Books and Bytes

3rd Graders Rock!

2011-11-01T16:12:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I got the greatest letter about Erin Hunter's Warriors series--typed in business letter format--from one of my 3rd graders! He wrote:

To: Ms C
From: JR
Re: Original Warriors Story

Dear Mrs. C:

I like Warriors. I thought I would write you this becausee you are a great person and to thank you for getting the Warriors books to be enjoyed by Erin Hunter fans of all ages.
Thank you,
JR

He then went on to summarize the Warriors book he just read and enjoyed--and he IS a fan! What a genuine, heartfelt, typically 3rd grade thing to do! I do love my students! 3rd graders rock!

Just What Are Our Brains Capable of?

2011-07-31T08:53:00.008-05:00

Look at the amazing infographic below! Makes me wonder not necessarily what my brain is capable of, but rather what the brains of our students, sitting before us learning to take multiple choice tests, are really capable of. Aren't we running the risk of dumbing them down, anesthetizing them, to the point that we lose--or distort-- all that brilliance?

As a new school year begins to rev up, I hope to remember--each and every day--how amazing each of our kids is. Lofty goal, but worthy.

Infographic by Smarter.org

Chris Lehman's Keynote: ISTE 2011

2011-07-02T17:27:00.015-05:00

I am almost never able to listen to a presentation by Chris Lehmann without crying. He is such a powerful speaker and leader, and every time I get to see him--so far only virtually, but one day I'll make it to a conference--his message touches me. There's an overpowering sense of optimism in his work, and he always makes me think, plus, I come away feeling encouraged and energized.

Below is Lehmann's Closing Keynote at ISTE was posted yesterday, and I just spent an hour enjoying it, taking it in. He is preceded by his school's Slam Poets (at about 31 min) , and, as he said in his blog post yesterday, they were breath-taking too. They--the kids--are really what this is all about, aren't they? We lose sight of that in most of our schools, in the thick of things. The kids are the reason that I wanted to do this with my life.

Opportunities to hear keynotes like this one, and to take part in discussions on twitter and in web chats, etc. are truly brain-changing! That's why I value my online network so much--I learn from, and sometimes with, so many people who are so much smarter than I am! :)

My notes--nothing particularly deep--just some points that resonated with me:

The greatest lie of education: You need to learn this because you will need it some day. Why aren't we helping kids to think and act relevantly in the world!
Must develop kids' hearts, minds, tools and VOICE.
From a student: I don't need a network. I need a family. I need brothers and fathers and mentors. (how true)
A theme that permeates so much of Lehmann's work: Our goal is not, as so many would have you believe, to create the 21st Century workforce. That is far too low a bar. All of our goals should be to help our students become the 21st Century, and beyond, citizens that we so desperately need.
Lehmann wants his kids to come through it all being thoughtful, wise, passionate & kind. A much more worthy goal than most mission statements I've seen.
Great quote of the day: If the best we can imagine these tools to be is the next greatest flash card, better way to test our children, we will have failed.

Thanks Chris. Amazing as usual.

Doug Johnson @ TEDxASB

2011-06-29T09:01:00.008-05:00

How did I miss these TEDx Talks? Guess I had my head down "in the trenches" when they were posted, but I truthfully don't even remember reading about them!

In March of last year, several of my favorite thinkers spoke at the American School of Bombay, and the resulting videos are posted at the bottom of this page as reference. The theme of TEDxASB was Identity, and (one of my professional heroes) Doug Johnson's 18 minutes are embedded below--he muses about how our "digital natives'" identity must change what we do as educators.

The part that resonates with me is near the end of Doug's presentation, when he recounts Clay Shirky's story about bringing home a huge new LCD TV for his family. His young daughter, rather than being impressed, immediately asked, "Where's the mouse?"

Engagement rather than entertainment is what our students demand from schools. Johnson's challenge to us is that we all create a environments in our classrooms, libraries, schools that foster engagement--active interest. Our kids deserve that.

I wonder if my library program is engaging to all my students. I don't really think it is. I know for certain that it isn't for some students--especially those who are so thoroughly unengaged in the entire school experience.

What does that look like in an elementary library with a fixed schedule? I'd love to hear from others what they think!

Here are the other great TEDxASB presentations. They are all very much worth your time and thought! These are some amazing people! Engaging and entertaining! :)

Cell Phone Usage

2011-01-29T17:43:00.003-06:00

Today, the indomitable Angela Maiers posted the following infographic and asked what was most surprising to us. While not exactly surprising to me, I find the stats to be amazing evidence of the fundamental changes that are occurring in society and with the behavior of young people--and people in general. Changes that most schools are not only failing to properly acknowledge, but are in fact denying entirely. Take a look:

Via: Online IT Degree

If average teens are texting over 3300 messages per month, and are capable of texting blindfolded, probably in their own pockets, then it stands to reason that a considerable percentage of that texting takes place at school--whether we adults like it or not. Whether we're ready for it or not!

In my experience, with a few notable exceptions (none of them local to me), schools are a) spending a great deal of time and brainpower trying to figure out how to justify and fund the purchase of technology for student use, and b) spending a huge amount of time and effort trying to figure out how to keep kids from using the computers they're already carrying around in their pockets! The districts in my area confiscate cell phones and then charge parents $15 to pick them up. However, a colleague and friend of mine at a local high school told me that most teachers in her building just try to ignore when students have their phones out because the "problem" is so widespread that there is no way to stem it. She hates cell phones, and thinks we should ban them all and take them away from all her students. No discussion. But her own middle school student has one that is well-used and -loved! Is this not a huge disconnect between school and life?

My question is why are we fighting the wrong fight? If we stopped pretending that students are not going to have cell phones in their pockets and instead, concentrated on harnessing that incredible and ubiquitous power, would we not be serving our students better? Are we not doing them a disservice by failing to help them develop work-appropriate habits and skills for the modern world? Could we not use these devices to the advantage of the school "machine" rather than throwing resources at trying to eliminate them?

And don't even get me started on luddite faculty members who have no idea what an app even is...that's another post for another day...::big sigh::

I'd like to know what other people think--especially secondary school faculty. Are your schools doing anything to acknowledge that the world is changing in this way? Am I totally off-base? Is my friend right? Is it just too big a nightmare to deal with cell phones in a huge modern high school?

President Obama State of the Union 2011

2011-01-25T21:00:00.004-06:00

Above is a Wordle representing President Obama's State of the Union 2011. As I look at this, I can't help admiring the prominence of words like new, America and future. A fresh vision of the future is what drove me to vote for President Obama 2 years ago.

I am saddened and disappointed that words like schools, students and children are all but invisible in the overall vision, however. Our children need decisive leadership that encourages talented and caring educators to spend their lives enriching and changing young lives. How will that happen? I wonder if it can in the current system, current atmosphere.

Charmed

2010-12-12T19:00:00.006-06:00

Tonight, in a conversation with my husband, I was lamenting that I don't seem to be "in step" with my colleagues at school these days. "Why am I always so out of sync?," I asked. Without missing a beat, my hubby replied, "Confundus charm is the first thing to come to my mind."
Love that man...

Infographic: US Education Spending

2010-11-03T19:54:00.000-05:00

Thanks to @LarryFerlazzo on Twitter for calling attention to this great infographic from DegreeScout. It compares US ed spending to other federal spending, such as defense, the War on Drugs, Food Stamp Overpayment, etc.

What's wrong with this picture? The amount of money that is declared as "Unreconciled Transactions" (2003) is roughly HALF of what we spend on education! That's the best that we can do? Every two years, we lose track of (or fail to report) more money than we spend on our children's education in any 12-month period? Wow.

Think of that in household budget terms. Unreconciled Transactions being equivalent to the loose change that my family loses in the couch and under the car seats, we would only be able to spend about $50/year on our daughter's education! I think her college owes me a refund, btw...

I'm not sure the image I'm trying to embed below is working right, so if it's a mess, go to the link above and take a look at this infographic. It's very enlightening.

Created By DegreeScout Online Schools

Still to Go...

2010-07-21T15:43:00.003-05:00

Every summer I get in a frenzy about this time of year. There are only a few days left before back -to-school PD begins. Panic! The summer sales are on, many of the jobs around the house are as yet undone, I haven't gotten to visit with all my friends & family as much as I want, and I haven't read all the books I meant to! Whew!

Here's what's still on my "to read" pile! I've started 2 of them already, so I might have a fighting chance...so what am I doing here! Gotta go read!

Advocacy is Advocacy...Wherever It Comes From

2010-07-19T18:56:00.010-05:00

The Twitterverse was all ....atwitter....this week when the Old Spice guy mentioned libraries! Love the campaign, love the message, love the Fresno County Public Library's pouncing on this opportunity to snag a little cool publicity for libraries!

As for the critics mentioned in this post by Gwyneth Jones, I so totally agree with her! Why not just chill out? This is clever, funny and current! The Fresno Library couldn't have bought publicity this effective! Sometimes the point is just to have a little laugh when we can--and if it benefits libraries, that's even cooler!

Laming it Up For the Kids

2010-07-17T09:41:00.005-05:00

July is one of my favorite times of year! This is usually the month that I catch up on the reading--professional and otherwise--that I just don't get around to during the school year. I usually have various home improvement projects going during the month--this year, it's tiling the house, which necessitates painting walls, replacing and painting baseboards, napping frequently to avoid all of the above... I spend a lot of time on Twitter with my PLN there as we attempt to recharge our batteries for the coming year.

I also spend a lot of time viewing & thinking about professional conferences & presentations that I've missed during the year, or those that I need to see and think about again! ISTEvision is always a treasure trove of ideas and I love, love, LOVE the openness with which the ISTE approaches their annual conference. Almost everything is online--much of it streamed in real time. It really is phenomenal. ISTE ROCKS

This morning, I was catching up with the amazing Teacher Librarian Smackdown, and got no further than the first round, when I had to stop and go use one of the tools that I learned about! I created this Google Search Story to promote our library and it's theme for this year:

Cute, eh? And they've made it wildly easy to do on Youtube with the Google Search Story Video Creator!

After I created it though, I realized that it will be problematic for me to post on the library web site to share with my students--anything that I want to embed on my page is always a pain, but I can usually figure out a way to make it work in our arcane program!

No, the problem will come with the curriculum department, which has intermittently supported blocking Google over the years, and still maintains an anti-google stance, for the most part. They purchase Nettrekker yearly for student use, and it is a good tool, I admit! I find that it feels "artificial" to me however. While students can use it from home, and some do, the go-to tool for most people is still Google!

As a librarian, of course I encourage my students to use authoritative sources such as our online databases for their research. I want them--and their teachers--to go to these sources first when searching for reliable information! Additionally, I want them to consider using Creative Commons images and music whenever possible, and perhaps even use Nettrekker first, to see if a "safe" web site can be found using those tools. However, I also know that Google is the first place that most students, parents AND teachers go when they need to know something "on the fly." I want my kids to have the information literacy skills to discern which is reliable information--a daunting task these days! And it's a vital one as well. How can they do that if we create an artificial, thoroughly blocked experience for them at school? That certainly won't be the case for most of them when they go home to use technology!

So. Back to my really cute video.
I guess I won't put it on my web site. I may use it with kids later on to make the point that Google is a great tool to find certain types of information. Brings me to the point that my husband, a non-educator, is fond of making. He says that the education machine has an amazing ability to take a great idea and lame it up to the point that it's unappealing to everyone involved. I think he hit the nail on the head.

Reach!

2010-07-07T09:46:00.010-05:00

I've read Jeff Utecht's blog, The Thinking Stick, for a long time. I follow him on twitter. He's one of the many amazing people that I think of as my Personal Learning Network. SO, I'm very proud to have his new (and first, I think) book on my shelf! I bought a copy of Reach: Building Communities and Networks for Professional Development, even though he very graciously allowed free downloads for the first few days of publication. I did that too, but thought that it was only right to support the effort of a member of my PLN. I'm glad I did, too!

Although I was familiar with many of the tools and techniques for creating a PLN that Utecht focuses on, I found that his book provides the basis for a great "how and why to start" discussion. Reach is a book that I definitely plan to share this year with faculty members. Utecht explains how to find people to follow on sites like Twitter and Facebook, how to use RSS to make it easier to connect to your "tribe," and more! It's the why and the how of building a professional learning network or community online--and it's a very hands-on, practical approach. I think that it will be helpful to many of my colleagues who might be just about ready to begin reaching out for professional support, and building a unique community of learners for themselves. It could form the basis for a great PD series too, if I can find some teachers in my world that are ready!

Thanks Jeff for your work in writing this book, and for so freely sharing with your network!

Twitter Friends...Or Something Else?

2010-06-23T10:04:00.014-05:00

Today, in a twitter conversation with some of my network, I was marveling again at how that group has deepened my thinking and professional practice. Most of this network is comprised of people who live in other places. I don't have too many local connections in that community, unfortunately, but I touch base daily with teachers and librarians all over the world. I know very few of them in the traditional sense though.

My thinking was stretched this morning by Dr. Scott McLeod's post, and then the comments, on his Dangerously Irrelevant. Today he posed the question, what do we really know about the edublogger we're sitting next to at a conference?

My thought was, what does my network really know about me? Do I reach out and share appropriately--even with my own virtual community--a community that I have chosen? Let me say upfront that I obviously don't "produce" as much as I consume online, and in that respect, am just beginning in my journey. I'm trying to share more with my network, but constantly wonder if what I have to say is that important or interesting!

As I was thinking and reading and connecting in my nerdy middle-of-the-summer way this morning, an odd thought struck me. It has to do with a person that I consider a critical member of my PLN--a blogger, podcaster, twitterer, thinker that I have come to think of as a friend and mentor. I truly feel like I know her. I look forward to reading her thoughts on so many subjects, I love to hear what she has to share when she podcasts with others in my virtual PLN.

