INLS 242:
CURRICULUM ISSUES FOR
SCHOOL LIBRARY MEDIA SPECIALISTS
INLS 242:
CURRICULUM ISSUES FOR
SCHOOL LIBRARY MEDIA SPECIALISTS
| DESCRIPTION | READINGS | ASSIGNMENTS | SCHEDULE |
| Goals and Objectives ... Textbooks ... Assignments ... Honor System ... Blackboard and Conduct of the Class |
"Collaboration is essential as library media specialists work with teachers to plan, conduct, and evaluate learning activities that incorporate information literacy."
--AASL. Information Power, 1998."...Reading is consistently shown to be more efficient than direct instruction. ... [It] is a powerful means of developing reading comprehension ability, writing style, vocabulary, grammar, and spelling. In addition ... it is pleasant, promotes cognitive development and lowers writing apprehension."
--Stephen Krashen. The Power of Reading, 2004.
The overall goal of the course is to prepare you to be a leader in your school's instructional program in four areas: research, reading, literacy, and technology. Strategies to achieve leadership will be discussed throughout the course."Students must be taught to solve problems, think critically, and get along with others. ... quality learning will take place only where classroom teachers and library media specialists collaboratively plan units of work. In a school where reform is really happening, the library will be the most favored and the busiest place in the school."
-- Faye Kimsey-Pharr, Principal, 1999 (quoted in Curriculum Partner).
Specific Objectives: Upon completion of the course, you will be able to:
Converse knowledgeably about current trends in education (e.g., electronic reading programs, standardized tests, block
scheduling, the correlation between media programs and student achievement).
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There are two required textboooks and two recommended textbooks as follows:
Bishop, Kay. Connecting Libraries with Classrooms; The Curricular Roles of the Media Specialist. Worthington, O: Linworth Publishing, 2003. ISBN: 1-58683-061-9 (pbk). List price $44.95 (Available from UNC Bookstore; from publisher, or from Amazon). Required.Some resource documents that we will use heavily are found on the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction website (www.ncpublicschools.org). These are:Information Power; Building Partnerships for Learning. Prepared by the American Association of School Librarians and the Association of Educational Communications and Technology. Chicago: American Library Association, 1998. This is the national standard for school library media specialists. ISBN: 0-83893-470-6. (Available from UNC Bookstore and directly from ALA; $35 from Amazon - used copies available as well). Required. Note: We use this manual for both INLS 241 and 242. For 242, we will be primarily interested in chapter 2, 3, 4 and 7 plus appendices D and E.
Krashen, Stephen D. The Power of Reading; Insights from the Research. 2nd ed. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2004. ISBN: 1-59158-169-9. Recommended. List price $25. (Available from UNC Bookstore, from publisher and from Amazon). Note: Second edition is considerably enlarged from 1st (1993).
Lanning, Scott and John Bryant. Essential Reference Services for Today's School Media Specialists. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2004. ISBN: 1-59158-137-0. Recommended. List price $40. (Available from UNC Bookstore, from publisher and from Amazon).
IMPACT; Guidelines for Media and Technology Programs. Public Schools of North Carolina, September 2000. This is available at http://www.ncwiseowl.org/impact.htm. We will focus on the Teaching and Learning section. A companion document for administrators focusing on program evaluation and effectiveness is also available at http://www.ncwiseowl.org/admin/adminimpact.htm. Look particularly at the rubrics for Teaching and Learning, Staff Development and Collaboration.Another resource of value is Learn NC; the North Carolina Teachers' Network. This website "offers a wide array of quality resources for K-12 classroom instruction and teacher professional development, all tied to the North Carolina Standard Course of Study." Take time to examine this resource.Information Skills Curriculum. North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 1999. Available at http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/information/. Grade by grade list of overall objective, focus areas, strands, and competencies expected. Also see Information Skills Curriculum Integration Strategies (one for K-5 and one for 6-8), North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, March 2001. These two documents are linked from the Information Skills Curriculum page and are available for downloading in pdf format. Note these documents are very large [75 pages for the K-5 document and 46 pages for the 6-8 document]. As they are intended primarily as reference material, You may want to use them online and not print them out. A 9-12 document has been promised but is not yet forthcoming.
North Carolina Standard Course of Study (SCOS) North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, various dates. These are the official state curriculum requirements for all K-12 grades and subjects. They are available at http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum. We will use this reference to develop knowledge of the curriculum and for learning objectives for all the subjects. Note this site has links to three other documents of potential use: The Balanced Curriculum (for elementary level), Operational Procedures Manual Enrollment of High School Intellectually Gifted and Mature Students in Community (primarily to make community college offerings easily available to top HS students), and Last Best Chance 2004 -- Middle Grades Task Force Report.
