Technology in the Library

I've been thinking a lot about the role of the librarian in bringing technology into the school. I am attempting to keep up with Web 2.0 tools that can help teachers and students with their learning. Right now I'm trying to teach myself and use Evernote and Pinterest. I think it is important to know what is out there and how it can be used to improve learning.

My best example of this is Easybib. When I was in school, I had to either memorize proper referencing styles for every paper I wrote. It was time consuming and I never did see the point of it. Easybib does the work for you. If you enter the ISBN, or scan the ISBN or enter the information, Easybib will format the bibliography for you. To me, this is a great step forward. Why spend time teaching students how to do referencing when we could be working on creating greater depth in the essay itself. I want the students to learn to think critically, and if I can exchange one or two classes on how to reference with how to think critically, that is an exchange I am happy to do.

We have also added 10 iPads to the library collection. So far, they are not being used the way I had intended. I have downloaded a number of education apps that I thought would be really useful in a variety of courses. The students, however, are much more interested in playing the word games that are also on the iPads. Oh well, I will keep discussing the educational apps and see what happens.

There is so much potential out there for improving learning with technology, but there is still so much fear about it's use. I recently read an article about "who profits from school technology". The answer in the article was that it is the big companies, and not the students, who profit. This article was being used by friends of mine to laud the Waldorf system for not pushing technology. I'm sure that Apple is profiting from iPads in school, but if the students are also profiting, then I'm ok with it.

What are your thoughts? Should a school librarian be pushing technology or should we stick to books?