School Libraries around the world

Fran Bullington - As an educator, I realize the importance of information and digital literacy. As a school librarian, I have been trained to teach information literacy skills. I collaborate with classroom teachers to teach lessons in which I incorporate these skills.However, the recession has had an enormous impact on school libraries. Many programs have been completely cut; others are being run by volunteers rather than a certified school librarian; and other programs have lost their assistants, whose job of handling routine procedures freed the school librarian to plan with teachers.

 

I noticed that the FCC is considering “a proposal to spend $200 million to create a digital literacy corps. This group of hundreds, even thousands, of trainers would fan out to schools and libraries to teach productive uses of computers for parents, students and job seekers.”

 

Although I applaud the intent of teaching digital literacy skills to our students, I question the expenditure of these funds. Why not instead funnel these funds into school library programs to allow trained, certified professionals to teach the skills?

I look forward to hearing from you on this vital issue.

Via Karen Bonanno