Additional readings and useful websites will be provided to you.
Course Requirements and Assignments
The overall goal of the course is to prepare you to be a leader in your school's instructional program through collaborative planning with teachers and the integration of technology in the curriculum."Students who score higher on tests tend to come from schools that have more resource staff and more books, periodicals, and videos and where the instructional role of the teacher-librarian and involvement in cooperative program planning and teaching is more prominent."
-- Lance Curry. The Impact of School Library Media Centers on Academic Achievement, 1993.
A variety of individual and group (or team) activities are planned. Brief descriptions of graded assignments are provided below. A more complete written description for all but the first one will be provided by or before the first class meeting.
- Class Participation. Strong participation is vital for a successful online class. Plan to log in to the course and participate in the discussions three times a week at the beginning. You will need to invest 8 to 10 hours a week in readings and postings throughout the class. (Remember you will NOT be spending three hours a week in class so the time spent is roughly equivalent to your face to face courses). The class will be rewarding to you and your class colleagues to the extent that you contribute your thoughts and candid opinions (I will ask you to agree that postings will be private to the class and not shared among outsiders unless with express permission of the author).
- Readings and Web Exploration. At our first meeting I will ask you to select three books from the class reading list to skim/read. Throughout the class, I will provide articles for you in addition for your reading pleasure. You will be asked to review some relevant websites. The fruits of your reading should find their way via summary posts (can be in bulleted format) and comment on appropriate discussion forums. You will also want to respond to postings about the readings posted by your class colleagues.
- Interview Teachers and Media Specialist. As in the companion 241 class, you are asked to adopt a school for observations and to become familiar with the pattern of activities within a school. For your adopted school, please select one or two teachers and the media specialist (or another teacher if you are the media specialist) for an interview about curriculum plans, resources used, nature of the students, particular units the teachers enjoy teaching, and how the teachers do their lesson plans. Some preliminary examination of the literature about these topics will allow you to conduct an efficient and useful interview (about a half hour for each). We will enjoy reading your summary of findings from these interviews.
- Collaborative Unit. This is the most important assignment. For it you have two choices. You may either do a real collaborative unit at your adopted school with one of the classroom teachers (the best choice for those doing fieldwork or already acting as the media specialist) or you may simulate the collaborative process by working with one of your classmates and trading roles (one of you acting as media specialist and the other acting as classroom teacher and then vice versa). This exercise will help you become familiar with the curriculum and content objectives for a grade level and subject area. You will learn to apply instructional design principles in working out a lesson plan and developing an assessment strategy. If you do the unit in a school setting, I will ask you to videotape (with permission) one of the student learning sessions. If you follow the simulation route, I will ask you to teach a sample lesson to the 242 class at one of our Saturday sessions. A collaborative post-unit reflection will allow you to think of improvements for the next offering.
- Reading Appreciation. Reading encouragement is a central part of the media specialist's role. For this assignment (done individually or with another classmate), you are asked to plan an event or activity that encourages reading (consult the class reading list, the librarian at your adopted school, or your own fertile imagination for ideas). The activity might preferably be a whole school activity but it could alternatively be for a selected grade or class. Develop a method to show the impact of your reading appreciation activity. Consider how you might use the event and the data for internal or external public relations. Summarize your work as a paper or a web page or a poster.
- Teacher Development Workshop You may choose this assignment OR the School Library Website assignment described below. It may be done individually or with another classmate. You are asked to design a workshop for teachers that addresses some aspect of one of the four areas of your instructional expertise (research, reading, literacy, technology). (For example, you might lead a workshop in which you provide information about the various research models (similar to what we will do at our first class) with the goal of encouraging teachers to select or create a school-wide model -- we can discuss other possibilities) Provide the agenda for the workshop plus any handouts or visuals you might use; think about how you might measure the impact and include a description of this as well.
- School Library Website. This is an alternative assignment to the Teacher Development Workshop described above. It may be done individually or with another classmate. You are asked to create (or improve) a website for your adopted school library. The website design should demonstrate your knowledge of the principles for a good website. It should include information for you (the librarian), for teachers (about research, reading, literacy and technology), for students with sample links to technology tools, databases, other useful resources, and announcements. You may want to have a public face as well for parents and other interested members of the community. I will provide some resources that may be helpful to you. You might start with Writing School Library Web Pages. Even though most of these pages don't exemplify all aspects of best practice, they provide ideas and some good starting tips.
