ok, Joyce snagged me again! One last post today. I’ve heard of a 21st Century Vision Summit by AASL, so it is time to consider the question posed here: What does a 21st Century librarian look like? There is a considerable list here that Joyce started.
without looking at Joyce’s list: Right now I feel like you have to be quick!
Quick to learn, quick to see what is new, quick to hear what kids are talking about-and try their new things, quick to keep up with (even just aware of) what is happening on the edge-try something new regularly, quick to understand the dillemas teachers face everyday and how to help them just one little bit, quick to respond to district issues/needs, quick to introduce new technologies so the librarian is the one, quick to get home and have a life, and quick to get those hiking boots on and be in the mountains!
That’s my quick short list. (I don’t say technology, but it is at the heart of each idea) If I keep that in mind this year, only changing the hiking boots to ski boots, I’ll do great!
After looking at Joyce’s first ten I’ll pick two that fit for me right now… that’s reasonable right? (I also have to learn more about Web 2.0)
5. Consider new interactive and engaging communication tools also for student projects. Are we looking at digital storytelling, wikis, podcasts, streaming video as possibilties beyond paper and PowerPoint?
6. Consider just-in-time, just-for-me learning as your responsibility and are proud that you own the real estate of one desktop window on your students’ home computers 24/7.
I also invite Alaska school librarians to chime in here and make your own list. or visit my wiki page
Includes slides from presentations at the Building Learning Communities Conferenence. Many ed-blog people were there presenting see hitchhikr for a blog of the conference.
One slide show has 162 slides covering a lot of ground starting with, of course, an essential question. “Is it a good enough/why bother world?” My first glimpse of what an essential question can do came from reading about Joyce Valenza, and I’ve been on the band wagon ever since.
Seriously, the presentation is loaded with ideas each of us can use. Guess I’ll have to head east to see Joyce… she hasn’t been able to make it to Alaska.
Found this from Stephen Ambram’s blog and took his suggestion to subscribe to Kathy Sierra’s blog Creating Passionate Users. First check out the Ignore the Competition post. I think the graph Sierra made says it clearly, but worth reading.
Blasted! I can only get a fuzzy thumbnail image…
Then checkout today’s post on presenting. Many tips here that I will read to students… includes aspects of presenting that I would like students to see- so I need to work on my presentations to them!
“Media always portray new technology in alarmist, ‘the world ends tomorrow’ fashion,” she says. “You get the sense that MySpace is an online sexual orgy where adults and kids sleep together in some kind of culty illicit community. That’s really not what’s going on.” L. Kris Gowan
Great article by Regina Lynn about Myspace, teen sex and Internet Safety. Largely focuses on a program from Portland State University headed by L. Kris Gowen called the Virtual Mystery Tour: your guide to teens, sex and the Internet. The tour itself is not virtual, but they do presentations.
Our district uses iSafe. Librarians and teachers can volunteer for district sponsored training from iSafe, then we have access to all of their curriculum. An up to date thorough service. Has a whole program for parents too.
More significant quotes from the article:
“My goal is to get parents to ask more informed questions so they can have a dialogue with their kid without feeling like they’re at a quantum physics lecture,” she says. “I want them to be able to ask intelligent questions, to know the lingo, not just ‘what’s that MySpace thing?’”
A recent conversation with a friend (nice, conservative family) about their daughter and Myspace. They visit their daughters Myspace and get to know the conversation, friends, what they’re talking about, the ‘lingo’ and wow what an insight to what teens are thinking. They also have groundrules.
Treating the internet as merely another part of “the media” makes no sense, especially around sex. Other media can offer sexual content; the internet, even more than the telephone, offers sexual interaction — with peers, with educators, with performers and, unfortunately, with creeps, too. The internet is a medium. It’s not the media.
I added the last line to my favorite quotes: “The Internet is a medium. It’s not the media.”
I had already planned on upping my focus on Internet Safety this year at school. This reinforces that idea, and adding the parent training as well. I tried a parent training at a PTA meeting, but it was not well attended. Will need to start earlier and advertise more. Parents need to know. Some parents aren’t worried at all, while others are the uninformed alarmists. I do love working with parents though…
British engineers are converting street vibrations into electricity and predict a working prototype by Christmas capable of powering facility lights in the busiest areas of a city.
Energy- Another special interest of mine. (I started college majoring in Resource Management, moved to Alaska, got sidetracked and ended up a librarian…. ya never know.)
We had a recycling class at school last year. It was a hot thing. Students were enthralled with the whole idea of energy conservation. It gave me cause for hope.
