Dive Brief:

• Mackin Educational Resources, a company that distributes print and digital media ed-tech products, has launched a "Transform Your School Library" campaign in order to convince schools to rely more on technology in that space.
• The company plans to hold national and regional conferences, webinars, and guest-speaking events to promote the campaign, and has launched a new website as well.
• "School librarians are now becoming educational leaders as libraries are being transformed into learning commons that K-12 students love to be in,” the company's president said in a press release.

Dive Insight:

Modern school libraries need to wrangle with the increased digitization of learning, and going digital likely has cost-savings benefits when it comes to expanding their collections.

Still, there's no need to rush. Effectively adopting any tech requires districts and schools to first ensure that teachers, librarians, or other educators tasked with incorporating new tools understand what they're doing and why. Conversely, educators also need to articulate their needs in advance of any rollout and fully understand how a specific product or platform can meet those needs. 

Without more teacher buy-in, a recent survey by TES Global and the Jefferson Education Accelerator noted that ed tech is less successful in the classroom. They found that 45% of teachers said that tech trainings had failed to make them more comfortable with new offerings. Further, 38% of respondents said they aren't involved in their school's decision-making process when it came to buying new ed tech products.