Joyce Valenza’s Neverending Search

I feel a strange pull between my two blogs.

Yesterday I posted a rather long list of options for finding podcast booktalks–as both models and as resources. I don’t want readers of this blog to miss it. So please see Booktalking 2.0 and please consider linking to the RSS feed for my SLJ Blog.

I thought that dissertation was done a couple of months ago. Done, it seems, is a relative word. The grad reader had lots to say about my use of dashes, and colons, and table formatting. Several days later, I think the word done finally applies. I can now go to Texas, see my old friends Stacy and Michael, and get hooded. Pics to come on Flickr.

Last week I attended our leadership summit in State College, PA. As a whole, our organization has been slow to embrace 2.0 technologies. Perhaps this is true of most state school library organizations.

But this is a critical year for school librarians in Pennsylvania.  And it is wise that this year our organization is fully focused on professional development.

Our state is entering the second fully-funded year of the Classrooms for the Future grant. The grant will put a laptop on the desk of every student in high school English, math, social studies, and science classrooms.

Each school in the program has a technology integrator who is experiencing a rich professional development experience. He or she is responsible for spreading the knowledge they gain with their high school faculties.

What this means is that Pennsylvania high school librarians must retool as our schools retool. Wait a minute. We must retool before our schools retool. It’s not optional.

We must all figure out how to teach and lead in technology infused, one-to-one schools. We must figure out how to lead in the areas of information technologies and new strategies for communicating information products. We must figure out how to best collaborate with our technology integrators. We must figure out how to reach students who are researching and writing in their classrooms.

This can happen through our virtual libraries. This can happen when we physically leave our libraries to partner with classroom teachers.

To get our feet wet, one of our first strategies was to set up a PSLA Ning. We are also considering following California’s example, investigating a program that resembles School Library Learning 2.0.

Did I mention that this is not optional?