Collaboration

I apologize for the late posting, but the week kind of got away from me with having Good Friday off.  I chose to talk about collaboration because our #EdSlowChat question for the week was: How does collaborating with your librarian impact student learning?

My hope as a librarian is that by teachers collaborating with me, WE are able to help the students make connections outside of their classroom. I love it when I read a story about something they are learning in class and they say, “We were learning about this in class!”  It’s amazing to see those light bulbs go off.

Often times, I don’t get a lot of true collaboration.  I realize teachers are busy, but I feel that part of my job is to help take some of the burden off of teachers.  If there is something that I can teach in the library that will save a teacher from having to do it, I am more than willing to help out.  I’m here to serve and I think a lot of teachers don’t realize the untapped potential they have in a resource like me.  I would love to be used more and to feel more useful than just someone who helps the students’ checkout their books.  Perhaps, in time, if I keep plugging away and try to draw more teachers in, I’ll be able feel as though I am completing my role as librarian.

Open e-books App

Last month, the White House and Michelle Obama announced the release of the Open e-books App available for iOS and android systems. This app is available to Title I, military base, special education teachers, librarians, and by extension, students.

Teachers may sign up to receive codes for their students who may download the app and then e-books on that app.  The hope is to get more books (e-books) in the hands of as many readers as possible, especially students that don’t have ready access to books.

The White House partnered with ten major publishers, Digital Public Library of America, First Book and the New York Public Library to make this all possible.

As a Title I school, this is something we are very interested in.  We’re hoping that very soon, we will be able gain access codes for our students so that they may enjoy books at any time on any mobile device.

Here is a link to read more about the Open e-books App.

http://tinyurl.com/jsmvekf

Digital Divide

In this golden age of technology, it is easy to believe that everyone has equal access to the Internet.  Unfortunately, that is not the case.  Nine out of ten low income families have internet access at home, but the majority of them are under connected in the fact that they only have internet access through their smart phones.  Additional barriers to connectivity for students is the fact that using the smart phone could lead to overages on data, the phone may be turned off due to lack of payment, or more than one person needs to use the phone.  If by chance a student might have internet access at home, there is often a problem of slow connection.

Many more schools these days are expecting students to use technology at home.  A prime example of this is my two nephews that live in a very small town on the outskirts of Joplin, MO.  Last year, their school district went to a one on one device ratio per student.  Each student was assigned a Chrome book and the community was expected to get internet service if they did not already have it.  As a single mother of two boys, my sister struggled to make this a reality.

Once she got the internet service, there were constant problems with being able to stay connected.  Apparently, this small town did not have the infrastructure in place to provide internet access to that many people.  Therefore, many students suffered agonizing loss of work and many hours of time working on their homework.  I know that there were many occasions that my nephews had to go to McDonald’s to use their free Wi-Fi in order to complete their homework assignments.  The fact that the school district forced many families to get internet service that could not perform properly is still a hot topic of discussion in this little town over a year later.

I don’t know what would be a good solution to make internet access more equitable for every student, but I know that the learning gap will continue to grow if changes aren’t made.  You can read more about this in a couple of articles that address this issue.

The first one is from Mind/Shift and is titled What’s Lost When Kids Are “Under-connected” to the Internet? and it can be found at:

http://tinyurl.com/zyfd28k

Many low income students use only their phone to get online. What are they missing? is the second article is by The Conversation. You can find it at: http://tinyurl.com/zkaos72

Perhaps one day everyone will have the same access to the Internet regardless of their income.