Erin Hogue's blog: February 2024

Being a librarian in a school setting is very new to me. I have always had a love for reading, organizing materials, and teaching kids how to read, but it wasn’t until last school year when I found out that our school librarian was going to retire at the end of the school year, that I started giving becoming a librarian serious thought. I still felt called to help young children become readers and hone their reading craft, but I desired a better work and home life balance. After teaching in various grades throughout my eighteen years as a classroom teacher, my personal children deserved for me to be more present while I was at home (not to mention their extra-curricular activities became more of a pull on our time). I applied, interviewed, and was given the opportunity to fulfill the role as my school’s librarian this 2023-2024 school year. While still working toward my MLIS, I still have a lot to learn and big shoes to fill as I embark on this great journey.

The PBS blog found in this week’s lecture, “WHAT is Media Literacy and HOW Can Simple Shifts Center It” really describes media literacy in a way that made a ton of sense:

“Think of all the things you read in a day—emails, books, and the news. What about Facebook posts, Instagram captions, Tweets, editorials, ads, and subtitles? How about maps, memes, and infographics? Do you read each in the same way?

Likely, you employ a certain set of skills and strategies when you engage with each piece of media. But given the new and ever-changing ways we use technology to receive and communicate information, to be literate in today’s constantly connected world involves skills beyond simply reading and writing in the traditional sense.

Literacy is the ability to encode and decode symbols and synthesize and analyze messages. But what, exactly, is media literacy then? The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) defines media literacy as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication. It is a broadened definition of literacy that includes media beyond text and promotes curiosity about the media we consume and create.

As NAMLE puts it, media literacy provides us with the skills necessary to “both comprehend the messages we receive and effectively utilize these tools to design and distribute our own messages. Being literate in a media age requires critical thinking skills that empower us as we make decisions, whether in the classroom, the living room, the workplace, the boardroom, or the voting booth.”

In effect, media literacy is a modernized approach to literacy—how we consume media and information differently than, say, 15 years ago. The context has shifted dramatically. What we read and how, plus how we find what we read are remarkably different. Media literacy education brings our understanding of literacy into the 21st century.” (Lonergan, 2022)

A school librarian’s information diet should be one that is well-rounded. It should not create bias, the quality of the information should be considered, and the sources should be credible. The Smithsonian article, “Demystifying Information Literacy: From Buzzword to Classroom Resource” also describes how a school librarian should interact with information in order to teach his/her students how to as well:

“At the core of information literacy is this notion of critical thinking, of a certain sustained and genuine curiosity. Knowledge is constantly heralded as the greatest equalizer, and learning how to be curious about knowledge is the mobilizing agent in making changes towards equality and equity. Information Literacy goes far beyond newspapers and magazines and teaches so much more than just identifying a source or how to properly use it. Information literacy is powerful and liberating. Information literacy models and rewards critical thinking by teaching how to ask arresting questions about bias and about motive and about implicit and explicit messaging. It lays the groundwork for justice and truth seeking through cultivating this passionate curiosity. Information literacy gives students, and everyone for that matter, that bright and flickering spark of eager investigation that can be lovingly tended into a flame that stokes change-making. Information literacy tells young people that it is okay to challenge the information you’re being given, what the information is teaching you to believe, the system giving you this information, and systems themselves.” (Chauhan, 2022).

As information is shared each week through lectures and readings, I am learning just how much librarianship has changed since I was a kid coming to my school library as a student and how it continues to change through the wealth of information at our fingertips in the technological world we live in today. As daunting as the task seems, I look forward to sharing what I’ve learned with other teachers and the students who come into the school library each week.

Fun With AI

This week I was introduced to Microsoft Designer. I played around with the generative AI Image Creator. Here are some images it came up with. I am excited to think of ways to use this in our school! Let me know if you’ve ever created anything with it!