Internet Competency

I used the Google search engine to look for websites related to my topic of interest, promoting literacy and the love of reading. I had to refine my search a few times to find exactly what I was looking for. When I googled 'literacy websites for teachers' I came across a website, http://www.literacyconnections.com/ that fit my needs quite perfectly. The vision of the website is "Promoting Literacy Skills and a Love of Reading". The site offers many resources for teaching literacy skills to students, ESL learners and even adults. I've used a few of the songs listed on the website in lessons over the years so I know that the content is current and useful.

Multimedia Competency-Gotta Keep Reading

I chose this video because I felt it was very inspiring to school librarians and teachers. This school was able to take a song, "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas, and create a parody that promoted literacy at the middle school level. All the students look engaged and I'm sure the media attention and youtube.com video have influenced other campuses to do the same. When educators and librarians take the time to find out what students like, then they can tailor instruction to be engaging for all.
This video is from www.youtube.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6D9jiEYxzs

Database Competency

This assignment requires testing four different search strategies using four different databases. My search question was "What are the effects of the digital divide on elementary children?"

Search #1 LibLit and the Building Block strategy

I wanted to divide my search into three concepts: effect, digital divide and children
S1: Digitial divide or knowledge divide
S2: effect or influence or impact
S3: children or kids or students

First I performed a basic search using only the term 'digital divide' and received 290 hits. I then used the advanced search option and used the terms 'digital divide AND effect AND children' which produced a single hit:

Noce, Anthony A.. "A new benchmark for Internet use: A logistic modeling of factors influencing Internet use in CanadaGovernment Information Quarterly 25. 3 (2008), 462-76. Accessed July 21, 2010 from LibraryLit database.


This did not give me much hope for further searching. I decided to use all the concepts together in an advanced search to see if I could find any more relevant documents. I searched (digital divide OR knowledge divide) AND (effect OR influence OR impact) AND (children OR kids OR students) and was able to find 3 relevant hits including:

Rosenfeld, E. Blocking Web 2.0 Tools in Schools: Creating a New Digital Divide. Teacher Librarian v. 35 no. 3 (February 2008) p. 6. Accessed July 21, 2010 from the LibraryLit database.

Search #2 JSTOR and the Specific Facet First

I am using the same three concepts as search 1: effect, digital divide and children

S1: effect (1717457 hits)
S2: digital divide (5528 hits)
S3: children (34096 hits)

According so my initial results I should start with the term 'digital divide' because it produced the fewest hits. After reviewing the hits most do not seem relevant. One of the articles that was relevant to my search query was:

Mauro F. Guillén and Sandra L. Suárez.Explaining the Global Digital Divide: Economic, Politcal and Sociological Drivers of Cross-National Internet Use. Social Forces, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Dec., 2005), pp. 681-708. Accessed July 21, 2010 through the JSTOR database.

Because of the large amount of hits received, I've decided that this strategy will not be effective. I should move on to Successive Fractions to narrow my results.


Search #3 WorldCat and the Successive Fractions strategy

Again I will use the concepts effect, digital divide and children

S1: effect OR impact OR influence (1881360)
S2: digital divide OR knowledge divide (4503)
S3: children OR kids OR students (3498934)

'children OR kids OR students' is the broadest facet so I will start with the 3, 398, 934 hits and add 'effect OR impact OR influence' to my search terms. This resulted in 90, 887 hits, still too many to search effectively. I then added my last set of terms 'digital divide OR knowledge divide' to the search. A much more manageable 106 records were found. The most relevant document I found was:

Krueger, Alan B. 2000. The digital divide in educating African-American students and workers. Princeton, N.J.: Industrial Relations Section, Princeton University. Accessed July 21, 2010 through the WorldCat database.


