What is the impact on the role of the teacher librarian from cross platform publishing?

Sekeres & Watson (2011) discuss the publication of the 39 Clues series by Scholastic. They describe online communities, books, trading cards and a website that were combined in order to tell the story/play the game of the 39 Clues. It was not possible to fully participate in the narrative without participating in all of the publishing platforms offered in the series. This required readers to connect with others, collaborate, and, of course purchase, multiple elements. The readers, according the Sekeres & Watson (2011) were highly engaged with the series. They describe readers wanting to connect socially with other fans of the series through the website and online community. The multi-literacy that is required to do this assumes and at the same time teaches a high level of digital literacy and ability to integrate sources of information. This is a positive skill for students to learn and so, teacher librarians should encourage the learning of these skills. Cullen (2015) Discusses how children are seen as naturally competent and confident users of technology and find it very engaging. It is undoubtedly true that digital technology is engaging and motivating for students, however, whether they are developing the critical ability to think about what they are reading/viewing, to integrate various sources of information and come up with verified information, is less clear.  Cladis (2018) argues that, despite the proliferation of digital texts, students are not reading as attentively or thoroughly as in tiimes past, that while students may be exposed to many hundreds of thousands of words in digital environments, they are not engaging fully with them.

Teacher librarians are in a position in between. We know that students will gain more from reading in a more traditional way, but that they are more inclined to do so when there is a digital and social aspect to their reading. We, as advocates of reading, can harness the power of social and multi-media and use it to channel interest and motivation to reading in a more traditional sense. By using technological tools available, such as Biblionasium, Good Reads, Inside a Dog etc, which engage readers in a social discussion of the books they read, we can augment the traditional methods of reading, adding that engagement and motivating factor.

Reading digitally may be more engaging (Heick, 2020) and so may be a way through for reluctant readers. A “gateway drug” that allows students to gain more benefit than they otherwise would by engaging in digital texts where otherwise they may not be engaging with text at all.

References

Cladis, A. E. (2018) A shifting paradigm: An evaluation of the pervasive effects of digital technologies on language expression, creativity, critical thinking, political discourse, and interactive processes of human communications. E-learning and digital media, 2018-01-30, Vol.17 (5), p.204275301775258-364. SAGE Publications

Cullen, M. (2015, December 21). How is interactive media changing the way children learn. EducationTechnology.  https://educationtechnologysolutions.com.au/2015/12/how-is-interactive-media-changing-the-way-children-learn/