Now for the 2.0 part. Today she began following me on Twitter for the first time. I've "known" this person for years--had her voice in my head through my earbuds, read her words, cheered for her as she shared her victories with us all...and she doesn't really know of me at all!

It just struck me how weird it must be for her when she meets someone like me, who really already thinks of her as a friend. I wouldn't feel like I'd have to go through all the normal getting-to-know-you awkwardness if I met her at a conference. I could just pick up where her last tweet left off. Until today, she would probably be completely unaware of who I am. A very odd, one-sided thing. I guess we're all trying to feel our way through the relationships we form in virtual communities.

I'm glad she decided to follow me though. Now, if I meet her at a conference, she'll at least recognize my name, and maybe it won't be quite so....creepy and stalker-ish for her! :)

Photo from Flickr by Always Be Cool.

Making Stuff: A History

2010-06-16T06:53:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Carolyn Foote (@technolibrary on twitter) for pointing me to this thoughtful and thought-provoking post from English teacher, Katie Sauvain and embedded on The Digital Down Low .

There is so much to see and consume on the internet, that I too find myself creating less than I should--not exercising the mental muscles that I should. And I'm an adult! My students, who are immersed in this culture from such an early age, will fight this on a completely different level. Is this an even more creatively stultifying situation than my TV generation had, where a few content providers dominated the creative landscape? Ironically, it may be, due to the sheer amount of creation that is going on and easily accessible to our kids.

How does the library help? How do I assure that our library is a creation hub for our school culture? Much thinking to do this summer...and then action.

Students Connect...Thanks to Good Books!

2010-05-04T19:30:00.018-05:00

You've all been where I was this morning: caught underprepared (read that "woefully unprepared") for my day's classes! The days have been filled with TAKS testing, crazy schedules, and meeting upon meeting, library fund raising, blah, blah...and I had simply not prepared sufficiently for my big kids! Twitter network to the rescue! Before school, I saw a tweet about Betsy Bird's 100 Best Children's Books, and the Animoto video that Maggi Idzikowski prepared to go along with it. They saved my day!! What a great basis for a sort of wrap up session with our soon-to-graduate 5th graders!

I started off with the video, first relating to them something that a professor and mentor of mine, Dr. Ruth Cox Clark, used to tell us: everyone should read Charlotte's Web once every ten years. As with most good literature, you will get something entirely new from it each time you read it! As they watched the books of their childhood flash across the screen, they exclaimed over and over again, "Oh! That was a good one!" or "I LOVED that one! Remember when Mrs. S read that to us?" All of the classes--even the ones peopled with some of our harder-to-engage students--had great discussions about the books they remembered and who they read them with! It was a great exemplar of the power of literature!

Since our last checkout is coming up soon, I challenged them all to try a book from the list that they have never read before. The books just about flew off the shelves! Hopefully many of them will be read, too! :/ All the classes certainly spent time reading and talking about their books and memories before they left--and without my directing it! It was a nice thing!

Before they went back to class, students entered the name of a children's book that they'd enjoyed & that they thought every student should read before leaving our school. Then I used Tagxedo to make this word cloud for our web site!

I'm thankful for my Twitter network! I'm going to stop blogging and tweeting now though, and prepare for my next couple of weeks' classes! I promise! ....is it summer yet?

Twitter & PLN

2010-05-03T20:15:00.009-05:00

Right now, just about any media outlet, product, celebrity or local business seems to have their Twitter name prominently displayed, yet in my everyday life, almost everyone thinks I'm a bit...odd...to even bother with twittering. I think this is so odd, because some of my most valuable professional colleagues are people in my Twitter network! I find useful websites, I get great ideas to try with our students, I discover articles and current research or advocacy tips--all from this valuable network of people that I've cobbled together for myself on Twitter. I'd say it's the most valuable tool I have in my toolbelt! There's great comfort in finding that I'm not the only one in the world that spends time thinking of things like core common standards vs. AASL standards or "new and emerging tech to promote reading," which brings me to an important point!

As has been said many times over, the reason that most people who try but end up being puzzled and disdainful of Twitter is that they do not have a relevant group of people to share with & learn from. Hashtags help with this dilemma, and for the teacher librarians out there, Joyce Valenza's suggestion of using #tlchat could make the difference!

Here's how to use the hashtag to create our own Teacher-Librarian learning network:
Go to Twitter.com and type #tlchat in the search box. You don't even need to log in!
Up pops a list of recent tweets by teacher librarians about....library-ish stuff! At right, look at a typical example of tweets--they're from tonight.

There are so many links to be found that you could easily lose an evening just learning. Then, once you see who is tweeting with the #tlchat hashtag, you will have a number of interesting people to follow!

Once you find a few people to follow, you can see who they follow, and you are on your way to building your own network! Wildly valuable, and quite addictive....

Heads in the Sand

2010-05-03T18:35:00.005-05:00

This afternoon, I sat down to check out my Google Reader, and found that one of my amazing Texas library colleagues, Carolyn Foote , had crafted an excellent and wonderfully thought-provoking blog post entitled No Heads in the Sand Here. It’s a must-read, in my opinion, for teacher librarians—in fact for any librarians—as we face a changing landscape in our profession.

I started writing the following as a comment on Carolyn’s post, but it got longer and longer, so I decided maybe it was really more of a blog post in itself! Thank you Carolyn for so accurately capturing the zeitgeist of the library conversation of late!

I too love Hazen's wording in the article you cite. Librarians "support and sustain ... meaningful inquiry” and through effective collection development, we consciously create a “carefully crafted, deliberately maintained, constrained body of material.” Wow! I love that!

Librarians fill a unique role in the educational framework, in that we have these long-term goals of “meaningful inquiry” and a “deliberately maintained” body of sources uppermost in minds as we work with students. Classroom teachers care about these topics too, of course, but have many other objectives to meet as well. On many school campuses, it is the librarian that focuses student effort and guides them to use authoritative sources effectively. In an age when information of all types is abundant and ubiquitous, critical evaluation is a crucial skill—perhaps the crucial skill—for our students to acquire.

Foote’s words and those of the esteemed professionals cited in her post bolster my resolve as I find myself and many of my colleagues, more and more of the time, having to fight against the perception that librarians are obsolete. This, even as we make enormous, unique contributions to student success--supported by a huge and persuasive body of research, might I add. Thanks, @technolibrarian, for giving me a document to look back at that will help me to clarify my thoughts & words as I have these discussions with others. You’re always giving me great food for thought!

Creative Commons Explained

2010-04-19T06:40:00.006-05:00

Thanks to Joyce Valenza and Melissa Techman for pointing out this handy explanation of the ins & outs of creative commons licensing! Neeru Paharia, Ryan Junell and Matt Haughey did a great job in explaining a topic that is confusing and frustrating to many users who don't think about these copyright issues daily! Especially useful are the examples they give of when a user might want to use each license. This is a very practical guide. I'm embedding their presentation below so I can remember to use it in professional development w/ faculty & students.

Creative Commons : Spectrum of Rights

View more presentations from Yann GEFFROTIN.

Access Justified

2010-04-16T06:46:00.006-05:00

Working in a district that typically employs what Wes Fryer refers to as "draconian" filtering policies, I am acutely aware of the frustrations caused by such uber-control. Our students can't access any sites labeled by the filtering company as "social forums," making it impossible for them to utilize Flickr, Voicethread, Glogster, Animoto, Google Books, public wikis/blogs or any number of web resources that could engage them and make their learning tasks more authentic, or current.

Recently, however, the district has begun to loosen the reigns on teacher logins, finally treating us slightly more like professionals than kindergarten students. Of course, even we can't access YouTube at school, even the entirely appropriate videos that might provide a rich resource for our students. Whether this restriction is for reasons of limited bandwidth or mistrust, I am not certain--perhaps I should give "them" the benefit of the doubt on this. Interestingly, teachers are now able to access Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc.--although we have been trained by the district that actually USING those tools at school is discouraged, as that would be unprofessional--as if banal posts are the only posts possible on Twitter. Go figure. They obviously do not connect with the people that I do on Twitter--professional educators who collaborate and enrich each others lives daily, and in real time, through this "dangerous" and "frivolous" social forum!

I relate this story because this past week, one of our administrators found that her access to Facebook was a crucial link in defusing a cyberbullying situation that popped up with some of our 5th graders.* Because she could access Facebook and determine that a threatening message had indeed been posted, she was able to deal with the bullying and confer with parents of the students involved before the situation spiraled out of control. She later came to me and voiced her relief that she is now able to use this tool. I asked her to please remember this situation, and to talk about it with her peers in administration. Slowly, I hope that the message might spread, that social networking and social learning is not inherently bad. Students and adults are going to make mistakes in its use, but if we adults aren't in the mix with the kids, how are we ever going to guide them to make better choices and learn from their mistakes?

*Yes, we all know that 5th graders aren't old enough to legally use Facebook--and we've discussed this fact with them and with their parents--but we also know that they use it anyway. Many of them have accounts that their parents set up for them, according to a recent informal survey that I did with our students.

Did You Know 4.0

2010-04-10T10:06:00.006-05:00

The latest Did You Know video below. Wow! This is the kind of game-changing information that I don't think most teachers/administrators "get". Last week, in a conversation with colleagues, two were shocked when I said that many lower-income families and developing countries have totally skipped the "computer on the desk" model of connecting with the world, and gone directly to a powerful computer in their pocket instead. They were surprised, maybe even a little incredulous, to think of a cell "phone" as a small computer. These were young (30 yrs old or less) teachers, too! I'm obviously out of step w/ my colleagues, because I couldn't believe that they were surprised! Digital divide, Texas style.

Community Outreach to the MAX!

2010-03-01T18:36:00.005-06:00

Wow! What an amazing example of effective community outreach! This gives me so many ideas! Kudos to Starkville, Mississippi's schools!

Starkville School District "Believe" from Broadcast Media Group on Vimeo.

Biblioburro an Inspiration

2010-02-27T06:59:00.004-06:00

Thanks to a colleague, I found this wonderful story from CNN's Heroes series. It fits so perfectly with one of our Bluebonnet Nominee books for 2010-2011, That Book Woman by Heather Henson & David Small! This story is current & contemporary though, and will bring this story full circle to our kids.

Luis Soriano is a teacher and evangelist for education and the power of literacy for children and adults in rural Columbia. Twice a week, he saddles his 2 burros, Alpha and Beto (LOL), and carries 120 children's books, to the far reaches of his region--a journey of up to 8 hours a trip! Not only does he deliver books for these young minds to devour, but he teaches lessons he's prepared, and supports the adults in these families as some of them learn to read as well.

What a mission, and what a man! Thanks CNN for bringing his story, his integrity and his passion for the power of literacy to us all!

From the CNN web site:
Want to get involved? E-mail Luis Soriano at eldoctosoriano@hotmail.com

Too Late to Apologize: A Digital Storytelling WOW!

2010-02-13T07:19:00.009-06:00

Thanks to the amazing Joyce Valenza for pointing out this video. From her blog post:

E-book creators, Soomo Publishing describes Too Late To Apologize: a Declaration by Tim Alden Grant, as

our first satirical video project and is part of our ongoing effort to facilitate learning in creative, innovative ways.

It was that brilliant music video remix of the Timbaland song that drew me into their e-book site.

What an amazing piece of storytelling. I'm working w/ our oldest students on the idea of telling a story with images--great example! And it even fits their curriculum!

View in full screen w/ students to get the lyrics scrolled across bottom. Wow!

Good Libraries

2010-01-25T06:38:00.004-06:00

Wow!
Doug Johnson did it again! His post today is right on the money! In these times, when so many of us are fighting for our libraries to stay open, professionally staffed, and even nominally funded, Doug has given us some crucial advocacy tools.

What Does a Good Library Tell You About a School?

It's a must-read and a great post to share widely!

Great Advocacy Tips To Consider

2009-12-20T10:58:00.003-06:00

An interesting presentation full of school library advocacy tips appeared in my Google Reader this morning. It is shared on docstoc , and created by some Canadian colleagues, I believe. Frankly, I do not know how the person who shared it on docstoc is associated with the creators, and assume that it was meant, by the creators (Sharon Armstrong & Valerie Bureau), to be shared. I hope that Armstrong or Bureau will notify me here if this was not their intention.

This presentation outlines dozens of interesting ways to advocate for your school library program--practical ways to use data, schedule creatively, and meet student needs in the less-than-perfect situations that many of us find is our reality! Well worth a look!

keep -

K12 Online 09 is Here!

2009-12-01T06:10:00.004-06:00

Hooray!
It's time again for the K12 Online Conference to begin! I can't wait! This is one of the most useful and exciting conferences around--and it's FREE! Thanks go to Wes Fryer and the many conveners that have put in so, soooo many hours making this conference happen! It is a lasting and significant professional learning experience for so many of us all over the world!

Join the sharing and learning, starting Friday, Dec 4! ( Schedule is here.) Until then, enjoy Kim Coffino's thought-provoking PreConference Keynote presentation, Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence and the Future of Education. Be sure to join the discussion, sharing and learning on the K12Online Ning as well!

Sir Ken Robinson on The Element

2009-08-22T18:13:00.005-05:00

I discovered Sir Ken Robinson through my PLN a couple of year ago, and he is one of the people that I most love listening to and learning from. What a mind he has. I would love to hear him at a conference one of these days. He's very eloquent and always makes me think differently about the world.

The video below supports his latest book, The Element, and in it, Robinson explores what element it is that elevates us to greatness. He contends that those who have a passion for our job are the more successful and fulfilled. Our task as educators is to connect our kids to their passions and engage them through those passions. Sounds a lot like a differentiated modern classroom to me--a goal/dream for many of us.
Enjoy!

