SHS Learning Commons/Library Report 2012

S om e r s H i g h S c h o o l L e a r n i n g C ommo n s / L i b r a r y

E n d -‐ o f -‐ Y e a r R e p o r t

2 0 1 1 -‐ 2 0 1 2

Pam Read, LMS Mary Ann Stangarone, Clerk Cathie Elliott, Tech

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Table of Contents

Overview: 2 Important Web Sites 2

Collections at a Glance: 3 Reference/Research Databases: 4 Database List 6

History of the Library and the Evolution of the Learning Commons Model: 7 What is a Learning Commons? How is it different from a library? 7

History of Library/Lab model 8 Obsolete Aspects of the Library/Lab Model 9 The Case for re-integration 11 21st Century Learning in the Learning Commons 11 Learning Commons Model as a Blueprint for Re-‐Creating Library Space (Library 2.0) 11

What do Students Want from a Learning Commons/Library? 14

The innovative space in the Learning Commons

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Overview:

The Learning Commons/Library is centrally located within the high school, and functions as its heart and nerve center. Students love the LC – we have about 400,000 separate student-‐single-‐period visits – and vie for a chance to get in, when study halls or ‘free’ senior groups are especially large.

The LC offers space for full classes with laptops, or smaller groups, working cooperatively in ‘blended’ units, or more informally, using their own devices as well as our desktop and laptop computers and netbooks.

An Innovative Classroom is also available, with netbooks, three large display screens, a SmartBoard, and flexible seating.

Individual students can borrow laptops and Nook eReaders, and have access to our small-‐but-‐up-‐to-‐date collection of books and magazines (for 2012-‐2013, we are going to offer magazine subscriptions on IPads). The LC maintains a web site and a FaceBook page, and its reference collection is almost entirely on line.

Important Web Sites

Learning Commons Web Page:

http://somershslc.weebly.com/

Reference Databases:

http://somershslc.weebly.com/databases.html

FaceBook Page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Somers-‐High-‐School-‐Learning-‐Commons/162571363823672

A look at our statistics for 2011-‐2012 shows that we are at capacity in terms of our ability to accommodate students within our space, and that the additions of the last two years – space for classes to work with laptops and books in a blended-‐learning context, and laptops, Nooks, and textbooks for individual students – have been very successful. A look at our database usage shows that while students/teachers are very comfortable with using the reputable and reliable sources we offer – particularly online encyclopedias – but may need more instruction in using the very powerful, subject-‐specific sources designed to support excellence in research competency that will be required of them in their college studies.

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Collections at a Glance:

Learning Commons Collections

# Purpose Access

Print Books/ Fiction

3000

-‐ Support ELA literacy and literature curriculum

-‐ Support personal growth and interest

SHS Community in LC

-‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐

EBooks (Reference)

-‐ Support all academic curriculum, offer interactive use (download, email, set alerts)

SHS Community use in LC + through Remote Desktop

-‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐

Print Books/Non-

Fiction (Includes Print Reference)

6398

-‐ Support all relevant academic curriculum

SHS Community in LC

-‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐

Databases

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-‐ Support all academic curriculum, with most offering download, email, set alert, etc.

SHS Community + At-‐Home access (Remote Desktop)

-‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐

Laptop

Computers

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-‐ Support blended learning as well as individual/small-‐group access to online resources

Student use in the LC

-‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐

Textbooks

30

-‐ Kept in the LC for student use during Study Hall/free periods, frees students from carrying heavy books unnecessarily

Student use in the LC

-‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐

Nooks

30

-‐ Support ELA/SS curriculum as well as student interest in/competency with ereader technology

-‐ Permit flexible acquisition of texts required quickly by students/staff

Class sets + Student loan

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Reference/Research Databases:

For this academic year (2011-‐2012) two new databases were added in response to the curricular need for resources supporting:

JStor: English 11 Literary Analysis Research Paper, the keystone research task for Somers High School students;

Proquest Datasets:Social Studies 12 Participation in American Government, a course for which college credit is given

All databases showed increased usage from last year, with the exceptions of:

ProQuest: a broad-‐spectrum database that students will find in college resources, and need to understand/access throughout academic life. This decrease may reflect the use of JStor for the 11th Grade English paper, which overlaps ProQuest and provides additional critical material for English research

Daily Life Online: used primarily for Social Studies (Global): the Social Studies department may have replaced its use with primary/alternative sources

Database Usage by Type

Online Encyclopedia

Subject-‐speciiic databases

Proquest

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The ability to successfully manipulate databases is critical to contemporary information use, and the host of competencies that depend upon it. It is clear that our databases are extensively used in the classroom; teachers and students are familiar with their use in a curricular context. One goal should be having students become familiar enough with these databases – and their transferability to other areas of study and personal interest – so that they continue to use them, after the school-‐based project is over.

