Overview

=Beyond The Stacks=

The roles of the teacher-librarian are not changing, but shifting to encompass new technologies. Teacher-librarians no longer just serve students and educators who physically enter the library, but now are reaching out to virtual customers using a variety of formats and methods of delivery. To serve these customers and continute to exert a positive and significant effect on academic achievment, teacher-librarians must understand the benefits of integrating all forms of information technologies into a full-service organization with human interfaces as guides to the best and most practical information sources ([|Loertscher, 1998]).

Characterized by creating, collaborating, connecting, and conversations, Web 2.0 has the potential to transform learning in today's classroom and school libraries. Teacher-librarians must build an understanding of the information sources and knowledge management that is demanded and desired by twenty-first century learners. These tools can be used not only by our students, but as educators to enrich and share our professional knowledge.

"Cast teacher-librarians as learning specialist as appropriately central..and empower learning specialist to undertake a leadership role in moving schooling into the 21st century and shed its obsolete 19th century habits" (Wiggins).

"The hallmark of a school library in the 21st century is not its collections, its sytems, its technology, its staffing, its building, but its action and evidences that show that it makes a real difference to student learning, that it contributes in tagible and significant ways to the development of meaning making and constructing knowledge" (Todd).

This wiki identifies "critical aspects of what teacher-librarians must integrate into their programme to participate in curriculum planning, collaborate on instructional improvement, faciliate the growth of school teams that trully support one another" (Zmuda).
 * Concept of learning specialist and reframing the role of teacher-librarian
 * Importance of collaborative and facilitative skills
 * Design of instruction based on current research findings, particularly inquiry-based learning
 * Importance of school librarians as information specialist through a look at students' information needs in a digital, multimedia landscape
 * Collection building and promotion

This wiki attempts to provide an enabling culture in which to:
 * 1) Explore and illustrate examples of emerging technologies (Web 2.0 tools) that impact the role of the teacher-librarian
 * 2) Enhance and enrich knowledge sharing and capability development through professional development
 * 3) Enable learners to construct sense and new knowledge using a repetoire of Web 2.0 tools
 * 4) Implement, through a constructivist, inquiry-based framework, educational uses of technology that facilitate school improvement ([|ISTE NETS Project])
 * 5) Collect irrefutable data of the impact of the school library program upon student achievement ([|Evidence-Based Practice])
 * 6) Understand the concept of participatory culture and its impact on learning, teaching, and school libraries ([|Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century])