REVIEWS
Connected Librarians: New Book by an Old Friend
You can certainly suspect that a friend or colleague is smart, but sometimes it takes reading a book she has written to really know just how smart.
My friend and colleague, Nikki D. Robertson, has written an outstanding book for ISTE titled Connected Librarians: Tap Social Media to Enhance Professional Development and Student Learning. In this well-organized, fast read, Nikki shares her personal history of using social media as a professional, provides outstanding rationale for keeping social media sites unblocked in schools, and demonstrates great ways of dealing with social media misuse by kids.
At the heart of the book, however, are very comprehensive and pragmatic examples of how a wide variety of social media tools can be used for learning by both educators and by students. Nikki knows and understands these tools and reveals a range of both tools and uses for them I had never dreamed of. Concrete example lifted from real schools give this book genuine practical use.
I know it is pretty darned early in 2018, but I will go out on a limb here and say that if you only read one professional book this year, make it Connected Librarians.
If I have any criticism of the book it would be the title. This book should be read and used by tech integrationists, classroom teachers, and administrators, not just librarians!
Librarians Help Students Use Social Media Connected Librarians: Tap Social Media to Enhance Professional Development and Student Learning
Review by Celest Peterson
In Computers In Libraries Journal
Nikki D. Robertson, gives practical ideas for using social media in the school library. It helps librarians use social media to improve student learning and shows how to manage issues of privacy and anonymity in social media sites and apps. There are tips on teaching digital citizenship and how to use social media tools to encourage reading and writing. It also covers how to use social media as a tool to build a professional learning network.
Peterson, C. (2018, April 1). Librarians Help Students Use Social Media. Computers in Libraries, 38(3), 27.
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
~Robert Heinlein
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