Someone’s knocking at the door
Somebody’s ringing the bell
Someone’s knocking at the door
Somebody’s ringing the bell
Do me a favor, open the door and let ‘em in
Paul McCartney
After ten years of maintaining a website I was pretty proud of, it struck me that it was time to rethink ownership.
What I know: Teens who create or collaborate on online spaces, are more likely to feel welcome living on them. So what happens when you open the door, even just a crack, and let them in?
It’s clearly time to open the door. Opportunites are ripe. Galleries of student art/ work can be easily constructed using tools like Flickr. I assigned several student curators for our clipart gallery. Right now, curator Steve is getting our yearbook photographers to contribute their shots. We have yet to attribute credit and assign labels, but Steve tells me he’s on top of it. Chris, our Art Gallery curator, plans to add many more examples of student work and encourage artist reflection as time nears for the art show.
You can view a steadily growing archive of videos in our new SpringfieldVideo Blog. Our students contribute to the learning culture by creating their own learning objects through streamed video or podcasts. Teachers are using them. I use them regularly. And I am always happy to see students viewing our student-produced book trailers here in the library. Some pull them up just to show their friends. It’s getting like that with our grammar and information literacy series.
Students (mostly dear, Ben) recently prepared our new orientation video. The library site also now regularly hosts our latest Springfield broadcast news production. Last month’s was particularly filled with honesty and humor.
Much more video is coming. The students are working on seven films more for our grammar series. And I am learning how to convert them to Flash. They’ll open far more quickly once I get that straight.
Podcasts are coming too. Martin posted one on Open Source, that we need to tighten a bit. He is also helping me get my own podcasts together for the site.
We are moving our senior seminar projects to blogs on our site to encourage reflection and more transparent peer and faculty comments and interventions. I am beginning to move our pathfinders from html to wiki form to encourage student participation. I want to include student discoveries and suggestions for resources.
I am inspired by the work I discover as I visit library sites for my doctoral study. Northfield Mount Hermon’s Reading Room Blog is all about student users and reaches way beyond student research needs to celebrate the whole learner, the whole KID. It celebrates and includes its student musicians, its student poets, its workers, its readers, and its lounge lizards.
Greece Athena (New York) Media Center’s website features student book reviews (and ratings) on its supplementary Athena Blogs. Uni High School students participate in a long-running Book Discussion Forum. Uni librarian, Frances Jacobson Harris fills her own Gargoyles Loose in the Library blog with images of and stories about her students. Naples High School (Florida) Media Center also features images of learners as well as student poems, photos, and art. Lawrence (Kansas) High School Library’s site is filled with posters featuring students and photos of student events. The LHS blog posts student reviews.
Quite a while back in this blog, I wrote about a new rubric for district sites developed by SchoolSpan. This rubric values contributions from faculty and students, images of students, the inclusion of student work. The description of an exemplary site concludes with this statement:
The community-at-large feels empowered as active stakeholders. . .the site reflects that ongoing communication objective.
All of this makes great sense in a 2.0 world. All of this puts front and center the kind of learning the recently released NETS draft encourages. Creativity and Innovation; Communication and Collaboration; Research and Information Retrieval; Critical Thinking, Problem Solving Decision Making; Digital Citizenship.
All of this makes great sense in a world where learners are used to creating Web content, as documented by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Teen Content Creators and Consumers. Way back in 2005, the report concluded:
American teenagers today are utilizing the interactive capabilities of the internet as they create and share their own media creations. Fully half of all teens and 57% of teens who use the internet could be considered Content Creators. They have created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations.
Should we lock these kids out of the very learning spaces where they spend the largest part of their days? Or should we open our doors and let ‘em in?
(I hope to build this post into my VOYA column. Please write to share other examples of online student/library collaborations.)
