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  • Essay / Information Behavior of Middle School Students

    The 21st century school library is the hub of student learning, with librarians assisting with research, encouraging students to read for pleasure, and developing mastery skills information. All of these aspects are important to the current generation of students who have been “raised with some familiarity with video games, email, instant messaging… Web 2.0 social networking habits, they have developed different engagement patterns those of previous generations. (Godwin, 2008, p. 52). School librarians must create information literacy programs to include Web 2.0 tools to effectively engage this generation. (Carroll, 2011, p. 27). Millennials or Digital Natives are the first generation to have grown up with technology and librarians must cater to these tech-savvy students by providing them with the opportunity to use Web 2.0 technology to find and share information, thereby engaging even the most reluctant students. Millennials are accustomed to online information and Web 2.0 technology. It is an essential part of their life and they can easily master new applications. This generation is made up of people born between 1982 and 2002, so this essay will focus on middle school students ages 12-15 who are in 7th, 8th, and 9th grade (Roehl, Reddy, and Shannon, 2013, p. 44) . ). These children are comfortable with change and “they enjoy learning to use new technologies through Internet searches, video games, texting, blogs, wikis, social networks, uploading photos, videos and music videos” (Godwin, 2008, p. 6). . Therefore, in order to engage middle school students in their learning, it is essential for school librarians to combine Web 2.0 technology with information literacy courses....... middle of article..... . at: Facet Publishing.Linik, JR (2012). Literacy 2.0: Teaching students the skills needed to succeed in our information economy. Education Digest: Essential Readings Condensed for Quick Review, 78(3), 25-29.Miller, C., & Bartlett, J. (2012). “Digital mastery”: towards critical use of the Internet by young people. Journal of Information Literacy, 6(2), 35-55.Miller, R. (2012). Social media, authentic learning, and integrated librarianship: A case study of dietetics students. Journal of Information Literacy, 6(2), 97-109. Roehl, A., Reddy, SL and Shannon, GJ (2013). The flipped classroom: an opportunity to engage millennial students through active learning strategies.(Strategies). Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences, 105(2), 44-49. Taylor, A. (2012). A study of the information-seeking behavior of the millennial generation. Search for information, 17(1).