Posted by Julia Music
In the article “The International Children’s Digital Library Enhances the Multicultural Collection”, Lemmons ties together two important themes of librarianship: access to literature and educational enhancement. As a media specialist, Lemmons faced a situation that every teacher dreads. Her 5th grade students completed her planned 60-minute lesson in 30 minutes. Lemmons quickly assigned students who had finished early the task of going on the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL), exploring and giving her honest feedback about the site.
Her students were able to use the site without a lot of direction. The site encourages students to find information on their own by allowing easy access to digital books. The digitized books are organized in way that makes sense to children. For example, children pick books by their age group, make believe or true books or genre (Simple Search).
Much to Lemmons’ delight, the students were so engaged in the digital books they were reading that day they didn’t want to leave class when the period ended. The next week, the students wanted to hop on a computer immediately to finish reading the book from the prior week (Lemmons, 2009). Moreover, these were students that Lemmons described as “reluctant readers” (2009).
The main goal of the ICDL is, “To create a collection of more than 10,000 books in at least 100 languages that is freely available to children, teachers, librarians, parents, and scholars throughout the world via the Internet. The materials included in the collection reflect similarities and differences in cultures, societies, interests, lifestyles, and priorities of peoples around the world” (ICDL - Foundation Goals). Lemmons article suggests that the ICDL is meeting their goal. ICDL provides access to quality literature, an easy to follow formant and high interest texts, which empower students to chose their own learning path. These are undeniable benefits of digitization. This particular digital collection allows schools to expand their collection for free, while offering enough texts to pique interests of all students.
ICDL - Foundation Goals. (n.d.). ICDL - International Children's Digital Library. Retrieved October 12, 2010, from http://en.childrenslibrary.org/about/goals.shtml
Lemmons, K.. (2009, March). The International Children's Digital Library Enhances the Multicultural Collection. School Library Media Activities Monthly, 25(7), 28-30. Retrieved October 12, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 1645334861).
Simple Search. (n.d.). ICDL - International Children's Digital Library. Retrieved October 12, 2010, from http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/SimpleSearchCategory?ilang=English
I think this would be a good web site to share with patrons at our library. I especially liked the foreign language books. We have a large migrant population that uses our library and we have a large number of Ukrainian immigrants who are still working on learning English. In addition, there are a number of teens who are responsible for younger siblings in the evenings while parents are working. Web sites such as these are invaluable in these situations. The teen will have homework they need to accomplish and will not have the skills to balance "parenting" and homework successfully. We set up the younger sibling on a computer next to the older sibling and get them onto a web site such as ICDL if they are capable of reading. For the pre-readers we use sites such as www.uptoten.com and kids.aol.com/KOL/1/KOLJr.
ReplyDeleteIt is just as easy to direct them to cartoonnetwork.com or nickjr.com, but these kids often are not getting read to at home, so the read aloud web sites are especially important to their development. I remember one young girl who came in with her sister for a few years before starting school. After her first day at kindergarten she ran in all excited to tell me about the story the teacher had read out loud. It had talking animals! I was happy for her and appalled that this was the first time a real person had read out loud to her. Hopefully by spending every evening at the library, she has a better chance of keeping up with her grade level. Now if only we could get the teens to take their siblings to story time rather than to the computer center.
In the first paragraph of your response you mention the migrant population. What a great way to uphold our ethics and remind this population that they are not valued as learners by our libraries!
ReplyDeleteI was eager to learn more about this website. One helpful article I found is The Evolution of the International Children’s Digital Library Searching and Browsing Interface. It was fascinating to come from learning about the search difficulties in the world of OPAC and compare it to the difficulty of creating searches geared toward children. One excellent aspect of the Simple Search is that students who remember a book with a red cover can click on the red button and view all books with that color cover. This is limited, however, since at this time only one book is the result of a red book cover. As this website adds book on their journey toward a 10,000 book goal there should be more varied results.
ReplyDeletehttp://portal.acm.org.proxy.lib.wayne.edu/citation.cfm?id=1139073.1139101&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=110721429&CFTOKEN=46615230
I use color identification techniques with my 6th graders. It really helps them keep track of the worksheets we use in class. Learners of all ages (who can see color) can often remember colors. It makes sense for kids to be able to select books by color rather than a level.
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