Visit to High School Media Center -
I spent three hours at a local high school media center today. The MS was friendly and welcoming and eager to share what she knew about being a high school MS. Due to recent budget cuts, the high schools in our area went from two MS to one MS plus a parapro. During my visit, there were a total of four classes scheduled to visit the media center at one time! Luckily, the size of this MC was able to accommodate a significant number of students granted they weren't all going to need access to a computer. One class was viewing a video on the projection screen, another was working at the computers on an English assignment, the third and fourth classes were combined of two English classes and needed the area to work on collaborative group projects. The MS asked a 9th grade English teacher what they felt students were lacking in terms of information literacy when arriving at secondary school. The English teacher responded that students seemed to lack the ability to conduct effective Internet searches in regard to locating and evaluating information pertained through search tools such as Google. The MS and I also discussed varying Web 2.0 tools and discovered that many tools were blocked at the district level.
