LibraryRemix

“You can’t write an essential question about Pokemon,” one English teacher told her 9th grade students. What fun we had learning otherwise. “Wow…how do you think like that,” one student asked after we settled on the provoking question: What social skills does playing Pokemon teach? She had that certain light a kid gets in his eyes when he realizes that he can ask deeper questions…critically consider…those things he’s truly interested in.

I had this discussion with my own teen daughter today. She is feeling less than thrilled about her own ACT scores at the moment. Being ranked 9th in a class of around 400 she’s simply convinced herself that her standardized scores should fall in a more impressive range. “I get so mad at a world that tests me and says that there is only one right answer,” she cried. “I think differently. I’m not a robot.”

Since her first foray into standardized tests in the 4th grade, my daughter has performed proficiently, though generally not as advanced as her sister or those peers with whom she shares high honors in the classroom. It is ironic, then, that she absolutely LOVED her AP Stats class last year…the very back bone of the data-driven world that demands standardized testing. She explained, “When Mrs. D asked us to identify research flaws…Mom, I could list 10 factors the researchers hadn’t taken into account. I love doing that…rethinking about each question DIFFERENTLY.”

As an educator, this would be the defining moment…the aha…when I knew my student could not only formulate an essential question, but that they had begun to think in this way as a matter of course.  Read more... (371 words, estimated 1:29 minutes reading time)

Read Buffy Hamilton’s (The Unquiet Librarian) powerful response (An Indecent Proposal) to the President’s failure to include funding in support of school libraries.  This failure to strengthen his recent official proclamation through specific action (and, in fact, mention!) is a blow to those of us who professionally support the President’s literacy initiatives in the field, integrated and day-by-day.  More than this, it misleads those who do NOT understand the new paradigm of literacy in a hyperconnected and information saturated society.

From a blog associated with the new book, GroundSwell, the post Social Technographics: Conversationalists get onto the ladder shows how twitter and facebook status updaters are figuring into the the world of social media. Reminds me alot of Gladwell’s Tipping Point.

"Conversationalists" are now on the ladder of social media

The author’s note that these “conversationalists” are an intriguing lot with a definate stake in market trends. I can’t help but come back to my own professional observations of how market and classroom align in today’s marketplace of information and media. Consider the following suggestions offered in the blog:

“Convince your boss this stuff is for real, and that if you haven’t jumped on it, you’re late.”

There is a hum (or drum) in education now pushing administrators to recognize social media not just as a tool that could be harvested, but as a new way of communicating that MUST be engaged if we are to remain relevant in society.

“Profile your customer base, and see what they’re ready for, before planning a project to reach out to them.”

Know your students. They don’t learn the same way we did, even 15 years ago. The dilemma in education? Student’s today are technologically MORE ready than we are! At the same time, they’re social aptitude has slipped they navigate through the online social network “willy-nilly.” Shouldn’t we be there with them…to teach, to model?

“Segment your audience; build different strategies for different segments. (Social is so prevalent now that a single approach for your company is probably too broad.)”

Differentiate your approach to reach different learners. We’ve embraced that in the classroom, but too often we settle for seeing “technology” AS an approach, rather than as a space in need of these differentiated approaches. All said, it comes down to…SCAFFOLDING!

Literary summaries and analyses.  In developing a library collection, teacher can’t agree.

For some, there is a double standard with regards to literary guides such as Blooms Literary Themes or the Understanding Literature series published by Lucent. One school where I taught shelved every volume (every edition) of MasterPlots “for teacher use only” because…a plot summary and analytical overview is a “refresher” for teachers and “cheating” for students!?  Cliffnotes, SparkNotes…the cheap way out of reading required materials.

Others teachers welcome the guides and the fresh, updated takes they offer.  They generally believe that any student willing to read the guide is probably immersed in the literary experience.  It’s for these teachers that I share the 60 Second Recap, a great site, whose mission is to “make the great works of literature accessible, relevant, and, frankly, irresistible to today’s teens…to help teens engage with the best books out there … not just to help them get better grades, but to help them build better lives.”  This is how the site introduces it’s mission:

“Eat your lima beans,” Mom used to say.

And now that you’re out on your own, honestly, are lima beans a staple of your culinary repertoire?

There, in a lima bean, lies the problem confronting the great works of literature. We’re all forced to read them in school so we can get good grades so we can go to a good college so we can get a good job so we can forget all about that literature they used to force us to read so we could get good grades.  Read more... (515 words, estimated 2:04 minutes reading time)

I shuffled through the mail left by my daughter on the kitchen table. The cover of  the newly arrived November edition of ISTE’s Learning and Leading with Technology reached out to me….Cool Tools for School.  Ahhh…worth looking at.  Below that?  Is Your Website Accessible?, Students Without Borders, and (!!!!) Do Schools Still Need Brick-and-Mortar Libraries?  (READ IT HERE)

Kudos, to Doug…obviously.  Yes, I am a school library media specialist and I appreciate the support he offers to our programs, particularly in light of Mastrion’s out-of-touch stereotyping that leaves me “alone, in [my] information monarchy” surrounded by words, words, words…and nothing more.

