High School Library Orientation...

[Michael Dodes]

This is a question I've been researching a lot lately and have been bouncing off a lot of colleagues but I haven't found a satisfactory answer yet.

For some background, I work in a 1,500 student high school in the Bronx, I'm a first year librarian working alone generally, my students have low self-motivation in general for projects that aren't of high interest to them. They also have less knowledge about the library than an average elementary school age student (even my brightest and smartest students look at me cross-eyed if I refer to the Dewey Decimal System).

When looking at library orientations at this age group (9th grade), they are usually targeted as a refresher of basic skills, and to tailor their knowledge of how a library functions to the new library they are entering. They are also usually treasure/scavenger hunts of a sort.

This does not work with my students, they simply do not have enough background knowledge to be able to complete it, nor do they find activities like this appealing.

So the question becomes, what do I teach my students when they first enter the building? Do I want their first exposure (sometimes in years) to a library to be about learning facts about how the library works? Generally, they don't see the relevancy of things like knowing what a spine label is, what the dewey decimal system is, or even how the OPAC functions (since many of my students are turned off to reading in the first place, they're not interested in learning how to find books).

In fact, most students have never encountered any of the above (or if they have, they've forgotten).

I've been mulling it over, reading, searching, reading some more, talking, posting, and researching it. I think I've come to a conclusion that for an orientation that's appropriate for my school, the emphasis shouldn't actually be on orienting them to the library (although I suppose that ruins the orientation label). Many students in my building don't know where the library is!

I think I need to focus on building excitement about the library for the 9th grade, and make it relevant to them to make them want to come find out more about it, since they don't have the motivation of really wanting to come to the library in the first place (e.g. being brought there by a teacher).

Any ideas how I can go about making the library relevant to 9th graders with little prior library experience or skills? These are kids who love things like video games, they use google/wikipedia a lot (even though they know how neither works), and generally feel tech savvy and that empowers them.

Maybe a virtual scavenger hunt would be better using virtual libraries? I just know I need to get them to want to come back to my space, talk with me, and start seeing the library as a place they want to go - and not create a lunchroom environment in the process.

What types of things do you think I can get students like this to learn in 1-2 lessons (or even more if I can talk a teacher into it with a solid plan) without boring them to death - assuming the tour guide/scavenger hunt approaches aren't appropriate to them.

I really need an activity that is highly interactive, but also highly structured, and relies heavily on things that appeal to and are appropriate to this age.

If there's another way to approach it, please feel free to suggest it. I really want to build something creative and interesting for them so that they will want to visit with me and learn more for every student that enters the school.

[Joyce Valenza]

Hi Michael,
You are working on a lot of issues here. Please call me for some brainstorming. But, for what it's worth, here's my orientation--http://www.sdst.org/shs/library/libscav.html

With some classes I up the fun level by having them begin an avatar and create an image with an image generator. I give food prizes as I watch students interact politely with staff and others. I also have upperclassmen create very goofy orientation videos as overviews.

Hope this helps a little.

joyce

[Librarymum]

Hi Michael,

I agree with Joyce that you have a lot to consider here. One thing that came to mind that you might want to look at for ideas is first an article at http://www.big6.com/showenewsarticle.php?id=456 on "Creating an Online Library Orientation with the Big 6", by Pamela Bacon at Ben Davis HS in Indianapolis. She has a book, Creating Online Courses and Orientations, published by Libraries Unlimited in 2005. If you buy the book, you have the complete orientation with handouts. She has a lot of great ideas about creating an interesting orientation that grabs the kids' attention and she is very willing to answer questions by email. I haven't yet been able to create what she has in her school, but I have incorporated some of her ideas. She really inspired me.

Let us know how it goes.

Janet

[Cathi Fuhrman]

Michael-
I spent 13 years as a middle school librarian and have just recently moved to high school, so my experience is limited. I agree with Joyce and your assessment that the "hook" to get them interested in the library is probably more important than a complete orientation lesson A-Z. Do you have the technology to do podcasting? How about having small groups of students pick one thing about the library to podcast about. That way they become an expert in one orientation topic. When done, you'll have a bank of great student created podcasts to use with future students.

Check out some of the awesome podcasts done at Grace Poli's school. http://www.teachwithgrace.com/TWG/Podcast/Podcast.html
I met Grace at a One-to-One conference last summer. She's got a very similar situation as far as her students.

Hope this helps!

Cathi

[Michael Dodes]

I'm working on getting the equipment for that, but we don't have it yet unfortunately, but it is an excellent idea and one worth following up on. Talking with Joyce, one thing I'm pushing at the moment is the idea of developing a personal information portal to the internet using igoogle...

In talking about implementing it in our school, I discovered our students don't have assigned email when they come in and not all students have that due to the digital divide...so it would be worthwhile to get them hooked up with e-mail and to teach them organizing information is valuable and fun, and to elaborate later as they come to the library and explore and organize more resources for themselves and their assignments. Maybe work on the electronic resources which they're drawn to and encourage the books as possible.

I've had a lot of success having students select books for the library from sources I teach them about, teaching them to search those sources, and also read and evaluate sources of information online when I'm charging them with specific tasks that are not specifically to learn those skills.