First and foremost, school libraries should align with the learning objectives and vision statement of the school community that they serve (Loh et al., 2017). Identifying the needs of the 21^st century learner is crucial to mapping the spatial and social arrangements of a future-focused school library. A major consideration for the teacher librarian is to provide an inviting physical space that will promote and enrich 21^st century skills, namely information literacy, critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity. To this end, the input of both students and teachers should be harnessed through surveys, interviews and focus groups in order to design a library that is to meet the diverse needs of its patrons, and foster innovative learning practices across the whole school.

The digital revolution and the use of personal computer devices has greatly impacted the way students find and retrieve information (Bailin, 2011). The library has had to adapt to this rapidly evolving environment, and provide state-of-the-art technological access to information, in addition to the traditional reading support services. This indicates that the spatial design of 21^st century libraries has had to be reconfigured in response to the ubiquity of digital information in school settings, the promotion of skill-based pedagogies, and the different learning styles of students. Libraries have undergone dramatic transformations in order to reflect the connectivity of our society, the need for collaboration and the flexibility of user requirements (Leousis & Sproull, 2016). For instance, some 21^st century libraries contain movable furniture and writable tables and windows, which allow students to engage in 21^st century learning experiences, such as group discussions, inquiry-based tasks, problem-solving and critical thinking activities (Concord Infiniti, 2015; Leousis & Sproull, 2016).

A well-designed 21^st century library space brings students together to a warm and welcoming centre that is flexible, and conceived as both an individual and a collaborative study space. The space needs to enable the provision of services that support the learning activities that take place and thrive in the school library. Teacher librarians need to pay attention to the different student-centred pedagogies and current technological trends, and be ready to renovate the library layout on a regular basis to reflect these changes (Concord Infiniti, 2015). They need to consider the introduction of new learning experiences that promote student collaboration and acquisition of ICT skills in the library through, for example, the creation of a maker-space area or virtual reality corner. Above all, 21st century libraries need to highlight the acquisition of information and digital literacy skills, as well as cultivate a lifelong love of reading in students.

References

Bailin, K. (2011). Changes in Academic Library Space: A Case Study at The University of New South Wales. Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 42:4, 342-359.

https://doi.org/10.1080/00048623.2011.10722245

Concord Infiniti. (2015, November 4). Infiniti special event: Driving innovation within your library [Video file].

https://vimeo.com/144676276

Loh, C., Ellis, M., Alcantara Paculdar, A., & Z. H. Wan. (2017). Building a successful reading culture through the school library: A case study of a Singapore secondary school. International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, Vol. 43(4) 335–347.

Leousis, K., & Sproull, R. (2016). Building Community: Partnering with Students and Faculty to Design a Library Exhibition Space. Journal of Library Administration, 56:3, 222-234.

https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2015.1105061

How does this library change information sources to information resources? Record 5 items in your notes and consider relevance in the school library context.

The CSU library changes information sources to resources by, for instance:

1- Having a search bar that allows both text and voice keywords, thereby greatly optimising access to available resources as students can dictate their search details.

2- By allowing students in remote learning courses to borrow print resources and offering free postage. This will greatly promote the circulation of print resources among all the student population.

3- By offering inter-library loans, as this option greatly widens the scope of a search for a specific study resource that may not be available at CSU library.

4- By providing links to resources available online underneath each entry. In many cases, these resources can be downloaded as PDF documents, which will increase students’ interest in accessing these resources because they can keep a copy on their devices.

5- By having a ‘refine your search’ function that allows patrons to apply settings, such as topics, authors and journal dates. This greatly narrows down the search in an effective way.

My school library utilises the Oliver software in a similar fashion, and students can conduct independent searches on inquiry computers. On the whole, all the functions described above are part of the Oliver system of organising resources, but sometimes it is difficult to access certain resources, especially in the non-fiction category, using the Oliver platform. Some of the great functions and characteristics of the CSU library could be incorporated into schools and the whole school community would benefit from increased access to educational resources.

I personally believe that leadership, most importantly, consists of paying special attention to the needs of a leader’s followers. This is achieved by a leader listening to their crowd and consistently paying attention to what they require. After processing their needs, a good leader should actively attempt to work on the faults in their community or provide their followers with what they are missing. This should be carried out with warmth and humility, as a good and receptive leader should try not to alienate themselves from their followers, but rather make themselves seem relatable in order to convey that they truly care for their demands. Inclusive leaders take into account and act according to the views of their followers.

Other positive leadership qualities consist of the ability to communicate, not only with their followers but also with their own team beside them. A leader should have great communication skills with the ability to clearly convey their message, and delegate different roles amongst their team so solutions are carried out swiftly and efficiently. They should also be able to communicate the progression of the solutions clearly to their followers, making them feel included in every step of the way. I believe that leaders should also have integrity, and therefore own up to their mistakes when they occur and work actively to resolve them. Overall, a leader needs to have good listening and communication skills, while also consistently upholding their integrity and humility.

