Joyce Valenza’s Neverending Search

This week I got a draft of my dissertation back from my chair. There is much to adjust before my defense on May 7th. And so, dear readers, for the next two weeks this blog is going to be a bit quiet. Please forgive me and wish me well. (And pray that I get over this flu-like stuff.)

Some good news:  When I get back to real life, my blog will join the others on the School Library Journal site. (I am hoping it will stay here as well.)
While I am gone, don’t forget to visit our TeacherLibrarianNing!  The action is really picking up.  Post your forum questions, your pics, your videos.  Put yourself on our Frappr map.

I am happy to announce that our TeacherLibrarian Ning space is looking better.  I’ve added a banner, a Frappr map, and a couple of forum discussions.  If you have any interest in a professional version of social networking, please join our impressive little core group of members.  Add your ideas and your photos.

First–Where am I? I am in between conferences. I left PSLA, our state conference, and I on my way to DC for Computers in Libraries.

At PSLA, a wonderful national speaker offered a fine basic workshop on blogs and wikis. She noted that there really weren’t any school library blogs of note, or none that she could easily find using Google. (Seems strangely reminiscent of that American Libraries kerfuffle, no?)

I smoothed my own feathers and began to think. The reason this nationally known speaker could not find our blogs is because we are blogging a little differently from our public library colleagues. The examples she shared feel roughly into three buckets: book reviews, professional development, and public relations. We blog differently.

Over the past two years I have probably launched or inspired 100 blogs. None of these efforts have my name or the term “school library” attached to them. I’ve launched or helped to launch global issues discussion blogs, research blogs, literary circle blogs, character interpretation blogs, and much more. I’ve seen so many other creative efforts.

So, it occurred to me that it would be useful to create a tool to showcase what these efforts look like and how they might be used in our own classrooms and libraries. It might also be fun to create a sort of taxonomy of pedabloggy, ala the brilliant Design Patterns for Eduwikis by Bernie Dodge.

Please help me brainstorm in our new Pedabloggy wiki! (Simply get a wikispaces account and edit away.) I’ll clean it up when we reach crit