As we mentioned a few days ago, reading is at a minimum due to the many cuts suffered in recent years and, in part also, due to a use that perhaps today's generations have forgotten in pursuit of ebooks or widespread readings using computers or tablets.
However, increase the use of the school library to 1000% It is possible and a perfect way to take advantage of the material available in those schools where students forgot the power of a book when consulting, working and even contributing data to their work.
Chromebooks, laptops. . . and books
Penny Sturtevant, Director of the Big Walnut Middle School in the city of Sunbury, in Ohio (United States), decided a few weeks ago that it was about time to do something with the school library of the center, a dusty space barely run by some students who preferred to succumb to the disseminated material thanks to their tablets, smartphones and laptops.
The objective of the project has been to reinvent the library and make it a dynamic workplace for students and in which PHYSICAL books are part of this reinvention.
The first objective was the kitchenware, especially the provision of furniture that could be easily moved and that could house individual students, in pairs or in groups of four. In this way, a dependency has been given life in which the room has been dotted with various sofas and tables that invite students to visit the library again except that, perhaps, an even more powerful hook was missing to incite them: the technology.
Once the furniture constituted the skeleton of this new library, the center has inserted various Gadgets and technological elements: 2 touch screens embedded in the work tables to streamline group tasks, 1 interactive projector, 2 televisions connected to laptops, 5 desktop computers, 20 Chromebooks and 3 digital cameras, items necessary to facilitate the work of the students.
Finally, we are left with the most important of the details: what about the books? According to the center, students are increasingly using library titles since this new workspace allows reading to be closer to hand and becomes an indispensable ally of this new space. At the same time, the center has entered into various agreements with the Sunbury Municipal Library to receive various titles updated weekly, as well as magazines and encyclopedic collections.
The school library: a bait to promote
According to an article published in 2008 in the Galician magazine Fadamorgana, focused on children's and youth libraries, the ideas for promoting the use of school libraries first go through the choices of teachers and experts based on the material available.
In this way, encouraging students to consume library books could be successful if controlled loan systems were implemented and, especially, there were updated titles that included everything from books to magazines, including studies carried out by the teachers themselves. Of course, 2008 was not 2016 and by then Wikipedia, Google Drive or Amazon did not have the potential among teachers and students that it has today, a fact that, however, should not cloud our hopes regarding those libraries less and less visited.
Perhaps, the problem lies in the low stimulus of some children and young people who do not finish empathizing with a generalized reading, something that we already told you a few months ago in the article about slow reading. Ideas such as holding exhibitions or talks in the library, organize theater workshops in pairs based on literary works of the same (which also means reducing the number of copies as it is an activity with fewer individual students) or including the figure of an expert who connects each student with the books in the library in order to guide you in your tastes are just some of the many measures that could be promoted in the classroom when it comes to dusting off so many forgotten books.
The success of the Big Walnut Middle School when it comes to reinventing its school library is an example of the many possibilities that could be applied to those spaces of culture and wisdom that modern children forgot in pursuit of the great G.
Maybe, until now.
What other measures can you think of to enhance the use of school libraries?
When I was a child, we did not have computers or mobiles, but my teachers got into the habit of reading a book to several students and then drawing each child, which we then painted to later make an exhibition, sometimes the book was read by one student. We were allowed to put different voices to the characters. This could be suitable for making puppets, telling comics or doing theater or a movie can even be used for plastic activities, it develops a lot the imagination and is an activity that makes you happy
Almost all of that has been lost but perhaps if from a young age we started by instilling in them all those things that you comment on, in the long run we would see results. Greetings!
Thank you very much for the contribution, it sounds very interesting. Let's see if I can test the application soon 😉 Greetings!