Wanderings…

I will TRY to remember to add to this post as I discover  ideas.  Someone on LM_NET recently asked for non-powerpoint presentation ideas for upper level classes.  Some of the ideas that have come in are:

• iMovie is a great alternative…they could compose music with garage band (MACS) and add it to the movie.  Audacity is a program for PCs – similar to garage band .
• A Periodic Table of Visualization methods
• Create a website on thier topic
• Digital Storytelling and Reformning PowerPoint
• VoiceThread
• Animoto
• Flowgram
• PicLits
• GoAnimate
• Glogster

I’ve been thinking about courage for the past few years. Reading Palmer Parker’s Book “The Courage to Teach” got me started. That book made me realize that during most of my career as a librarian, I never really had the courage to actually know my students … and allow them to know me. Somehow I had fooled myself that teaching research skills to students was more important. I’ve been meaning to do a “courage” posting for awhile now.

2 days ago, Doug Johnson asked “Are hope and inspiration our missing ingredients in educational change? Seems like we have the work part nailed!” I say “AMEN!” to that.
Today, Doug started his post with the words “Hope didn’t do it”, and goes on to tell us how the bill mandating school librarians in every MN school did not make it. At the end, Doug says:

I am sadder than I thought I would be. I knew this would be an uphill battle. I wasn’t even sure we should have taken this on, given its odds of passage. But yesterday convinced me that is a necessary fight and we can’t surrender. As the Blues Brothers would put it, our profession needs to be on “a mission from God.”

I too am discouraged. Does no one else understand our “Mission from God”?

Maybe some of Parker Palmer’s words will provide a much needed infusion of hope and courage:

…..good teaching sometimes goes unvalued by academic institutions, by the students for whom it is done, and even by those teachers who do it. Many of us “lose heart” in teaching. How shall we recover the courage that good teaching requires? …. In its original meaning, a “professor” was not someone with esoteric knowledge and technique. Instead, the word referred to a person able to make a profession of faith in the midst of a dangerous world. All good teachers, I believe, have access to this confidence. It comes not from the ego but from a soul-deep sense of being at home in the world despite its dangers. This is the authority by which good teachers teach. This is the gift they pass on to their students. Only when we take heart as professors can we “give heart” to our students – and that, finally, is what good teaching is all about.

From “Good Teaching: A Matter of Living the Mystery” by Parker J. Palmer

So Doug ….Keep the faith. Keep hope alive. Courage!!

Summertime is a time to recharge. I have been re-reading articles and emails that I have saved for one reason or another. Below is an email that appeared on LM_NET from Gayle Lawrence, Library Media Specialist, Charles Page High School, Sand Springs, OK. I read it whenever I feel that the contributions of librarians to the information age have been overlooked.

One of my teachers sent this quote to me today. Sometimes we take for granted the great strides librarians have taken in the last 10-15 years. This reminder made me proud of our profession.

“If you had told people a decade ago that card catalogs would virtually disappear within ten years and would be replaced by our current information-management systems, they would not have believed you. Librarians have been the real heroes of the digital revolution in higher education. They are the ones who have seen the farthest, done the most, accepted the hardest challenges, and demonstrated most clearly the benefits of digital information. In the process, they have turned their own field upside down and have revolutionized their professional training. It is testimony to their success that we take their achievement-and their information-management systems-for granted.”
(The Academic Culture and the IT Culture: Their Effect on Teaching and Scholarship By Edward L. Ayers EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no. 6 (Nov/Dec 2004): 48-62.) Edward L. Ayers is Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and is Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History at the University Virginia.

Now I am going to plagiarize my own writing. The above email resonated with me at the time – and I replied to the group. I think we all need to remind ourselves from time to time of where we have been, how far we have come, and how we are still changing the information world.

Thank you SO much for sharing this quote. It is EXACTLY what I have been saying for years. [Librarians] don’t often get the recognition we deserve. But while most of the world could only dream about the information revolution, we were busy building the superstructure needed to make it a success. I have been a librarian for over 30 years. I remember using punch cards. I remember faithfully sending catalog cards to our School Library System, because “someday” all our holdings would be searchable from one database. I remember when we had a computer with a tape recorder as a drive, rather than a floppy disk [drive or CD-ROMS]. I remember when a double disk drive was the epitome of high-tech! Heck – let’s face it – I remember the abacus!

So – keep up the good fight everyone. We are Information Super Heroes!

In the everydayness of our job, it is easy to fall into the trap of feeling under appreciated and wondering if what we do has any affect. Well – I want to share something else that has energized me this summer.

As many of you know – I spend a lot of time teaching kids to be wise and wary users of the internet. Sometimes I feel that I am preaching to the walls. Well – I was contacted by one of my students the other day. Here is our email exchange:

MY REPLY:

Basically I told him that it looked like an online ticket scalper
and he would be better off to go to Ticketmaster. I told him that
I knew Ticketmaster was a legit site and that when I checked
the price for the concert he wanted to go to, they listed $96 for
the best seats, while the site he emailed me listed $300 for
the best seats.

2nd EMAIL FROM THE STUDENT:

thank you so so much you rock more than the concert im going
to lol thanks for the link also i knew i could count on you, ok
have a great fun and book filled summer!

Isn’t that the best?!

Cost of Ozzfest tickets from Ticketmaster? $96

Cost of Ozzfest tickets from online ticket scalper? $300

Knowing when to ask a librarian? Priceless

So – I will say it again: “Keep up the good fight everyone. We are Information Super Heroes!

Not many students will tell you as this one did – but they know they can count on you for help and “you rock”!

The Future of Libraries: Beginning the Great Transformation
By Thomas Frey, Executive Director of the DaVinci Institute

This article makes some interesting points for our school’s new GatesBeatles Committee to consider. Yes – the article is about the future of libraries. However simply substitute the word “school” for “libary” and you will see that the the article also speaks to the future of schools. Following a brief history of libraries, the author lists many trends, including:

• Trend #4 – Search Technology will become increasingly more complicated
• Trend #6 – Over time we will be transitioning to a verbal society
• Trend #8 – The Stage is being set for a new era of Global Systems
• Trend #9 – We are transitioning from a product-based economy to an experience based economy
• Trend #10 – Libraries will transition from a center of information to a center of culture

Read the whole article here: The Future of Libraries: Beginning the Great Transformation