Online Curriculum--is It Improving?

2009-08-16T12:15:00.012-05:00

From a link in Wes Fryer's post today, the following video from Dr. Jose Bowen of SMU really hit home:

Online multimedia tools (podcasts, videos, slideshow tools) enable professors to deliver lectures online and, in turn, facilitate authentic learning through discussion and exploration in the face-to-face setting. What an inspiring vision that is! How I wish that this kind of leadership and vision proliferated in today's schools and universities!

I envision a totally online classroom being successful with this model too, if discussion boards are adequately facilitated by interested and skillful faculty. Unfortunately, in my recent online grad classes at a Texas university certainly did not engage me in this way. I'm wondering if most online courses--both 9-12 and university--are so poorly designed.

My daughter, a sophomore in college, is currently living the nightmare of poor online curriculum design, and it is such a shame! This summer, she has taken both an online German language, and a political science class to satisfy degree requirements at her university. They have both been horrifically tedious for her and I would dare to guess that very little authentic learning has taken place--it's been more about us paying for the course and her checking the course off her list. I daresay no meaningful learning has taken place, although she has earned A's in the classes. Very frustrating in a time when an engaging and community-enhanced curriculum could have provided a rich experience.

Her current poli sci course literally consists only of reading a chapter from the breathtakingingly expen$ive text, and taking a 20-question online multiple choice quiz over it. Repeat--for twenty chapters! To be fair, the professor has tried to provide some relevant contemporary content to the course by assigning several extra credit readings (even John Stewart's America) and Frontline videos. She's really enjoyed those, and has wanted to talk about them--fortunately, she has her father and me! There is absolutely no collaborative element to the class, and unfortunately, the interesting, contemporary content serves only as extra credit--how many of the students don't even bother to do the extra credit, much less discuss it with someone?
Watch video/take quiz/get extra points. No discussion or exploration of the subjects at all? Can't we do better than that?

Are most online courses utilizing the multimedia and collaborative tools in the way that Dr. Bowen encourages at SMU, or is my experience and that of my daughter the norm? Are more engaging programs on the rise, I hope?

25 Ed Tech Leaders to Follow

2009-08-04T08:48:00.004-05:00

Wow! Thanks Lisa and Liz for a great list of Ed Tech Leaders to follow! This will be a great resource when colleagues ask questions like "but who do I follow on twitter that will give me good information and not junk?" Great list!

Of course, I'd add Liz Davis (twitter: @lizbdavis ) and Lisa Thumann (twitter: @lthuman )to the list!!

BLC 25 Ed Tech Leaders

View more presentations from Lisa Thumann.

Public Schools vs Public Libraries

2009-07-02T10:30:00.002-05:00

Mac Thecaster is a young video life blogger, and the following piece is an articulate and engaging argument for intellectual freedom & how the library respects and encourages it.

I found this video through a new twitter friend, @WillSwartz , who first embedded this on his blog.
It's over 2 years old, but I'd never seen it. What do you think?

Favorite Picture Books

2009-06-07T17:02:00.022-05:00

I discovered a new school librarian blog today through a new Twitter contact! The blog's called Top Shelf, and it had some interesting posts! Check it out!

One of her recent posts listed her Top 10 Favorite Picture Books, and that's a meme that I just couldn't pass up! Here are mine! My favorites today, that is. I'd probably give some different answers on another day..

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
I remember checking this book out just about every week of 1st grade! I loved it sooo much that I even bought a lithograph of one of the illustrations a few years ago. It is a seminal piece of children's literature, and the quintessential picture book, IMO.

Animalia by Graeme Base
I loved this intricate picture book so much the first time that I saw it, that I bought a poster set and hung it up in my middle school MATH classroom! The kids were captivated by the illustrations! I may have been a librarian even then, and I didn't know it!

My Big Dog by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel
I just LOVE Merle the cat! This is a sweet story of home and belonging, and acceptance! I think this team (Stevens and Crummel) is one of the treasures of today's children's literature--any of their picture books could have made my list. I love My Big Dog the most though!

Once Upon a Cool Motorcycle Dude by Kevin O'Malley
My students absolutely love this silly picture book told in 2, very distinct, voices! Kevin O'Malley visited our school last year, and I don't think any of us will forget it soon! What a character he is! Even before his visit, I couldn't keep our multiple copies of this book on the shelf! It's a hit with teachers, boys, girls, primary-aged and intermediate kids! Check it out if you haven't already!

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka & Lane Smith
What kids don't love this silly collection of fractured fairy tales! It's a perennial favorite in our library!

Martin's Big Words by Doreen Rappaport & Bryan Collier
Not every single book on my favorites list is a silly one! Martin's Big Words is such an affecting work, and I see something different in it every time I share it with students. Wow! This is what makes children's literature exciting and amazing!

Pigs Aplenty, Pigs Galore! by David McPhail
This picture book just makes me laugh to think about it. That Elvis pig is just a hoot! McPhail's use of a black background just makes the story come alive. I love this one!

My Dinosaur by Mark Alan Weatherby
I love this quiet story of imagination! I love that the main character, who love-love-loves her dinosaur friend, is a girl and not a boy. I love the soft illustrations and the small details that keep kids interested. Notice the wallpaper in the girl's room, the dinosaur's eye peeking in the window, his shadow falling across her lawn! I also love that my students applaud when we finish reading this sweet tale. Lovely.

Click Clack, Moo: Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Betsy Lewin
Cows that type are just plain enjoyable!

The Rainbow Goblins by Ul De Rico
Maybe slightly heavy-handed, as far as the storyline goes, but I have such sweet memories of reading this book over and over to my nephew when he was small! He reads it to his daughters now...The illustrations are stunning and unique.

What are your top 10 picture books?
Tag them with top10picturebooks! It'll be interesting to see people's picks!

Seems Familiar

2009-03-29T18:00:00.000-05:00

Under the heading of "the more things change, the more they stay the same..."

What do Ben Franklin and Matt Drudge have in common?
Yesterday's pamphleteers = today's bloggers. Interesting take on mass communications!

Watch CBS Videos Online

Another Wow!

2009-03-28T07:05:00.003-05:00

Yet another amazing application--this time, an iPhone ocarina (flutelike instrument) orchestra! Stanford. Asst. Professor Ge Wong created an iPhone app that turns the device into an ocarina--the player blows into the microphone and moves fingers as if on a wind instrument to make music. Wow. Further, he demonstrates another app that links players all around the world.

Dr. Wong makes some interesting points about these technologies bringing musicians from all parts of the world together--flat world in evidence.

Michigan: 21st Century Media Center Video

2009-01-28T06:23:00.007-06:00

The importance of the media center to student achievement is highlighted by the Michigan Library and the Michigan Association for Media in Education in this video, just posted to YouTube.

Hooray for you, Michigan libraries, for being proactive in stating your case in this difficult economy--and on YouTube too! You've given libraries and their supporters a tool to use in discussing the true importance of dynamic school libraries to student achievement, which may, in the end, help save some library programs!

Are there videos such as this available from other states, I wonder?

Introduction to Creative Commons--A Video

2008-12-27T10:13:00.003-06:00

Thanks to Steve Hargadon on the Classroom2.0 ning. He posted a link to this great video that I think does a wonderful job of quickly explaining what Creative Commons is and how it came about.

This would be a good intro for teacher PD. Only problem that I see is that in our district, all social media sites like youtube, flickr, photobucket, etc. are blocked for students. Teachers can now access them though, so for photos, flickrstorm would be a good option to share with them as well.

Here's the video to share:

Edublog Awards 2008

2008-12-24T09:18:00.005-06:00

In his blog post yesterday, David Warlick thanked his readers and the Edublog Awards for conferring a Lifetime Achievement Award upon him. What a fitting tribute to a man whose work has impacted so many people--by challenging our thinking and by so incisively analyzing the changing world and what it might mean to our profession and our kids.

I've followed David Warlick since I was lucky enough to see his presentation at the ALA Annual Convention in New Orleans in 2006. His presentation inspired me to read Friedman's The World is Flat, and later, Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind, two works that have helped me to guide my young college-aged daughter, and to change my practice as a librarian. That one hour that I spent in Warlick's workshop truly changed my brain--changed the way I look at librarianship for the 21st century, as well as education in general! Yesterday, I was excited to get Warlick's latest book in the mail: Redefining Literacy 2.0. I can't wait to read it-- I know it will reinvigorate my thinking.

In his post, Warlick worries that the Lifetime Achievement Award might indicate that he is a doddering old man at the end of his career. I can't imagine that this is even close to truth. It's just a much-deserved thank you to a man that provides leadership and challenges so many others to think about things a bit differently, inspiring those of us "in the trenches" to professional practice that will (hopefully) serve our students well in this changing world!
Thanks David! And Congratulations!!

The Week in Rap!

2008-12-14T11:37:00.011-06:00

I learn the most amazing things through my professional network of people all over the world! Today I was listening to the Seedlings at Bit by Bit podcast, and Bob Sprankle's Geek of the Week was The Week in Rap. Oh my goodness! What a wonderful and engaging tool for the classroom! It is a weekly current events video--in rap! From Flocabulary, which is a NYC-based project (I need to read more about it) that works with infusing hip-hop into educationally based products. Very interesting.

Here is a sample of a recent week in rap--a particularly monumental week it was too: Election Week 2008 in the US.

The Seedlings at Bit by Bit podcast this week was particularly full of great links too--even better than normal!! Thanks Bob and Alice and Cheryl! Carla was a great guest and I learned so much this week from you! Wow!

Nearest Book Meme

2008-12-03T06:33:00.006-06:00

"The sun was shining." What a disappointing sentence to pull from such a wonderful book! One of my favorites!

Wonder what I am talking about? Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk blog encouraged us all to take part in this meme by Stephen Abrams of Stephen's Lighthouse

Rules: * Get the book nearest to you. Right now.
* Go to page 56.
* Find the 5th sentence.
* Write this sentence - either here or on your blog.
* Copy these instructions as commentary of your sentence.
* Don't look for your favorite

Web Site Evaluation: UDTechToolkit

2008-11-23T15:48:00.008-06:00

A key component of No Child Left Behind is that every child should demonstrate appropriate learning growth yearly. Joyce Valenza and Karen Janowski’s website, UDTechToolkit is an excellent source of information and links supporting such learning for all students.

On over a dozen pages, the website clearly indexes various assistive technologies freely available on the Internet for classroom use. There are pages of links for such tools as text-to-speech, research, literacy and math. The site is wiki-based, a dynamic and interactive format enabling users to add relevant information of their own. It is graphically appealing, with a Glogster interface as the home page. Screencasts, and videos appear on many pages, effectively modeling good design for users with different learning style preferences. The only drawback that I detect with UDTechToolkit is that the Glogster interface may be blocked by some school districts, thus removing one of the most user-friendly aspects.

The authors of the site are clearly authoritative in their fields. Valenza, a prominent librarian, educator and speaker, is the blogger behind Neverending Search. Janowski is an assistive technology consultant and well-known blogger at EdTech Solutions: Teaching Every Student.

UDTechToolkit is a valuable resource for 21st century classrooms, and I highly recommend it. Today’s classrooms must be student-centered, continually meeting the needs of all learners. Assistive technologies such as the ones discussed here are helpful for all students, not only those in special education, so I see this site as a wonderfully rich source of information for 21st century learners.

Fair Use: Best Practices for the 21st Century Classroom

2008-11-12T06:20:00.006-06:00

Yesterday, the Center for Social Media (American Univeristy) and the National Association for Media Literacy Education, in collaboration with several other organizations, including National Council of Teachers of English released a new Best Practices document concerning fair use for 21st century education. I haven't had a chance to fully study it yet, but I'm looking forward to reading the document and getting my thoughts together to revisit it all with my faculty.

Below is a video from their site that's worth sharing.

Digital Citizenship

2008-11-04T18:29:00.011-06:00

Thinking about our internet safety curriculum...like so many others, I don't like the emphasis on "safety" that this title entails. To me, "internet safety" implies that the internet is so frought with dangers that we must go to great lengths to innoculate our kids! As I believe Nancy Willard's work suggests, our students don't set out to do dangerous things on the internet, and child predators are not victimizing huge masses of children engaged in everyday activities. As mentioned on EdTech Weekly this week (was it John Schinker who said it?) bad stuff happens on the internet to people who engage in dumb (or risky) behavior.

I think our focus needs to be on giving students the tools to act responsibly when they're using any technology. Prevention, training and making wise choices should be at the root of our message. "Internet safety" leaves out the most vital concept of the curriculum: citizenship!

So, in that mindset, I've decided to minimize my use of the term as I work with my students. I'm going to emphasize citizenship. Great message on this historical election day, eh?

Here's a wordle I came up with to use:

Collaborative, Student-Driven Classrooms

2008-10-20T05:46:00.004-05:00

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach gave a great keynote at Maine's ACTEM conference last week, and Bob Sprankle has posted it on his site, Bit by Bit. Wow! What a great keynote to share with administrators.

Nussbaum-Beach speaks of the shift in teaching and learning that should be happening in our classrooms--a shift to a student-driven, globally connected model. One-to-one programs like the one in my district won't be successful without this major shift. I don't think it's widely understood though. I wonder if administrators get this crucial shift that is necessary. And if they don't "get it", will the teachers? Do administrators have the leeway to lead in a different way, to embrace this shift? I suspect not.

So how do we ensure a successful on-to-one?

Nice Tag Cloud...

2008-09-25T18:46:00.011-05:00

I liked the tagcloud I made today on Wordle using my Delicious tags. Shaped nicely like a tree--nice metaphor. Now I need a catchy name for it. Tree for Tomorrow's Learning? Tree2.0? If I were cleverer, I'd come up with something wonderful...ideas?

