Week Two Reading Continued

Another piece of our reading this week involved a pretty sweet e-book featuring contributions from school librarians and other stakeholders on the state of school libraries.  My fave essays are as follows:

• "Game-Based Learning, Literacy, Engagement, and Motivation" by Dan Bowen.  I am really fascinated by the opportunities afforded by digital media in the learning process, and this author did a great job of articulating the specific reasons for integrating what some might consider ridiculous as learning tools.  I look forward to the day when schools and learning environments are more collaborative with tech/video game developers, so that we can use games that are appropriate for our environment to impart the specific skills we would like to engage.
• "I Want to be an App"  by Joyce Kazman Valenza.  The phrase that stuck out to me, and I will probably be using in almost every library conversation I have for the rest of my profession is migrating practice.  "We are not," states the author of this essay, "migrating our practice quickly enough."  We are sticking around in North Dakota, and we are being frozen out.  Last semester, in SI 647, one of my fellow classmates wrote an impressive paper on the inclusion of mobile technology into library services, and as I recall, heralded this as the "biggest, little idea" for libraries.  The ALA guidelines for how future librarians should be trained in technology are vague and completely underwhelming, so not only do most librarians not understand how to use this technology, but they would not know the first step in how to create it.  The issue of creating apps is not just about relevance, the issue is one of scalable or translatable experiences.  I believe that students need real world connections to their online world and online connections to their real lives, and libraries need to have a stake in this process.  I too want to be an app.