Week 2: Collaboration & Spaces

Reading Jeanna Walker's essay, "They said YES!", allowed me to think about how school librarians can leverage connections with other institutions (in this case, a university) to build meanigful connections. As her example pointed out, collaborating with other organizations can lead to powerful learning outcomes for students.  Related to this, Leslie Morgan's article about collaboration among librarians of varying types (school, college, public) makes a strong argument for why these types of endeavors should be pursued. In short, so much education that takes place at the K-12 level sets the stage for later learning and it makes sense to  utilize these resources together.
Arrangements like the one Walker initiated can be a great way for students to gain information literacy and relevant skills in a more hands-on, real-world sort of way. It can introduce young people to concepts and opportunities that they may not have been aware of, and it can do so by enhancing students' comprehension of various media capabilities (Prezi, Google applications, etc.) Perhaps more than any other faculty/staff in the K-12 environment, librarians are in an ideal position for impacting some of the most necessary and life-empowering skills for students: reading/literacy, technology use, and information literacy. These abilities are not only essential to academic success, but life success as well. In this way, thinking outside the traditional research/instruction model can provide some new ways of teaching students about technology and information literacy.
I also read through several articles that discussed the school library as a physical space. Of these, I found the essays by Washington-Blair and Sullivan (both of them!) to be particularly compelling. Their essays argue that school libraries of the future should be about doing, not being. As more and more content moves from a physical to a digital format, the library format itself should respond accordingly. Obviously, technology integration is a worthwhile goal.    Sullivan suggests a number of different interactive elements that could be worked into the design of the library and recommends developing the library as the central hub of school activity. All of these ideas would help refocus the library as a learning space, with a broader idea of what learning means. Moreover, redeveloping the physical space of the school library may attract new students to hang out there, creating more opportunities for engaging and building relationships.