Blocked Bytes Week

2008-09-25T05:58:00.007-05:00

This week, Doug Johnson (Blue Skunk Blog) called for an addition to Banned Books Week. He states:

if we are truly committed to "Freedom to Read" what we really need is...Blocked Bytes Week

How true! I guess that's why he's Doug Johnson!
As are many (if not most) American K-12 educators, I am continually frustrated by filtering in my district--although it has gotten better this year, admittedly. We're lucky in that fact, I suppose.

I just wonder how it is that we're supposed to guide students and foster good cyber-citizenship in them if we are blocked from the "teachable moments." A related example of this is a statement made by my principal in a school-wide professional development session before this school year started. She stated that there is no reason to ever exchange an email with a student. Her takeaway from district administrative training was that exchanging email is so inherently frought with dangers that teachers should never take that chance. She said if a student emails a teacher, that teacher should call them on the phone and talk to the parents and then talk to the student. While I am relatively certain that this was not the intent of the district educational technology leadership, it was, nevertheless, how she interpretted policy. Oh my. We have spent millions of dollars on technology in this district, have a particularly well-respected leader in the district ed-tech department, and principals still come away with misconceptions like that. No amount of talking will change her mind, because she is blinded by the idea that inappropriate things might be said in email and that might put both students and teachers at risk. Period. It made me sad and frustrated to hear that.

Thanks Doug Johnson, for fighting for freedom along with us! Reading freely and exploring ideas, both in print and digital form, are cornerstones of democracy and freedom.

Kwout it!

2008-08-12T17:57:00.005-05:00

Trying a new tool that I read about called Kwout. Don't really know why it's called that--I think a lot of people in my world would be more likely to try tools if the language didn't get in the way, but that's another post...

Via a widget in my Firefox browser, Kwout does this:

Twitter via kwout

That is a screen capture of a piece of my twitter page this afternoon.

I can capture a screen shot easily and quickly and make it any size I need it to be. This is done with a useful little slider that sizes your kwout so you can see exactly how big it'll be before you save/upload it--love that. They mashup with Blogger so that it's wildly easy to post to my blog. Cool thing is that it says the hyperlinks within the graphic above are still hot, although I can't tell as I type this. They're not now, but they should be once this goes live. I'll see how useful it ends up being. Like it at first blush!

A Vision of University Classrooms Today....

2008-08-08T09:36:00.012-05:00

In a post today, Wes Fryer relates a conversation he had recently with a university professor at Oklahoma Christian University, where all students are required to use Apple iPhones or iPod Touches. He relates:

When I learned this professor taught at OC, I enthusiastically said, “Wow, you’re going to have all your students bring iPhones to class this year!” His response was:
Boy I sure hope not. I have a tough enough time having them keep their laptops closed all the time during class.

I almost passed out on the spot, but I was torn by a simultaneous urge to weep.

Sadly, Wes's post reminds me of an experience that my husband and I had at a large north Texas university (over 38,000 students) a few weeks ago at Parent Orientation--our daughter is an incoming freshman there this fall. At one of our sessions, the Dean of the Honors College spoke to us. She was an engaging and entertaining speaker, using humor and compassion to make her point to a room full of slightly tender freshman parents, not yet entirely ready to set their kids off to the wider world . I was really feeling good about her message of helping all students to reach their individual goals, guiding them as they transition to the adult world with skills as well as a solid ethical base...

THEN she said it.
She said that she makes it clear on the first day of any class she teaches that no laptops, cell phones or handheld devices are to ever be brought to her lectures. Students are to take notes with pen and "an old-fashioned yellow legal pad." Then, she said, if they felt the need to use their computers in studying or "transferring their notes later", she was OK with that. In her mind, the act of writing information down with pen and paper passes for kinesthetic learning, I suppose. And, after all, what would students ever do academically with a computer other than transfer the professor's wise words to a MS Word document? It all made me sad too, Wes, and so vividly brought to mind Michael Wesch's A Vision of Students Today.

As Wes noted in his post, this particular dean had no concept of the possibilities that 21st century tools can offer--and it seemed to be black & white to her. Computers can not be useful tools for learning in her classroom (or lecture hall). There is no room for the question How do we harness the power of this tool that keeps popping up in my lecture hall? Furthermore, this being the viewpoint of the DEAN, is there any leadership in that institution (or at least that college within the university) to foster continued learning by the professionals? To change the status quo and address the needs of these 21st century learners?

I will certainly say that the experience left me with a feeling of trepidation about dropping $8,000+/semester there for the next 4 years. I know however that 1) the situation would probably not be noticeably different at most American universities and
2) my daughter will get from her experience there what she puts into it, and she's an enthusiastic learner with a strong and stable background. (She's a real keeper!)
She'll be fine. But really, doesn't she (and all those like her) deserve better?

Back to the questions that we keep coming back to: how can this change? What can we, in the profession, do? What are we doing that is meaningful, and what do we need to toss and reevaluate? How do we encourage other professionals to "buy in"?

Photo attribution: Old Notes, New Purpose by idiolector on Flickr. Creative Commons non-commercial share-alike license.

Podcasting with Purpose

2008-08-06T09:45:00.005-05:00

Bob Sprankle's latest Bit by Bit podcast is posted, and I'm just getting around to listening to it. It is the audio from his Building Learning Communities keynote, entitled Podcasting with Purpose.

Wow! Well worth a listen! I think his title is slightly off the mark though, because this presentation explores so much more than just podcasting, per se. He used podcasting as a catalyst for change in his classroom--a change that is much deeper than just one tool. How I would love to have had my child in a 4th grade classroom with this much authentic learning, peer teaching/learning, exploration. His is a story of how these changes are about more than the tools--the change is in the focus of the classroom (learning rather than teaching) and authentic work that engages students. Thanks to Bob Sprankle for a great example for the rest of us who are trying to advocate these changes to teachers that may not love the tools...yet.

The presentation slides are below, and you can get the keynote here. Do them together--and then share! Also, I recommend that you subscribe to his podcast feed! It's really a great one to have in your ipod!

| View | Upload your own

Voicethread for Fall: Tips for Picking a Just Right Book

2008-07-26T18:31:00.003-05:00

Bluebonnet Reading...

2008-07-23T15:48:00.007-05:00

As I do most summers, I've spent a bit of time reading next year's Bluebonnet nominees and so far, I've not found what I think is a clear favorite. I've found some that I really don't love and some that I can't fathom why they've been included on the list. So far, one of my favorites (because I'm a geeky teacher at heart) is Douglas Florian's poetry collection, Comets, Stars, the Moon and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings.

I've loved his past work and so do so many of my students. His poetry is accessible to even the most stalwart of non-poetry-reading boys, and I love it that he is also an artist. This collection fits perfectly into the curriculum, has intriguing artwork, humor and information all at once. Pluto is even treated scientifically correctly! That being said, I know that some kids will like this a lot, but it will be mostly teachers that love it and find curricular uses for it. I wonder...Two more nominees that I loved reading (with minor questions) are Cherise Harper's Just Grace and MJ Auch's One-Handed Catch. LOVED them both for read-alouds. Just Grace will be accessible to many of my 3rd graders, where most of the books on this list this year may be a tad too challenging for them. I wished at the end of that book that Harper had found some way to resolve her plot without having the 2 children lie to their neighbor and get away with it. I had to groan a tiny bit on that note. To persnickety of me? Am I turning into a pinched librarian? One-Handed Catch is just wonderful--and it made me want to look into having Mary Jane and Herm Auch for an author visit! This fictional account, loosely based upon a year in Herm's childhood, is funny and touching and just has so many good jumping off places for class discussion/writing. I'd love to read this to a class. I wish Auch had left the part out about Santa not being real though...even 5th graders still want to believe! Dang! Loved, loved LOVED it though!

Krashen's Concerns about Scholastic Reading Report

2008-07-15T16:21:00.007-05:00

The talk on the Texas school librarians' listserv for the past couple of days has been about Scholastic's latest "research" about kids' reading habits and opinions. Today, Ty Burns posted Stephen Krashen's June 20th post to the ALA forum about his concerns with the Scholastic study. (see below)

It seems to me that just about any "research" on young people's reading habits that is funded and carried out by one of the most powerful publishing companies in the field of children's literature should be accepted with skepticism. Thank you Dr. Krashen, for helping clarify some of the questionable points contained in the Scholastic study!

From: Stephen Krashen
To: aaslforum@ala.org
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:13:34 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [aaslforum] Scholastic researchers need to read more
The Scholastic 2008 Kids and Family Reading Report: Why Scholastic's Researchers Need to Read More
Stephen Krashen
www.elladvocates.org/blog
June 18, 2008

Scholastic recently released a survey on how much and what children are reading these days, interviewing 501 children, ages 5 to 17, and their parents or guardians from 25 cities (Scholastic, 2008).

As is often the case, the Scholastic report was sent to newspaper reporters before it was released to the public. In other words, scholars had no chance to read it (or as they say these days, to vet it) before descriptions appeared in the press.

This is in stark contrast to the way scientific knowledge has been traditionally disseminated: Research is first submitted to professional journals, and will only be published if it passes review by other scholars. The reviewers make sure the study is done correctly, and that there is a full and competent review of previous research in the area, so that readers can determine how the results relate to previous research. Acceptance of the report can take several months, and it could be a year until the paper appears in print. At first, it is read only by professionals, those who read the journals, who often debate the results and may attempt to replicate the study.

In the field of educational research, all this has changed. Non-academic organizations (think tanks, government agencies, and private companies) with large budgets now produce their version of research, and utilize public relations avenues to send the report immediately to the media. Scholars can only read these reports well after descriptions have appeared in the media, descriptions written by reporters who may or may not have specialized knowledge, who are often unaware of other research in the area, and who nearly always have deadlines to meet. By the time the real experts read the report, it is already old news, the results have already been widely disseminated, and often stimulate important policy changes.

When the cold fusion report was released to the media before being submitted to review by other scientists, the researchers were widely criticized. When this happens in education, there are no complaints. In fact, what happens in education is worse: The studies are now given to the media before scholars can see them, and reporters are not allowed to share them until they are officially released (they are "embargoed"). In the case of cold fusion, scientists got the information at the same time reporters did.

This was the case with the Scholastic report on reading. Not surprisingly, different media reports said different things about it. Some reporters interpreted the findings as showing that reading is on a decline, e.g. WSB radio in Atlanta posted an article with the title, "Fewer kids reading for fun," and the Desert Sun in California ran the headline "Kids don't read for fun." But the School Library Journal headline was "Kids still wild about books."

Actually, it is impossible to draw any real conclusions from the Scholastic report about whether children are reading more or less than they used to. The problem is that those who wrote the survey questions did it in such a way that it is impossible to compare the results with those done years ago. The Gold Standard of surveys is the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress). Unfortunately, Scholastic and NAEP asked different questions and categorized children into age groups in different ways.

For example, Scholastic asked children if they read "never, once a year, more than once a year, once a month, 2 to 3 times a month, once a week, 2 to 3 times a week, 4 to 6 times a week, every day." NAEP asked if they read "never or hardly ever, a few times a year, once or twice a month, once or twice a week, almost every day."

Scholastic divided age categories into ages 5-8, 9-11, 12-14, and 15-17. NAEP only asked questions of nine, 13, and 17 year olds.

To analyze the amount of reading among the age groups, Scholastic presented the data in terms of type of reading done (books, comics, magazines, newspapers). NAEP only asked about "reading for fun." A comparison could not be made because many readers in the Scholastic study read more than one genre, but this information was not included.

(For a summary of recent NAEP results, see Iyengar and Ball, 2007.)

There is, however, some important data in the Scholastic report.

Children read a lot

Even though we cannot compare reading today and reading in previous years, nor can we compare younger and older readers, for reasons outlined above, it is clear that the data shows that young people are doing a lot of reading: About 2/3 reported that they read at least two to three days a week. (Oddly, Scholastic categorizes those reading four to six times a week as "moderate" readers, reserving the "high frequency" reader category for those who said they read every day).

Children respect readers

Only 9% said that the reason they didn't read more was that "reading is not cool." This agrees with our recent results: Only 7% of our sample of over 2000 children in grades 4 to 6 disagreed with the statement: " People I know who read a lot are interesting and fun" and 56% were in full agreement with the statement (Schatz, Pierce, Ghalambor, and Krashen, in press).

Poor reading competence not a barrier

When asked why they do not read more for fun, only 9% of the sample said it was because "I don't read that well." Even for the youngest group, ages 5 to 8, only 13% said this was the reason they didn't read more. This runs counter to the current wisdom that proclaims we have a literacy crisis due to children's low reading ability.

Few children dislike reading

Only 15% of the Scholastic sample said that the reason they don't read more is that they don't like to read. This also agrees with our findings: We found only 10% of our sample chose "not very much" in response to the statement "I like to read" (Schatz et. al., in press; see also Schatz and Krashen, 2006). This also runs counter to current wisdom that proclaims that children need to be bribed to read, i.e. reward systems.

The importance of self-selection

Scholastic reported that 89% of the young readers agreed that their favorite books were the ones they chose themselves. This result was consistent across all age groups and gender. The positive impact of self-selection on literacy development has been demonstrated in the research literature (e.g. Lee, 2007).

A lot of children use the internet

Scholastic reported that 79% of their sample said they used the internet and even 53% of the youngest group, ages 5 to 8, said they used the internet. This agrees with a great deal of research (reviewed in Krashen, 2007).

More internet use, more reading

Scholastic also reported that high frequency users of the internet were more likely to be high frequency readers (but see above for Scholastic's definition of high frequency reader), and were slightly more likely to have read a non-required book, magazine, comic or newspaper than low frequency internet users. Also, 37% of the entire sample said they used the internet to find a book in a series they were interested in, and 10% said they wrote an on-line review of a book they read. The relationship between internet use and reading has been studied extensively, with several studies confirming that more internet use is related to more reading, and in improvement in reading (research reviewed in Krashen, 2007).

