In the summer of 2019, a pilot project was created to develop a program that allowed the librarians to collaborate with current students and young alumni to adapt/modify/maintain an information literacy site. The project started with adapting and modifying UCLA’s WI+RE program for the Upper School Library in order to provide online access to tutorials and handouts with information literacy best practices. The team's time was dedicated to researching ways to incorporate “design thinking” elements and educational pedagogy to create a new site that will be easily accessible and user-friendly for both the students and faculty.
Mrs. Miwa went to visit Doug Worsham at UCLA to discuss the WI-RE program. She thought a modified version of the program to create a similar website for the Upper School Library would be beneficial to students and faculty at ʻIolani.
Mrs. Miwa proposed the project to Mrs. Pfingsten who approved a summer pilot project to create a program and website at ʻIolani. Mrs. Okumura and Ms. Nagoshi kindly agreed to provide technical advice for the project. Ashlyn and Dane became part of the team to create the website and content.
Ashlyn and Dane spent six weeks not only creating the site, but also creating content. They also spent a lot of time finding ways to make creating new tutorials and handouts easy for the librarians.
After final meetings and changes, the site was launched on September 4, 2019.