Successive Fraction

Topic: teachers collaborating with school librarians to use technology in the classroom

Database: ERIC.

Teachers seemed like my broadest topic, so I started with teachers and it brought up 336708 results. After adding school librarians or media specialist, I only had 1513 results. After adding technology, I only had 405 results. This was still too many to work with, so I narrowed my topic asking for full text only and articles published from 2005-2008 since new technology is coming out at such a fast rate, and I want something current. After adding those limiters, I ended up with 26 results.
The seventh result was the one I chose.

Burk, Lynne F. 2007. “Don't Hesitate, Just Collaborate!” Library Media Connection 26, no. 3 (Nov-Dec 2007), p 40-41.

Abstract:
The over-riding goals of a quality school-library program are to "collaborate" with teachers, administrators, parents, and students; to "support" building and district initiatives; and to "integrate" the teaching of literature, information literacy, and technology skills into the subject-area curricula. Numerous studies since the 1990s, as well as personal experience, confirm a belief that collaboration with classroom teachers supports active and engaged learning, differentiates instruction, facilitates the use of a variety of resources, and ultimately influences student achievement. But, all too often, library media specialists read or hear about elaborate collaborative projects involving intensive planning between teachers and librarians, or involving protracted time frames, and are left with the feeling that accomplishing similar achievements is almost impossible. However, effective school library media specialists must demonstrate that they understand these challenges, know the curriculum, and are familiar with the benchmark objectives students must master. This article presents ten tips on how to develop a seamless pattern of collaboration with the classroom teachers across a variety of curriculum areas.

The tips for collaboration drew me to this article. Articles that just talk about collaboration but do not present a concrete way to implement strategies are not as practical for me. This article addressed integrating technology, but it also talked about collaboration on a larger scale which is relevant for school librarians. Though my focus is helping teachers with technology, I found that reading about other ways to collaborate with teachers to help students broadened my view. This search did lead to serendipity for me in a way. It was what I needed but also offered the unexpected that proved to be very useful.

Reflection: This type of search worked really well. Though it took time to get to the article I needed, the process of elimination approach seemed to get rid of completely irrelevant results. By the time I narrowed down to only 26 options, most were relevant to the topic I chose to explore, and I found several I would like to read.