Ten years into my career as a high school librarian, I find that I have collected an overwhelming number of helpful web pages, programs, links, apps, pathways, documents, and so on and so on. But more and more in the chaotic "personal learning environment" I call my library, I find it hard to put my hands on what I need when I need it.
Where is that article about Google Scholar and impact factor software that would be helpful to the AP U.S. History class embarking on their research project? Who recommended that cool, free, easy to make website that looks like a poster and would be perfect for collecting student projects and displaying them online? Hmm . . . starts with a B and rhymes with frog? OR was it starts with an F and rhymes with . . .? What was the name of that app that helps you collect web pages as you "surf" the web and quickly comment on them, store them, and organize them later?
Librarians locate, analyze, and collect an amazing amount of information, then organize it for students and teachers. When those resources are focused on a single topic or research project, we call the organized list a "pathfinder," and those pathfinders can take many forms.
The simplest form of a pathfinder is a handout, with a list of print sources in the library, some suggested databases, and some well-selected links to quality online sources. That still works, and when a teacher lets you know at 7:30 a.m. that their class is coming in at 9 a.m. to do a new project, hey, a quick one page pathfinder and a run to the copy room is a better start for the student researcher than an unfocused web search!
Over the years, I have created, edited, and tweaked over 100 of these "paper pathfinders," pretty good resources overall, and I post them on the library web page when classes come in for those projects that tend to be repeated year after year. But let's face it, emailing links to myself from home to work just isn't working -- 997 emails in my work inbox as of one pivotal Friday afternoon, probably some real gems in there back on page 12 of my email. Will I ever get to them, click, remember what was so great about that site, and get it on my web page? Probably not. There has to be a better way.
As is my custom, I jotted down my needs, as I perceived them, before starting to search:
- a process for capturing links to resources as I search for them online (other than emailing them to myself, or putting links in a Word document)
- a way to organize those resources by categories (and what are the categories?)
- a place to park resources I don't need yet, without losing track of them
- some kind of content organizer that can use all different media - video, audio, graphics, web pages -- and yet not overwhelm the students accessing it (a web page? a wiki? a blog? is there something else out there?)
- a way to connect to social media, such as Facebook and Twitter
- a quick way to access the web sites I use every day, and hey, if I could get to it on my phone that would be even better
On top of organizing information for my school, I also need help organizing my time, my library staff, and the facilities, such as computer labs.
And, I need resources that will work with the way my mind works: very visual, better with a bulletin board than a filing cabinet, color-coded is good, But whatever IT is, it has to be easy to use and not "take over" -- it has to support me, not run my life. What what and where is IT??!!
Stay tuned . . . Teen Read Week is upon us, but my quest has begun, and I will report back soon on what I find,and suggestions are most welcome.
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