Editorial
School Library Monthly/Volume XXVI, Number 8/April 2010
What Can Be Done
By Deborah D. Levitov
It is clear that educators today must be on board to prepare students for learning, life, and work in the 21st century. But, as Greg Byerly indicates in his article "Teaching the Generations and Generations of Teachers" (Teaching the Generations and Generations of Teachers, SLM 26, no. 8: 32-35), there are digital natives and there are those that are not. Most educators today fall in the "not" category. School librarians can play a crucial role in helping both teachers and students know what tools and resources are available and how to use and access them for teaching and learning success. For this to happen, however, school librarians first must reflect, through their daily practice and school library program development, the essence of the learning environment that is needed.
The document cited in Byerly's article, Building the Field of Digital Media and Learning, by Henry Jenkins, et al., at MIT, is a document that helps articulate the skills students must attain during their K-12 education. Pages 22-55 of the document the "Core Media Literacy Skills" are outlined in detail, including "What Might Be Done" to achieve each skill. The skills listed embrace the world of technology but reach far beyond to the strategies and understanding that must accompany the use of technology tools.
- Play
- Simulation
- Performance
- Appropriation
- Multi-tasking
- Distributed Cognition
- Collective Intelligence
- Judgment
- Transmedia Navigation
- Networking
- Negotiation (http://digitallearning.macfound.org/)
All school librarians should take time to download this document and read it. The connections to AASL's Standards for the 21st-Century Learner and ISTE NETS will be obvious. Questions to ask are: How does the school library embrace and models these skills? What tools and resources are needed? How can the school librarian help teachers and students address each? Through the answers to these questions, the 21st-century school library will emerge.