I had a couple of conversations over the past week that involve preparing preservice teacher-librarians and working with the folks out there who don’t know what to do with the shift in the information landscape, as well as those who didn’t even feel it move.
In fact, some of that talk occurred during my defense. All of this chatter reminded me of that incident last summer at our state leadership summit. One young librarian noted that she didn’t really know what she should be doing. “We’re all doing different things.” (Read that old, but really good, post here.) Another old post–”You’d better start swimming”–also came to mind.
I believe that many of my fine colleagues at preservice institutions are working to address the shift, creating projects that mirror those projects that are (or could be) happening in our classrooms and libraries, preparing professionals to thoughtfully create with new tools, to embrace and blossom pedagocially with change. But I don’t know if this is true globally.
I see many new professionals who are falling through the holes. (Even though they may know how to use these tools in their personal lives.) I believe this is true for those who come out of our schools of education as well as those who come out of our schools of library and information science.
Many other of us don’t see the reasons why we need to advocate to unblock the very learning tools our students need to collaborate and communicate.
So I want to start a discussion and I want to plan something real and scalable. Can we gather the “older” troops? Can we create a road show? What kind of boot camp do we need?
Can those of other who talk to each other here in our own blogworlds, and in our lovely, baby TeacherLibrarian Ning, Classroom 2.0 Ning, and Library 2.0 Ning, also gather together at one of our conferences to share our best new learning activities?
It is truly a shame that ALA and NECC overlap this year. I love both. Sometimes I feel like I learn more at NECC, more of the stuff I need to apply in my classroom.
Anyway, it seems that one such forum might be EduBloggerCon at NECC. I volunteered to host a session. I would love others to present with me. Join that wiki and volunteer to help. Also, take a look at the other NECC sessions being planned–see below. The panel sponsored by SIGMS, and planned by Peggy Milam is going to include David Warlick, Doug Johnson, Will Richardson, Doug Johnson, Alice Yucht and me. It should be way cool, but all of these are one-shot deals.
How should we mobilize? How should do we scale change and new knowledge? How can we prepare our colleagues to lead from the center?
| EMS SIGMS Forum: The Changing Landscape of 21st Century School Information Centers |
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| Theme/Strand: |
Technology Infrastructure—Library/Media Centers |
And I’ll be presenting:
Information Fluency Meets Web 2.0 
[Session: Lecture]
Joyce Valenza, Neverending Search blog with Ken Rodoff
Wednesday, 6/27/2007, 8:30am–9:30am; (location available mid-May)
How do we translate traditional information skills for an information landscape that is genre-shifting, multi-modal, media-rich, participatory, socially connected, and brilliantly chaotic?