Search #4 Project Muse and the Citation Pearl Growing strategy AKA Snowballing

I decided to start with "digital divide among children" which gave me 366 hits. I noticed that my search was looking for the terms "among" which didn't help my results so I revised my search to "digital divide AND school AND children". This narrowed my search to 284, still not a manageable number of records to browse. Some of the subject headings were 'elementary education' and 'social aspects' so I furthered revised my search to "digital divide AND elementary education AND students". I was presented with 40 hits but most of them focused on elementary education and students, not the digital divide. I decided I would browse the records and look for relevant articles. I found this one:

Attewell, Paul, Belkis Suazo-Garcia and Juan Battle . "Computers and Young Children: Social Benefit or Social Problem?Social Forces 82. 1 (2003), 277-296. Accessed July 21, 2010 through Project Muse database.

Conclusions

While searching I noticed that some of the databases are more suitable for specific types of searching. WorldCat and LibLit were very user-friendly and were great for building block searches. Although I didn't post about the particular database, I found Lexis very hard to navigate and my hits were limited to 1000 each time so I wasn't getting an accurate result. After completing this competency I can see the relevancy of the snow-balling strategy better than I did previously. It is something I do naturally but had never known the name. I found the specific facet first to be the least helpful.

Tagging Competency

For my tagging competency I went to LibraryThing.com and searched through the Tags field for "school libraries". After browsing the hits, I chose
Library 101: A Handbook for the School Library Media Specialist.

I want to become a school librarian and the elementary or middle school level and I believe that collaborating with teachers is a fundamental role of the librarian. This book aligned well with my belief.

administration (1) adult (1) cataloging (1) computers (1) education (1) handbook (6) how-to (1) isar (1) librarians (2) library (6) library administration (1) library management (1) library media specialist (1) library science (1) ls5813 (1) management (1) media (4) media center (3) media program (2) media specialist (2) media specialists (2) planning (1) professional (2) resource (1) school library (6) school library media (1) school library media specialist (2) technology (1) textbook (5) uwg textbook


http://www.librarything.com/work/4172102/book/62468542

RSS feeds added

For this assignment I chose to add two RSS feeds to my blog. First, I chose the YALSA feed because it pertains to the literacy of young adults. I am currently an elementary level teacher but as I've learned about librarianship through my first two courses, my focus may be shifting to the middle school level.

Secondly, I chose the post feed from the blog, The Unquiet Librarian. This is a blog that I follow regularly and I find that it follows my topic of interest quite well.

Podcast on Literacy Programs

I found this podcast on youtube.com when I searched for elementary literacy programs. I liked the video entitled, Stony Creek Elementary School- 2009 TEAMS Award Winner, because it embodies the things I find important in the school librarian's position on his/her campus. I believe it is the responsibility of the librarian to help foster and build relationships with students in order to increase students' reading comprehension, fluency, accuracy and overall love of reading. I love the part of the video when the library media specialist (love the title by the way) says that when children hear an adult read them a story, the fancy, colorful cover of the book is replaced with a face. This is a gentle reminder that books and reading inspire wonderful memories for children of all ages.

You can watch the podcast below



or visit the website at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxtSlT5Zhsk

Connecting to the At Risk Student

As I looked through the Google Blog search engine for related articles, I came across this one entitled, The Library and the At-Risk Student. I think it fits my topic of interest perfectly. The article comes from the blog, Top Shelf: the "best stuff" for school librarians, and provides research on how the library and the librarian can build positive relationships with students who are classified as "at-risk". The article reads,

"Librarians can help build resiliency in the environment in many ways. They can provide support for at-risk students by developing relationships with them and serving as mentors. Students who have trouble in the classroom environment may come to the library with a “clean slate” and find refuge and success.

Librarians can also help build resiliency by providing opportunities for meaningful participation: clubs, games, poetry readings, and other events offer at-risk students the opportunity to interact socially with their peers and caring adults. Students who are involved have less risk of dropping out....."

For further reading, check out the blog at http://topshelf.edublogs.org/2009/03/04/the-library-and-the-at-risk-student/