Monday, December 5, 2011

Should we hold classes in the library?

Keeping the distinction between the library and the classroom has been a theme in conferences and articles for years. Libraries provide materials--teachers teach students the ideas and concepts needed in classes. But does this distinction really hold any more? As the library, whether in a public library or a school, evolves into an information center providing access not just to print or AV materials but to streams of information, it becomes more like a classroom than ever. Indeed, what is a classroom these days when many students get their online or homeschooling courses at home? The family kitchen or a child's bedroom becomes a classroom and eventually children may complete their K-12 education without ever setting foot in what generations have called a school or classroom.

These thoughts are conjured up by two recent articles. One, in the NY Times tells of how the well-known Kahn Academy classes available on YouTube are being used as the bases for classes in some schools around the country. In the conventional classroom setting where every child has a laptop and a high-speed connection, the teacher can monitor the progress of individual students going through the math classes available through Kahn Academy videos. This combination of individualized online and face-to-face instruction may be a model for future learning.

The second article, also from the NY Times appeared this summer. It tells of an experiment by Stanford University to offer online courses free to anyone who signs up for them. More than 100,000 people did sign up and even though thousands of them dropped out after a short time, thousands others are still working their way through the courses and clearly learning from them.

What does this have to do with the role of libraries? Well, it's hard to believe that if these courses exist and are freely available to the public, a library could easily be a center for distributing them. Libraries can provide a quiet space and a fast Internet connection, advantages not available to many people living on the edges of poverty. Although most libraries, at their present level of funding, cannot provide individuals to help students and guide them through the process, they still could make the programs available to parents and young people. Most libraries have not considered offering a variety of online courses as part of their resource mix, but surely provision of these materials would increase the visibility of libraries in the community. Learning groups could be formed just like today's reading groups where like-minded individuals could meet together to engage with stimulating materials. It's a new twist to the library mix and one that should be considered as part of the move to make a library the center of the school or of the community in which it is located.

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