I found this lesson to be quite enjoyable. I love looking at library websites! I’m itching to make my own and as soon as I get my library more organized then I will dive into developing a library website. My school encourages parents to use the school site by having a calendar of events, all teachers post homework on a daily basis and there is lots of other information for parents as well. I think that having a library webpage is very important and as Joyce Valenza says “Your library Web page is your second front door. It meets your students where they live, and play, and work, with 24/7, just-in-time, just-for-me support and intervention. It creates online signage for students and staff. It projects the image of the librarian as a 21st century teacher and information professional. The effective library Web page pulls together, in one unified interface, all of a library's resources--print and electronic.”
Developing a library website can be an excellent tool in teaching information literacy skills. Once I develop my site I plan on teaching students how to use the OPAC and having them practice finding books on the shelves. Then I plan on introducing search engines and how they work. To help students to not rely so heavily on Google, they need to be introduced to other search engines and to see the value of these sites. The search engines then need to be included on the library webpage and made known to the parents who are helping their children with their projects. Students are always telling me how they have to sift through large amount of websites to find something that might be useful to them. They also need to be introduced to directories and how to search using sub-categories. Then I would move toward teaching them what makes a good site. Students need to experience the websites themselves to be convinced. The best way is to ask the classroom teachers what topics they are studying and then have students find good websites on that topic. Once they have a base of good websites then comparing them to other sites is much easier. For the older students, we could even create a type of evaluation rubric with specific questions to help them see if a website is good or not. With all this information that I give them it’s so important for them to have access to these sites whenever they need it. This is why having a library webpage is very important in fully developing information literacy skills.
I have never created a detailed website but these are some of the key features that I would want to incorporate in my site:
- age appropriate
- user-friendly- picture icons and minimal text to avoid confusion
- colourful and uncluttered
- pictures of the library, projects and work done by students
- contact info for TL
- hours of operation and policies
- access to the OPAC and online subscriptions
- educational and fun links
- links for parents and teachers
- library calendar
- lists of new books
- link to the public library
I really enjoyed looking through Joyce Valenza’s wiki. There is so much information! I think I will have a hard time keeping my site simple to begin with after seeing all the great information included on some of the school library websites. They have totally inspired me!
No comments:
Post a Comment