The following web portal “The Web We Want” provides a handbook and lesson plans that promote skills and responsible attitudes about using the Internet. It is av available in several European languages:
http://www.webwewant.eu/pt_PT/web/guest/about
Does having a library help make a child more likely to read for pleasure at school? And what about at home? Does having a library impact a child’s attitude towards reading? Room to Read commissioned a research team to examine their libraries in Laos, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Zambia, and South Africa. Find out in their report, a summary of which is available at http://blog.roomtoread.org/room-to-read/2015/03/crossnationalevaluation.html
2015 is the 30th annual celebration of USA’s School Library Month, honoring school librarians for the amazing job that they do everyday. Julianne Moore, the Academy Award winning actress and children’s author, is the Spokesperson and will be promoting the theme, Your School Library: Where Learning Never Ends, throughout April.
To celebrate this 30th anniversary, AASL has planned the following activities:
*The Student Digital Storytelling Festival – see Website for details. The deadline for submissions has been extended to Midnight on March 20th.
The School Library Ambassador Initiative – look for this on social media throughout April and later on Pinterest.
The Author Gallery and Tip of the Day Calendar –look for this on social media throughout April and later on Pinterest.
Send us your Best Shot – this will be a Twitter and Instagram activity announced at the end of March.
Professional Development Sessions – see Website for details.
This is the link to the 2015 AASL School Library Month Website: http://www.ala.org/aasl/slm/
The IFLA Literacy and Reading Section is seeking proposals for a program to be held at the IFLA Conference in Cape Town, South Africa in August 2015. The theme is Literacy Matters! The Importance of Literacy & Reading in the Creation of Strong Societies.”
Literacy is more essential than ever before. In societies dominated by the written word, it is a fundamental requirement for citizens of all ages in modern Europe. Literacy empowers the individual to develop capacities of reflection, critique and empathy, leading to a sense of self-efficacy, identity and full participation in society. Literacy skills are crucial to parenting, finding and keeping a job, participating as a citizen, being an active consumer, managing one’s health and taking advantage of digital developments, both socially and at work (EU High Level Group of Experts on Literacy, 2012)
The Literacy & Reading Section recognises that literacy and reading skills are essential for access to information for educational achievement, personal growth lifelong and the development of communities within society. Libraries have a unique role in the promotion of literacy and reading by providing community spaces and access to a wide range of resources and expertise. The program for the IFLA 2015 Conference will focus on the theme Literacy Matters! and include a mix of invited speakers and presenters.
Building on the Section’s theme Literacy Matters! The importance of literacy & reading in the creation of strong societies, presentations will be considered which address the theme and examine:
· best practice library programs;
· library services which support literacy and reading skills; and
· research projects that support literacy, reading and libraries.
Proposals are requested for 8 – 10 presentations to be part of a series of round table workshops. Each presenter will be part of a round table discussion group which will participate in 3 workshops designed to help further develop the LiR ‘Literacy Matters’ concept & action plan:
As an introduction to the final workshop presenters will have 15 minutes to present their best practice program to their table. Since these projects will be presented in an informal, small group setting, speakers should plan some visual accompaniment such as a poster that can be set up on the table. Presenters may also want to bring brochures or flyers to hand out.
The successful proposals (template provided) will consist of:
· a 500 word description of a 2000 – 2500 word paper about the program/services/research in their presentation which will be published in the IFLA online library;
· include a copyright and plagiarism statement; and
· abstracts will be distributed to all tables and used during Workshop discussions
Abstracts will be selected by a double, blind-review process. Papers will be published in the IFLA online library. Successful presenters will be listed in the official Conference program. All papers will be edited for the English version and returned to presenters for publication in other (English) journals.
Proposals should provide the following information:
· Presenter/s and affiliation
· Brief biographical information of presenters
· Proposal title
· 500 word abstract describing their program, service or research project
· Language of presentation
Proposals should be sent to:
· Barbara Combes (Secretary of the Literacy and Reading Section) at [email protected] by 14th March 2015.
· Please include IFLA Proposal WLIC 2015 in the subject line.
· Successful presenters will be notified by 28th March 2015.
· Submission of final papers in one of the official IFLA languages by 20th May 2015.
For more information, please contact:
· Annie Everall (Chair of Literacy and Reading Section) at [email protected]
· Barbara Combes (Secretary of the Literacy and Reading Section) at [email protected]
Please note that it is the speakers’ responsibility to find funding for their participation in the conference. All papers will be edited for publication in the IFLA Online Library.
here is a message from the present UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova on International Mother Language Day:
“2015 marks the 15th anniversary of International Mother Language Day – this is also a turning point year for the international community, as the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals, when countries will define a new global sustainable development agenda.
“The focus for the post-2015 agenda must fall on the priority of advancing quality education for all — widening access, ensuring equality and inclusiveness, and promoting education for global citizenship and sustainable development.
“Education in the mother language is an essential part of achieving these goals — to facilitate learning and to bolster skills in reading, writing and mathematics. Taking this forward requires a sharper focus on teaching training, revisions of academic programmes and the creation of suitable learning environments.
“UNESCO takes forward these goals across the world. In Latin America, with the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNESCO is promoting inclusive education through bilingual intercultural approaches, in order to include both native and non-native cultures. For the same reasons, the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Education in Asia and the Pacific, based in Bangkok, Thailand, is working to deepen understandings of multilingual education based on the mother tongue, across the region and further afield. Mother tongue education is force for quality learning – it is also essential to bolster multilingualism and respect for linguistic and cultural diversity in societies that are transforming quickly.
