Reading Review Part A - Technology for Equity in the Elementary Library Learning Commons

I’m interested in equity in the Library Learning Commons (LLC). My goal for our Library program is to celebrate students as agents in their learning. Their voice matters, and the things they care about matter. Nobody should feel they are on the margins of our learning community. Rather, each of our stories enriches us all.  

This year I will be conducting a diversity audit of our collection. From there, we’ll be addressing the gaps as we go forward with resource selection. Our budget for acquiring books is pretty limited. This is a great time to look to digital media. How can our use of digital resources in the LLC help to balance the way we represent all members of our community? How can digital resources foster student agency? 

When it comes to the collection, I hope to find digital offerings that represent our school’s cultural diversity, and put them into teachers’ hands for classroom use. I hope this can enhance what we offer teachers, as currently our practice is to pull picture books for them from our overly “white” collection on the shelves. 

We can also reflect on our learning activities in the Library program. We can celebrate students as creators, by giving them the role of storytellers and digital makers. I’m looking forward to using Book Creator and Stop Motion Studio this year, as ways for students to share their voice. It’s fun and meaningful to make things, but I’d like to take a further step, amplify student voice a bit (maybe a lot) more. 

I’d like find a way to showcase student work, publishing it within the school for all to enjoy. I’d like students to see themselves and their peers privileged in our LLC collection of stories next to their favourites like Mo Willems and Todd Parr.  

Our Library program can share literature, with a shift. As well as showing we can engage with the books we share, let’s explore what we can create with those books as inspiration. How can characters, words and images help us express ourselves?  

Topics for my literature search will include: equity work, digital curation, student publishing, student agency in the Primary/Early Learning context, pedagogy of voice, and connecting the school community through the Library Learning Commons.