My Vision As A Media Specialist

As a Media Specialist, I will strive to guide students in developing the skills needed to effectively and ethically explore the information world. To this end, I will strive to make the Media Center the information hub of the school. I look for the Media Center to be the place where students explore information available to them in the form of both print and non-print sources. In serving as the information hub of the school, I also hope to open the eyes of our teachers to the multitudes of resources available to support curricular goals and units. As a means to accomplish this goal, I will work in collaboration with each teacher to gain information regarding resources and services needed for units and lessons.

Through active collaborative partnership with teachers and administrators, I hope to integrate critical information seeking skills into the curriculum to provide optimum learning opportunities for the students. As a Media Specialist, I will also provide staff development programs designed to increase teacher comfort levels with technology, promote the use of technology within the classroom and raise awareness of ethical and legally acceptable usage of technology in the classroom setting.

In addition to serving as the school’s information hub, I hope that the Media Center will be seen as a place that sparks excitement and intrigue in students’ attitudes toward reading. I will strive to instill a life long love of reading and learning in each student by creating an exciting and inviting environment that welcomes all members of the learning community to utilize the Media Center everyday for research and pleasure.

Program Goals

I find media and literature to be key components in providing students with a rich learning environment. While literature is a very important tool that boosts students’ reading skills, I find media to be an even greater tool. When I consider the life and times in which we live, where computers and other media are an integral part of our daily lives, I wonder why media does not constitute a larger portion of the instructional practices carried out in our schools. If schools are preparing students for the future, should knowledge and use of media not be a key part? I believe that it most certainly should be, however in my experiences I have found that schools often use the excuse that there is not money to fund the purchasing of such equipment or that if equipment is available, teachers do not take the time to learn of the possibilities media can bring to their instruction.

In this my experience as a classroom teacher, I have had several experiences to illustrate the aforementioned point regarding teachers not learning to use media. I recall one day when I had the TVator set-up in my classroom to utilize websites related to the tsunami tragedy. I can not tell you how many of my colleagues came into my classroom that day and asked “What is that?” and “What are you using that for?” (referring to the TVator). I was further appalled by their reaction to my intentions, which included such questions as “How did you find that?”. To me knowledge of these activities was as easy as doing a web search, though I guess this simplicity stems from the fact that I have been using computers and other media much of my life. It was after I had answered this steady stream of questions from my colleagues that I knew that the Instructional Technology program was the one in which I should pursue my Masters degree. It became my desire to attain additional knowledge of media practices that I could in turn impart upon my colleagues, while also using myself to insure that the students in my school are provided with media-rich learning experiences.

As I mentioned before, in schools, teachers often do not take the time to explore how media can enrich their instructional practices, while at the same time schools neither understand the value of media in instruction nor do they find media purchases to be feasible within tight budget constraints. Therefore, it is my hope that at the completion of this program I will be able to correct misconceptions regarding the usefulness of media in the classroom and prove to those making budget decisions the importance of investing in media for instructional purposes.

Thus, my two major goals for study in this program are to attain knowledge of the media resources available and to learn how these resources can be implemented in the classroom setting thus allowing me to both enrich the learning opportunities of my students and to assist me in guiding my colleagues to become media literate.

Preparation For The Future

Looking back at my goals prior to the start of this program, I feel as though through my experiences in the SLM program, I have more than met these goals. I say this because I feel that I have met all of the things I expected to learn in a program with the SLM focus,while also learning even more than was expected. Prior to the start of the program, I did not realize the vast realm of roles a Media Specialist should carry out. I now feel as though I not only have awareness of this vast array of roles, but I also have the knowledge and experiences needed to carry out these roles. Through the words of experienced Media Specialists, completion of assignments similar to real world activities, and involvement in a variety of Media Centers, I feel more than prepared to hit the road running as an involved collaborative partner and teacher, not just a shelver of the books. Therefore, it is my hope and desire to one day be a Media Specialist who guides students to be life long information seekers and readers.