We're early in this course so far, but the biggest eye-opener for me has been the emphasis on empathy when it comes to human-centred design. Empathy, conceptually speaking, has come up in different areas as central to good educator practice. My own work in collective mentorship models found that empathy served to align purpose in reciprocal practice of mentorship between neophyte teachers and their more experienced peers when they join a school community. We are confronted with the valuable impact that empathy can have across the core competencies that students are asked to develop and nurture over their time in school here in British Columbia. That empathy would arrive front and centre to the design process had never occurred to me before. But of course, as Tim Brown states in his Ted Talk, creativity and design are inherently human centred and built upon the human experience.
Have we created libraries to be human centred yet? Is the school library a space that emphasizes the experience of the library or are we perpetuating an industrial model of education that protects the books as artifacts all while shushing the would-be humans from actively living in the space.
This is a course about the teacher librarian serving as a tech leader for the school, but that means so much more than simply knowing how the technology functions and how to troubleshoot its bugs and glitches. It's about recognizing how the technology best fits with the needs and ambitions of its users. In the same way that Ruben Puentedura acknowledges that tiers of technology uses serve different purposes for different levels of sophistication, the librarian needs to be a lot of things to a lot of different people. And one needs to know when to be what in a dynamic way.
And the library, as a modular, dynamic space that facilitates experimentation and adventure, can be just that if we're willing to let it be that way. My previous blog post talks about the work of my friend and colleague Natalie McIlmoyle and her attempts to take the maker configuration (and maker mindset) that has landed in her learning commons and expand it throughout the whole school and beyond the physical walls of the library space. She seeks to fold natural building materials into a craft and maker space with a little bit of structural reconstruction and a whole lot of imagination. The possibilities for exploration are endless and I'm so excited to see where she takes it.
A final thought on this: G. Douglas Bundy is an educator and "driver" of the Future Bus: a physical representation of a lot of what we've been discussing and the potential epitome of where the teacher librarian role might be headed. I've seen him deliver an amazing keynote at an educational technology summit and since starting this course, my mind has drifted back a few years to that presentation. If you get a chance, watch the video on his website - another TedTalk.
Question for discussion: Will the tech-leader/maker-mentor/creative guru remain the purview of the teacher librarian? Will new roles or teams need to be created as education continues to move more and more into this space?
Works Cited
“Core Competencies.” Building Student Success - B.C. Curriculum, Government of British Columbia. 2016, curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies#unpacking. Accessed 10 July 2021.
Brown, Tim. "Tales of Creativity and Play." TED. www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_tales_of_creativity_and_play?language=en. Accessed 11 July, 2021.
Bundy, G Douglas. G DOUGLAS BUNDY - MAKER. sites.google.com/view/gdouglasbundy/maker. Accessed 11 July, 2021.
Puentedura,Ruben R. "SAMR and TPCK: Intro to Advanced Practice." Hippasus.
hippasus.com/resources/sweden2010/SAMR_TPCK_IntroToAdvancedPractice.pdf. Accessed 11 July 2021.
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