No mention of the core problem

As is the case with all surveys of this kind, there was no mention of the core problem in literacy: Access to books for children of poverty. The Scholastic report tells us only that 47% of the children came from families earning under $53,000. Research tells us that children of poverty have far less access to books and other reading material than other children: They live in neighborhoods with inferior school libraries and fewer bookstores, and have access to fewer books in school, because of inferior classroom and school libraries (Krashen. 2004). We would expect children of poverty to have the most trouble finding interesting reading, but this kind of analysis, easy to do with the data available in the Scholastic report, was not done.

Scholastic and reading

I find it ironic that Scholastic's website first offers a visual presentation of a summary of the report. Lower down on the page they provide the option of downloading the report and actually reading it.

It is also ironic that Scholastic's researchers, it seems, didn't do much reading: There is no bibliography, no mention of previous surveys or research in this area, and, as noted above, reason to believe that the researchers were unaware of previous work. Clearly, the Scholastic report would not have been accepted by any respectable professional journal in its present form.

Frustration

The Scholastic report has already been distributed widely, and as noted above was available to reporters before scholars could see it. I am hopeful that other scholars familiar with this area of research will review the report and publish their views. Their papers will, however, have a hard time penetrating the public's consciousness. Going the usual route, submission to a professional journal, with its time delay and the fact that only a handful of people will know about and even fewer will read such a paper, is no longer an option. Letters to the editor, always worth trying, are limited in length by newspapers, and only a small percentage are published; in addition, they need to submitted soon after the original report appears, which is nearly impossible to do when the report requires careful reading and analysis.

The internet appears to be the only option. Even if a website has only a modest number of readers, it is possible that those who read a post will pass it along to others, and eventually the paper will be widely disseminated. My hope is that this happens with this paper.

References

Iyengar, Sunil. and Ball, Don. 2007. To Read or Not to Read. Washington, DC: National Endowmnent for the Arts.

Krashen, Stephen. 2004. The Power of Reading. Westport, CI: Libraries Unlimited and Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Krashen, Stephen. 2007. Free voluntary surfing. International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 3(1): 2-9. [ijflt.com]

Lee, Syying. 2007. Revelations from three consecutive studies on extensive reading. RELC Journal 38/2:150–70.

Schatz, Adrienne, Pierce, Kim, Ghalambor, Ken, and Krashen, Stephen.
More on the "Literacy Crisis": Do children like to read? Knowledge Quest (in press).

Schatz, Adrienne and Krashen, Stephen. 2006. Attitudes toward reading in grades 1-6: Some decline in enthusiasm but most enjoy reading. Knowledge Quest 35: 46-48.

Scholastic. 2008 Kids & Family Reading Report. http://www.scholastic.com/aboutscholastic/news/readingreport.htm

Test: Coveritlive

2008-07-15T09:47:00.002-05:00

I've seen Coveritlive on so many people's blogs, that I decided to try it myself just to see what it was all about. Below is a test--I'm leaving it here only to remind myself that it's a tool that could be very useful. I'm thinking of instances where some of my colleagues can't come to a particular meeting and need to be caught up on the latest directives from the district! This would be useful. Obviously it is highly useful for live conference blogging too. Very cool and easy.

Another Post About Creativity...

2008-07-06T06:09:00.012-05:00

I've been way out of the loop with my blog/professional reading for the last few weeks. End of school just always slams me, and then I got to go on a wonderful vacation, so it's literally been a couple of months since I've really read what is showing up in my google reader! I can't wait to begin looking through and thinking about what recently happened at NECC.

Anyway, this morning (since I'm still a bit jet-lagged), I got up early and began reading David Warlick's blog--he always gets me thinking! He has a turn of phrase that so often provides a clarity that I just can't express as well myself.
In his response to Clarence Fisher's post, (America, You've Got Trouble ), David considers how both Canadian and American classrooms can effectively incorporate the changes that are necessary to our students tomorrow.
He says:

The problem, in my opinion, began when we started to consider and to treat our students as our future workforce. When it became our industries that were at stake, rather than democracy, then we had no choice but to mechanize education, to turn it into an assembly line, where we install math, and install reading, and install science, and then measure each product at the end to make sure that they all meet the standards — that they all know the same things and think the same ways.

The sad part is that this theme of class as future work force is just about too firmly entrenched to turn around in the short months and years we have, before it’s too late. I’m finding myself promoting the creative arts skills for the sake of the economy, rather than a richer life for our children. But even within that story, I think that we can retool our classrooms in a way that does help our children inside and outside their work experiences.

Standards--and minimum standards, at that--are being used on a massive scale in our schools to ensure just that--learning at the lowest acceptable level by the greatest number of children. We put great time and effort into ensuring that minimum competencies are met by all (or most). Admittedly, we do talk professionally about "extending the learning" of all students, especially those who we know will pass the test in the end, but is that enough? It seems artificial & prescriptive to me...a bit disingenuous, in fact...to allow "extension," but primarily for the students who have already met the minimum. Is it enough that all our students know the "same things and think the same ways?" That is scary to me...and sad.

More and more, I find myself out of sync with the general practice in my profession--at least locally. Shouldn't we challenge all our kids to think creatively? Not just with the goal of better standardized test scores in mind! Honoring our students' creativity and fostering its development is what will make a difference in their adult lives--both economically and personally. Is there room for that when minimum standards consume our practice? What is the answer?

Sir Ken Robinson: More on Creativity

2008-05-29T22:31:00.012-05:00

We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educating our children. And the only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are, and seeing our children for the hope they are. Our task is to educate our whole being so they can face this future.
Sir Ken Robinson
October 2006, Edutopia magazine
A new video, from April 2008, posted at Edutopia. (16 min)

Are you meeting the creative needs of the students in your school? Are most of our schools?

Playing with Animoto!

2008-05-28T09:01:00.005-05:00

I spent my lunchtime playing with Animoto yesterday, and this is what I came up with. Not final--I just threw a few pics from our Multicultural Club event last week in. This is a FANTASTIC tool! Very easy to use and results that WOW!

Library Cat Travels the World!

2008-05-26T18:27:00.010-05:00

Meet our library mascot (or would that be mascat?). Ben was a Beanish-Type Baby in a former life, but now he lives in our library by the circ desk and all our students visit him once a week. This summer, several of our teachers will be taking Ben (or one of his litter-mates, purchased on Ebay in the last few days) with them on vacation. Ben will be visiting South Dakota, Central Texas, Upstate New York, Alaska, Victoria, British Columbia, Paris, Dublin, Kazakhstan, Germany, Austria, Mexico, Hawaii and many more exciting places around the world! Traveling companions will be taking pictures of Ben in many culturally interesting places, near recognizable sights as well as in more hard-to-guess settings. Next year, students at our school will have a chance to guess where Ben traveled during his summer vacation! Hopefully this will spark some student (and teacher) interest in using our online databases for research. Google Earth, a newly discovered and well-loved tool in my building, will fit nicely into the activity too!

This project ties in with the project described in my previous post, in that for the second year, our library theme will be Travel the World...Read Good Books! This theme is shared by our wonderful counselor, and we plan all sorts of fun and hopefully meaningful activities for our K-5th graders next year to encourage an appreciation for diverse cultures around the world. Would that the district might let us collaborate in a meaningful way with actual people in other countries through wikis, collaborative projects, streaming video, etc. Change is slow...baby steps...must keep reminding myself.
We may be able to get some epals set up or something of the sort, if we are lucky! That would be a step in the right direction! Exciting days for Ben!

Year End Craziness and One Big Success!

2008-05-26T06:50:00.007-05:00

Over the years, my poor family has learned that in May, they should just leave me alone as much as possible and let me get through it all so we can go on to have summer! Last week, some colleagues and I were talking about end-of-year inventory time in the library, and it seems that I am the anomaly. Everyone else loves getting the library in order and the books all on the shelf and accounted for. Me? It makes me nervous as a cat and quite, quite irritable! Adding to the stress this year, our lovely daughter is graduating from high school, so the house has to get clean for family visits too! Yikes!

In the midst of graduating our only, getting ready for a trip to Europe and vile inventory, not to mention our book character parade on the last day of school (an old thorn in my side, long story), I also got tapped to help head up a school-wide multicultural appreciation club kickoff! I helped our wonderful counselor, who is ever diligent about keeping up lots of activities that promote tolerance and appreciation for diversity.

We had our premier event last week, and it was a great success. We had 3 sessions about various cultures--France, Mexico and Vietnam. Students rotated from one session to the next and learned a tiny bit about each culture. In one session they did a craft, in another they learned a dance, and in another they heard a folktale. Then we all had a snack from each of the cultures.

We set a limit on students to attend because we're just getting our feet under us--next year it will go wide. To our surprise, the limit was hit by 9am the morning after the permission slips went home! We had lovely participation from our Moms, many of whom speak little to no English. I think that is potentially the most powerful part of the program! We will be able to tap the knowledge & talents that these Moms have, and honor their cultures! We can get them into the school to have positive experiences, and then it might not be such an uncomfortable place for some of the families. Having lived in Germany myself, I know what it feels like to be the only person in a room that isn't understanding the language. I can really sympathize with our families that don't have much English--what a brave and wonderful thing it was for our Moms to be willing to be a part of the club. They did a lot of work preparing too! One pair of Moms made tamales of different types, one prepared a Powerpoint and made spring rolls, one made madeleines for the children to taste. I was just really so impressed and pleased with the afternoon. Tired and stressed...but pleased.

Next blog post: traveling the world with our library mascot!

Blocking...

2008-05-04T12:58:00.009-05:00

Wow! My second post today!
I'm just catching up with reading from my RSS aggregator, and I found another short article by Scott McLeod (for American Association of School Administrators ) that seems to fit into my current mindset regarding 21st century skills, NCLB and enabling creative kids in our schools!

In Blocking the Future, McLeod compellingly urges superintendents and other school policymakers to find a way to enable teachers and students to use 21st century technologies to create authentic learning environments in schools. He writes:

...school district leaders have a critical choice to make: Will their schools pro-actively model and teach the safe and appropriate use of these digital tools or will they reactively block them out and leave students and families to fend for themselves? Unfortunately, many schools are choosing to do the latter. As a technology advocate, I can think of no better way to highlight organizational unimportance than to block out the tools that are transforming the rest of society. Schools whose default stance is to prohibit rather than enable might as well plant a sign in front of their buildings that says, “Irrelevant to children’s futures.” Note: I inserted boldface.

Strong words, but so true and so important. Thanks for eloquently saying what so many of us think, Dr. McLeod!

A Look at NCLB

2008-05-04T10:13:00.012-05:00

At the suggestion of Dr. Teri Lesesne and Dr. Mary Ann Bell, two of my favorite professors from grad school, I read two articles--yet two more articles, I should say--that question the efficacy of mandates made by No Child Left Behind. Great food for thought as we ponder changes in our schools.

From Jordan Sonnenblick's Killing Me Softly: No Child Left Behind

Our arts programs are gutted, our shop courses are gone, foreign languages are a distant memory. What’s left are double math classes; mandatory after-school drill sessions; the joyless, sweaty drudgery of summer school. Our kids come to us needing more of everything that is joyous about the life of the mind. They need nature walks, field trips, poetry, recess...What they’re getting is workbooks.

Study: Reading Program Doesn't Boost Comprehension
In this recent AP article, reporter Nancy Zuckerbrod visits the Department of Education's own study of NCLB's Reading First program--a study finding "no difference in comprehension scores between students who participated in Reading First and those who did not." Food for thought. These are two articles that are definitely worthy reading for school librarians and, in fact anyone with an interest in American public schools.

If we are truly making "data driven decisions" in schools today, what of these findings? It seems that we have encountered more problems than solutions with NCLB. What now?

Who among the legislators is listening and asking the real, tough, expensive questions? Can we afford to change course after the billions of dollars that have gone into NCLB changes in schools? I think of Daniel Pink's insistence that, to thrive in the 21st century global economy, the United States must find a way to encourage ingenuity, design, creativity in our workforce. These are exactly the qualities that we discourage in our students today with NCLB, in my opinion. Can we really afford not to change course? Leave me a comment and tell me what you think...

No Sharpies for You!

2008-04-29T05:57:00.013-05:00

I know I'm a little slow on the uptake, since this incident is almost a month old, but I just had to comment on this story from Adams School District 50 in Colorado. Apparently an 8-year-old boy used a Sharpie marker to color on his sweatshirt and then continually smelled the spot. His elementary school principal, Chris Benisch, in an effort to make a definitive stand against inhalant abuse, or "huffing," suspended him for 3 days. The school district initially backed Benisch, but later the suspension was reduced to 1 day. In response to the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center's statement that Sharpies are nontoxic and can not be used to get high by inhaling, Benisch reportedly still felt that Sharpies are too dangerous for schools. From Colorado's 9News.com:

'Wow, that's a very serious marker,'" Benisch said. Despite the medical evidence, Benisch promised to draw an even clearer line on markers. "We've purged every permanent marker there is in this building," he said.

Wow. When I read this account, it brought to mind the approach of many American school districts to emerging technologies. It seems that it is just more manageable to lock down student Internet use at school rather than finding ways to incorporate safe, constructive use of a global interactive web. So many schools just take the interactive, read/write web away--like the Sharpies--rather than changing school structures and expectations. Rather than teaching students how to use these tools authentically and ethically!

I don't believe that administrators/school IT departments make the "lock-it-down" decisions that they do most of the time simply because it is the easy decision. I think it is fear of litigation driven by a fundamental lack of understanding about the incredibly positive experiences students can have when schools allow & guide them. Look at the Horizon Project for a great example of students learning globally and collaboratively.

