As a librarian media specialist and technology building representative I will be in charge of helping my colleagues and students with technology. This means I may need to train teachers and classroom aides to use educational technology and educational management systems. These articles are illuminating in not only my responsibilities as a librarian media specialist, but also currently as a classroom teacher. Growing up in the twentieth century, I have a different perspective and experience with technology than some of my more seasoned colleagues. I need to take into consideration that my role as a librarian media specialist that some of my colleagues will not share my love of using technology within the classroom. However, I also must be current in understanding how technology and media are changing teaching and learning.
As students are becoming better experts in technology and media than many of their teachers, teachers must adapt to keep up with the changes in pedagogies, as well as the changes in content delivery. According to Fullan and Langworthy, today “active learning partnerships with students are new” (Fullan and Langworthy, 2014), as opposed to the teacher and textbook being the main source of information, students are recognizing that they can acquire information on their own using technology. Students and teachers are working together to learn and acquire information. These active learning partnerships are so different than the structure of teacher as leader and content expert. This may make many teachers that learned how to teach using traditional pedagogies uncomfortable in the classroom. Access to digital media and resources is more available than ever before. Fullan and Lanworthy state, “digital access makes it possible for students to apply their solutions to real-world problems with authentic audiences well beyond the boundaries of their schools.” (Fullan and Langworthy, 2014) This is significant because without digital access students would be left behind in the digital age.
As a future school librarian and a current teacher I will need to recognize that education is changing and evolving, especially with student access to digital and media sources. Hobbs states “Today, school librarians and teachers are working together in a national movement to bring digital and media literacy to all citizens.” (Hobbs, 2011) This is important because this reaches beyond the school to the community as a whole. The school community will also need to learn how to become good digital citizens as well as learning how to navigate through media. The issue is that many in school leadership may not understand newer technology and educational resources, so it will be my responsibility to also guide the administrators in my school in what digital technologies to invest in. Hobbs states “Although investments in technology have increased significantly in recent years, simply purchasing the latest digital technologies does not necessarily lead to the acquisition of digital and media literacy competencies” (Hobbs, 2011). Furthermore, I will need to help train teachers to use new digital technologies in the classroom, and also encourage them to use them regularly. Hobbs supports this idea in the following quote: “School librarians support digital and media literacy competencies by serving as leaders in their schools and communities, working as instructional partners to support colleagues providing the services of an information specialist and program administrator to manage programs, as well as offering direct instruction to learners.” (Hobbs, 2011) As technology becomes more and more advanced and educators are trying to find a balancing act of using technology as great resource to help with instruction, engagement, and differentiation as well as protecting our students from the unpleasant and harmful aspects of the internet. Hobbs states “All across the nation and world school librarians and teachers are taking steps to ensure that digital and media literacy education offers the potential to maximize what we value most about truly empowering characteristics of media and technology while minimizing its negative dimensions.” (Hobbs, 17) This balancing act is difficult for adults, let alone students, so teaching digital citizenship, and filtering sources for credibility is essential in all classrooms using digital technology and media.
My opinion about Bloom’s Taxonomy is that it needs to be updated for the digital world, even though it was already revised in 2001, technology, pedagogies, the relationships between teachers and students, as well as the media have changed so much in the past twenty-one years that another update is necessary. Especially considering that students gain more knowledge from the higher levels of Blooms, and today students are learning much more rapidly discovering information using digital resources. Students appear to be more engaged in digital resources and media today. Furthermore, with many students that I teach, who are in a Title I school, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs must come before Bloom’s Taxonomy in order for real learning to occur. This can be done using educational technology, and using it correctly. Huhn states it well in the following quote: “When used correctly, educational technology gives new meaning and ultility to long-established educational paradigms, such as Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy (revised) and Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple intelligences.” (Huhn, 2008). As a librarian it will be my responsibility to filter educational technology that will fit the needs of my fellow teachers and the students we serve. While educational technology can provide endless information, engage students, as well as provide differentiation of instruction that is so clearly needed by our students, when used incorrectly can be as ineffective as students learning information from a worksheet or a textbook. I will need to research new technologies, their reviews, their uses, and their costs/ benefits prior to presenting them to my administration for consideration of purchase, but I will also need to use educational technologies to assist teachers in instruction of digital literacy. I will also need to navigate more digital resources such as digital and audio books for my library on my own.
Resources
Fullan, M. & Langworthy, M. (2014). A rich seam: How new pedagogies find deep learning. London: Pearson. Retrieved from https://www.pearson.com/content/dam/one-dot-com/one-dot-com/global/Files/about-pearson/innovation/open-ideas/ARichSeamEnglish.pdf
Hobbs, R. (2011). Empowering learners with digital and media literacy. Knowledge Quest, 39(5), 12-17. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.
Huitt, W. (2011). Bloom et al.'s taxonomy of the cognitive domain. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved from http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cognition/bloom.pdf
Kuhn, M. S. (2008). Connecting depth and balance in class. Learning & Leading with Technology, 36(1), 18-21. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.
Rogers, E. M. (1963). The adoption process II. Journal of Cooperative Extension, 1(2), 69-75. Retrieved from https://archives.joe.org/joe/1963summer/1963-2-a2.pdf
Great blog post. To start, I have often thought that librarians teaching and working in our current educational culture are in a weird place, or at least from what I have observed from my position working in higher education, because they are often under appreciated by both students and faculty who have begun using digital sources as opposed to frequently venturing into their local or school libraries to check out physical texts. In fact, recently heard a colleague refer to their job as "on it's way to obsolete." I, on the other hand, disagree with this idea and think that librarians are not only a student's partner in learning but are their fellow educators' partner in learning. I also fully agree with your perspective that "as opposed to the teacher and textbook being the main source of information, students are recognizing that they can acquire information on their own using technology." The things that sometimes students cannot do is figure out how to sift through the information they can find and that is where librarians are so important. They also serve faculty by helping them find research and curate selections of articles and digital sources (and print too) in such an efficient way. Librarians are our research partners just like they are partners to our students. They are having to adapt quickly to the digitalization of the library and most are doing it beautifully.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that Bloom's Taxonomy needs to be updated for the current learner. I know that the Maslow's over Bloom's idea is popular in K-12, perhaps more so than in higher ed (as far as I have been able to tell.) I agree, though, that students cannot learn if their needs aren't met and that we [higher ed faculty] often don't have the same level of interactions with our students to even understand that their needs aren't being met (which is causing their struggles in class), and I think that needs to change.
Again though, good post.