LAT Report on Joyce Valenza's Virtual School Libraries and 21st-Century Service
Internet@Schools East
Springfield Township High School Virtual Library
"Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a changin'."
From "The Times They Are A'Changin'" by Bob Dylan, Sony, 1964
Joyce Kasman Valenza, Librarian, Springfield Township High School in Rydal, Pennsylvania, began her keynote address by asking us to sing. What followed was a 60-minute whirlwind tour of 21st century learning landscapes. We will try to condense for you here what we took away from this incredible hour, realizing we cannot do it justice. We encourage you to explore her high school's virtual library and if you have the time, to scroll through her entire 167-slide PowerPoint presentation (beware--this is a big file so it takes awhile to load). Where we have referenced slides from the presentation, it is because those slides contain more information than we can summarize here and contain links to wonderful resources.
21st century students are 24/7
Our users are changing, our technologies are changing, so OUR PRACTICE MUST CHANGE
Our practice has to be a hybrid--both virtual and face to face
Because members of the millennial generation are persistent technology users, popular literature attributes technological sophistication to them. However, research belies this assumption, identifying deficiencies of information seekers. Most students prefer using search engines and have little awareness of alternate methods for information seeking.
21st century learners need 21st century projects, learning landscapes, teachers, and librarians
21st century students need independence and intervention
We need to make students smarter and to make systems smarter
By creating standardized terminology, better directions, context-sensitive program supports, and customized resources for our students we can teach them how to become savvy technology users. (Slides 13-32)
School library interfaces are different:
- We know our learners
- We know how our teachers teach
- We collaborate on the instruction
- We know the full scope of our resources
- They are about equity
- Our sites can be customized directly to meet specific groups of users!
What can we do that Google cannot?
- Personalized service
- Knowledge of the learner
- Abilities, interests, habits
- Knowledge of curriculum
- Knowledge of teaching styles
Why create a online virtual library for your students?
- Extends and scales service and instruction
- Promotes a wide and balanced range of relevant, quality resources
- Introduces alternate search tools
- Creates buckets, schema
- Maximizes student use of time to higher-level tasks
- Provides both independence and intervention
Evolution of the landscape
- Library home pages have changed since the late 90's
- Addition of collaborative lessons, presentations, interactive tools, blogs, media, pathfinders, wikis
- Some sites more knowledge management in approach, hosting school's instructional content
Your online presence is the virtual 24/7 translation of your program! (Slides 35-42)
Library site part of school culture
Can a school's online presence go beyond links to databases to a true digital library?
Your webpage should include your mission statement, policies, forms, newsletters, and annual report (Slides 44-46 have links to sample mission statements and resources for translating your program administration).
What learning landscapes look like online:
The medium is not necessarily the message!
Thoughtful research (no matter what the platform) asks students to:
- Debate
- Conclude
- Recommend
- Justify
- Argue
- Propose
- Invent
- Analyze
- Judge
- Support or reject or critique
- Prioritize
- Evaluate
- Solve
Digital authoring tools will shift the product
- Annotated works cited, online pathfinders
- Student pathfinder blogs
- A Terrorist Acts blog
- Create a blog arguing against school uniforms linking it to the most important research or for literary discussion
- Another example of a blog used for literary discussion
- Create a wiki for your group collecting your knowledge around pollution in your town, your town's history
- Plan a debate on banned books with another class in . . . (threaded discussion, wikis, Internet2)
- Produce a video trailer for your lit circle book
- Student -produced video infolit lessons
- Digital storytelling (Center for Digital Storytelling, Educational Uses)
- Have kids analyze and write about when to use Wikipedia and when not or how to use Google more powerfully
How will you interact with 21st century learners?
There is so much more to share. We hope you have at least gotten a glimpse of some of the resources available through this presentation and get a chance to visit it. Money should not be an issue because many of these tools (NVu, Edublogs, pbwiki) are free to use. Building a virtual library takes time, but it all begins with your first project. What will that be?
POWERPOINT SLIDESHOW (Remember, this takes awhile to load)
Joyce's Neverending Search Blog
Springfield Township High School Virtual Library
Karen Mitchell and Jane Reeves
Monroe 2-Orleans BOCES Library Automation Team (LAT) Members
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