Thursday, May 03, 2012

Live Thursday, May 3rd - School Libraries: What’s Now, What’s Next, What’s Yet to Come

Join me Thursday, May 3rd, for live and interactive Future of Education conversation with  Buffy Hamilton and Kristin Fontichiaro, editors of School Libraries: What’s Now, What’s Next, What’s Yet to Come. Their crowdsourced eBook, which is available for free download, is a collection of over 100 essays from around the world about trends in school libraries written by librarians, teachers, publishers, and library vendors.

In the book's foreward, Dr. R. David Lankes laments that the "future of school libraries and school librarians hangs in the balance," and that even with all of the research supporting the important effects of the school librarian, "communities are presented with a false choice: reduce the number of teachers in the classroom or lay off the librarian." This, he says, is a "false choice because school librarians are teachers – their classrooms beyond the four walls of the library and extending into every classroom; indeed into every student’s home with resources and assistance."

Hamilton and Fontichiaro recognize the additional and huge historical context of a world moving from print to digital, and by bringing diverse library voices together, wanted to ask questions that would "help us gain strength and inspiration from one another, even as our roles and duties expand and our job security and salaries decrease."
What is the future of school libraries? More particularly, what is the future of school librarians? ...For those of us still working in schools, what are we working toward? ...Those are some of the question we posed to the extended school librarian community. What is the future going to be like? What do you see? What can you hold up from your own practice as a lantern to illuminate the way for others? These questions are too big to be answered by any single librarian, district, organization, or task force. They take collective thinking. And so we made an unusual overture: all voices would be heard, regardless of experience, reputation, or perpsective.
Date: Thursday, May 3rd, 2012
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8 pm Eastern (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). Log in at http://futureofed.info. The Blackboard Collaborate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Blackboard Collaborate, please visit the support and configuration page.
Recordings: The full Blackboard Collaborate recording is at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2012-05-03.1714.M.9E9FE58134BE68C3B413F24B3586CF.vcr&sid=2008350 and a portable .mp3 audio recording is at http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/schoollibraries.mp3.

Buffy Hamilton is a school librarian at Creekview High School’s “Unquiet Library” in Canton, GA.  Buffy is a 2011 Library Journal Mover and Shaker ; she is also the  2011 winner of the Salem Press Blog Award in the “School Library” division, Salem Press Blog Award,  School Library Blog Winner 2011 as well as the 2010-11 GLMA/GAIT Georgia Library Media Association/Georgia Association for Instructional Technology School Library Media Specialist of the Year.  Her Media 21 program (http://theunquietlibrary.libguides.com/media21) was a winner of the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) Cutting Edge Library Service Award.  In addition, she has been honored as one of the National School Boards Association Technology Leadership Network “20 to Watch” 2010, Tech and Learning’s 100@30: Future Leader;  her library program was also honored as the 2010 Georgia Exemplary High School Media Program.   Buffy is also the author of the recently published Embedded Librarianship: Tools and Practices from ALA TechSource.

Kristin Fontichiaro is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Information, where she coordinates the school library media program.  In addition, she co-teaches Teaching with Technology in the UM School of Education. Formerly, she was an elementary school librarian, professional development facilitator, and secondary English teacher.

In 2011, she edited two eBooks: School Libraries: What's Now, What's Next, What's Yet to Come (co-edited with Buffy Hamilton) and Information Literacy in the Wild, a compilation of graduate student essays.

Earlier professional books include 21st-Century Learning in School Libraries; Active Learning Through Drama, Podcasting, and Puppetry; and Podcasting at School. With Sandy Buczynski, she is co-author of Story Starters and Science Notebooking: Developing Student Thinking Through Literacy and Inquiry. She also writes informational texts for middle grade readers and has written for Principal Leadership, ASCD Express, Teacher Librarian, Synergy, and other publications.

Coming in June are two new books: are Navigating the Information Tsunami: Engaging Research Projects that Meet the Common Core State Standards, K-5 (Cherry Lake) and Growing Schools: Librarians as Professional Developers (with former Future of Education guest Debbie Abilock and Violet H. Harada, 2012).

Named an Emerging Leader by the American Library Association, Distinguished Alumna by the Wayne State University Library and Information Science Program, and a 2012 Library Journal Mover and Shaker, she blogs at http://blog.schoollibrarymonthly.com and writes the “Nudging Toward Inquiry” column for School Library Monthly.

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