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educational tool for professional development and
management since video is an appropriate vehicle
for training, knowledge management, systems
analysis, and public relations.
This chapter explores the effectiveness of video
conferencing as a mechanism for developing and
maintaining a community of practice for learning
leaders (such as teacher librarians). Using video
conferencing, teacher librarians have a unique
opportunity to help build a strong collaborative,
professional network that will positively impact
best practices while at the same time raise aware-
ness of twenty-first century librarianship. This
chapter examines the philosophy of communities
of practice, the nature of video conferencing, and
provides a case study on the use of video confer-
encing to facilitate a nation-wide community of
practice among teacher librarians. Both general
considerations and lessons learned from an ex-
tended case study are provided.
media, administration, collaboration, professional
development, etc.) and as a result of these efforts,
TLs make positive advancements in multiple
contexts.
The need to bring these multiple worlds to-
gether is becoming more critical because of the
increasingly underestimated value of the TLs. In
this digital age of easy access to online resources;
who needs libraries? Can't online help take care
of information questions? Yet, it is apparent that
students usually are not efficient online search-
ers or critical thinkers. Who is best positioned to
teach all students about how to access and process
information in myriad forms for myriad purposes?
TLs. They are truly resource persons, providing
value-added physical and intellectual access to
information and ideas. Not only do TLs know how
information is created, disseminated, organized
and used across the curriculum and beyond, but
they know how to teach the entire school com-
munity how to be fluent and responsible users of
these resources.
Using video conferencing, TLs have a unique
opportunity to help build a strong collaborative,
professional network that will provide ongo-
ing professional improvement and facilitate
collaboratively-created products (e.g., online
bibliographies, web tutorials, library portals,
digital learning objects) that can be shared with
the rest of the education community.
bACkground
Teacher librarians (TLs) work in K-12 school
settings, and have as their mission to ensure
that students and staff become effective users of
ideas and information. To carry out this charge,
successful TLs:
provide intellectual and physical access to
need for Professional development
materials in all formats;
provide instruction to foster competence
and stimulate interest in reading, viewing
and using information and ideas;
work with other educators to design learn-
For K-12 teacher librarians (TL) to be effective in
their work, they need to keep current in the field.
Dall'Alba and Sandberg (2006) defined two di-
mensions of professional development: improved
skills (the competency level) and embodied under-
standing of practice (the “big picture”); beginners
tend to focus on the former, while experienced TLs
may well stay at the competency level rather than
continuing to seek challenges and take a longer-
term perspective. Oberg (1995) found that expert
TLs had stronger professional networks, and were
ing strategies to meet the needs of individ-
ual students.
They need to develop and manage resource
collections, serve as effective teachers as well as
effective information specialists, and administrate
a library program of services. The role of the
TL requires multiple competencies (curriculum,
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