Facebook: A School Librarian’s Tool for Building a Community of Readers

Abstract

In this paper Facebook is examined as an educational tool that can be used to facilitate the development of literacy skills. The philosophical assumptions underlying the Social Development Theory by Vygotsky and the Social Learning Theory by Bandura were used to substantiate the benefits students can gain from learning in a social environment such as Facebook. Librarians can help students to develop their literacy skills, by using the Literature Circle on facebook. Assigning readers roles such as literary luminary, synthesizer, analyzer, and evaluator and rotating these roles will allow readers to develop the various literacy skills overtime and to avoid monotony.