Think what might happen if our kids could use Sharpies and the Internet. Who knows what they might be able to do!

LookyBook !

2008-04-08T20:01:00.006-05:00

Our group reviewed LookyBook tonight, which looks like a very interesting web site! At Lookybook, you can do just that: look at a children's picture book online--the entire thing! What a great resource for classroom teachers and librarians! It's a great selection tool as well as being a fantastic way to share the illustrations in a picture book. Very slick!

And best of all.....it's not currently blocked in our district!!!

We wondered about the copyright compliance of it all, and I did some reading--started with the terms of service. But here's an article from the Novato (CA) Advance newspaper that leads me to think that copyright is not a problem in our classroom settings.

Lookybook allows you to set up your own "bookshelf" so that you could have the books you plan to use with your classes collected in one easy place. And one of the coolest features is that you can embed a book into a web page or blog! Very, very slick!!

Here's a sample, Poultrygeist by Mary Jane Auch:

AllTop and Another Social Network for Booklovers!

2008-04-08T19:40:00.004-05:00

In Web 2.0 class, we've twice visited and played around with Librarything--a big favorite in a room full of librarians, as one might guess. Well, I have two new links to share that I've recently discovered: AllTop and Shelfari.

I don't remember how I found AllTop, and I don't know how long it's been around, but it's new to me! Here, they collect news items from "all the top" sources, and aggregate them into collections such as education, culture, geekery, etc. How they decide what the "top" sites are, I don't know, but I've found some interesting education articles and news items here! Another nice facet is that when you mouse over an item, you get a preview. Cool!

When I was browsing Alltop the other day, I discovered Shelfari. If you like Librarything like so many of us librarians do, take a look at Shelfari! It's a social networking site for booklovers--you can create your own bookshelf that really looks like books on a shelf.I like this cool interface better than Librarything. Very cool! Librarians, go check it out!

Inspiring Elementary School Blogs!

2008-04-06T21:24:00.008-05:00

I happened upon a wonderful elementary school web site / blog that I just have to share with my web 2.0 classmates. Go look at Pashley Elementary School's Library Blog now!

Librarian Kristina Neddo maintains a wonderful, regularly-updated blog that contains new book reviews, news about library events and fun web 2.0 projects that various classes have completed, including Voicethreads, how-to screencasts that could be used by faculty or students, and more! It doesn't look like the blog is too old, but it is really a great example of library 2.0, I think.

I'm really inspired by looking at this librarian's efforts to keep her library program vibrant--and I'm impressed that there seems to be a schoolwide (maybe a districtwide) understanding of the importance and power of emerging web technologies. I seem to spend a lot of time in my school day hitting road blocks--filtering issues, teachers/admin feeling too overwhelmed to try one more new thing, testing, testing, testing.... It's great and reaffirming to see a librarian using these webtools effectively! After looking at this library blog, I'm confident that Ms. Neddo is a leader in her school's efforts to really engage learners. Lucky kids!

Trying Out Flock Again

2008-04-06T19:57:00.005-05:00

After watching Liz Davis' great screencast about using Mozilla's "social browser," Flock (a browser-on-steroids), I decided to try it out again. I'd downloaded it awhile ago and never really fully gave it a chance. Gotta say that I'm not totally loving all of it yet, but I might grow to like it better.

I love several of the web2.0-ish aspects of it. For example, I'm blogging from it right now! note: posting from Flock didn't work tonite, although I tested it a few days ago and it was fine, so maybe a glitch??? I'm getting used to the feed reader--I have always preferred using an rss aggregator add-on to my Firefox. It's my favorite way to read my collected feeds, although it is limited, of course, since it resides in the browser. Flock has the same problem, but I'm not comfortable with the Flock interface quite yet.

I also love, love, LOVE the clipboard sidebar in Flock, which enables you to simply drag any item--photo, link, video, pdf--to the clipboard so that you can later use it in a blog post, google doc, etc. easily. Very convenient!

Flock seems to be a little....cumbersome....to me in some ways though. It takes a bit of time to load (aren't we impatient these days...), and there are several tools that I'm not that interested in right now. I love my Firefox browser because it's light and I can add whatever add-ons I know I'm going to use. Flock seems interesting enough to use it for a while though--I may love it in the end!

Week 7, Thing #16: Wikis

2008-03-25T18:41:00.003-05:00

What a disappointment that the wiki that I've been working on to support this class and to help us plan for a possible future class is not useable on the school network. Don't know why, but all pbwiki pages lose their formatting on our network and make it such a mess to look at that it's a no-go. Strangely, it seems that if you don't log in or try to go to another page within a pbwiki, the formatting on the front page is ok. Log in or click on a hyperlink, and all formatting goes wacko and the wheels fall off the cart! How frustrating.

AR and I can't remember why we decided against wikispaces last summer & I started making the wiki on pbwiki instead. It's a moot point though because wikispaces is blocked! Shriek!

Discussion tonight centered around our Acceptable Use Policy and exactly what it might be about wikis that is so dangerous that none of them are cleared for use. That's a powerful tool that is just totally unavailable to us.

Some of us agreed though that wiki use is not as easy to "get" as blogging is--I think we need more opportunity to practice with one another. Maybe soon???

Dr. Tim Tyson--another great keynote

2008-03-24T21:22:00.005-05:00

OK, OK, OK...I know I've been full of suggestions, must-hears, must-reads, must-sees, but I'm going to add another to my list--if only to store my thoughts here for my own future reference.

I've been listening to back-episodes of Bob Sprankle's Bit by Bit podcast for the last few days. Among insightful blog posts, he's posted all sorts of wonderfully rich and thought-provoking podcasts, including several keynotes from various conferences he's attended, including the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference last fall. Today I had a real treat hearing the keynote speaker from that conference (Bit By Bit Podcast #56), Dr. Tim Tyson of Mabry Middle School in Marietta, GA. Dr. Tyson just seems like the kind of administrator that I'd wish for to lead my daughter's school--he's a real visionary, I think. Visit his school's web site, Mabryonline , if you have a chance. Wow!

Here's a link to Dr. Tyson's Keynote, entitled Moving from Personal Knowledge to Global Contribution , linked from Bob Sprankle's great site. I think Tyson's one of the most inspiring speakers around--how I WISH we could get someone like him to speak in our district! Wish, wish....

New Video and Rethinking...

2008-03-24T08:50:00.007-05:00

Great video I just discovered--it's a response to Karl Fisch's Did You Know . Did You Know is the most important education-related video of the last 2-3 years, imho. I think every educator, every administrator, every school board member should watch it--more than once. If you haven't watched it yet, watch it now and then perhaps read (or listen to, like I did) Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat 3.0 . It will change your outlook--I promise.

Anyway, I found this new (to me) video, called Mr. Winkle Wakes, on Scott McLeod & Fisch's shifthappens wiki, as I was trying to reinvigorate/refocus myself before returning to school tomorrow after spring break. How true it is! How wrong that it is true...

I'm left again with the question how do I foster the needed changes in my school community? Modeling doesn't seem to cut it because the most resistant teachers (and we have a lot of them) seem to think that I know how to do these things, but they could never learn. I (as librarian) have "so much more time" than they do--they can't possibly "fit it in." After school/conference period trainings are ill-attended. Administrator doesn't want to "bother" the teachers with things like Fisch's video--"we just ask so much of them anyway--we can't put another thing on their plates." Teachers are under so much pressure to focus on state testing to the exclusion of any other authentic learning/evaluation.

I've so far failed to ignite change in my school. That's clear.
What are your ideas about effecting change so that our students really are being prepared for their own future? What are you doing in your schools???

Cyberbullying Guide

2008-03-17T09:56:00.003-05:00

On his Blue Skunk Blog, the amazing Doug Johnson has posted Mankato's new Cyberbullying Guide, which is well worth a look as we're getting our cyberbullying curriculum going in our district's libraries. The pdf contains a nice list of cyberbullying resources as well, including quite a few of Nancy Willard's resources.

BTW, Web 2.o classmates, if you're not subscribed to Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog, you might consider adding it to your Google Reader! I think he's really one of the important "thinkers" in our field today. Check it out!

LOL Catz--Makes Me Has LOL

2008-02-28T19:10:00.007-06:00

Funny...Couldn't help linking to it...

Search LOLcats google!

Experimenting with Voicethread

2008-02-27T19:46:00.007-06:00

Belatedly, I'm experimenting with Voicethread this week. It really is a great tool, and as I've learned from the developers' many visits on various edtechtalk podcasts, they have proven to be wildly responsive to the needs of educators--even to the point of creating an entire new service ( ed.voicethread.com ) for educators unable to access the original site on their campuses. Wow!

I have experimented with putting short comments from students in a voicethread celebrating my school's 30th anniversary.

Cute! And relatively simple.
As the students and I have created this voicethread this week, my teachers have watched--and some have shown some interest in learning how to do it themselves. I find this encouraging, in that our high-stakes tests begin next week and most of our teachers are so stressed that they can hardly sleep at night!
Anyway, the process wasn't flawless, but I think it was a good thing in the end--a chance to make the point (to the adults watching, mainly) that it's not insurmountably hard to use, and that it's ok to try new things and have them turn out less than 100% perfect!

I think the project so far is cute, and the students have enjoyed it. I hope it generates some creative ideas in the classes too!

Del.icio.us Librarians!

2008-02-26T17:31:00.012-06:00

Our Web 2.0 for Librarians group is discovering Del.icio.us tonight!

Here is one of my favorite down-to-earth explanations of what Delicious and other social bookmarking tools enable us to do! Common Craft, the producer of this video tutorial has provided so many great tutorials that it's worth mentioning them over and over!
Thanks Common Craft!

And here is David Warlick's explanation--another great one!

For Melise: Bloglines Question

2008-01-31T18:40:00.001-06:00

Melise had a question about whether or not she had successfully subscribed to some RSS feeds through Bloglines. Here's a screencast that I created with a very cool, free web tool called Jing. Maybe it answers her question. I also told her about the RSS reader that I use at home--it's called Sage, and it is an add-on to the Firefox browser (which I love).

I couldn't figure out how to resize my Jing capture, and it was huge. I'll have to look at their FAQs, but here's a link to my screencast hopefully answering your questions, Melise! We miss you!

Great Book for Descriptive Language Lesson!

2008-01-06T19:08:00.000-06:00

Each year at this time, my 4th grade teachers really start to hit writing skills hard with their students. In TX, 4th graders are tested on writing for the first time, so this is a major priority in the 4th grade curriculum.

Toad, by British author Ruth Brown is really wonderful piece of descriptive writing! It's a very simple and short story, so it's easy to fit into the short time frame that I have to work with as classes visit the library. I use Toad each year with my students--it's accessible to them (nice, "gooey" descriptors that the boys really get into!) and the illustrations allow me to slip in a little art appreciation on the side! The elementary art curriculum in TX is all but nonexistent--in practice, anyway--so this book affords me a great opportunity!
Thanks Ruth Brown, for your wonderful work!!

2007-12-31T10:06:00.001-06:00

Photo by our lovely Artist in Residence!

Happy New Year All! This photo was taken by our daughter when we were visiting with my sister and her family at a cabin on the Llano River in central Texas. We celebrated a late Christmas with them, and we had a wonderful, fun, relaxing time!

Here's hoping that we're all rested up and ready for the new year--we go back to school on the 2nd! YIKES! Ready or not...

Cool Kindergarten Blog!

2007-12-19T08:32:00.000-06:00

Wow! It's been over a month since I posted! I'm wondering if I'm cut out for this! I have just been swamped and I've gotten out of the habit of posting. Hmmm..

Anyway, today I was listening to EdTechWeekly, which is one of my favorite edtech podcasts, and I went to their website to see host Jennifer Maddrell's graduation picture (just earned her PhD--impressive!).

One of the congrats posts was from Maria Knee, whose kindergarten blog is here. What a fantastic blog! She's used all sorts of web2.0 tools, like Slideshare, VoiceThread, Bubbleshare, YackPack, etc. to share what her kids are doing with the world. It's just an excellent example of what can be done to connect kids to the world and to let parents/grandparents/community members into their children's learning. Very exciting. And kudos to her school district for allowing use of those tools. Most of these are blocked in my district--and many, many other districts, to state it fairly!

Bottom line: this is a fantastic web site to share with teachers to show just what kinds of projects even the youngest of students can don that take advantage of the technology that we have available. I certainly think the students in Ms Knee's classes/school will remember their kindergarten experiences. What fun they seem to be having learning!

Belated Thoughts on K12Online Conference

2007-11-12T20:20:00.001-06:00

Wow! Is it ever easy to slide and not post for weeks! I've been swamped, for one thing, and for another, I've been a bit...disconcerted & didn't want to blog before I got my brain around a couple of things. I'll post later about that though...I needed to just get a post up tonight so that I'm over the hump and maybe I'll get back to posting semi-regularly!

I'm still trying to catch up and enjoy the K12Online presentations. So many of them were sooo good. Like many people whom I've heard give an opinion on various edtech podcasts, I thought Sylvia Tolisano's presentation, Travel Through Space and Time was just so inspiring! Her school completed a virtual "trip" to China using a Build-a-Bear to give students a focus in their studies. The entire elementary school studied Chinese customs, history, geography, culture, and then 2 teachers (with the bear) actually traveled to China. They used blogs, digital video & photography and various other web2.0 tools to keep in touch, real time, and bring the trip to the children in their school. What a great idea! And it sounds like they've really squeezed all the learning opportunities and connectivity out of it that they possibly could! I'm sure the students at her school will never forget this vivid learning experience! Wow!
Wheels turning in my brain...

Zombie Alert!

