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As more and more educators face the impact of Web 2.0, and as we see emerging what could be called a Learning 2.0 environment, it becomes urgent to extend teaching to meet the literacy and learning needs of the Net Generation. These 'new' learners and their expanding literacy needs have major implications for current models of school library programs which are largely focused on reading promotion and information literacy skills. We join others in recognizing the need to critically question long held tenets of school libraries and to create a new research-based vision that will accord with the current economic and social directions driving educational change. This paper contributes to that process by proposing a framework for the work of school libraries in new times based on research in new literacies, today's learners, and emerging concepts of knowledge.
Today's students are no longer the people our education system was designed to teach. (Prensky, 2001)
Spurred by explosive developments in information and communication technologies generally and Web 2.0 specifically, the meanings of knowledge (Castells, 2000; Gilbert, 2005); and literacy (Lankshear & Knoebel, 2003; Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, & Cammack, 2004; Lonsdale & McCurry, 2004) are changing profoundly. Today's students view digital technologies very differently from their teachers as they seamlessly integrate them into all aspects of their lives (Lenhart, Madden, & Hitlin, 2005; Media Awareness Network, 2005; Organisation for Economic and Co-operation Development, 2001). Outside of school, many young people comfortably use a wide variety of new literacies associated with new technologies and use Web 2.0 tools to construct and distribute knowledge (Knoebel & Lankshear, 2007; Lenhart, Madden, Macgill & Smith, 2007). These new literacy practices are also defining the new workplace in the knowledge economy (Lonsdale & McCurry, 2004). We agree with Selfe and Howisher (2004), and others, that the literacy education provided in the past by parents and teachers will no longer equip people for success in the altered world in which we live. These transformations of the essential foundations of education-learners, literacy, and knowledge-carry dramatic implications for teaching and learning. Below we identify key concepts emerging from three interrelated literatures: today's learners, new literacies, and postmodern views of knowledge.
New Learners
A growing literature focuses on today's students who were born into this...