Tag: digital literacies

e-Literature and e-Trends – How will technology impact the TL?

Monica CoddingtonLeave a comment

Libraries are changing – this is no secret for those of us who are patrons to and managers of libraries. They are adapting and growing and developing – changes that are being made in light of, most significantly, Web 2.0 technologies. The school library I work in, and the libraries I visit, look vastly different from the libraries I had access to as a teenager even 8 years ago. There is a growing movement towards eBooks, where students can access the library collection online from any device. What a world to live in…

On the rise is the newer trend, one that appeals to young students’ love not only of engaging with stories, but also with technology – a source of much contention and yet such potential as a learning device (Stasiak, 2011). Since iPads have risen in popularity, producers have worked to create interactive eBooks for younger audiences – some as young as 18 months old (Stasiak, 2011). In these apps, children can direct the story themselves. They see the effect of their actions as they make decisions to drive the story along a path of their own choosing, listening to and watching their “character” interact with the space they inhabit. Children and students can now be more immersed in a story than ever before.

However, consider this: in a world where library patrons can access the books they require and desire using a tablet whenever they please, and when young children can (and might prefer) interacting physically with a story that they guide themselves on a tablet device, working independently and at their own pace, what role does the TL now play in schools?

Haughton (2015) provides a comprehensive list of quality interactive eBooks for young children, highlighting the educational benefits of each. Some have explicit links to STEM, some inspire curiosity and wonder. Others re-create classic texts with more interactivity (seemingly for the sake of it). Here the TLs role shifts. Now, there is opportunities for TLs to introduce worlds to students through print-based books, and then guide deeper exploration in such worlds through interactive apps. The possibilities of integrating STEM into library lessons also becomes more possible and engaging with interactive digital books such as “TinyBop: The Human Body” for primary school aged children. The TL can move towards fostering curiosity and wonder-driven immersion in books where students can immediately explore cause and effect and learn in a more interactive manner than ever before. Still, then, in this sense is the TL a facilitator of student-driven learning.

However, Haughton also makes clear that there is an abundance of such texts in the digital world. It is important, now more than ever, that the TL acts as collection manager of a collection of quality, and conducts thorough research into these programs and books prior to adding them to the collection. If students are to explore digital story-telling in a meaningful fashion, with meaningful results, then they should be exposed to quality literature and literature programs.

Even with the changes heralded by this e-trend, the TL must still stand as the expert selector of quality educational resources for their students.

 

References

Haughton, C. (2015, January 4). Top 10 book and bookish apps for young children. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/jan/04/top-10-book-and-bookish-apps-for-children-chris-haughton

Stasiak, K. (2011). iTots: True Digital Natives. https://www.slideshare.net/KatStasiak/itots-true-digital-natives

Transliteracy Reflection

Monica CoddingtonLeave a comment

Think about ‘your’ library – as teacher librarian. What evidence is there that the library supports transliteracy practices? What do you think could be done better?

Currently, I am working as the TL at a small central school in NW NSW, and am at the beginning of my TL education. Perhaps it is for this reason that, as I reflect on what evidence exists for the support of transliteracy at the library I manage at the school, I am coming up short. We have a bank of 8 computers, and I have recently been in discussions with the Principal and the Technical Support Officer to obtain a bank of laptops for the library space. Our Oliver site provides access to a range of digital resources, but these were added to the collection by the previous TL. I had a casual conversation once last year with another member of staff about the possibility of adding eBooks to the collection in the future, but have not progressed any further with this.

Clearly, my library space does not support transliteracy as well as it could. This is due, I believe, to a lack of knowledge on my part, a gap that I am eagerly seeking to address now. Transliteracy needs to be supported more in our school library, as these are the skills that students will need to develop to become informed and literate 21st century citizens. To be able to navigate society and the workplace, our students will need these skills, and the lack of updated digital and multimodal texts in our collection is therefore very concerning, to say the least.

Steps and Learning for the Future

Work needs to be done to add to the digital collection on a regular basis – not just webpages and videos, but digital literature, augmented and virtual reality and interactive literature too. This is but one method to support the development of transliteracy in our students, but it is, I believe, a crucial step in the process. Reflecting on my own practice, it is clear I will need to engage in more thorough research about digital literary texts and transliteracy, so that I may offer more support for the development of this vital skill.

ETL401 AT1 Part B – Experience-informed Reflections on the TL Role

Monica Coddington1 Comment

What is a Teacher Librarian (TL)?

As a beginning teacher, my experiences in school libraries and with Teacher Librarians (TLs) have been limited, but the first thing that has always come to mind when I have thought about the role of the TL has been as a facilitator of a love of literature and reading and of a manager of resources. This understanding I know now reveals only the surface of the TLs roles, and was informed by infrequent interactions with TLs and my role as an English teacher.

A facilitator of a love of literature and reading.  Original photograph. Coddington, 2020.

In my early teaching days I had to take each of my classes to the library once a fortnight, where they were required to “engage in wide reading of self-selected [. . .] texts for enjoyment” (NSW Education Standards Authority, 2019, p. 147). In one school, the librarian would lay a selection of books on the table for students before disappearing into her secluded office space. From this very brief experience I had understood that TLs were to provide the means and the space for independent reading to occur, but little more. At my next school this understanding grew when the TL eagerly recommended titles and showed students where to locate books they had found in the search engine. Here it was clear that the role included arming students with the knowledge and skills to navigate the library space and resources, rather than just staying up to date on popular Young Adult literature.

After recent experiences in my current school, however, where I have worked more closely with our TL, my understanding of what this role entails has grown further – and will continue to do so. It is also about engaging the school and the community to foster reading culture. In 2019, events like Book Week Reading Café’s, the Premier’s Reading Challenge and Book Club opened the doors of our library to “encourage a love of reading for leisure and pleasure” (NSW Department of Education, para. 1, 2018). I learned here that library spaces should be more than just a home for literature. But whilst TL’s do manage versatile library spaces and physical resources, it is clear that this is a very minor aspect of the TLs role.

Perhaps the most key component lies in the arming of students with knowledge to navigate their world – one that has increasingly blurred lines between being offline and being online (Floridi, 2007). I’m talking, of course, about the crucial role of the TL in teaching critical and digital literacies. In an age where students have easier access to more information than ever before, these literacies are more important than ever. And who better to teach them than the Teacher Librarian, who manages such resources? My current school library is a hub of online learning and research, with distance education and independent research occurring daily. The digital world is as much a part of students’ education as it is of their personal lives, and without the skills to critically navigate an ever-expanding infosphere, students run the risk of becoming overwhelmed and uninformed.

TLs will always be champions of literature, that much is evident. But their roles have changed as education – and the world – has. They stand as information specialists who teach students the literacies necessary to successfully navigate the infosphere and become active, informed and critical digital citizens.

 

Reference List 

Floridi, L. (2007). A Look into the future impact of ICT on our lives. The Information Society, 23, 59-64. DOI: 10.1080/01972240601059094

NSW Department of Education. (2018). NSW Premier’s Reading Challenge. https://online.det.nsw.edu.au/prc/home.html

NSW Education Standards Authority. (2019). NSW Syllabus for the Australian Curriculum: English K-10 Syllabus. https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/learning-areas/english-year-10/english-k-10