PONderings

I just stumbled upon Joyce Valenza’s blog. In my very short time exploring her reflections, I found an interesting post entitled You know you’re a 21 century teacher- librarian if…

Among many other notable checkpoints, Joyce points out the need for educators to understand the concept of Web 2.0, a term I admittedly know little about. When I became a teacher-librarian in 2001, I relied on the CASL standards to guide me.

In 1997, the Canadian Association for School Libraries (CASL) published its own guidelines entitled Students’ Information Literacy Needs in the 21st Century: Competencies for Teacher-Librarians. Although this document provides excellent general guidelines, this document is by its nature too vague. Under its Professional Competencies, CASL states that teacher-librarians use “appropriate information technology to acquire, organize and disseminate information”. To me, this wording seems too top-down and bureaucratic, placing the definition of “appropriate” in the hands of us digital immigrants. Perhaps that term “appropriate” could be better served by “relevant and engaging”.