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September 15, 2002

Not Your Parents' Library

By Pam Berger

Last May, we examined how technology has transformed the role school librarians now play in the classroom and community. Here, we shine a light on best practices and projects.

At Scarsdale High School in Westchester County, N.Y., school librarian Phyllis DiBianco and English teacher Natalie Farina have teamed up to teach women's history in a unique fashion-by studying old clothing advertisements from the 19th century. But instead of turning to reels of microfiche, as they would have a decade ago, the two educators are taking advantage of the Library of Congress American Memory Web site. There, they dispatch students to search for ads depicting turn-of-the-century women and then jot down observations, questions, and interpretations (see example activity below).

Does it sound like an unlikely curriculum for a school librarian? Not in today's schools, where new technologies have brought unprecedented opportunities for easy and quick access to high-quality resources, such as those found in the American Memory Collection, along with a vital need to equip students with the critical thinking and information literacy skills to take full advantage of them. "The Internet has provided us with more information than we ever dreamed of," says DiBianco. "But kids don't know how to evaluate the information they're retrieving online. It's our job as librarians to help them make sense of it all."

Indeed, with the vast amount of information kids now have literally at their fingertips, honing their research, analytic, and interpretive skills has become paramount. As a result, school librarians are increasingly finding themselves taking on roles as curriculum specialists, community collaborators, and staff developers-trends we introduced in the first article of this series. As a follow up, we zero in on specific examples of how these new roles are being assumed.

A Historical Exercise Objective Observations What objects are shown? List details about what you see. Subjective Observations What words/phrases come to mind when you look at the object? What caption could you write to "fit" the image you see? Making Inferences-Interpreting What You See What do you imagine a day in the life of a woman who wore this piece of clothing was like? What can you infer from this piece of clothing? Considering What You Know What do you know about women's lives at the turn of the century?

Team Teaching

These days it's not unusual to find school librarians working side by side with teachers to create technology-infused classroom projects. One such effort is taking place at the SS. Cyril and Methodius School in Deer Park, N.Y., where an interdisciplinary team of teachers and librarian Anna Stokes developed a fifth-grade curriculum unit on American immigration.

The focal point of the project is a Web site developed by Stokes that includes hyperlinks to primary sources, articles about immigration, a list of relevant books available at the school library, and photos of a recent field trip to Ellis Island. Using these resources, students identify an immigrant population that traveled to the United States between 1890 and 1910, such as the Italians or Russians. Then they research what it was like on the journey from their homelands, considering such challenges as the overseas passage or the medical inspection upon arrival at Ellis Island. Along the way students created various artifacts, such as first-person journal entries and letters to family and friends back home, which were posted on the project Web site. "Kids were involved and motivated and liked the fact that everything they needed could be found on the Web site," says Stokes.

Throughout, parents could log on to see how the project was going. "The objectives, resources, standards, and tasks are all on the Web site for anyone to see," says Stokes. "They could log on anytime, anyplace and stay involved with their child's schoolwork."

Community Partnerships

As students in growing numbers are turning to the Web for information, whether at home, school, or the public library, librarians are finding themselves creating shared community resources. In Pittsburgh, for example, Westinghouse High School librarian Linda Savido and Janet Marnatti, a public librarian at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, designed a literary Web site for the city's teens.

As part of a unique federally funded grant called Building Collaboration through Technology, the two librarians planned the site using a combination of face-to-face and online meetings. "We didn't have enough time to always get together in person but we still needed to be able to 'talk' to each other and work on the project," says Marnatti. Using TAPPED IN, a virtual environment for educators, Savido and Marnatti were able to work from their home or office computers and open multiple screens: one to simultaneously view their project Web site, one to chat with each other about issues such as guidelines for submission, and another to share potental Web resources to include on their site, such as online reference tools and author sites.

School and Public Librarians: An Online Collaboration How many lighthouses are there on Long Island? What were the numbers of the Suffolk County cavalry regiments in the Civil War? Answers to these questions can now be easily found-along with information on Long Island ecology, community, and history -- at Kids' Long Island, a site created by Lisa Herskowitz, a children's librarian at Northport/East Northport Public Library, and Linda Dickman, librarian at Norwood Avenue Elementary School. Today, students, teachers, and residents all over Long Island use Kids' Long Island as a community resource.

The result was the Write Here, Write Now Web site, a venue for Pittsburgh high school students to showcase their writing and art on the Web. Students are encouraged to submit reviews of books, movies, music, software, or Web sites in addition to pieces from creative writing, journalism, and art classes.

Staff Development

With schools expanding their efforts to teach students information literacy-in particular being able to evaluate the accuracy and authority of information found on the Web-classroom teachers are expected to have the sophisticated information and technology skills required to keep up, and lead. Recognizing this need, librarians in Allentown, Pa., developed a unique staff development program called the Curriculum Technology Integration Project.

CTIP workshops, taught mostly by district librarians, provide teacher participants with hands-on opportunities to explore a variety of technologies and then construct classroom activities. For example, to keep kids on task while doing Net research, teachers learn to use Filamentality, a free Web-based template for creating guided Web "hunts" around a particular topic, such as the Civil War or plant ecology. For projects requiring a lot of organization, teachers learn how to use Inspiration, a visual learning tool from Inspiration Software that helps students develop ideas and organize thinking through concept mapping, diagramming, and categorizing. Whatever tool is used, the emphasis is placed on integrating technology into all aspects of the teaching and learning process.

After the training, as teachers attempt to apply what they've learned in their classrooms, they use the discussion board on the CTIP Web site to ask follow-up questions of their instructors and exchange ideas with colleagues. Using technology in the workshop, says librarian and CTIP founder Sally Trexler, "not only models good practice, but it gives teachers an opportunity to experience what it's like to learn with technology so they have a better understanding of their students' perspective."

Pam Berger, educational technology consultant and publisher of Information Searcher, was a school librarian for 18 years.

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