Rose Boland

Over the last 50 years the role of the teacher-librarian has been evolving from one of the "keeper of the books" to that of a navigator on the information superhighway. In the last decade increasing amounts of education dollars have been spent on computer technology in our schools and in the last five years there has been a cry from many elements of society for schools to get on line or our children will get left behind. Teacher-librarians have been at the forefront of developing many special classroom activities and collaborative projects based on the use of the World Wide Web. The vast majority of work published in this area however, has focussed on the logistics of implementing this technology in classrooms. Teachers and elementary teacher-librarians in particular, are becoming increasingly concerned about the use of the free internet and the WWW in particular, as a research tool. There has been much written work published describing technology implementation in classrooms, but little on the critical questions of whether these practices are helping students learn and if they are, how? Through the use of qualitative methods of research including videotapes, audiotapes, and interviews with students and collaborating teachers, this proposal hopes to show what and how students learn using the WWW as a research tool in an elementary library setting. As well, the author is interested in finding out what are students' and teacher perceptions of the use of the WWW as a research tool.