2007-10-28T18:26:00.000-05:00

I know, I know--I've gone video crazy for the last few posts, but this one is good & I couldn't resist--it's by Commoncraft, who brought us those really useful videos RSS in Plain English, Wikis in Plain English, etc. This one is a warning about the alarming impending zombie invasion from Canada this Halloween. Beware...

Flat Classroom 2007 Keynote

2007-10-28T12:03:00.001-05:00

Wow! Dean Shareski's keynote for this year's Flat Classroom Project (Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsey) is just a great discussion of the elements of design & things to think about as students (anyone) create their projects. The FCP is utilizing Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind as part of their framework this year, and Shareski uses these elements as talking points in his keynote.

I shared the video with my high school daughter (our artist in residence), because I thought it so spoke to her, her strengths and interests.

Here it is--wow!

New (to me) Screencasting Tool!

2007-10-27T12:15:00.000-05:00

Here's a screencast that I made to help our web2.0 cohort members who are doing the SLL2.0 course this fall with uploading their avatars to their blogs. Screencast-o-matic is a very easy and free tool that I will use again to create screencasts. I'm thinking of making tutorials for my teachers/students on it. Great for teaching new students how to use our PAC, making booklists on our PACs, etc. On Screencast-o-matic, the videos can remain on their site (of course, it's blocked at our school), or you can download it, embed it, etc. Very slick.

I have tried repeatedly to upload it to Teacher Tube, but I'm not having any luck. It keeps getting stuck and times out on the upload. So I'm embedding it here, although that's probably not a long term solution because it's 4 min long and 42MB. I'm learning though--this is a first effort. Any wisdom out there about using Teacher Tube, making screencasts, etc.?

How to Put Your Yahoo Avatar on Your Blog

New Bloggers!

2007-10-23T19:32:00.001-05:00

Our district librarians & ed-tech team have formed a cohort of web2.0 learners, and we have some that have made some exciting discoveries! Welcome to the Blogosphere, ladies! Keep posting and commenting! It's very exciting for your fellow bloggers to get comments! Kudos to you all for taking the plunge and learning about these new technologies that are so "native" to our students' lives.

Today's Student, Yesterday's Classes

2007-10-13T23:59:00.000-05:00

I read about this video on Dean Shareski's blog today, and I just don't want to forget about it, so I'm embedding it here:

Wow! Another great one from Michael Wesch--the same man who did The Machine is Us/ing Us!

I wonder about a video illustrating this concept of disconnect between our students and our system. What would it look like if translated to the younger students--like my elementary aged kids or middle schoolers? Thinking...

K12 Online Conference

2007-10-12T20:03:00.000-05:00

As are many edtech teacher geeks, I'm really looking forward to the next 2 weeks' K12 Online Conference! What an amazing world we live in that people from all over the globe can be excited about this virtual event!

I'll probably blog more later about it, but I just wanted to say that Lisa Durff's blog post today made me laugh. She listed the 6 descriptors that David Warlick suggests identify today's students' different learning styles, and she commented:

today's learners are a new breed. I see myself in that list, bolstering my idea that I am not a digital immigrant, but an illegal digital alien.

I haven't deconstructed that to see what exactly it is that makes us illegal aliens, but I do feel a bit like that myself somehow, Ms. Durff! Funny observation!

Teachers as Collaborators

2007-10-07T16:08:00.000-05:00

Twice within the last week, I witnessed teachers that I know decline to share good teaching ideas with their colleagues. Once, it was a teacher who did not want to share the link to an activity that she'd found online with another grade level for fear that they would "steal" it from her grade level. The second instance was a fellow librarian who had second thoughts about sharing, with another librarian, an Internet Safety resource she'd created.

Both instances left me feeling uneasy. I spend a good deal of my own professional learning time thinking and reading about flat world concepts, web 2.0 tools, collaboration as a means to enhance student/self learning. This reluctance to share is disconcerting--it just doesn't fit my idea of what we're supposed to be doing as educators. AND it does not fit the paradigm of collaborative learning/teaching that our 21st century learners need to use and see being used.

Now, for the really great part of the week though. One of my goals this year is to learn to use podcasting as a way to excite students about the library. Last summer, I discovered a wonderful podcasting resource by Liz Davis, an edtech teacher in Massachusetts. I decided I'd like to adapt it for my students, so I wrote to her for permission. She was nothing but gracious and eager to share! Her email back to me really did bolster my faith in my fellow educator! Thanks so much, Liz! Not only did I find a resource that has helped me to meet one of my goals for our library program, but I've also discovered a new teacher to learn from and collaborate with! Check out her blog!

So I'm thankful for the examples that I see all over the online educators' community. Examples of resource sharing & global collaboration--there is so much out there to learn! A perfect example is coming up, starting tomorrow: K12 Online Conference! I can't wait to see what we'll learn!!!

K12 Online Conference Next Week!

2007-09-30T19:29:00.000-05:00

In a week, the second annual K12 Online Conference begins, and it's the talk of the edublogosphere right now. I'm very excited to about it and am really looking forward to some thought-provoking addresses and conversations as the conference gets started.

The organizers have asked that we spread the word about the conference by stating our 3 reasons for participating. See Wesley Fryer's original meme post here.

My 3 Reasons for Participating (for the first time) this year:

1. It's fantastic to have this access to so many people that are thinking about the same things I am these days as I try to create a 21st Century Library for my students & teachers. What an opportunity--and it's free!

2. The learning from this conference can go on all year long (or longer) through the archives, wikis, discussions on the K12 Online Conference site. If I get swamped in the middle of the conference (I hope I won't!), I can pick up where I need to. If I want to hear a presentation again, it's available! Powerful.

3. This conference fits my learning needs & interests right this minute better than what I have available to me locally. "Just in time" learning, I hope.

To further this meme, I am tagging the other participants in my district's Library2.0 Cohort.
I'll start with:

Lifelong Learner
Mama Librarian
and
Not Done Learning

Maybe they'll tag some of the rest of our friends!

Teachers as Learners

2007-09-05T06:10:00.000-05:00

Behind in my reading as I come up for air from my Book Fair week...

On Sept. 3, David Warlick posted a rant about teachers and their adoption of technology, and his post generated 18 comments to date--obviously a topic that is on a lot of minds, including mine!

I've read enough of Warlick's work to know that he is a huge teacher advocate and that he has the highest respect for people in this noble profession. He's obviously heard enough excuses though! And I must say that I am with him! We will lose our "in" with students if we don't figure out a way to teach them in ways that are relevant in their world. I see that worrisome glaze over some of our kids eyes at younger and younger ages. It used to be the high school kids that had to "power down" to come to school--now it's our elementary aged kids!

I am a librarian in a district that has benefited from wonderful edtech leadership--every classroom teacher in my building, plus the reading specialist and librarian (me) have at least 4 computers in their room, their own starboard, LCD projector, Einstruction kits, access to a computer lab! Professional development for technology is ubiquitous, with Atomic Learning provided for our use, district-based after-school technology classes, campus based technology workshops, and edtech team available to us to model lessons, and more! This is the piece that so many districts leave out, and yet my district has made it almost unavoidable to have professional development opportunities available. And still we have numerous teachers that choose not to learn any more than they are forced to. Campus technology workshops are poorly attended--only the people that get paid to attend are there, even though they're filled with wonderful, useful ideas! Administrators sometimes come, most times do not.

More than a few times, teachers have stated to me that professional development & technology training should be on school time, not personal time. The overriding perception is that "in the "real" (business) world, people are paid to be trained, but the poor teachers have to do it all on their own time. By and large this is not true, from my observation of friends and family members not in education! There are workshops, trainings, professional journals, conventions, etc. all to be paid for and taken advantage of off-the-clock. That's what professionals do! That's what learning and growing people do! Shouldn't we teachers, of all people, embrace and personify the life-learner model?

The debate on this topic in the edublogosphere has simply been a rant because this is a topic that frustrates all of us so much. There aren't any answers, I guess. The people that won't go to professional training on their own time certainly aren't reading these blogs! It does make me feel less of an oddball to hear of other people who feel the same way I do though! It helps me to focus on the teachers who do want to learn something new. I'll just hang out with them!

Adult Book Note: Amagansett by Mark Mills

2007-09-03T06:15:00.000-05:00

Just finished a compelling novel that I found through the book suggester on Library Thing. Amagansett, by Mark Mills, is one of those books that keep you turning the page and reading the next chapter. By revealing just enough, chapter by chapter, Mills had me from the start.

It is 1947, and a young War veteran, a fisherman, who has returned to his home in the Hamptons pulls in the body of a woman in one of his nets. Little by little we learn who she was and what other dark secrets her murder means to members of the wealthy summer beach community. Reviews of the novel point to the fine period details and fully realized characters of Conrad, the fisherman and Hollis, the local policeman.

This really is a gripping novel--more than just a murder mystery--and it is Mills' first! I'll definitely read more from him. Great read.

http://books.google.com

Online Connections

2007-08-28T05:31:00.000-05:00

Wow! I read about Jennifer Dorman's Online Connections class on Cool Cat Teacher Blog this morning and took a quick look at it. Wow! Dorman has used the web 2.0 tools that we have all learned about over the past few months and taken this course to a whole new global level. Her course has a global slant that we know is important for the 21st century. I wanted to mention it on my blog so I don't forget to go back and look it over more carefully. It really looks primo.

Books. Finally!

2007-08-26T09:16:00.000-05:00

So far in this blog, I've written far more on the topic of bytes than books! This is mainly due to the fact that I was trying to finish SLL2.0 before school started, and its focus is technology. It's also due to my interest in EdTech issues. In fact, I have to make a concerted effort to not let the "bytes" part of my library program overtake the "books part! My EdTech bent is one factor, and the curriculum of our district, the focus on information rather than literature being another. I don't think this is necessarily a good trend in education & school libraries, however it is the current climate in Texas.

Today is a Books post though! Hooray!
A colleague of mine and I are planning an author visit in November for Children's Book Week, and I'm excited about it. I will be hosting only one author this time, while my friend has about 10 different authors and activities planned! That's a big job! I did that a couple of years ago when we had Carole and Bill Wallace visit our school, but thankfully it's a bit more low-key in my world this year!

This year, we will host science writer Elaine Scott in our schools. Elaine lives in Houston, so we are lucky to have her right in our back yard! A savvy writer, Elaine is one of the first children's authors to have jumped on the whole Pluto development! I can't wait to order and read her newest book, just published this month. It's called When is a Planet Not a Planet? It's gotten very good reviews, and I have been very pleased with the other books in our collection by Scott. So this one should be a great, and much needed addition to our astronomy collection.

Scott's last book, Poles Apart, filled in that little piece of information that children (and teachers, sometimes) seem to miss so often: penguins and polar bears don't live in the same place! My students love that book, and we have multiple copies. Penguins are always a popular topic, as any school librarian might tell you, and so are polar bears! It's a great book--highly recommended. By filling in these fascinating bits of information for our students, Scott shows her savvy. She's a good, personable presenter too--I saw her at ALA last year.

So I can't wait to host her at our school! Should be a good day!

Unblocked! Amazing!

2007-08-23T05:36:00.000-05:00

Wow!! I'm surprised and happy that my district has unblocked my blog so that other librarians in my district can access it from school! WooHoo!

That's a good sign. Maybe districts are beginning to decide that these web 2.0 tools are not evil unto themselves. They're tools that our children are going to use--they do now--and we had better have access to them so that educators have a fighting chance to learn how to use them too and be there to guide them! Hooray for making small steps!

Google Sky--Wow!

2007-08-23T05:31:00.000-05:00

Looks like another wow application from Google--Google Sky ! You can even use it within the Google Earth application! Looks like they have done what they did with Google Earth and created an application that stitches together the body of knowledge about the universe--in pictures. It's all very smooth and swoopy! Cool! I've only just downloaded it and haven't really gotten to play with it, but it looks like a powerful tool to use with students (and me too!) learning about the solar system.

Good info page about Google Sky is here. More here with screencast. Looks cool!

Special Hi To My Local Colleagues

2007-08-21T20:30:00.000-05:00

Today our district librarian (AR) introduced the SLL2.0 program to the rest of my fellow librarians to see if any of them might be interested in exploring it together as a group. I thought I'd say welcome to any of you that might be exploring my blog to see what it's all about. Look back over previous posts too. Leave me a comment on a post if you come by so I'll know you've been here!

Just about everything that you see on this blog along the right side is an element that I learned about through exploring a "Thing" in the SLL2.0 program. You can learn about all of these Things too--and do it a little more slowly during the school year than I did it this summer. AR said the district cohort would be doing the program in 9 months rather than 9 weeks--so the pace won't be so frantic. It is a self-paced program anyway, so the only pressure is what you put on yourself!

Why participate in SLL2.0?
Warlick states that, in a world where the future is not certain, the most valuable skill we can foster in our young people is that of lifelong learning. Today we may not be able to accurately predict what our students' future careers, environments or even social structures will be like, but if we have taught them to learn new things for themselves when they need to, then we have done our jobs!

The web 2.0 tools that are explored in the SLL2.0 course are the tools that our children use to connect--to information, to entertainment, to ideas, to each other. These are the tools that they are using today. I think I should at least know about them!

Additionally, these tools are showing up in numerous forms within traditional information channels too. Bloggers now get national coverage & audience at political events. They're quoted on the evening news! CNN's IReport seeks and uses viewers' videos of news events. Almost every news outlet on the Internet has a Comments function so their patrons can make their opinion known to the world. These are all web2.0 tools. They bring people together. They promote conversation and rethinking and debating.

Lastly, I must say that I found many of the tools, sites, applications and ideas explored in SLL2.0 just plain cool! Week 5 is just a blast--you'll learn about online photo sharing sites, creative sites like Scrapblog, art and design sites and lots more. Just fun stuff!

