Since last week we looked at how students are learning via online courses and screencasts, this week I decided to look at how librarians --specifically school librarians -- are communicating with student patrons. One of the articles I looked at was 'What's my email address anyway, miss?': communicating with the Facebook generation by Nicola McNee, published The School Librarian, volume 58, issue 2 (2010). This article would have fit in well with last week's readings about online learning. McNee, as a school librarian has come to realize that today's generation is most comfortable with navigating the world wide web, and using the internet as the source for endless information and answers to the greatest mysteries.
She has found that it has become a challenge to communicate with students via email, as the students rarely take the time to check their inboxes, instead relying on facebook messages, and instant messages or text messages. She decided to utilize iGoogle to keep information up-to-date and keep the students in the loop as to what was going on in the library. She set out to show students that they could successfully integrate social media with learning.
I feel that this is a very important aspect of the library environment today that we all, as future and present librarians, should be aware of. We have remember to come up with ways of learning and teaching that will be interesting to those we are trying to teach and inform. We can't expect kids today to learn in the same way we learned when we were younger students. I feel like I said a similar thing in my post last week, and here I am saying it again. This just proves that it is a very important issue for me, we must be able to take into account the changes to research and learning that are happening around us. We then have to utilize those changes into a productive way of teaching the present and future generations.
The idea that students wouldn't check their email at all is strange to me; I tend to think of email as the clearinghouse for all my other social media, since that's where notifications go, allowing me to monitor everything at once. But McNee's adaptation to the problem she faced is a good one, and I think it demonstrates one of the key issues that we'll face as information professionals, which you mentioned here: we have to focus on methods that are consistent with the backgrounds and expectations of students and patrons, not on our own pre-existing approaches.
ReplyDeleteLast semester I interviewed my then-fifteen-year-old brother for a study on adolescent literacy practices. He said he and friends don't really use e-mail either and commented on how strange it is that this technology that was so cutting-edge and new within his lifetime is already "outdated." Like Andrea, I also rely on e-mail notifications to keep me up to speed on my online social network, but if we're supposed to be serving a teenage population we should definitely follow McNee's lead and keep in contact with them through the online media that they use. Of course, there's the "cool" factor to deal with--how can librarians insert themselves into the "private" online lives of teens? What would make teens even consider "friending" their school or public library? Just having a web presence, even on the online social media sites that teens use, isn't enough.
ReplyDeleteMaybe email isn't out of date for teens. Maybe it's just the fact that they do not need to communicate long and important information as adults do. I personally did not use email daily until I started college and received constant emails from my professors, fellow students, student organizations. I now check my emails several times a day.
ReplyDeleteIn jr. highs and high schools teacher do not regularly email their students. Information about extracurricular activities communicate through school announcement, flyers, etc. There isn't a need for them to constantly use email.
Her use of iGoogle strikes me as an excellent lesson on transfer -- teach the tool, then let students customize it and use it beyond that lesson to organize their life.
ReplyDelete