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The Role of the School Library in the Era of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) by Sara Zeller

 The Role of the School Library in the Era of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)

By Sara Zeller 


A student receives his laptop computer for remote learning in front of Bell High School in Bell, California on April 15, 2020. It will be returned after the school year is over. Remote learning has become imperative as California schools remain closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.


    When I was growing up no one would have handed 9 year old me something worth $500-$1000 and asked me to be responsible with it; to not lose it or break it. And yet here I was 4 years a go sitting in an auditorium listening to the tech department of my 4thgraders school district walk me through the digital literacy and usage policies associated with my sons school issued Ipad.  I thought this is crazy, maybe we should decline the school Ipad and just offer to “bring our own device” and not stress about how much we would eventually owe when we did in fact brake or lose the Ipad. 


    In a pre-COVID world while a majority of students having cell phones meant that they were and are on campus with a BYOD, most of districts were in a push for classroom equity when it came to laptops and tablets. In the article School Librarians: Key to Technology Integrationthe author states, “Financially, BYOD always sounds like a great solution because the hardware and software costs no longer fall on the district; however, there are obstacles and less-obvious costs even with a partial BYOD initiative. Capable infrastructure and internal district resources are two top concerns that immediately come to mind. For example, who will support these personal devices if students have problems using them for classwork?”(Kuzo, September 2015).  While some districts chose partnerships with Staples and other retailers to provide voucher options in regards to what type of tablet or laptop students choose, there still was the above mentioned problem of who would support the updates and trouble shoot any problems in live time. This creates the difficulty that, “districts will have little to no control over personal devices, so we must be careful what access they have to our networks. Acceptable- use policies should also be reviewed to ensure personal devices are included” (Kuzo, September 2015).

   

    With the era of BYOD, the role of the school librarian in regards to technology shifts to, “resource specialists; by extending their role into the one-to-one learning environment, students can be supported in their learning though librarian-led resource instruction” (Rivero 2015).  Gone would be the library computer lab as a research center, students now have a 1:1 ratio eliminating the need for a central space. “The beauty with BYOD is that, in many cases, as long as a device can connect to the web, they can learn in new ways” (Doyle Spring 2015).  In order to make the best use the librarians new job description it would seem that the most beneficial policy for a majority of schools would be to shift away from BYOD and pursue a simplified 1:1 device so that all learning can be done on a unified platform.  In addition to the elimination of the computer lab the BYOD or 1:1 device policy creates an, “Our almost total reliance on electronic resources– 98 percent of our nonfiction collection is eBooks-- means that teachers do not need to bring their students to my lab for research or for creating documents or presentations. Classes just do not come to the library. Collaboration, when it happens, occurs in the classroom” (Doyle, Spring  2015).   Thus creating the question, do we move the tangible books to the classrooms, do create a mobile library system where the librarian is in the classrooms on a rotation? Can those spaces that once housed the be turned into other or different learning atmospheres? I’m excited to see what the future holds in regards to the evolution of this role and how I am going to get to play a part in it once I have my certificate in hand!




Works Cited:

Kuzo, Joseph. “School Librarians: Key to Technology Integration.” Knowledge Quest, vol. 44, no. 1, Sept. 2015, pp. 74–76. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lxh&AN=109276635&site=ehost-live.


Rivero, Victor. “The Bring-Your-Own Dilemma.” Internet@Schools, vol. 22, no. 2, Mar. 2015, pp. 7–9. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lxh&AN=111882940&site=ehost-live.


Doyle, Tony. “1:Web Transition: One School’s Experience.” CSLA Journal, vol. 39, no. 1, Spring 2015, pp. 20–21. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lxh&AN=103437947&site=ehost-live.


"A Student Receives His Laptop Computer for Remote Learning." Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2020. Gale InContext: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/KMCOTH569768609/OVIC?u=sddp_main&sid=OVIC&xid=409555d2.

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