If you find that this program is just not your bag, that's ok too! I think you'll learn something useful if you give it a try though. It's a chance to practice/model that skill of lifelong learning.

Last Thought for Today...I Promise!
I believe that librarians and the school library really do help form the true heart of a school community. I also fear that our talents (librarians') will be marginalized as schools rush to do the popular, flashy thing with students where information technology is concerned. Librarians must be part of the conversation when it comes to accessing, evaluating and using information--it's what we know! We have a unique perspective that is vital to our students. We must remain at the heart of the school for tomorrow's kids.

Busy Busy Beginning School

2007-08-21T20:14:00.001-05:00

In teacher meetings all week long, and trying to get our library in shape for students in the extra minutes during the day! I haven't had much time to read my usual blogs or even think about my own blog.

This year I will have a new paraprofessional working with me, a friend from the school community that I've known for several years--great choice, I think. (Although I will miss my old para--she was great fun to be around and work with) Anyway, it should be a good thing, but transition is always difficult. It's a good time to reflect on practices in the library and how I can set a framework that is good for her to work in--with clear expectations and enough support--one that also works for me so I can concentrate on the teaching tasks. Team building--it's an exciting time, but it's also a big job.

Week 9 Thing #23 Summary of My SLL2.0 Experience

2007-08-16T19:34:00.001-05:00

Since my last post (Part 1) was a more personal one, I will confine myself to answering the questions that the CSLA team asked us to explore in our summary post about the School Library Learning 2.0 program.

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
Of course, I loved all the Week 5 activities! I think it was great timing to put the fun stuff in that week so that it broke up the "heavy thinking" part so nicely! Imagechef is very cool and I've already used it on my school web site. While I was already familiar with Flickr, I did enjoy looking thru and playing with all of FDs Flickrtoys. By the way, John Watson, who writes all these fun tools also writes a very interesting and sometimes quite touching blog called Flagrant Disregard . His blogs about Being Daddy are most wonderful--and he's a great photographer too! Check him out!

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
I sometimes found it difficult to toggle between the main page and the discovery pages. Maybe put simpler links on the main page for each week and then put the tips, discovery items, curricular tie-ins, etc. all on one page for each week. ?

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?
I absolutely would. I will keep up with some of the fellow learners blogs as well. I found some great ones!

How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote CSLA learning activities?
The School Library Learning 2.0 learning experience was truly one of the most valid professional development experiences I've ever had.

Week 9 Thing #23 Part 1 Learning for Life...

2007-08-16T18:53:00.001-05:00

The School Library Learning 2.0 learning experience was truly one of the most valid professional development experiences I've ever had.

As the "information landscape" changes (David Warlick's phrase), librarians face the opportunity to become more important and integral to the learning experience than ever before. People will need guidance to find authoritative information! As Warlick (he's one of my favorite thinkers, does it show?) and so many others insist, in an age where we can no longer predict what kinds of jobs or lifestyles our young people will face in adulthood, the most important skill we can hone in them is the ability to continue teaching themselves new things when they need to. We should model this behavior for our students--not only for the sake or modeling, but also because lifelong learning is a fundamental tenet of librarianship! Learning is what we facilitate--it's what we're about! So...we have to walk the walk!

As my friend, mentor and fellow learner said to me today, we must stay a step ahead if we can. We might not be a step ahead of our adaptable young learners all the time, but we can stay a step ahead of the norm in terms of learning new and better ways of doing things! And if our kids see us learning, then I say we've done them a favor, because we've shown them that learning is a forever pursuit!

I am wildly appreciative of the California School Library Association for the spirit of collaboration and lifelong learning that they've exhibited by making this program available to me, a Texas librarian, who will probably never be a resident of their state. The sponsors of SLL2.0 have been supportive and helpful to me and my other Texas colleagues, and we will in turn spread the word--and give the credit to this wonderful team. Thank you again for being so willing to share your knowledge and time--this was really a wonderfully engaging and pertinent professional development experience.

Week 9 Thing #22 eBooks and Audiobooks

2007-08-16T18:11:00.000-05:00

I am a HUGE fan of audiobooks, as one might guess, since I'm such an iPod lover! First of all, audiobooks fit nicely into my life--just as with podcasts, I can listen to an audiobook during my commute time, while waiting in a traffic jam or wherever! My family enjoys audiobooks together just about every time we take a trip. I "read" books in this way that I might not have time to read otherwise.

As an educator, I find audiobooks to be a wonderfully accessible format for students. Readers who might not be able to "handle" a book that their peers are reading can listen along--or better yet, listen while reading--to an audiobook, thereby "keeping up" with their friends. In fact, when the Harry Potter series was first published, this is how my 3rd grader, who was not then a strong reader and would never have been able to read them alone, read the first couple of books. By the time the third one was published, she was reading while listening. That particular audio series was such a phenomenal production that by the publication of the 7th book, our whole family chose to read and listen to the book. The audiobooks had taken on a life of their own, and we didn't want to miss Jim Dale's performance any more than we wanted to miss reading the books ourselves!

Podiobooks, Librivox and Audiobooks with Annie are all great sources for free audiobooks--both new titles by new authors and titles in the public domain through the Gutenberg Project.

eBooks I am not as familiar or comfortable with. Possibly because I don't have a portable device that I can read them on. While I don't mind surfing the web on my laptop, I don't love to spend a huge amount of time reading on it. Also, it seems to be harder on my old eyes than a traditional book. I just don't like it.

That being stated though, I do understand that our students are more comfortable with the format, and I see that I need to explore and think more about such sites as Overdrive and the World eBook Fair.

Week 9 #21 Podcasts

2007-08-14T20:38:00.000-05:00

Podcasts! I think podcasts are potentially the most effective professional development tool we have available to us. As in many districts, my district's latest push is for educators to engage in personal professional learning communities. I think podcasting is a powerful professional development tool that perfectly fits into this model. I know podcasting has certainly changed my professional learning!

As with so many things in life, I came to be interested in podcasts because of my daughter. She got an iPod for Christmas a couple of years ago, and I never thought I would really be that interested in one. Then I discovered how many podcasts were available! And they were all FREE! It wasn't long until I had an iPod of my own, and so did my husband!

I have dozens of podcasts, personal and professional, that I download regularly. I use iTunes primarily. There are so many really good casts that I sometimes have a hard time listening to all of them!

One podcast that I listen to every week as soon as it posts is Women of Web 2.0 through the EdTechTalk channel. In fact, just about all of the EdTechTalk casts are worth a listen. A great resource for our American History teachers is the cast produced by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. It regularly covers topics that really help bring the colonial period to life--interesting stuff like what people wore, how they made wigs, what a slave's life was really like, etc. Geek!ed! is also a must-listen each week. I like this cast because the hosts, all from a school district in Michigan, represent a variety of educators' views --from technology teacher to IT director to edtech director, etc. They are silly and thought-provoking and just fun to listen to. It is fascinating to hear how many issues we have in common, even though we are from very different & distant states.
Ooo! And I forgot to mention that so many conference sessions are now podcasted that I can "sit in" on conferences that I can't manage to get to!

I find that I listen to these podcasts in the minutes that I spend commuting or waiting in carpool lines or in traffic jams. In this way, I have a much richer professional development life than I did before. Pre-iPod, many nights my professional reading was, frankly, when I was too tired to really give it my full attention. Podcasting is a perfect fit for me.

More personal favorites are Hometown Tales (because every town has one), Rick Steves' Travel , TEDTalks video podcasts, Reading Rockets Author Interviews...

Week 9 Thing #20 YouTube

2007-08-14T19:28:00.000-05:00

In several previous posts, I embedded videos from various sources, so I think I've covered this "Thing" already in my blog. Although I do enjoy the occasional cute kitten video or funny political video from YouTube, I must admit that most of it is not classroom material.

I will say that TeacherTube is a GREAT site for educators though. Our district seems to be particularly conservative as far as which web sites are allowed, and even WE can get to TeacherTube from school! At least it wasn't blocked earlier in the summer--we'll see if that sticks! That's good news though, because I've found many videos there that are worth sharing. While it doesn't have nearly the number of videos on it, most of them are more usable for the classroom than what proliferates on YouTube.

What I think is more exciting, is the idea of these video sharing sites--the impact they and a whole Web2.0 mentality are having on the wider culture. In the recent Democratic Presidential debate and the upcoming Republican Debate, CNN and YouTube are working to combine their resources to allow people to ask candidates questions by video online. The Democrats even ended up taking a question from a sock puppet. Wow. Now, not surprisingly, many of the Republican candidates are refusing to "play along."

I think it's all very interesting that we happen to be immersed in thinking about these web tools, and here they are making national news in this way. I wonder what the final outcome will be? Will the Democrats ultimately pay the price for catering to the "cool" crowd? Will the Republicans stoically refuse to embrace this new technology and end up paying the price instead? Will it all just blow over and turn out to be a non-issue? Or is this truly a cultural turning point as to how, and how immediately, candidates have to respond to their (potential) constituents? Interesting times...

Week 8 Thing #19 LibraryThing

2007-08-11T19:51:00.000-05:00

I am such a book geek that LibraryThing is just my kind of place! What a fantastic site--and it's FREE for a year! Wow!

I had been to this site previously, but I didn't set up my own catalog until last month. (See random books at right). Since then, I've put many of my books in my catalog. Every time I go back to it though, I find that I lose about an hour because I can't tear myself away!

What a fun way to recommend books to patrons, advertise new books in the collection, suggest books that fit a certain curricular unit, etc. Again, I wonder if I will be able to access LibraryThing at school...

Week 8 Thing #18 Online Productivity Tools

2007-08-11T19:10:00.000-05:00

I have played around the Zoho writer and Google docs for a few months now, and I must say that I think this change in the whole idea of applications and software is an exciting one. I've found that they work almost identically to MS productivity tools, and documents created in these applications open and function perfectly normally in MS Office. These online productivity tools could potentially replace expensive applications such as MS Word, Excel, etc. because they're free and accessible anywhere. Other than the necessity of being live online, I can see no reason to insist on MS products for our school PCs. Users can save their work in microsoft-friendly formats too, so they're useful to users who might not be Zoho/Google Docs users.

Imagine my disappointment when I found that Google Docs is blocked at my school. I haven't checked Zoho. I don't know why. I don't know why such a tool would be threatening to the network or to student safety. Perhaps the ability to publish a document wide is the objection that the district has to these tools. It is certainly too bad, because this seems like a huge "gift" to school districts strapped for funding!

Week 7 Thing #16

2007-08-04T07:45:00.000-05:00

I am relieved to find that we can access wikispaces from school! So now my district librarian and I are able to collaborate on a mini-program for our colleagues incorporating some of the concepts we're learning through School Library Learning 2.0.

I decided to set up a wiki of my own to see how it works/how I like it. I must admit though that I have found wikispaces a tad confusing. I don't know HOW it could be confusing to me, but for some reason it is! I'm in the process of watching the tutorials again to make sure I didn't miss anything, and then I may just scratch what I've done and start over. I think I did something funky in the beginning and it's made the architecture of my wiki weird. Working on it...it can't be that hard! The whole idea is simplicity! I think it's me.

I concur with many of my fellow SLL2.0 participants whose blogs I've read, in that Joyce Valenza's blog post entitled Ten Reasons Why Your Next Pathfinder Should Be a Wiki really puts a practical face on wikis and why they're really a perfect tool for teachers and librarians. I'll have to periodically reread it as I get a little further into my year planning! I plan to introduce wikis to my older students as well, in the form of book reviews/discussion--especially in connection with our state reading program (Texas Bluebonnet Award) nominees.

I spent some time looking around a site that I'd read about in addition to the sites listed in SLL2.0: Curriki . Curriki calls itself the Global Education and Learning Community--it's a Curriculum Wiki. I found a couple of really useful things here and here in just a few moments' browsing, so I think this might be a site worth checking in on regularly as well & sharing with teachers.

To complete this Thing, a few other uses of a wiki in the school library setting:

collaboration with teachers
event planning (book fair, author visit, etc.) with both teachers and volunteers
curriculum planning with fellow librarians at other schools
book reviews by students/teachers
pathfinders/resource lists
any project necessitating collaboration!

Week 6 Thing #15

2007-08-02T16:11:00.000-05:00

What does Library 2.0 mean?
In my view, libraries have always had a 2.0 bent, because the ideal library program considers the patron's needs first. The overriding consideration in a good library program has always been maximizing access to information--isn't that a core idea at the heart of Web 2.0/School2.0/Library2.0?

I do believe though that in an information rich environment such as today's, libraries must continually search for ways to remain relevant to their patrons. We know we're the ideal resource people to help students/teachers with:

location of authoritative resources
resource evaluation
reader's advisory
new and promising trends in education, etc.

However, I do not think we always market ourselves to our communities effectively. Web 2.0 tools can facilitate our efforts.

Of the articles/blogposts that we read for this exercise, I found Rick Anderson's Away from the "icebergs" to be the one that I kept thinking about. His assertion that we can no longer maintain a "just in case" collection fits right in with Warlick's idea that schools must change because information is ubiquitous in the digital age--the info itself is no longer "precious." We are no longer the gatekeepers to knowledge, so we have to establish what we are going to be.

Our services must be accessible--at least in some form-- around the clock, or our patrons will look elsewhere to get their needs met. Our millennials have come to expect that! Anderson's third point is that patrons must know about and know how to use our resources, and I think this is the point that librarians in my district (including me) must really concentrate on. We are wildly lucky to have a variety of resources in my district, including research databases, unitedstreaming, teachingbooks.net, online encyclopediae and more! We know about them and how to access them--it's a constant challenge to keep our teachers/students aware! Web 2.0 tools can help!