Thursday, June 16, 2011

Librarian 2.0 Buffy Hamilton

Librarian 2.0: Buffy Hamilton by Howard Rheingold
            Librarian Buffy Hamilton has revolutionized student learning at Creekside High School in Canton, Georgia. She collaborated with teacher Susan Lester to create what they call Media 21. Using Netvibes, an RSS aggregator, the students set up their own personal learning environments, created their own online dashboards, studied and installed widgets and created what they call a “Veterans’ Issues Project Portal”. Instead of writing a paper, they created a multimedia presentation about the issues facing veterans today. They interviewed veterans, created their own tutorial videos about how they used the online tools to find the relevant information they needed. Some students interested in the bionic limb replacement program branched off from the group with their own presentation.
            Most of the students used Evernote to bookmark their favorite research sites and used Netvibes to create their own personal learning environments. They could customize their pathfinders in the way that they thought was appropriate to their needs. They could then share their bookmarked resources with their classmates. They can sometimes meet professionals in the field through social networks like Twitter or blogs. It can make for a very dynamic and rich learning environment and, hopefully, it will make the students want to do even more research. It also helps the students to become transliterate—able to read, write and share information through various technologies. But it takes good teachers and librarians to nurture, support and guide the students on their learning journeys. The end result is students who are able to find, utilize, evaluate and create exciting learning platforms that they can share with other students.
            Watching his video interview with Buffy Hamilton and reading about her Media 21 project makes me excited about becoming a librarian. We need more out-of-the-box thinkers like Buffy Hamilton running our libraries and our school districts. Our student would then have the chance to become the learners we know they can be.
Citation:
Rheingold, Howard. “Librarian 2.0: Buffy J. Hamilton.” DML Central 3 May 2010. Web. 28 May 2011. <http://dmlcentral.net/blog/howard-rheingold/librarian-20-buffy-j-hamilton>.

1 comment:

  1. Fabulous summary. You've captured the spirit of the video.

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