From a young age, children learn language and concepts through literary response. Teachers can deploy picture books as whole class prompts to stimulate the imagination, narrative understanding of topics, and the comprehension of simple accompanying texts to the pictures, that contain important early markers for spelling, grammar, and vocabulary learning. Picture books and their responses are typically used throughout primary education and early secondary as a basis for learning, and can provide stimulating, story based lesson content to accompany other curriculum learning areas, such as the humanities (e.g., Kiefer, 1988).  As the children progress in their reading, print only literary texts can be introduced into the curriculum to expand the knowledge, language, and communicative bases of the children.

Print only texts can be sourced in many different genres such as novels, short stories, newspapers, magazines, poetry, instruction booklets, pamphlets, brochures, etc. Children can henceforth learn through a variety of literary responses to these texts, that can challenge and expand their thinking with respect to what constitutes a text. It is vital that children are exposed to a diversity of text types in their curriculum learning, so that they gain competency in understanding the genres of these texts, and can respond effectively to information delivered in different manners through texts (Christie, 2013). At this stage, pedagogy will have changed from whole class ‘show and tell’ style lessons, through and in which, teachers typically use resources such as picture books, to evoke a literary response and accompanying skills such as phonemic awareness, to children reading on their own in a variety of genres, and being asked to produce literary responses themselves, or in groups. At this stage, extra skills can be introduced to literary responses, and alongside basic reading competencies, such as critical literacy. Critical literacy requires children to think critically about the text in addition to understanding and responding to it coherently.

Since the 1990s, the need for teaching critical literacy skills through literary response has increased and expanded, due to the exponential multiplication of texts mediated electronically. The introduction of the internet into the way in which children learn has brought a whole new dimension to literary learning (Evans & Po, 2007), that demands, for example, that the children ask new questions about the text, such as: Is it authentic/real? Has it been copied /reproduced from elsewhere? Does the text have hidden messages (e.g., commercial)? What is the text trying to get me to think/buy? New means for understanding online texts have developed, such as multiliteracies (Mills, 2009) multiple literacies, and the new literacies studies (NLS). In combination, these approaches recognise and help to explore the new environments that children are exposed to through their digital devices. As a whole, the curriculum can now be supported and inter-linked through the deployment of online texts, that require students to demonstrate research and critical abilities, to, for example show whether or not the sources for their arguments are valid (Peters & Lankshear, 1996). Students now gain much of their information and language skills online, and digital literary responses must henceforth be analysed in terms of what these skills amount to, how they can be evaluated, and what other skills they complement and enhance, e.g., technology and coding.  In the future, these digitally mediated literacies will only intensify, hence teaching has to adjust and take into account these expanding and authentic practices (Beach et al., 2011).

References 

Beach, R., Appleman, D., Hynds, S., & Wilhelm, J. (2011). Teaching literature to adolescents. Taylor and Francis.

Christie, F. (2013). Genres and genre theory: A response to Michael Rosen. Changing English, 20(1), 11-22.

Evans, E., & Po, J. (2007). A break in the transaction: Examining students’ responses to digital texts. Computers and Composition, 24(1), 56-73.

Kiefer, B. (1988). Picture books as contexts for literary, aesthetic, and real world understandings. Language Arts, 65(3), 260-271.

Mills, K. A. (2009). Multiliteracies: Interrogating competing discourses. Language and Education, 23(2), 103-116.

Peters, M., & Lankshear, C. (1996). Critical literacy and digital texts. Educational theory, 46(1), 51-70.

There are two major factors which are going to keep driving change. The first one is technology… In the past, children’s literature served the purpose of an adult reading with a child. If the children’s literature allowed that to happen and encouraged communication between the adult and the child, then it was useful for education and reading enjoyment in some way.

The vision is that technology, the internet, mobile phones, Ipads have revolutionised children’s literature. Having technology at hand creates a different interface from the adult talking directly to the child. So the child now is getting stories, images, ideas, from a different interface, instead of the adult-child relationship. Nevertheless, there will still be children’s literature written by adults for children, but technology is not going to stop, and that creates a different narrative and structure, and a different interface. The children are learning so much more from technology that the children’s literature has to take account of that in some way. Exactly how, and why and what works, no-one knows. However, it cannot be ignored. Therefore, educators need to find innovative, interesting ways to use these mediums, use these interfaces to still keep doing good intellectual and educational work, such as using elements from gaming, from popular apps and different things that the children use on the Internet and integrating that into real stories, narratives that can be told between generations, rather than just assuming that this child-adult book way is going to be the main way in which stories get transmitted, and education gets built around them, like language learning or ideas.

The other driver of change is the children themselves, as productive of new ways of seeing the world, as being more in charge of the literature or in charge in a novel way. If there is an adult-child relationship, and the story is written by the adults, it is the adults’ perspective and the adult’s assumptions and the adult’s values and worldview that will be portrayed in the literature, but with children more and more getting these things from the Internet, not from adults, from these sites and apps that they find interesting, that starts to change the way they see and tell stories. However, a story is a story, yet the content, the language, the speed in which it is said, using images instead of language or using video will change the rendering of a story. All of these factors tend towards more user-driven content. Are the children being productive of the literature, being productive of different ways of seeing the world?

These are the two bigger drivers of change.