Just in time learning with Electric Library - Electric Library/Homework Helper online reference library service - Children and the Digital Library

Library Trends, Spring, 1997 by Marvin I. Weinberger

ABSTRACT

The arrival of digital libraries has necessitated the creation of a new definition of literacy. This author is an inventor of an online reference library service (Electric Library/Homework Helper) and posits that "free-form" learning and information delivered on demand to a scholar is the highest form of new media literacy. This "just in time learning" embodies all of the most popular aspects of twenty-first century literacy as recently defined and debated by educators and librarians. The author surveys recent research and literature on the topic and defines twenty-first century literacy in a new light, expanding on the traditional definition while incorporating a discussion of the Electric Library as it pertains to this new media trend.

INTRODUCTION

While the future is quickly bearing down upon us, the debate continues to rage over technology and its role in our schools and libraries. IT is assumed by many that computers alone are a panacea for what is wrong with our education system today. Some argue that they are used for little more than "drill and kill" exercises; still others complain that there is an exigent lack of effective technology and curriculum integration. But consider the alternative -- a nineteenth-century curriculum based entirely on paper textbooks. As such, most of these texts aim at a very low common denominator, and many contain outdated information by the time they are printed. It is difficult to debate what many know to be true: Technology can do what textbooks cannot -- interact.

As the entire world outside of the school and library becomes electronic (e.g., beepers, CD players, cell phones, video games), the problem of keeping students focused and learning is compounded. This MTV-style barrage of information and ideas from a wide array of sources that confronts today's students is truly mind boggling. It challenges the efforts of even the most gifted parent, teacher, and librarian. Now technology and other advances rapidly make obsolete much of the information imparted to students over the course of a child's formal education. The situation has become a crisis.

Students need to experience the joys of free-form learning and self guided discovery rather than being tethered by the constraints of outdated tomes, overcrowded classrooms, and information overload. A passion for learning -- a reward for seeking -- must be offered if they are to succeed. The power of digital libraries and new media technologies can provide this reward and break the shackles of nineteenth-century literacy. The downward pressure on costs for technology and communications matched with new and easy-to-use learning software means that Just In Time Learning -- twenty-first century learning -- is becoming a reality for all of our students.

Making this future a reality necessitates the building of an educational system based on the "just in time" learning philosophy. It requires the development of learning tools essential to survival in this rapidly changing world -- tools that teach children to be the intellectual explorers of tomorrow. One such tool is Electric Library[TM], an online reference service designed for students. The challenge of designing a digital library that fosters and enhances learning in the new millennium is met by corporating the basic elements of twenty-first century literacy.

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY LITERACY ELEMENTS

In June 1991, the U.S. Department of Labor issued its first report from the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS). This watershed document examined the changes in the world of work for the twenty-first century and highlighted the implications of those changes for learning. It summarized how the world has changed for schools in preparing our young to work.

A strong back, the willingness to work, and a high school diploma

were once all that was needed to make a start in America. They are

no longer. A well-developed mind, a passion to learn, and the

ability to put knowledge to work are the new keys to the future of our

young people, the success of our young people, the success of our

businesses, and the economic well being of the nation. (U.S.

Department of Labor, 1991, p1) The report continued to define five competencies which rest on a three-part foundation of skills and personal qualities. These parts are defined as basic skills, personal qualities, and thinking skills, the last being the centerpiece of the SCANS foundation and a primary factor in the development of the Electric Library. Of the five competencies, the one most concerned with what is classically defined as twenty-first century literacy is information competency. The report defines this as: (1) the ability to acquire and evaluate information; (2) the ability to organize and maintain information; (3) the ability to interpret and communicate information; and (4) the ability to use computers to process information (U.S. Dept of Labor, 1991, p.12). According to SCANS, six individual components constitute thinking skills: creative thinking, decision making, problem solving, seeing things in the mind's eye (i.e., processing symbolic and visual information), knowing how to learn, and reasoning.