Blog Post 3: Technology Implementation Strategies

Timothy Horan is a school librarian and is currently the director of the School Library Writing Center at Hauppauge High School in New York. He writes about technology’s incorporation into the writing center of school libraries in Technology and Your School Library Writing Center. Technology plays a crucial role in the education system and the three main points Horan makes are: 1. The technology itself is not the goal. The goal should be for technology to aid with teaching and writing. 2. Writing and research go hand in hand. Technology helps facilitate the cycle of locating, evaluating, and using information. 3. School library cards help students access more academic information through databases. To expand on Horan’s first point, many educators are caught up in technology itself and that can cause technology to replace human-made authentic work or ideas. However, if technology is regarded for what it is, an extremely useful tool, it can help in the production, creation, and support of teaching and writing. Technology facilitates writing center tutorials, for example. His second key point is that good writing cannot be done without research. A good writer is informed and educated on the topic of their writing. Technology in the library writing center allows for students to dive deeper into researching by helping them evaluate the vast array of sources on the internet. Horan considers the writing center to be fundamental place for students to learn how to best locate, evaluate, and then use information. He suggests that school librarians in charge of the writing center include the “Big6”, which is a model that breaks the research process into six intelligible steps: Task Definition, Information Seeking Strategies, Location and Access, Use of Information, Synthesis, and Evaluation (“Big6 Skills Overview” 2014). Horan’s last key point is that students who use their library cards and the library writing center’s technology have better access to information because of database bundles school districts purchase. This gives students access to tons of awesome resources, tools, articles, and knowledge. The school librarians in the writing center can also show students how to best search, go through their research options, and find which tools best fit their research needs. I am not currently a teacher or school librarian, but two new tools I learned from this article that I think would help improve instructional strategies are the “Big6” and the combination of the writing center and research with the help of technology. Those are two strategies I can implement in my own academic learning. References: “Big6 Skills Overview.” Big6. January 1, 2014. http://big6.com/pages/about/big6-skills-overview.php (accessed March 29, 2015). Horan, T. (2015). Technology and Your School Library Writing Center. School Library Monthly, 31(6), 5-7.