The school librarian in me paused to think when I read this part of the post–
In a time of rapid change, to disregard information, because its source can not be incontrovertibly determined, would be to waste a wealth of useful content.Source, as a measure of information’s usefulness does not go away. However, I believe that one of the shifts that we will need to make in how we think about information and in the skills that we bring to bare on research is a shift away from source as the determining factor for using information and a shift toward value. The question will not always be: Is this an authoritative source?
Instead it will always be:
Does this information effectively help me accomplish my goal? Is it valuable to my mission?
Most certainly the source will often be a contributing factor in determining information’s value, but it will rarely be the defining factor.
Granted this quote is a bit out of context so read the whole thing. I have to agree that, especially looking at the level of publishing via blogs, considering the “source” definition is changing, but it is not going away. I don’t think we should not question the source.
I think we should broaden how we determine what is authoritative. We always have to guide students in how to determine if a source is authoritative. That totally depends on the information you are seeking and your purpose.
Questioning if information will accomplish the goal is part of the research process that we/I teach. I am happy that my teaching on evaluating sources covers both issues, but I see that more attention could be brought to this issue to encourage more critical thinking…
If I want to know how students hacked my library computer I hang with the geeks in the back corner for awhile, and learn a lot! They are the authoritative source.
School Library Leadership Academy LS591 Technology, Technique, and Text
Blogging Workshop - August 3, 2006
Anchorage, Alaska
We have just 90 minutes to cover a lot of territory. We will not finish today! Use this site to continue as a launch pad. It will not take long for you to have your own long list of resources and blog posts.
Wikkis in Education: article my Graeme Daniel contains lots of supporting examples and references on - well- wikkis in education
Goal: 1. Get a start on blogging. 2. RSS - Bloglines 3. Wiki Spaces
Part 1. Intro to blogs and workshop overview. (15 min)
My take on blogs and school and libraries.
profesional reflections/sharing/learning: This is the more traditional way blogs are used. There’s nothing like writing your thoughts for the world to read to make you think and work hard! This is an incredible road for learning and professional growth.
bring teachers on board: Just one role of the SLMS is to collaborate/lead in instruction and curriculum and incorporate information technology. Teachers can use blogs to manage their whole class. It’s a beauty to behold.
student blogs: This takes a little more work and policy defining, but students blossom in the world of blogs.
keep up with the world: Today bloggers use numerous tools to gather and disseminate information. (does that sound like our job?) Information literacy takes on a whole new meaning when you see, read, listen and learn how bloggers maximize time and effort, share and learn from each other.
also: school committees and groups, professional reading groups anything that needs a central location and an archive of discussion and resources.
Yes, it’s that easy! You will need to have access to email to recieve your account confirmation and setup your new blog.
Follow the directions online, or use wordpress handout.pdf Important note: Your username will be your URL and it CAN NOT be changed. You can change the title of your blog at will.
Need more detailed directions? Try these by KBoan.
CMSweBlog school blog used to facilitate staff reading of text for professional development. Set up by chapters with groups doing a review and all commenting.
Part 6. RSS — Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary
“RSS is real important technology that information specialist and educators would be well advised to harness sooner rather than later” Will Richardson’s RSS Guide
What I know about RSS:
RSS is part of the answer to the question, How do I keep up with everything that is happening? It’s kind of an information super store or your own news aggregator. Technically, an RSS feed is XML code that is generated by a website that sends certain updated content out to wherever it is requested. Much like regular news sydication.
Services like Bloglines allow you to create an account and subscribe to the RSS feeds that interest you. It is no longer necessary to visit each site separately to see what is new. Just read through your aggregator. Simply wonderful for blog and news updates. Emailed news or journals no longer need to clutter your mail.
If a teacher has students with blogs the teacher can subscribe to each student blog and have all of their submitted work sent to the aggregator to read and comment. What a handy thing… wish I had realized that a couple of years ago!
Turn that around and have students, parents, teachers or whoever subscribe to your teacher blog. No more class newsletters. Parents get the daily blog, homework, announcements, thoughts.
RSS feeds can also be setup to deliver updates to specific web searches. So, if you figured out a successful search string for global warming on Google advanced you could receive an RSS feed that would deliver any new content that shows up to your Bloglines aggregator. This can also be setup to load right to your blog. Possibilities?
Start your account TODAY! See handout page four.
Part 7. Wikis
This is how I explain it on my CMSreads pbwiki site:
What is a wiki? The word wiki is the Hawaiian word for quick. On a wiki website anyone can enter content or edit content. All of the writing on a wiki is a joint project among the community of users. That means that each person respects the writing of others, and each person is responsible for maintaining the site. Yes, if you see a mistake, fix it! If someone writes something, well- nasty, take care of it- you don’t need to “tell the teacher” or your mom. You have the power!