But it isn’t enough to disagree with Mastrion’s point-of-view…mostly because I am a librarian, which makes my own intentions instantly suspect.  “Perhaps” I am simply an apologist who values traditional literacy over the more “progressive” approach.

So…let’s start with Mastrion’s assertion that Google (a tool I consider myself proficient in using) offers a simpler and more efficient means of finding information for students today.  I tested that theory in a quest to find out exactly “who” Johnson and Mastrion are, and how their thinking is impacting learning,  specifically with regards to technology.

Now, I’ve read Johnson before.  He’s a well-known writer in the fields of information and technology education.  Still, would the novice researcher find his work as easily online as off?  The answer is YES.  I Google his name, and irregardless of it’s commonality, Doug Johnson’s site hits the top of the list.  Johnson has made his ideas and research available across platforms (print and online).

Next, I Google Mastrion’s name (in quotes, to keep the first and surname relative to one another, of course) and get 751 hits.  Below are the results:

Hit # 1 – He graduated in 1985 from Courtland High School in Fredricksburg, VA.  I can’t tell more, since this is a subscription site to which I do not belong.  Read more... (1410 words, estimated 5:38 minutes reading time)

On September 30, 2009, John Temple, former editor, president, and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News, posted a transcript of his keynote presentation at the UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit, delivered that same day.  Under Temple’s direction, the paper won a total of four Pulitzer Prizes.  And yet, seven months earlier, that same paper printed it’s final edition, after almost 150 years of publication.

I see valuable lessons in what Temple has to say to news professionals that apply in the secondary school setting–not just in our journalism classes and school publications, but also in the classroom and school paradigm in general.  Below are some key points to consider:

Newspapers, like schools operate under  long-established and respected models of delivery. Each is served by professionals rigorously trained to operate within these models. And those models and the paradigms they support are difficult to shift, largely because they have deeply engrained conventions and cultural functions. Temple notes:

“…we thought we were in the newspaper business….and put the vast majority of our efforts into the print war. We didn’t understand what was happening to the playing field. Media companies used to think they were in control. That they could “own” a market. What we didn’t take into account is that in this new era, consumers were going to be in control.”

Failure to adopt technology was not “the problem” that plagued Temple’s newspaper, anymore than it is a failure in most American schools today. And yet, too often technology is seen simply as a way to make existing tasks easier or more efficient. Use and development stop short. We adapt the adopted technology to fit the existing model of delivery, rather than adapting the model of delivery to adopt the new ways of thinking made possible by the technology.    Temple writes:  Read more... (1329 words, estimated 5:19 minutes reading time)

Disney is well known for it’s jealous protection of their works, even in educational settings.  Using micro-moments from those same works to teach us about both copyright and fair use is both unique and irreverent. Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University’s approach manages to educate, while at the same time offering subtle critical commentary of the most ardent adversary of this remix culture we live in. Original video posting can be found here.

The Info-Fetishist, a blog maintained by Anne-Marie Deitering, a professor at Oregon State University Libraries recently reviewed David Palmer’s 2009 research findings published in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 46 (2).  The research focused on student interest (or focused attention) generated during various learning situations or activities.   The entry, titled Motivating students in the one-shot offers an assessment of this research on library-based inquiry skills instruciton.  Deitering notes that Palmer’s research

suggests [that] “multiple experiences of situational interest” can develop into long-term interest.  At best, this suggests that students would need repeated exposure to awesome information literacy teachers to develop a long-term interest in research or inquiry just from IL classes alone.   In fact, Palmer suggests that one reason for the mediocrity he observed in inquiry skills was the fact that students didn’t really have the experience with independent inquiry to know how to talk about what they were doing.

In my own practice, I’ve certainly found that students have too few opportunities to engage in the broad personalized inquiry that is available in a library setting.  Instructors too often provided (or at least point to) all of the informational pieces students will need to research the same conclusions previously discovered (whether by expert or educator).  And while there is an expectation of informational analysis, there is generally an “anti”-expectation of variation in findings.  Is it little wonder that students view library research opportunities as times for “fact gathering” and “answer finding” rather than a time of discovery and scholarship?

I’ve admired Wesch’s work since I was first introduced to it a couple of years back. His digital ethnographic studies are facinating and address the crucial changes that are occuring in our culture (and should be occuring in our classrooms). His youtube presentations include Web 2.0…The Machine is Us/ing Us, A Vision of Students Today, Information R/evolution, and Twitter and the World Simulation. Wesch spoke this spring to to Wisconsin educators at WEMTA, and the following, from the 2009 Personal Democracy Forum reiterates much of what he presented to us. I look for opportunities to share these ideas…and hope readers here will too.