Coincidence?
On my way to our first class I was reading Learn: The Magazine of BC Educators and one of the articles’ title was, “The Future of Libraries”. It described a Conference involving librarians (school, public, university) and government officials. The question they were considering was: “What is the role of libraries in a world where technology, information and communication are changing so rapidly?” Coincidence indeed…As we have discussed in our class the past couple days, it seems that technology is going to continue to significantly change our lives and our libraries.
On a personal note, I get nostalgic when I think of my time in the library as a kid. I still love the library…but my conception of a library involves books, and lots of them. Will that be the case in the future? Will libraries be a set of computers with big screens, web cams, headsets, etc? I lament the loss of my book-based library…though I realize the digital advances we’ve experienced (the internet for example!!) have improved our abilities to find, apply, create and share information…but what will happen to books?
I’m prepared to work with technology as I know our students need to be prepared for the world they face–and this means having the skills to navigate and interact in the digital world. As such, educators and educational practices need to evolve with technology.
I’m learning that being connected is the future. I can see the way we do things is constantly changing. Even this class has changed how I perceived education. For exmaple, needing to bring a digital tool class and blogs are where you show your knowledge and your input (individual and interactive) becomes your work to be assessed/evaluated. This is new to me and it is how most classes are done now.
I realize that being connected on-line with our classmates creates another dimension to learning–we are creating a public document of our work. On-going, ever-changing information created in a social, yet personal way. The blog thereby changes how we learn and the culture of our education (i.e. less teacher–>student).
Will Richardson explains in Why School? that one way to reform education is move away from the focus of acquiring knowledge and move towards building skills to work with it, “from content mastery to learning mastery.” Also, this method of reform would put an emphasis on working with others, even beyond our school settings. Richardson describes this shift as not to, “‘do you own work,'” so much as “do work with others, and make it work that matters.” Sounds a little like our class, no??
Finally, back to the article I cited at the beginning of this post. Ultimately, the librarians and their supporters left their conference with a greater interest in collaboration across libraries, especially at a time where changes are happening quickly. Also, they determined that, “the value of libraries lies less in their collections and more in their ability to make knowledge serve the interests of the community.” So now that information is easily accessible (for those with technology available to them) do libraries need to adapt their mandate from supplying information to helping people work with it? I have a feeling Will Richardson would agree.
A very nice job connecting the magazine article, Why School, and your own reflections on the future of libraries and library practice. I agree, there was always something deeply relaxing about wandering through stacks of books and looking at titles that caught my eye. Remember the special kids section with books invitingly on display? When I think of the present state of book-based libraries, they will have the same books in multiple collections, or you have inter-library transfers to share books. But when the information is digitized, you don’t have to keep multiple copies, like you do with a hard copy edition. But, you can only manage so much data within a single system, so maybe libraries will become networks of collections, curating specific collections and sharing world-wide. Social learning, and making our learning visible to each other is really quite a profound change in education.
Something I learned many years ago is that we’re not really preparing students for the world we live in now, because the world is changing so quickly. I like the way you addressed this in your post with the idea that information itself is changing, rather than just multiplying! I still have a connection to real books. On paper. And searching for those books in a library or bookstore. Part of the reason I’m personally resistant to e-books is that I picture myself in a post-apocalyptic world (or, perhaps less terrifying, after a big storm or natural disaster?) where I’m without power or computers for a long period of time. It could be days, weeks, or even months, and I’d be happy to have a tangible information source to remind me how to filter my water or treat injuries. I suppose the point is that we don’t really know what the future will be like, so I agree it’s so important to be able to work with information (including sharing information) – it’s a skill that’s transferrable to any medium.