NoodleTools continues to receive attention across the curriculum; another goal is its integration in all appropriate curriculum units as a template for understanding and a vehicle for keeping track of personal information/research.

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Database List

CQ Researcher

Forty-‐four reports from Congressional Quarterly explore individual "hot-‐button" topics in depth, ranging from health and the environment to science and technology, offering background, history, points of view from all parts of the controversy in question

Daily Life through History

This full text online global history sourcebook combines the content of the print books with online additions: web sites, teacher resources and multimedia resources.

Encyclopedia Britannica

A great encyclopedia, with easy to read AND very in depth material, with terrific new on line features: graphics, links, and more

GaleNet History Resource Center

Designed to support American history curriculum with source documents, graphic material, and comprehensive coverage of events, trends, and people.

Grolier Encyclopedias

Comprehensive online encyclopedias with links to related WWW sites, especially good for information related to North and South America. Includes an encyclopedia in Spanish.

Grove's Dictionary of Art

Simply the most comprehensive single source of information on all aspects of art and art history. Provides links to high-‐quality images at reputable sites.

Grove's Dictionary of Music

Simply the most comprehensive single source of information on all aspects of music, musicology and music history.

JStor

A database of articles primarily related to the humanities, provided by a cooperative organization of Universities that make scholarly content (journal articles) freely available for member libraries/schools

Noodletools

Online Research Tool, including notetaking templates and Reference Lists)

Proquest Data Sets

Statistics and Data sets for a range of Social and Political Science purposes.

ProQuest Direct

Provides thousands of full-‐text articles from national newspapers, popular magazines, and scholarly journals.

ScienceDirect A database of scholarly and scientific articles in the sciences, searchable with reviewed web pages through the Scirus Search Interface.

World Book Encyclopedia A comprehensive online encyclopedia with links to related WWW sites, and embedded New York State standards

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History of the Library and the Evolution of the Learning Commons Model:

Learning Commons/Library Class Visits

What is a Learning Commons? How is it different from a library?

The “learning commons” is a space within a school where students and faculty can find the best resources and the most versatile facilities, centrally located, needed to work collaboratively and cooperatively. Any and all relevant media – books, databases, high-‐end computers and software – are available, along with functional workspaces and supporting personnel available to support research and tech needs. Staff are trained to make sure that any question they are posed is successfully answered.

Classes with Netbooks

Classes on Library Floor

Classes on Floor with Laptops

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Books are still an important resource….

History of Library/Lab model

When the library was originally designed, the print collection was still really the main repository of research material – encyclopedias, magazines, newspapers, atlases, dictionaries, and fiction and non-‐fiction books. Classes made a choice between working with the print material on the floor or going into the lab to search what was, at that point, the world wide web. There were databases around at that time, but there was a clear divide between the books and the web; between the library and the lab. Computers were carefully kept away from the ‘main room’ of the library because the noise that accompanied internet searching – the questioning, the discussion about whether or not the information being found was OK to use – was thought not to be conducive to the quiet reflection required when studying print.

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What has happened in the intervening decade is teaching and learning have fundamentally changed. Technology has become much more important than anyone imagined it might, and, with the advent of 21st Century Learning and the ‘new’ face of work, almost any ‘literacy’ you care to name has a very important social component to it. Working in groups has come to occupy a much more prominent place in education than ever before.

School libraries had really not kept pace. Now, almost all of that material in the ‘book’ part of the library – much of the reference material for sure and now, increasingly, the books – has been digitized. This material not free, and the library spends an ever-‐increasing portion of its budget on these databases, which are constantly increasing in number and changing in composition, and are highly competitive with one another. But it is available on the computer, and we have begun to buy ebooks as well, and although they are not standard student equipment, I think they represent the future. And after a decade that wild web is still with us, with an ever-‐increasing amount of very good free content. Witness Wikipedia, online dictionaries, online newspapers, government and organizational web sites and university sites, etc.

Obsolete Aspects of the Library/Lab Model

So those classes that were, 10 years ago, using the ‘free web’ are still in the lab, using that good content as well as the questionable stuff that was always there. And increasingly, those classes that used the library books, periodicals, encyclopedias, and reference materials are now also in the lab, accessing that same content through our databases, online reference books, and ebooks.

This has left those books under-‐utilized for the purposes of teaching and learning, and our library floor less and less appealing as a place to bring classes for instructional purposes. The books are still used, and more heavily used each year, since teachers do still assign books for students to read, kids do still read for pleasure, and since teachers are well aware of the value of the books and still incorporate them into research. But this incorporation is increasingly likely to happen in the form of a cartload of books brought to the classroom, or into the lab. As the availability of labs has been outstripped by the demand, teachers have pushed for computers in their classrooms and the classrooms have become, as Mary Couzis so perfectly described it, ‘satellite libraries’, with all that good free content and teacher’s web sites, wikis and pathfinders supplementing the databases and the ebooks.

