Page 29 - THE Journal, March 2017

VIEWPOINT
Susan K.S. Grigsby, Ed.S. and Cathy Fuhrman, Ed.D.
Making the Digital Shift? Your
Greatest Asset May Already Be
in your Building!
School librarians are well versed in the evaluation of online, print and digital resources.
CHOOLS ALL OVER the country are taking a hard look at the way they select and buy instructional resources and many are making the choice to go digital. In the past, print materials could be selected with the assurance that
publishers had staked their reputations on properly editing and fact-checking their products. Digital resources purchased from a reputable vendor still provide that same expectation of quality; however, with the advent of open
educational resources (OER) and the plethora of web resources for K–12, school systems are wrestling with how to thoughtfully curate quality materials, as well as how to provide the professional development necessary for teachers to use those materials effectively. More importantly, whereas textbooks provided content along with curriculum guides, OER requires the teacher to be a more active designer in constructing lesson plans complete with benchmarks, timelines and assessments.
School systems may not realize they already have a valuable asset in their schools that will allow them to thoughtfully curate digital resources, build quality units of learning, provide professional development to staff and build instructional partnerships for higher levels of integration: the school librarian!
A professionally trained and certified school librarian (aka library media specialist or teacher-librarian) is well versed in the evaluation of online, print and digital resources.
He or she is trained to look for authority, accuracy, relevancy, currency and appropriateness for the school community in which the resources will be used and is also trained to address both individual and group professional development activities
to make sure the available resources are integrated into the classroom in a way that fosters higher-order and critical thinking skills. The librarian also understands how
to take traditional research assignments and make necessary changes to prevent them from being simple cut-and-paste projects that have been all too common in our schools.
In short, the certified school librarian is no longer sitting behind a desk circulating print materials. He or she is an active member of the school learning community
MARCH 2017 | 29
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