Learning through Books, Media and Technology

ARTICLES THIS ISSUE:

Chico High School: Uning the library media center and its tools to push out the walls of the classroom

What do you do with 4,000 students? A Great library media center helps!

Library as learning laboratory — for students and teachers

From local access systems to global dialog

Helping students and staff connect

Restructuring: getting to the heart of the learning process

Making the most of learning resources, from human to technological

Winning combinations — kids, technologies, teaching partnership

A "logical place" for applications of information technology

The "Dream Team" at work: changing ideas of how we prepare students for the future

From library to "Discovery Center" — a marriage of tradition and technology

Good Ideas! Briefs

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Winning combinations --- kids, technologies, teaching partnerships

McGaugh Elementary School
Seal Beachs

Danny Flores, student

For the past 12 years, McGaugh's library media teacher, Lois Cohn, and principal, John Blaydes, have worked together to build a library media program that serves all students, including the district's elementary special education classes. Teachers are lured into partnerships, sometimes on a one-to-one basis with Lois, sometimes in a total school effort, with the library media center as the driving force. In addition, the annual planning process specifies cooperative efforts between class-room teachers and the library media teacher. The result is solid mutual support and rich experiences for students.

Recognizing the potential of media technologies in adapting to varied interests, Lois urges students to seek different ways to find and communicate information. Video production has become a predominant choice, and students have won state and national awards for their work. Adjoining computer and art rooms provide additional access to learning tools and opportunities for creative expression.

REACH is a McGaugh instructional program that integrates research and writing skills with other areas of the curriculum. In this program, half-classes of fourth and fifth grade students come to the library media center daily for lively instruction in the 'research process. This is no mere program of locational or traditional "library skills." Students are actively involved in all stages of the process, from initial brainstorming, through development of media for communicating the information they have researched.

This year, McGaugh was honored as one of the three semifinalists for the AASL National School Library Program of the Year Award. In discussing the strong emphasis on the library media center programs in the Los Alamitos School District, one staff member commented, "They support the entire schools' programs; they are so essential that they'd be devastating to lose. We know what they'd be missing… It's our history!"

• McGaugh Elementary School (Grades K-5, enrollment 760)
  1098 Bolsa Avenue, Seal Beach 90740; (213) 430-1021
  John Blaydes, Principal
  Lois Cohn, Library Media Teacher
  Los Alamitos Unified School District