Practical Concerns
The Horizon Report (Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Cummins, M., Estrada, V., Freeman, A., and Ludgate, H. (2013) outline key trends:
1. Education Paradigms changing to online learning, collaborate models
2. Social media changing the way people connect interact and communicate
3. Openness - easy access to data - is becoming a value
4. As cost of technology drops schools are open to BYOD
5. Our role as educators is challenged as easy access to resources and open
relationships
Foremost, the escalating urgent need for ‘formal instruction’ to up-skill teachers and students in areas of information literacy, visual literacy and technological literacy is alarming. Secondly, the ‘need for innovation and leadership at all levels’ does not exclude library management. It is a fact we live in a learning world where site-blocking is frustrating (Black, 2008a; Smith, 2009; Johnson, et. al., 2013) and school based technologies and decrees seem not to keep pace with new interface technologies that would engage students and restore innovative thought required for future problem solving. Teacher librarians, now more than ever, are catalysts for change when incorporating exemplary key management strategies to address these concerns.