In addition, there will be some ungraded assignments -- some done in our Saturday sessions; others will involve postings on the discussion forum following a prompt (question, request) of some kind. I have included a final exam in the list below of how the assignments count toward a final grade. The exam would take about an hour and be administered on the final Saturday of the class. You would be asked to respond to some essay style questions (or possibly an oral) about the knowledge objectives of the course. Note the conditional tense in this description and also that the proportion allocated to the final exam brings the total to 110%. We can decide either collectively or individually whether the final exam is necessary.
Note: For any assignment done as a team, both students will receive the same grade unless there is overwhelming evidence why it should be otherwise.
- 20% - Class participation
- 15% - Readings and/or Website Explorations -- individual assignment
- 10% - Teacher/Media Specialist Interviews -- individual or team assignment
- 25% - Collaborative Unit -- individual with classroom teacher or team of two students
- 10% - Reading Appreciation -- individual or team
- 10% - Teacher Workshop or School Library Website -- individual or team
- 10% - Final Exam -- individual (written or oral)
For extra credit - Attend a full day's session at a relevant state conference and write (and/or present) a brief report.
Incompletes: A grade of incomplete may be taken only because of illness or special circumstances and only with the permission of the instructor.
Honor System at Carolina Carolina's Honor System has a long and distinguished history at the University of North Carolia. Information about the student-administered honor system is available at honor.unc.edu. "The university community, including faculty and students, share a commitment to the pursuit of truth, and the dissemination of knowledge to succeeding generations of citizens devoted to the high ideals of personal honor and respect for the rights of others. These goals can only be achieved in a setting in which intellectual honesty and personal integrity are highly valued; other individuals are trusted, respected, and fairly treated; and the responsibility for articulating and maintaining high standards is widely shared." This statement from the honor code might serve as a model for your work with students and faculty in your future school.
"The library media professional has an agenda for developing information literacy ... That agenda can only be effectively accomplished when it is integrated into the curriculum. Such integration requires collaboration between the library media professional and the teaching staff."
-- Jean Donham. Enhancing Teaching and Learning." 1998.
For your assignments in this course, remember that information taken from the work of another must always be attributed and that work that you submit must be your own (or your team's in the case of group work). In this class, collaboration, discussion, and the use of assistance from other class members is encouraged and is not inconsistent with the honor system.
Conduct of the Class - Blackboard
"The key element in a successful learning environment is student engagement." This class will use the course management system, Blackboard. As a registered student in INLS 242, when you enter the Blackboard site (blackboard.unc.edu), you will be prompted for your ONYEN and password (If you do not yet have an ONYEN, please make arrangements to get one as quickly as possible -- send me an email if it is a problem). When you sign in, you will see INLS 242: Curriculum Issues for School Library Media Specialists listed. Please jump right on the site and post some "Getting to Know You" information. You will probably also see an announcement or two and a request for you to provide other postings. At our first meeting, I will provide some tips and tricks to navigating the Blackboard site. If you need help before that time, don't hesitate to email me (daniel@ils.unc.edu). Remember, you should plan to check the Blackboard course site two or three times each week during the duration of the class. Regular postings to the various discussion forums are required, as is reading posted material, notices, and the detailed assignments.
-- Diane Oberg, 1999."... almost everything I really need to know about designing a library media program, I have learned from first graders. ...
I learned the importance of putting students in charge of their own learning ...
I also learned the importance of the connection between the classroom and the library ...
I also learned that reading is the foundation of learning ... "
-- Barbara Stripling, 1999.The class will meet face to face four times during the semester in a workshop format on the following dates:
The first and last face to face sessions are required; the middle two are highly recommended.
- Saturday, January 22 - 9:30 to 1:30, Manning 307
- Saturday, February 19 - 9:30 to 1:30, Manning 208
- Saturday, March 26 - 9:30 to 1:30, Manning 208
- Saturday, April 23 - 9:30 to 1:30, Manning 208
At our first Saturday session, Mary Gray Leonard, media specialist at Chapel Hill High School, will join us. She has also agreed to co-teach the class with me. Look for her voice in announcements and discussions. Other local media specialists have agreed to join us for subsequent sessions.
A detailed schedule of activities and assignments will be available on Blackboard. Please use your onyen and password to access the course.
Email Evelyn Daniel if you have any questions or comments.
Last revised January 20, 2005.
