Josh Catone's article talks about education moving online. A poll done by the NY Times showed that students in online learning conditions outperformed those in a classroom setting. I agree that this is not necessarily true. I think it depends on the student and the teacher. I do think that education is evolving towards more integration of online resources in the classroom, but I think it is safe to say that classrooms are not going anywhere.
Buffy Hamilton talks about the librarian's role in education. She mentions budget cuts and cutting personnel. I've mentioned it before, but this is a subject that hits very close to home for me. I will be the librarian next year, but after that my position is questionable due to budget cuts. So for me, I think that getting into the classrooms and making a difference during this upcoming school year is absolutely vital. Buffy stated, "I dream of a model of school librarianship that embeds us in the classroom whether it be the classroom of a teacher, our library space, or a learning space outside the traditional school building (such as virtual)." I totally agree with this comment. That is a dream of mine too. We need to make it happen!
I love the poster that Joyce Valenza created! So many do not understand what librarians teach or that they teach at all. They don't understand the essential role that a librarian plays in the school. It makes me sick to think about library positions being cut, but that is why... we need to let me know that we TEACH and WHAT we teach!
Zmuda and Harada talk about redefining librarians as "learning specialists". I like this idea. This theory is very similar to what I have in mind. In fact, I talked to my principal about this just recently. My district has a Literacy Coach that serves the entire district. She has so many places to be and people to see all the time, that it is sometime hard to make contact with her. I envision the librarian at each building being basically a building literacy coach, or I guess you could call them, the learning specialist. I do think it will be difficult role, especially when working with those staff members that don't like change, but I feel like it is a necessary one. It's time to put and end to those "bad practices".
CATONE: You don't think that it is possible for students to learn more from an online class than a F2F class?
ReplyDeleteValenza's poster is fantastic -- I agree -- but how do we get that message out to the greater audience? We can't just talk to ourselves.
Just what does a literacy coach do?