2008 OASL/WLMA Joint Conference Proposal Confirmation

This is a proposal that Jim Tindall and I have submitted in hopes of making this presentation at the joint conference of Oregon and Washington school librarians, in the fall of 2008. We hope to make the presentation to an audience of secondary school librarians and library supervisors who are interested in information literacy and technology. If you or anyone you know has some good solutions to this problem, please let me know. Perhaps you can join us on the panel.

Main Presenter: Peyton Stafford
Co-Presenter: Jim Tindall (North Wasco County School District, North Wasco County S)

Presentation: Getting Teacher Buy-In for Quality Online Resources

Short Description: Tired of spending your time and library budget to provide quality online resources, but then having teachers undercut your efforts to teach critical thinking and good research practices by accepting citations from questionable web site? Hear how your colleagues have solved this problem in their schools.

Description: School librarians put tremendous effort into selecting and acquiring high quality online resources that support student research. However, classroom teachers often fail to distinguish between authoritative onlineresources and questionable ones. They accept citations from Wikipedia and web sites that may or may not have correct factual information and may or may not be written with a strong bias. This both undercuts school efforts to teach critical thinking and ill-prepares students for higher education, where strong research skills can make the difference between success and failure in college and work. Librarians know this. The challenge is getting the point across to teachers and then supporting them as they change their practices. This session will be a panel discussion on ways that Oregon and Washington school librarians have found effective in changing teacher beliefs and practices about student use of online research resources. Participants will include school librarians from both states who have had experience working to improve teacher use of online resources as student learning and research tools. They will be drawn from a variety of districts so that the solutions offered will apply to schools of all sizes, funding levels and demographics. Each attendee will be given access to a web-based presentation that can be used in professional development and informational sessions with teachers and administrators. This will be developed by the panelists prior to the conference.