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With a coming wave of new digital reading products designed to improve aptitude and provide unlimited access to online libraries, school districts have various options to help bring 21st-century learning in the classroom.

Some teachers and librarians say that digital reading products can personalize learning for struggling students and help interest young readers in nonfiction books, which are a major component in the Common Core State Standards Initiative designed to strengthen current state standards. As school districts across the country struggle under the weight of budget cuts, however, school administrators will need to be creative in finding funding sources.

“Librarians will always be an essential part of a school, but we’ll have to become more technologically savvy,” he says. “It’s all part of the evolution. [Technology] is another tool we can utilize to get more kids reading.”

SIGMS provides a community for school library media specialists to gather and learn about technologies that improve the operation and programs of the school library media center, increase access to information, and create a more effective and efficient teaching and learning environment.

The Media Specialists Special Interest Group (SIGMS) released an important advocacy statement, The Role of School Librarians in Promoting the Use of Educational Technologies to provide information on the role school librarians play in promoting the use of educational technologies in their schools and the need for libraries to have available technologies.  Please share this statement with administrators and other library stakeholders.

The sample items and performance tasks are intended to help teachers, administrators, and policymakers implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and preparing for next-generation assessments. They provide an early look into the depth of understanding of the CCSS that will be measured by the Smarter Balanced assessment system. While the items and tasks are not intended to be used as sample tests, educators can use them to begin planning the shifts in instruction that will be required to help students meet the demands of the new assessments.

These standards are interdisciplinary, and it is school librarians who can help teachers make connections among courses. It seems to me that the role of school librarians, more than ever, is one of leader, designer, and educator. They will need to insert themselves on curriculum committees, department meetings, grade level, and team meetings with the focus being how the library can connect all of the disciplines.

Oh, I've always wondered why librarians work so hard to stay in the ranks of teachers, instead of working toward being considered administrators or directors. Do we have a innate inferiority complex?

Clearly articulated information and technology curriculum and specific benchmarks. Your school should have a separate K-12 IL curriculum with clear grade level benchmarks. If your state has one, so much the better – use it. (Wisconsin’s standards are excellent.) But if not, write your own based on AASL’s Information Power and ISTE’s NETS standards. When an administrator, teacher or parent wants to know exactly what skills you teach, you can readily show them.