Technology

Technology has fueled many of the “cutting edge” changes in the role of the LLC professional as described through the entirety of the LIIIITES model guide. The new literacies including media, information, digital as well as real-world, global connections represent instructional opportunities unearthed as a result of new technologies. After 30 years of a variety of efforts in education to integrate technology in ways that truly personalize learning for every student, the evolution of these technologies has spurred the role evolution of the LLC professionals. Most recently, several districts implementing district-wide digital learning initiatives have put their Library Learning Commons professionals at the center of the digital transformation. (1) The LLC professionals co-teach, model, lend expertise and facilitate the use of technology not as a tool but as an environment that includes ready-access. The LLC professionals understand that ready-access does not stop at the device or tool but nurtures the student and teachers’ informed, skilled and discerning access - using what’s available in the environment - including technology - when and if it’s needed. The LLC professional assists in designing performance tasks that lead to authentic problem-solving, passion-based projects or nurturing creative interests. The LLC professional team contributes to their school community by designing learning experiences that lead students to inventing, creating, collaborating, and expressing ideas and information in new ways.

During the past year, the author worked with the LLC professionals and a district (Wilton Public Schools, Wilton, CT) to implement a K-12 digital learning initiative as their Director of Digital Learning. (2) The plan put the LLC professionals at the center of the initiative to provide co-teaching experiences, faculty, or small group professional learning on best ways to improve student learning with technology as well as support with day-to-day operations of a digital initiative. The LLC team comprised the Library Media Specialists, Technology Integrators/ Technology Instructional Leaders, Student Tech Innovators, and IT professionals. The model flipped typical technology implementations that normally emphasize a phase-in of device deployment and, instead, put learning at the forefront. The device deployment took place within one year rather than several. The message was that this is a gradual deployment of teaching and learning strategies based on access to the technologies. There is a three-year phase during which time all educators and students have time to explore, take risks and share ways that technologies improve learning and teaching. Such a flipped technology model depends on a Library Learning Commons and its professionals to support teachers and students. In a recent blog entry, Scott McCleod, (3) an educational technology leader, suggested that every educator needs to stop thinking of any tech tool as a magic bullet. Instead, take a look at instruction and make the changes. Here are the specific ways he suggests and how the LLC professionals can support these efforts:

• Do a Learning Audit - Are students working at the lower levels of Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (4) or the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, (5) or the SAMR Model? (6) Collaborating with an LLC professional, teachers can use technologies that can elevate learning to creative, higher-order tasks.
• Do an Agency Audit - Are students given choice and voice in their learning? If not, work with the LLC professional to provide choice in content, process, and product.
• Do an Authenticity Audit - Are students engaged in relevant, real-world experiences?

The LLC professionals collaborate with teachers to guide students in curricular tasks that elevate media consumption to critical analysis and personalize curation so that it leads to creation of new meaning presented in ways that reach global audiences. The magic is not in the technologies but in the human interactions afforded through collaborating teachers, teams of students, and the global connections to problems that affect all of us in some ways. It’s when technologies disappear into the background, that the expertise of the LLC professionals can be best demonstrated. In this new paradigm, students not only consume but create using information; they think critically and question what they read arriving at their own skeptical analysis. They not only collaborate with students in their own classrooms virtually but their classrooms have expanded beyond the walls of their communities, state, or country, they not only appreciate and analyze images and videos but are able to plan, storyboard and create their own infographics and videos. In this paradigm, technology uncovers our humanity.

LLC Professional Role - Cutting Edge

Technology in a participatory culture opened up a new world of creation, real-world problem-solving and opportunities for innovation. The cutting edge, forward-thinking LLC professional teams scour their professional learning networks, follow educational technology bloggers, seek credentialing and expertise in the most promising technologies. In addition, the LLC members crosswalk AASL, ISTE, Common Core, NEXTGen Science Standards, Social Studies and Social Justice among other standards to seek out rigorous, real-world connections that provide transdisciplinary learning opportunities. The following are examples of what the LLC professional is involved with in today’s new digital world:

• Support professional learning for school staff on meaningful technology integration based on frameworks such as the SAMR Model and Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
• Versed in an ever-expanding knowledge of Tech Tools from free to fee and provide tutorials, screencasts, best practices for use in improving instruction and using a virtual learning commons to share with others.
• Expert matching of learning objectives with a tech tool; make the leap from using technology for tech sake to meaningful, appropriate use of tech based on learning goal.
• Train, oversee, and nurture a “techsherpas” team of students who share their knowledge of tech, innovation, and new digital literacies with everyone in the school.
• Provide professional learning, coteaching experiences and model the use of a variety of tech tools to accomplish learning objectives.
• Create and maintain a showcase of learning experiences that demonstrate a tech boost.
• Facilitate connections to global classrooms in order to solve real problems such as the water crisis in Africa, access to resources in Latin America or study cultural differences through an exchange with students in another country.
• Bring expertise into the classroom or library learning commons that was never possible, i.e., authors, scientists, historians, community and other leaders, well-known experts in a field being studied..
• Lead, support and sustain school-wide efforts with Hour of Code, programming opportunities through collaboration, and maker stations.

Provide opportunities for students to use newest technologies in Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality to create new virtual worlds representing areas of interest or curriculum-based projects.

Finally, technology is also the precursor to the Maker Movement. As new technologies are introduced, the Makerspace in the LLC is a perfect research and development space. Whether it’s Tinkercad and 3-D printing, Aurasma, Makey Makey, or a variety of programming tools, students can tinker, imagine, invent, and create using many of these tools. Designing the environment in which teachers and students can explore, share, and discover is critical in providing the opportunities that our next generation needs to succeed.