Learning & Leading Through Technology

LIBRARY

In the past I have seen the librarian as either somebody who is there to find you a good book or as somebody whose primary job is to keep order in the library…. I have seen librarians as not very internet savvy and clinging to a past where books were the main research source.

—Grade 9 student

How do you change students’ attitudes about librar- ies and librarians? You flip it! As the idea of flipping the classroom took hold at
Lakeside Upper School in Seattle, Washington, we began
thinking about how the philosophy of flipping could be
applied to the library too.
In general, library orientations include a tour of
the facilities and a review of library functions
and rules. Even though many schools have
trimmed the part about rules or turned the
tour into a scavenger hunt, we wondered if
there were better ways to use the precious
little time we had with the freshmen class at
the beginning of the school year. The flipped
classroom philosophy opened the door to a
new way of thinking that shifted our prior-
ity from the rules, and our orientation from the
physical space of the library, to building relation-
ships with the students.

Tour and Library Expectations

Because we don’t want rules to be the main association students make with the library, we moved the tour and the explanation of our expectations to the web. At home, students watch a library orientation video we created with GoAnimate.com that addresses both the general lay of the land and the rules.

Back at school, students take a brief quiz about the video
using PollEverywhere.com, and we project the results on
a screen. This also gives us an opportunity to clear up any
misconceptions and reinforce
our expectations in a fun, relaxed
manner.

The “Just Ask” Mentality

Another influence on our decision to flip came in the
form of an article shared by our middle school librar-
ian, Lillian Godreau, called “What Students Don’t Know”
( bit.ly/o2ej4J). The article reports on the Ethnographic
Research in Illinois Academic Libraries project (www.
erialproject.org), which studied “how students view and
use their campus libraries.” They discovered that “students
rarely ask librarians for help, even when they need it. The
idea of a librarian as an academic expert who is available
to talk about assignments and hold their hands through
the research process is foreign to most students.”
We realized that some of our students might also feel
this way, so we made our number-one priority the culti-
vation of a “just ask” mentality. We even ordered color-
changing pencils with our new slogan to give out at the
end of orientation, and we now have sweatshirts for the
library team with “Just Ask” on the back.

We really wanted students to view us as teachers with expertise in information and technological literacy that applies across content areas and as warm, friendly, and helpful adults on campus. This mentor relationship is key, especially as students take on ever more challenging inquiry tasks.

To get the conversation started, we ask students to read a small part of “What Students Don’t Know” at home and respond to the following statements in a discussion forum: