Bringing the village to the university classroom: Uncertainty and confusion in teaching school library media students in the design of technology enhanced instruction

This chapter highlights critical lessons learned during the past six years during the development of a capstone graduate educational technology course, teaching School Library Media (SLMS) pre-service students how to develop learner centered, knowledge centered and assessment centered Web-based learning tools; in short, to enable them to become change agents in their educational communities. A large northeastern University has cultivated educational partnerships that bring together University students with their professional, in-service, PreK-12 counterparts to explore issues of technology in education, pedagogy, theory, curriculum, information literacy, assessment, and evaluation. Unlike traditional courses with prepackaged academic assignments, this course engages school library media specialists with real-world teaching and learning situations that are frequently ill-structured, often chaotic, and collaboratively defined by the learning needs of all participants (PreK-12 through university; in-service and pre-service). The strengths and weaknesses of the course are candidly discussed with recommendations for improvement.