Now as we know, nature and high school students abhor a vacuum, and students have migrated there during study halls; to read, do work, and socialize. The reading and the studying are perfectly legitimate activities for a library. But the presence of a large

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number of students engaged in non-‐academic activities has its own set of issues, and has, at the very least, provided one more reason for teachers NOT to choose it as an instructional space, since it is usually noisier than even the ‘21st Century’ classroom, which is often noisier than the classroom of a decade ago.

The integration of books and computer-‐based resources

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The Case for Re-‐Integration

The one major research unit that has resisted this trend is the English 11th Grade Literary Research paper. For that project, classes spend several days in the print collection, and move on to the lab, and then, if time and scheduling permits, spend several days going back and forth between the two, accessing material relevant to individual students’ thesis statements and research questions, with teachers conferencing with students. Every year the library buys more material to support the project, and teachers work with us to make sure that our collection and our databases supports their needs. Teachers and librarian are available to work with students as they do their research.

The library remains the largest instructional space in the building. It houses the second most important collection of resources, and is arguably the nicest space in the building, with an in-‐house resource specialist and tech support. It space has the potential to be used more flexibly (all shelving and furniture are moveable.) With the ever-‐escalating space crunch and demand for access to on line material, moving more computers onto the library ‘floor’ and bringing in classes interested in using the available resources is a desirable goal.

21st Century Learning in the Learning Commons

21st Century learning is a general term describing a fusion of ‘the three Rs with the 4 Cs (critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration, communication, creativity and innovation.) One of its theoretical underpinnings is the belief that because we are training students to negotiate a world – and employment – that does not exist at the present time, we must offer them a ‘lab’ in which they can make their own meaning, and work together with teachers, to address their own learning goals, and explore the world of the 21st Century.

Learning Commons Model as a Blueprint for Re-Creating Library Space (Library 2.0)

In many ways, this project provides a model for what could – and should – be happening on a much broader scale. It now makes sense to re-‐integrate the books and the databases, since very often, optimal learning requires the use of both. It is time to get back to that idea that students need access to the best sources to meet their information needs,

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whatever the format, at the time they are actually doing the research. In order to do this, we need to look at current usage of the main library, and think about ways to re-‐create it as a space that makes this integration of books and online resources possible. The librarian, the tech people, the books, and the potential for the space to be re-‐designed are already there. All that remains (simple enough!!) is to bring the classes and teachers back in.

The Learning Commons model is one that has been used to facilitate this re-‐creation, primarily in college libraries, and in one high school that we will take a look at in a bit. The Learning Commons’ main characteristics are:

• The availability of all required resources, whatever their format

• Flexible spaces that allow teaching and learning to take place in all possible configurations including computer searching, reading and studying, conferencing, and making presentations to small or large groups

• The presence of teachers, librarians, and technical support people, to ensure that optimal learning can take place.

Additionally, Learning Commons at colleges offer a host of things, including small conference rooms and classrooms equipped for specialized kinds of work, coffee shops and places for socializing, places with wireless access points for students to use with their own laptops.

The new Learning Commons currently in the planning stages at the Georgia Institute of Technology is described as follows: “[The] Learning Commons will include

• Innovative classrooms that foster experiential, collaborative learning,

• A learning center that connects students with faculty, post-‐doctoral fellows, graduate teaching assistants and student peers in science, math, and communications classes on a walk-‐in basis,

• Science laboratories for biology, chemistry, earth and atmospheric science and physics,

• Lecture halls,

• Project team rooms,

• Writing and Presentation Skills Center

• An Information Commons equipped with computer workstations”

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Certainly not all of the features of a college Commons could be – or should be – recreated in a high school. But it is interesting to see that many colleges are pulling some of their most useful resources and best learning spaces into a Learning Commons, in an attempt to bring together in a central location all of the services and sources students need.

How students learn today..

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What do Students Want from a Learning Commons/Library?

Whatever happens with the library as an instructional space, students have the right to have high expectations of their library, in terms of resources and welcoming, accommodating staff and space. One thing that the Library has done exceptionally well is to meet the needs of individual students, whether they are working alone or in groups. Students expect – and receive – first-‐class and personalized service when they come there. They can use computers and textbooks (if teachers have placed one with us,) make copies, and work in groups. Library staff members answer research questions and requests for books and articles, which we get via Inter Library Loan if we do not have them in our own collection. Students who want a quiet space or who are working in groups that need to be removed from the general hubbub can use the conference room or one of the smaller ‘offices.’ Any re-‐design of the library space needs to take into account students’ individual needs.

For a very entertaining look at what students value in a Learning Commons, check out the Weigle Learning Commons at UPenn, as described by its students:

http://wic.library.upenn.edu/multimedia/videos/musicvideo/musicvideo_big_hi.mov

SHS Learning Commons/Library Report 2012

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