Library/Media Coordinators' Corner
Making the Library into a Cybrary
By Diane D. Coggins
Transforming a school library into a multimedia center integrated with technology can be an enormous challenge. Here's advice and suggestions from experience to help you.
Wow! You've Got to See This: Turning Kids on to Research through Technology Integration
By Sherry H. Buchanan
Integrated technology and research units are highly motivating for elementary children of all ages, but especially for fourth and fifth graders. Sherry explains that as children develop multimedia presentations using the information from their research, the purposes for their learning become authentic. She describes how students have fun, strengthen their research skills, and become more adept at using technology effectively. The end result is students who are turned on to research through technology integration.
Pathfinding Through the Information Jungle
By Mary Logan
James Fenimore Cooper would be amazed at this 90s version of a pathfinder. Like Natty Bumppo, these pathfinders also can help us to find our way through a forest - but a forest of information. Mary shows how creating pathfinders has many educational benefits for her students, not the least of which is that they use the higher-order thinking skills of analysis, evaluation, and synthesis. Her students find a path of research that they not only follow but make available to future generations.
Indiana's Media Specialist Technology Leadership Training
By Terri Whitehead
Students and teachers alike rely on the Library Media Specialist to have all the answers all of the time. Library Media Specialists try their best to meet these expectations, but sometimes the information-glut presented by the Internet and other electronic technologies makes them feel as if they're out at sea treading water in a deluge. Terri describes how one state developed a special training program to make these gurus of information resources stay abreast of the new technologies and help them to become even more vital assets to their schools.
Learning to Surf the
Internet Effectively
By Joanne Troutner
Sure your students use the Web for research. But are they searching wisely? Do they cast a net and hope to catch some fish or do they take careful aim with a speargun and bring home the ones that didn't get away? That is, do they just randomly browse or do they truly take advantage of the power of the latest search engines? Joanne shows how, in just one lesson, you can teach students to make their online time more productive and become superb hunters ("fishers"?) of information.
From School Librarian to Information Teachnician: A Challenge for the Information Age
By Janet Murray
If the Internet is, as some have claimed, a "library without walls," then who is better equipped to help students and teachers learn to use it well than those acknowledged experts of information retrieval — school librarians? Janet proposes that librarians redefine themselves as "Information Teachnicians" and make their libraries into dynamic information technology centers. True to her own words, she offers a list of suggestions for teachers who want to develop their Internet skills.
Action Research Helps
Teachers with Computer Skills
By Marcia Rettig-Seitam
As an educator you are actually using the techniques of Action Research every time you customize instruction to meet the perceived needs of individual learners. Marcia explains how she uses the techniques of Action Research to help students to develop research projects, teachers to master a new grading program, and senior citizens to learn tool software.
On-line Resources for
Librarians
By Roger Gottlieb
The Internet may be the world's largest library someday. And librarians and media specialists are already our guides through much of this information. Here is Roger's list of web sites for librarians and media specialists and for anyone who helps people find their way through the web's on-line resources
On-line Resources for
School Libraries
By Michael Lyman
Totally impressed by all the work a school librarian does in one day, Michael compiled this comprehensive listing of information-loaded web sites and listservs, useful not only to librarians but to all educators. Browsing this list, which includes a link to a site used daily by New York Times reporters and to another which shows how to cite sites in a term paper, is like browsing the shelves of a world-class library.
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