What are the ramifications of the characteristics of digital information? How does this inform and transform how we educate our students?
These are critical questions when it comes to the role of teacher librarians, whether we are educating primary school students on the cusp of jumping into the murky waters of searching online for information, or helping senior high school students to carefully interpret and represent what they find online.
Once, a teacher librarian was required to teach students how to use the library’s physical resources to find information. Encyclopedias, non-fiction topical books, and perhaps a limited search through an online database. This represented a shallow pool of information and one that could be relatively safe and easy to interpret. This metaphorical pool has since swallowed a world’s worth of information, across decades and from a variety of sources – some with authority on said subject, some merely faceless, uneducated opinions. The wading has become deep diving, and one that requires highly skilled librarians to navigate.
Teaching students how to search and then interpret what they read is a necessary lesson. Teaching them how to evaluate what they read and discern fact from fiction seems like an insurmountable task. Not only do they need to become capable critics, they need to understand how the information they read may have been altered and replicated – and how this might undermine the authenticity and reliability of the information. This is important in not only what they read, but what they add to the online world. Teaching students that digital information has persistence – that adding to it may never really be deleted has implications on their own digital footprint. Even though these challenges for teacher librarians may seem as impossible as getting Kindergarten to walk in a straight line on the first day of school, there are some benefits.
Teacher librarians are highly skilled and qualified personnel. The implications of the weight of this responsibility, of teaching students to be active and responsible digital citizens may have some negativity – the need to keep up with ever changing technology just one of them. However, there are opportunities. The wealth of programs and tools now available online are there to make our task somewhat easier – thus the need of networking with other TL’s to share these resources is critical. The world of information is available at our fingertips – we can share information with students that will broaden their world considerably and take them to places students fifty years ago could never go. This benefit alone is enough to dip one’s toe into the pool, perhaps even to swim wholheartedly.