Of course there are many other examples most of all the Wikipedia.
Check out these wiki sites:
Wikipedia is the prime example of a successful wiki project.
Why Wiki Works for some information on the philosophy of wiki.
Davis Wikiis an example of how to promote community awareness… a nice idea.
Library Success is a best practices wiki for all librarians.
PBWiki - I used this for my CMSreads, also used for AKASLwiki. Formatting in pkwiki is done by typing simple codes like astericks and dashes etc. You need to use the wiki style sheet to get the hang of it.
Wikispaces - An account on Wikispaces comes with an Edublogs.org blog account. This is great because it helps put everything in one place. Plus, Wikispaces has a WISWIG formatting style. Just like a word processor… For this reason alone I like Wikispaces. Feel free to try it in the Sandbox for the academy at Teacher-Librarian wiki.
I hope you have learned as much as I have in the process of getting here!
First, I added the link to Pressit ( see the botton of the write post page in WordPress) so the webpage I want to write about automatically creates a new post with title and link… cool. only it didn’t work for the article I wanted. The criptic title/link is the current issue, March/April 2006 of Knowledge Quest .
School librarians often work with teachers and on our own to get kids to read, right. Reading fluency, reading often, reading lots, reading novels all lead to improved reading and therefore improved student achievement. (I hope someone is nodding their head, even it is only my one friend who I force to read this!)
In this issue is an intriguing, if not thought-shifting, article by Stephen Krashen examining data from a Program for International Assessment study. In the article “Home Run Research” Krashen poses the question “Is book reading necessary to promote high levels of literacy?”
In short, Krashen’s analysis looked at students reading short bits and longer texts. You have to read the short 2 page article. His his conclusion may cause you to think:
This analysis confirms that there are different paths to reading proficiency, and that long-text reading, generally book reading, is not a requirement. Either long- or short-text reading can bring students to the highest level of proficiency, a result consistent with previous studies showing the value of “lighter” literature (Krashen 2004).
I think I should do more reading on reading research!
Also, I’m trying to figure out this web publishing business, so if I post or use information incorrectly- someone can feel free to let me know.
Well, I’ve spent a bit of time trying other themes, and have found that many of them don’t show the links, tabs or tagline…. or anything. So I’ll try this one for a while. It shows my links in categories and has the pages near the top. Now I just need to create some content!
I read through the Blogging in WordPress PDF mentioned in the Dashboard written by K. Boan and found a few comments saying that certain themes or features just don’t work. I can live with that. It’s nice to know it’s not me.
BTW Boan’s blog is a goldmine. After a little snoopping I find Boan is the tech guy at Landrum Middle School. I’m green with envy… great website, tech services.. wow.
From the cover of Will Richardson’s new book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms. I bought 5 copies to take to my blog workshop in August. I should probably have 30! While I thoroughly believe in being as paperless as possible it is wonderful to have Richardson’s knowledge, experience and wisdom in paper at my fingertips. I think people like leaving a workshop with a book in their hand even if they have to buy it.
I discovered blogs and Weblog-ed in 2003 while working on my masters. I have never been, and am still, so inspired as when I read through Richardson’s writings and the incredible information disseminated through his blog.
Richardson states in his book that a blog is created every second (20), and that most are not kept updated. That would be me. This is my 4th or 5th attempt, so far so good. I’ve set up blogs for book discussions, reading programs, a journalism class, and a special community/school project (Alaskablog- site no longer active) that have all been, or are still, successful. It’s my personal blogging that I fail at, and a goal for this year. Which leads to another point that hits home for me in Richardson’s book.
We must understand the difference between journaling and blogging (20). I have never been a journal-type person, but I am far more intrigued with blogs. Here’s Richardson’s take-
Blogging is a genre that engages students and adults in a process of thinking in words, not simply an accounting of the days events or feelings (20).
It takes me a long time to put my thinking in words, but I love it. Students love it too. Teachers often think kids don’t think… they do, and they want someone to care. I have seen the depth of thought and enthusiasm from even the most reluctant student. It takes leadership, organization and the willingness to go where you have not been before.
Richardson’s book is as inspiring as his blog site, and thorough guide to blogging in education. I’m looking forward to this school year with a new enthusiasm and blogging!
has 162 slides covering a lot of ground starting with, of course, an essential question. “Is it a good enough/why bother world?” My first glimpse of what an essential question can do came from reading about Joyce Valenza, and I’ve been on the band wagon ever since. 
