Allison Long works with student Brantley Sherrill in the Media Center at Mooresville Middle School.
Posted: Sunday, March 23, 2014 11:15 am | Updated: 12:00 pm, Sun Mar 23, 2014.
In a school district renowned for its digital transformation, Mooresville Middle School Media Specialist Allison Long works to bridge the new and the old.
She aims to not only keep the traditional school library going, but ensure that the school’s media center remains on technology’s cutting edge.
Long’s efforts landed her the 2014 Media Specialist Technology Innovation Award. Long was nominated by MMS Principal Carrie Tulbert during the North Carolina Technology in Education Society annual conference because of Long’s “continued commitment to technology in education.”
The award identifies individuals who promote and sustain excellence in collaborative and innovative technology-based projects driven by the school library media center in support of curricular and instructional needs in elementary, middle, and high schools.
“We’ve focused more on how we can use the media center not just with technology but through collaborative learning with teachers and combined all that,” said Long.
Through innovative collaboration with classroom teachers, Long has incorporated learning stations in the media center, and collaborates with her teachers designing lessons involving group projects and research.
“The media center has evolved since we’ve had the laptops, so students aren’t just using books for research anymore,” she said.
With a focus on small groups, Long said that as classes come in, teachers will divide their students so they can have three mini classrooms in one, allowing for more focus on the students skills and allowing the teachers to meet with students on a smaller level.
At the same time, they are incorporating technology into the lesson via Polyvision Interactive Whiteboard that can “talk” to a student’s laptops or a teacher’s iPads. “Students can sit at the table and put something up on the screen so they aren’t always up at the front of the room explaining something or solving a problem,” she said.
While this may seem to take away from students learning basic communications skills they would get from speaking in front of a crowd, Long said they still have plenty of opportunities to be in front of their peers in the classroom.
“At this age, students are very aware of their appearances, so for some kids this is a great tool to use to share their work, without feeling like all eyes are on them,” she said.
Despite the focus the district has placed on technology, Long noted that students still want to check out books, with fiction books serving as one of their most checked-out genres.
“They still want to check out books and hold it in their hands, though research has changed because there is so much more technology,” she said. “They have a lot more access to doing research online, and research things off their laptops, but it’s important that they learn to use books when researching as well because that is ideally the best resource for research.
“I want them to learn how to do it effectively and efficiently know the best place to start because they could spend hours looking for information online when they could get it just as quickly from a book.”
Long said she’s always preaching to students to look for credible sources while doing research for a project.
“If I know a class is coming in I’ll pull books for them specific to what their research topic is and that saves times and you can’t always research everything on Google,” she said.
However, Long does feel that libraries are slowly on the way to being completely digital.
“I don’t see this happening in the near future, but things will slowly change as technology evolves,” she said. “There will always be people that will want to own books, but it could one day be a thing of the past. I think there will always be some sort of need for books, but it will look different.”
With Long’s award comes $1,000 from the NCTIES to be used in the MMS media center.
“I will probably let the students help me decide on books and items they would like to see in the media center,” said Long. “I periodically do a survey with students to see what they like/dislike and would like to see. (It) gives them a voice even if some of their ideas are things we are not able to accomplish.
“They are the ones who initially asked for cozy seating and now we are really working on those areas for students to use to learn collaboratively while they are in the media center.”
The “cozy seating” Long refers to allows students to feel more comfortable in the library whether it’s sitting in a bean-bag chair or in a small group setting, these new learning spaces are designed to let the students find their own space and efficiently do work.
“This is a new thing for us, and they don’t feel like they’re really working because it allows them to talk to each other and collaboratively discuss what they are working on,” she said.
Long is in her 23rd year as an educator, and has spent the past 16 years as the Media Specialist at MMS, where she has earned distinguished titles such as a Discovery Education DenStar and a Common Sense Educator.
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