PREPARING TEACHER LIBRARIANS TO TEACH VISUAL LITERACY SKILLS THROUGH TECHNOLOGY-BASED GRAPHIC NOVEL RESOURCES

Today’s students need 21st-Century information literacy skills, in order to be college- and career-ready. These skills include technology literacy and visual literacy skills, among others. The use of digital graphic novels and comic-creation websites can motivate students, and help them develop both visual and technology literacy skills. Graphic novels have established themselves as a popular literary format with today’s youth and the guidelines and standards of several international educational associations promote their use in schools. For example, in its Position Statement on Adolescent Literacy (2012), the International Reading Association lists one of its principles as, “Adolescents deserve access to and instruction with multimodal, multiple texts.” (p. 7). Largely because of the research-based justifications for using graphic novels in the classroom, and the support for visual literacy in international standards, teacher librarians are recognizing that graphic novels are a powerful communication medium that can meet the informational and recreational needs of today’s learners. In addition, the engaging sequential art in graphic novels, and the combination of text and images, can facilitate learning for students with a variety of learning styles and abilities.

Digital graphic novels and comic creation websites can be used in creative ways to teach visual literacy, technology literacy, and writing literacy skills. The range of topics that are covered in digital graphic novels provide unique opportunities for teacher librarians to find multiple ways to use them with students across the curriculum. Comic creation websites are also proving to be engaging technology tools for teaching writing skills. Websites, such as Make Beliefs Comix, allow students to produce their own comic stories and view the work of their classmates. As technology leaders in their schools, teacher librarians are uniquely qualified to share these graphic novel resources with classroom teachers, and collaborate with them to enhance student learning. This session will present strategies for teaching pre-service teacher librarians how to collaborate with classroom teachers to effectively integrate technology-based comic and graphic novel resources into the K-12 curriculum.