The School Media Center: Technology and Diversity

The American Library Association’s (ALA) publication, Information Power: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs (1998), outlined the mission of the school media program. This mission is to ensure that students and staff are effective users of information and related ideas. Additionally, in 2007, the organization introduced Standards for the 21st Century Learner, the replacement for the Information Power guidelines for media programs. Despite the update, the roles of the school media specialist remain a solid focal point for media specialist serving as instructional consultant, information specialist, teacher, and technological coordinator within school settings. Therefore, media specialists are charged with setting the standards for integrating technology and diversification through the school media program.

In addition to the aforementioned mission of ensuring effective users of information, ALA also emphasizes another key goal involving media programs’ responsibility to emphasize intellectual freedoms and access to various forms of information sources, including technological resources. Media specialists provide learning activities and related resources for students on a daily basis, but must be cognizant that these resources and actives are representative of their school community’s demographic, social and cultural perspectives. The media center activities and resources must also provide diverse experiences for all learners within the school setting with the goals of producing technology literate students and increased student achievement. This is a major challenge for school media specialists and teachers serving schools with a range of socioeconomic, ethnic, and learning needs, including gifted, general, and special education, ESOL, as well as remediation programs.

As school media specialist serve in various roles, the utilization of various strategies and resources is equally important in order to address technology integration and diversity needs in and through the media center. Accordingly, Learning Points & Associates (2007), provided suggestions for relevant 21st century technology integration, including:


Student Learning:

• Social networking technology
• Web-based resources for research
• Online portfolios
• Synthesizing and presenting information through creative graphic presentations
• Use of audio and video files
• E-learning project based collaboration, such as ePals Classroom Exchange
• Virtual Fieldtrips


Teachers/Staff:

• Ongoing professional development
• Curriculum integration of technology to meet state academic standards
• Use to increase parental involvement and communication in schools
• To college, manage, and analyze data for school improvement, teaching and learning


Resources for Technology Integration:

• ePals Global Community – a free K-12 social learning network - http://www.epals.com/join/

• Website for information on technology and learning - http://www.techlearning.com/

• Integrating via video vignettes @ Integrating New Technologies Into the Methods of Education or IN TIME - http://www.intime.uni.edu/

• TimeMe's free and fee based software products time tests, classes, meetings, projects, and presentations - http://www.timeme.com/

• Free blog for kids designed for elementary and middle school teachers and allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community - http://kidblog.org/home.php

• Free online note taker, organizer, spreadsheets, presentation and word application tools - https://www.zoho.com/


Resources for Diversity in Media Services:

• A website of bilingual translation of common media center phrases/signage - https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/projects/bilingualsign/main.html

• An introduction to the resources on the Web concerning multicultural education and diversity - http://library.csustan.edu/lboyer/multicultural/main.htm

• Article on strategies for reaching out to diverse populations - www.sedl.org/connections/resources/rb/rb5-diverse.pdf

• Information Literacy and Differentiation - http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Information_Literacy_in_the_K12_Classroom/Chapter
• Research and best practices for technology integration - http://www.pbs.org/teachers/librarymedia/tech-integration/

• This National Education Association online toolkit introduces the multiple facets of diversity - http://www.nea.org/tools/diversity-toolkit.html


References:

American Association of School Librarians and Association. 1998.Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning. Chicago: American Library Association and Washington, DC: Association for Educational Communications and Technology.

Learning Point Associates. (2007). Understanding No Child Left Behind: Technology integration. Retrieved from http://www.learningpt.org/pdfs/qkey3.pdf