Interview with Mrs. Stanton

I conducted my interview with Rebekah Stanton, the media coordinator at Rock Springs Elementary School. Rebekah was a librarian in Charlotte-Mecklenburg School system before coming to teach fourth grade at Rock Springs. After a year in fourth grade Rebekah moved to the media center this school year. She is full of wonderful ideas and has a familiar bond with classroom teachers. In her first month she has revitalized integral parts of our library.

Rebekah uses technology daily with her media classes. The checkout system Destiny is web based and a major help for her. It has been in use at the school for two years and can give her book recommendations, student print outs, and can analyze the library collection in seconds. She also uses the LCD projector frequently with a document camera or laptop computer. The students have access to two computer labs with 24 PCs and 2 printers. Rebekah uses the computer labs to enrich her media lessons. Students browse specific websites, NCWISEOWL, encyclopedias, as well as complete web quests and word processing activities.

The single biggest problem facing our library is funding. While this problem is echoed throughout the school and school system in general, Rebekah faces an aging collection and lack of technology. The average age in the collection is 1989, over twenty years old. Rebekah is in the process of writing a grant to receive additional funding to build the collection and enrich the library with multimedia tools.

If money was not an object, Rebekah would purchase a Mac computer with the video production software. After using the software to create personal DVDs Rebekah realized the impact it could have on our school. While there is PC software available, the Mac version is very user friendly and ideal for young students. She would also like to purchase more digital cameras, not only for use in the classroom, but to create books on Photo Story. She would also like to purchase a color laser printer to correlate with the digital cameras and enrich all lessons.

Another problem facing Rebekah is the difference between K-2 and 3-5 and their technology skills and abilities. Grades 3-5 is much more capable of completing a task in the computer lab with just her as the instructor. Yet, K-2 students need lots of additional help which is difficult when there is no additional help. Another problem she faces is the discrepancy between what all students should know and what they actually know. In a world full of technology there are many students who have little or no experience with word processing programs.

As a classroom teacher, I find this to be a major problem as well. Given the amount of curriculum I am required to teach, technology skills are taught in sync with the subjects we are studying. I teach my students how to create a Power Point, but some still can’t capitalize a letter. This is a discrepancy that deepens as years progress. With some teachers doing little or no technology instruction, many students get left behind. Even though this is not a part of media curriculum, it would be wonderful to teach simple skills in correlation with the media lessons. This way, there would be consistency throughout a grade level.