Blog 1: CURATE

My interview with Mrs. Tamara Brown focuses on the AASL Shared Foundation Curate.  Mrs. Brown is the Media Specialist at Timberland High School in St. Stephen, South Carolina.  The school is located in a rural area affectionately known as “the Majestic Forest.”  Many students rely solely on what the media center provides for information resources so curating a quality collection of resources and teaching students how to curate, organize, and evaluate on their own is very important.  The town library branch is temporarily located in a very small building with limited resources due to renovations, and many students are not able to access it due to transportation issues - you really need a car to get there unless you happen to live in town.  Mrs. Brown works to address this by teaching students how to access SORA, Newsbank, and DISCUS in and out of school.  She also has a partnership with the local library branch where students can apply for and receive their public library card back at school.  This allows them to have an even wider network of resources outside of the school building. This is important because even in the same county not all students are going to have the same access to information outside of school, especially in large counties like Berkeley.  Being creative and thinking outside the box to increase access is something that I may need to do in my future library.

Although this generation of students is sometimes called digital natives because they have grown up immersed in technology, they still need to be taught digital literacy and how to critically evaluate information.  Mrs. Brown starts with discussing their information sources, most students say Google or Wikipedia.  She teaches them about the importance of using appropriate sources for different information needs.  Google and Wikipedia are okay for casual queries, but academic writing and research papers need different kinds of sources.  She also stresses the importance of critically evaluating information.  Mrs. Brown uses SORA, DISCUS, and Newsbank to help students have access to a variety of diverse sources that are appropriate for academic and recreational use.  While some of the resources and lessons might need to be adjusted depending on the age of my students, the content is extremely valuable and the core of it could be applied to any group. 

Mrs. Brown provides tools and strategies to help students organize information by teaching them how to utilize a folder system in their school Google Drive account or by housing their resource collection within Destiny.  Organizing information and information sources is important across grade levels.  While not every school uses Google, the folder system could be used on any cloud based storage or even on a flash drive.  Teaching digital organization is something that is necessary across grade levels, and the earlier it is started the easier it can make students' lives in the future.  Even if I were to be an elementary school librarian, I would still try to incorporate digital organization.  

Mrs. Brown’s biggest constraint to collaborating with teachers is time.  They have so many responsibilities already that collaborating with the librarian can feel like just one more thing on their plate and she really has to actively seek out these partnerships.  This is valuable advice and I really think it holds true across grade levels.  As librarians we really have to put ourselves out there and sell collaboration.  I appreciate her honesty about how it is not always easy to get people on board with collaborating but you have to keep trying and showing teachers what you can do for them.