As I begin my first Teacher Librarian elective course in my program I’m excited to explore and add great literature and literature response resources to my list. I think this is a great time to be undertaking this course having just finished up the INF533 Digital Literature course. I’m already seeing great crossover that extends upon my interests in the world of Educational Technology.

I’ve started curating a Goodreads shelf called ETL402 for book titles I find throughout my readings, interactions in discussion boards and through Web 2.0 sources. This will hopefully help me keep track of the abundance that I will find and want to refer back to eventually.

Some ideas for Assessment `1 are already beginning to form but could still change as I traverse the modules. I’ll list the 4 I have so far I can reflect back on these budding ideas later:

• Graphic novels or comics as learning tools: This is something that interests me as this genre is heavily loved and sought after by students in my context and the stigma around them in that same context is very much like what was mentioned by Neil Gaiman “cried out as bad books that foster illiteracy”.
• Promoting children’s balance of choice in literature modes. As a first-grade teacher, I noticed, my students naturally gravitated to digital forms of literature in their choice reading time. I think there is some stigma behind reading on iPads or tablets due to “screen time” seen as being detrimental. I felt some guilt if someone were to peer into my classroom and all of my students were reading on the iPad, and I have to ask myself why. Interestingly, books became the ‘hot item’ again mostly after a read-aloud or shared reading time. I’d like to explore this balance more and find ways to promote children to pick up books, and find balance, while also educating teachers and families on the use of the digital-book collections and destigmatize the use of digital resources.
• Digital Citizenship. I’d love to curate a fiction collection directly related to the teaching of digital citizenship. This is an area of interest for me and something I know I will be diving into in my future role.
• Cultural Diversity in Literature: Another collection I’d like to curate is internationally diverse books which feature children in their own cultural contexts and showing similarities and differences for children to make global connections. Short (2018) found a severe lack of diversity in children’s literature and I’d like to explore this further.

I have a lot of ideas, and I hope the choice becomes clearer as I finish up Module 1 and delve into Module 2.

This feels like a very important key subject in my learning already. Even though it may not be heavily focused on technology perse, diving into children’s literature will help me form my pedagogies around why we can choose certain resources for learning. I also feel like it will help me when it comes to working with Teacher librarians, which I know I will be doing closely in my new technology integration role.

Utilizing stories for cross-curriculum logic, as mentioned by Haven (2007), stood out to me as inquiry is a priority in my work context and to empower 21st-century learners. This also reminded me of what I learned during the Game-based learning course, to do with the importance of narrative in games and to aid learning.

After watching the video of Neil Gaiman (readingagency, 2013) and reading Gaiman (2013) I found his discussion on exercising the imagination through the use of reading fiction and reading for pleasure resonated with me a lot. In my context or working at a school in South Korea the culture is heavily affected by pressures to perform well in academics with students taking tutoring in a multitude of subjects outside of school hours. I think a lot of parents hold biases toward academic books only being seen as books that can teach a subject, math or science-related books. Whereas the students love comic books, books about LEGO, Minecraft, Pokemon, ghosts and all sorts of amazing picture books and fiction. The parents ask “Is this okay? Will he/she learn from this?”. And some even come in to borrow books for their child if they don’t like what the child has chosen during their library borrowing time. As Gaiman (2013) stated, “well-meaning adults can extinguish a child love of reading by stopping them reading what they enjoy”.

I hope this course can give me the reasonings and pedagogies to help educate families within this context with what Gaiman (2013) says so strongly about reading fiction and reading for pleasure is one of the most important things. It leaves me with 2 questions to keep in mind.

How can one have an innovative mind if all one reads are books based on real events and nonfiction? What imagination can one be afforded if we are basing our ideas off of real life?

References

Gaiman, N. (2013, October 16). Why our futures depend on libraries, reading and daydreaming. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming

Haven, K. (2007). Story proof: The science behind the startling power of story. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csuau/detail.action?docID=329134

readingagency. (2013, October 22). Neil Gaiman Reading Agency lecture 2013 [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/yNIUWv9_ZH0