As I accepted a LinkedIn request from a former colleague, I thought about how important connections are. Essential to networking, connections are also a powerful and positive part of our education world:

• Students connect the dots to understand a new concept.
• A teacher connects with his or her class.
• We connect to the Internet.
• People feel a connection with a co-worker.

Because the right connections can really make our lives easier, I wanted to take a closer look at how we can use them to partner with others and create a more collaborative school and library environment.

How do you connect with others in your school or library?

If you’re a teacher or library media specialist, the relationship between the library and classroom is a key connection and a valuable partnership. Several educators have shared their approaches for building a bridge between the library and classroom; here are two examples:

A library media specialist at an elementary school in Tennessee explains the benefit in partnering with teachers. Using a Technology Day to kick things off and maintaining open communication, these savvy educators can correlate what is going on in the classroom with happens in the library. The full story is here.

We all know how the role of the library media specialist is crucial in today’s ever-changing technology and learning environment. In Georgia, one middle school uses a collaborative approach that taps into the information literacy expert (the media specialist) alongside the content expert (teachers), so that the library serves as a powerful complement to the curriculum in the classroom. Read more here.

How do you connect with the resources that your school or library provides, so that you and your students are reaping the most from these tools?

If you’re a teacher or library media specialist, the relationship between the library and classroom is a key connection and a valuable partnership. Several educators have shared their approaches for building a bridge between the library and classroom; here are two examples:

• A library media specialist at an elementary school in Tennessee explains the benefit in partnering with teachers. Using a Technology Day to kick things off and maintaining open communication, these savvy educators can correlate what is going on in the classroom with happens in the library. The full story is here.
• We all know how the role of the library media specialist is crucial in today’s ever-changing technology and learning environment. In Georgia, one middle school uses a collaborative approach that taps into the information literacy expert (the media specialist) alongside the content expert (teachers), so that the library serves as a powerful complement to the curriculum in the classroom. Read more here.

How do you connect with the resources that your school or library provides, so that you and your students are reaping the most from these tools?

Hopefully, you are making Professional Development a priority! As the Manager of Professional Development for Britannica, it might not come as a surprise that I would say this. But I can tell you first-hand that:

The experiences and connections you make through Professional Development can take a learning experience from “so-so” to “over the top”!

PD experts will demonstrate practical and proven methods for learning, while serving as a future contact when you need help, are looking for inspiration, or want an update on the latest and greatest. When you take advantage of the support that PD sessions provide, you will strengthen instruction and more easily achieve the results that you’re expecting from your students.

We’ve made a commitment to Professional Development, so that we can connect with our customers and vice versa. For example, when we head to Austin in mid-April for TLA, we’ll be making plans to kick off our new partnership with TexQuest, which provides Britannica School and Spanish Reference Center to all students in the public schools of Texas starting in June. (Read more about this partnership here.) We have already scheduled a dozen PD webinars in the first three months alone, and we’re offering in-person workshops at each of the 20 ESCs during a “road show” in the first two weeks of August. In addition to our PD staff in Chicago, we also have two instructional coaches in Texas that will be conducting in-person sessions. We will continue to support them all year long with additional opportunities and constant communication. Connecting with our customers as they use the product gives us great insight into how our products are used in the “real world” and allows us to help educators integrate our technologies into the learning experience.

Ultimately, we all share the same goal—preparing students for college and careers. Let’s all make some great connections along the way, building powerful partnerships that put students first!

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