Technology in Education
Outstanding Adjunct Faculty

Get to know our outstanding faculty. Each month, Lesley's Technology in Education division highlights the accomplishments of an adjunct faculty member.

Linda Braun has worked as a librarian and educational technology consultant for 23 years. In the not-too-distant past, being a librarian meant that you dealt only with books. However, Linda and others have led the way in expanding the librarian's job to include guiding students in the use of technology for collaborative learning, effective communication, information literacy and other purposes.

Linda started her career as a children's librarian in North Adams, MA. Her interest in technology grew as she watched children use an Apple IIE. "The technology wasn't much," she says, "but the children were hooked and I wanted to know more about why." She learned much on her own but decided that earning a degree in Technology in Education would enhance her skills and her career potential. She enrolled in a Lesley Technology in Education off-campus program in Norfolk, MA. After completing her degree Linda started her consulting and training business LEO, for Librarians & Educators Online (http://www.leonline.com/) and applied to become an adjunct faculty member in the Lesley Technology in Education program. But her leadership, vision and impact don't seem to stop.

Linda is currently on the board of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). She is in her second year of this elected three-year position. As a member of the board she serves as the liaison to the Teen Advisory Group Website Committee (TAGS), which is responsible for the TAGS sub-site of the YALSA website. Linda is also a member of the YALSA adolescent literacy task force. For more information on the work that this organization does go to http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/yalsa.htm.

An interview Linda conducted with Elizabeth Birr Moje on adolescent literacy will appear in the December/January issue of Public Libraries magazine. Two of her books were published in the spring and summer of 2003: Hooking Teens with the Net (Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.) and Technically Involved: Technology-Based Youth Participatory Activities for your Library (American Library Association). Linda has published three other books; you'll find information about them at http://www.leonline.com/about.html. All are well worth looking into.

Linda is a member of the evaluation team of the Library Connections (LC) project of the Archdiocese of New York, which focuses on revitalizing 36 school libraries in the diocese and promoting collaborative lesson planning and technology integration. See http://www.libraryconnections.org/aasl/ for more information on the project. In October, 2003 she took part in a panel presentation on evaluation practices related to the LC project at the American Association of School Librarians conference.

Linda receives rave reviews for the two courses she teaches for Lesley--ECOMP 6009 Authoring with HTML: Weaving World Wide Classroom Webs (http://www.leoclasses.com/lesley/authoring) and ECOMP 5004 Technology in the Language Arts Curriculum http://www.leonline.com/lesley/langarts/).

New York City is Linda's home, but she also spends time on an island off the coast of Maine with her husband and her dog.

Other outstanding Technology in Education adjunct faculty