Making Our Learners Transliterate is Just as Important as Knowing how to Read

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Reflections on Transliteracy by Brenda McPherson Fry Our youngest learners to our college graduates and beyond need to become Transliterate. Just because children are born into the computer age, it does not mean that they know how to maximize the use of the smart phone in their hand, the desktop in the dining room, or the tablet in their backpack. Young mind still need to be nurture, develop, taught to use in meaningful way all the devices and tools they have at their fingertips.

Transliteracy for me it is the ability to read, comprehend, enhance, synthesis and develop knowledge across a wide variety of media platforms. Students no longer just read a book, they listen to the author talking about how his book was written. They access the internet through search engines, like Finding Dulcinea, Instagrok, and Google Custom Search to determine, evaluate, and identify information and data to answer the questions, and to question the answers. They synthesis the material they gather from all the sources available to them to truly be 21st century learners. These are tools that last beyond memorization and rote skills, beyond just reading and writing, these are skills that expand the mind, elevate the human race, cultivate learners who grow up to discover the cure for cancer, become productive members of the society.

We are at the precipice of change, we are no longer talking about the future, we are talking about the present, and librarians are the keepers of the knowledge. Their changing role will enable them to be collaborators with other staff members, to be the curators of information, and to provide the access and the tools to all learners as they grow and develop in a world that is no longer just about a pen, a paper, and an encyclopedia.

No Man is An Island in the Digital World

No Man Is An Island by English poet, John Donne

In this Global Economy and Digital World that is Literally at Your Fingertips, John Donne's poem still rings true after almost five hundred years. It demonstrates the timelessness of classic poems, ideas, and concepts as they bear witness to a world that Mr. Donne could never have imagined. He died on March 31, 1631. He may not have been talking about the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, or the many other venues that connect us to one another, but his poem, No Man Is An Island, rings with prophetic truth.

In this global economy, data-drive collaborative world, students need to know how to effectively use the tools they have been provided in this glorious world where a cell phone acts as a bridge across towns, countries, and continents to provide learning experiences and creative thinking, so that when the "bell tolls for thee," they will know how to answer it. Closing the digital divide across cultures and socio-economic groups is a necessary step all parents and educators should advocate for the children in trusted to them. Bringing 21st skills and tools to them is the role of the Librarian as she helps them to navigate through the world of transliteracies, and helps their teachers through collaboration to unite on a journey, exciting and ever-changing as we advance ourselves and students on the life learning process.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
John Donne