Curated Resources a Win-Win for everyone

 

AASL Shared Foundations Blog Series – Curate

This blog is the first in a series of blogs that discuss a variety of the shared foundations that SC librarians find are important in their school libraries.  

This first librarian is Bambi Ferrer.  Her school is located in rural Kershaw County.  This high school is currently in under construction due to a tornado destroying the school in February, 2020.   One of her roles as librarian of the school is to curate a new collection physically and virtually.   With the loss of the physical library, it became important to Bambi to have resources digitally for students and teachers.  She curated sites that they both could use that were available by way of the school website. 

This platform was created using Google Sites and were very easy to navigate and visually appealing. 

During her process of curating these resources she wanted to provide ways to challenge her learners, provide appropriate resources and tools for them to use, and reach a variety of audiences.  These audiences included students, parents, and teachers.  Some of the sites include Tutor.com, SC Discus resources, SORA eBooks, virtual field trips all over the world, and games to enjoy. 

These resources were created so that she could collaborate with teachers, while not having a physical library.  The virtual resources were utilized by students for class research projects.  Courses that she assisted were science, history and English classes.  Recently she created a choice board for a history teacher.  It allowed the students to digitally navigate some topics for an American Revolution project. 

Challenges in her curation efforts are finding time to curate and update the selections on a regular basis; vet the resources to be appropriate for student use; and planning time with teachers.  Kershaw County has a very progressive technology plan to provide hardware and software for students and staff of the high quality.  They have a strict district procedure for software approval and teacher are to have any new resources approved by the district technology department.  This can slow down the process of providing new resources to staff and students.  The final challenge is getting teachers to take time to collaborate.  Teaching time is critical these days.  Having teachers give up critical time in their schedule to utilize the curated resources is a struggle but in the end will be a win-win for the teachers and the students.