“Since 2000, there has been tremendous progress to reach the goals of Education for All. Today, we must look ahead – to complete unfinished business and to tackle new challenges. International Mother Language Day is a moment for all of us to raise the flag for the importance of mother tongue to all educational efforts, to enhance the quality of learning and to reach the unreached. Every girl and boy, every woman and man must have the tools to participate fully in the lives of their societies – this is a basic human right and it is a force for the sustainability of all development.”
International Literacy Day, 8 September 2014
Happy International Literacy Day everyone. Comment on an Australian listerv:
I AM glad to be literate, yet it’s often something I take for granted. I wonder how many of us fall into the same category? In Australia the statistics are a bit frightening. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 44% of adults (18-90) are operating at level 2 literacy level or below. Level 3 is considered the level students need to reach to graduate from high school. Without literacy you cannot function effectively in society. You need to be literate before you can use digital technologies effectively and efficiently. Computers are complementary NOT compensatory.
Dr Barbara Combes, Secretary, Literacy and Reading Section, IFLA
Lecturer, School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University
I was travelling on a bus to work one morning, when a woman anxiously requested the driver to turn the bus around. He was agitated with her and asked her why she wanted him to do so. She said: “you are going in the wrong direction, uou are supposed to go the other way. The bus driver became very frustrated with her when she started to panic and continued to ask him to turn the bus around. I witnessed this for a while and then realised that the woman could not read, because the bus route was written on the front panel of the bus. I got up and spoke to the bus driver and then he realized it too and gave her the benefit of the doubt. He stopped the bus and let her get off the bus, fully reimbursed with her travel fare. She was anxious yet relieved and exited the bus thanking us profusely. This is the result of illiteracy in our nations. If a human being cannot read simple signs like bus route names and places familiar to them, it is extremely sad and frustrating to them, and to us who are aware of it as well. I have had similar incidents in our shopping malls as well. In these incidents, women could not count for correct money to pay their items bought, or even read what is written on the store shelves. In all those incidents I thanked God that I could be of assistance to them. Their embarrassment and helplessness were very evident in all cases. In all the incidents I experienced, I was so grateful that I could read and write, and this too inspired me to do literacy advocacy with children as my social responsibility. Happy International Literacy Day everyone. Literacy definitely Matters.
Julia Paris, South Africa
I recently had the fortune to participate in a UNESCO meeting on mobile literacy solutions for out-of-school children in Thailand. With a large population of migrants in some of the most difficult-to-reach parts of the country, many children risk missing out on school. Thailand’s official commitment to ensuring access to education for all is impressive — an explicit mandate to include all children, regardless of status — but there are many hurdles. As the starting point for access to information, opportunity and advancement, literacy is understandably a key priority for governments and organizations across the development spectrum. Millennium Development Goal #2 targets universal primary education, and includes literacy rates as a key indicator. USAID has prioritized early grade reading and aims to improve the reading skills of a 100 million children by 2015. So, with more than 230,000 public libraries in developing countries around the world — institutions historically devoted to access to reading materials — it’s confounding that libraries are usually left out of systematic literacy efforts. It’s a huge missed opportunity. And as new technologies start to become a realistic supplement to education efforts, there’s even more of a need for a coordinated community learning hub, a role libraries are suited to play. At the meeting in Bangkok, participants from government and NGOs shared familiar challenges they are currently coping with — not enough teachers, not enough equipment, not enough time in class. While no panacea, public libraries are ideal institutions to help mitigate these issues in many places, including Thailand, where there are more than 800 around the country. I shared some of the lessons Beyond Access has learned in ways that existing public libraries can support literacy efforts.
A public library in Tbilisi, Georgia shows how comfortable spaces for enjoying reading together can be created cheaply and simply. Children don’t gain fluent literacy skills from school alone. Research from the OECD PISA exam shows that “the performance advantage among students whose parents read to them in their early school years is evident regardless of the family’s socioeconomic background.” Any literacy effort must foster a convenient place where families can spend time reading and learning together. And libraries can serve this role. A room full of academic reading desks and locked bookcases is no longer a relevant model. A modern library has soft carpets and beanbag chairs, and short shelves with book covers facing outward, facilitating browsing and discovery.
To foster literacy, technology should encourage interactivity and create a substantially new experience. That doesn’t happen by simply providing PDF copies of books to be viewed on a computer screen. But new technology — such as shared tablets — can be used to bring families together, for example around collaborative educational games. Public libraries are the best place to host these tools and serve as community learning laboratories when new technologies arrive.
Frequently overburdened with too many students, subjects and levels, teachers can’t be expected to lead the literacy charge on the local level by themselves. But librarians are often perfectly placed to supplement their work. Libraries can create welcoming literacy hubs and conduct outreach to schools — bringing books for lending and sharing, leading group reading activities like story times, and supporting teachers in working effective literacy activities into their lessons.
In our work on Beyond Access, we notice similar tendencies around the world, in literacy projects as in others. Big investments are made in things — technology, publishing, connectivity — while the skills in how to use these things to improve lives are shortchanged. When equal consideration is not given to proper training, things quickly become obsolete and disused. Our experience has led to a roughly 1:1 ratio as a guideline. For each dollar put into things, we recommend spending one dollar on training. Often, that means fewer things. But of course, it means much more impact from the investment. Beyond Access is just starting out on efforts to address the gap between libraries and literacy initiatives. We are developing programs that include a focus on community literacy in Myanmar and Bangladesh, and we’re exploring how we can assist with efforts in other regions. We’re also involved in the latest round of the All Children Reading Grand Challenge, supporting projects that integrate libraries. As we learn more about how public libraries can most effectively fit into the literacy picture, we’ll share our reflections here. As always, if you’re interested in partnering with us on this initiative, please get in touch at [email protected].
Ari Katz, Regional Director, Beyond Access, Country Director, IREX/Thailand, Bangkok