our students and teachers. How do I best prepare myself to collaborate with classroom teachers who have so many items on their platters already?

By: blk1

blk1 — Fri, 23 May 2008 13:36:13 +0000

Great to visit your blog this morning and find this post in support of librarians, who need to be valued and supported and brought into real collaborations.
When I taught in high schools, I was sad to see how many teachers around me wasted great opportunities to work with our librarian. Great to see the discussion here.
Bonnie

By: futura

futura — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:10:33 +0000

I also meant to say in my post that I think building some personal learning network activities online, like WOW2 for librarians would be a great way to help people enter into the web 2.0 environment.

Lesley, I think that is great news. It’s not customary around this part of the country from what I’ve seen, so hopefully that model will spread.

Laurie, Thanks for the testimonial about learning it the hard way, and how libraries have made a difference. Kudos to you!

By: Lesley Edwards

Lesley Edwards — Thu, 22 May 2008 04:27:42 +0000

I am a teacher librarian working in a Gr. 8-12 school. I was thrilled when this year’s batch of student teachers came to me and said that part of their practicum included collaborating with the teacher librarian on at least one unit of work. This is the first time I have seen this requirement and I was heartened to see that at least one university was recognizing the important role we play.

By: lauriefowler

lauriefowler — Thu, 22 May 2008 03:34:51 +0000

How many teacher training programs address research projects with students and how the library and tech departments on a campus fit into those projects, and the importance of collaboration?

At the university I attended, this is not done at all because teacher training is done by the College of Education and library school is in the College of Communication. As a former English teacher, I was never coached on how valuable the librarian could be to me during research project/paper time. I thought I had to do it all myself. After a rough beginning with a doomed 9th grade research report, I eventually learned to give the librarian a list of my topics ahead of time and even to make sure our library had information on the topics.

I think the key to engaging more librarians in the emerging technologies is to find the one thing they are most into and see if there is a technology link to it. I like the idea of doing podcasts and wikis for specific tasks not just learning something “new” because it’s new.