As the Library Media Specialist for her high school, Sarah was used to working closely with teachers to ensure the library had traditional print and non-print resources to support academic units taught in her school. Last year Sarah’s library media specialist duties expanded. Her school’s improvement plan called for the use of technology to enhance student learning. The school principal and leadership team felt Sarah could play a critical role in helping to reach this goal. Her new responsibilities included helping teachers work toward integrating technology into their classrooms. With the support of her colleagues Sarah was able to use building funds to hire a half-time library support person. She shifted some of her library clerical duties to this new staff person which allowed Sarah to create a flexible library schedule. The new schedule allowed her to meet with teachers during their planning times and to provide other coaching support for part of each day. In addition, the school leadership team chose Sarah to receive the educational technologist stipend provided by the district. (Some of the elementary schools in Sarah’s district asked each classroom teacher to assume some limited clerical responsibilities in the library, such as checking books in and out to provide their library media specialist more time to coach.)

Sarah started by identifying one department of teachers she could coach. She found a group who had not been using technology in the classroom, and were unhappy with the results of a project previously assigned to students on American presidents. Sarah worked with them to revamp the project using a WebQuest model. The “new and improved” project had students work in teams to develop a re-election campaign strategy for a chosen president. As part of process of designing the unit Sarah helped the teachers identify online resources that could encourage students to be more actively involved in their learning, and then to provide scaffolding tools to help students analyze and synthesize their findings. The teachers who collaborated with Sarah to create this project were extremely happy with the results. Instead of students producing an encyclopedic account of a presidency; the students’ work reflected a deeper analysis of the issues of the day and demonstrated more complex problem solving. They were soon asking Sarah for assistance on other projects they were planning, and teachers who had heard about the successful presidency project were asking Sarah for help with their projects.

Coaching has become an effective way for Sarah’s staff to learn new technology skills and instructional strategies for integrating technology in the classroom. By working with Sarah, teachers learn how to organize and manage teams of students sharing computers as well as learning how to integrate technology into their curriculums. Each week, Sarah provides a short after school workshop for interested staff on a specific task involving technology. One week, she focuses on evaluating Web sites, and another week, she demonstrates Internet search strategies. Teachers have found that having immediate access to someone who can answer questions about using these tools has helped them effectively integrate technology into the curriculum to enhance student learning.