Don’t miss: Prepositionitis (More grammar videos)
Our students are just finishing up the latest in our series of learning objects. I think they did an especially nice job on the critical disease, Prepositionitis! These are becoming nifty tools for whole-school review.
Uncategorized | Comment (0)Office 07 compatibility–keeping up
Charlie, an 11th grader, came in with a problem we’re likely to all face in the next several weeks.
He saved his documents–due last period today–as Word 07 docs. And he couldn’t upload his file into our older versions of Word. (Of course, he should have saved as an older version or RTF. We’ll work on that for next time.)
I thought I could fix this one easily by importing the file into NeoOffice or OpenOffice. Nope.
I thought I could bring the file into Google Docs, AjaxWriter, or ZohoWrite. Nope.
With my colleague Tammy, one of our tech teachers, we searched for converters–on the Microsoft site and at Source Forge.
Finally we found it. You need to download and install fileformatconverters.exe
Then try to open the document choosing Word 07 from the dialog menu.
The Microsoft description:
“Open, edit, and save documents, workbooks, and presentations in the file formats new to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007.”
Hope this helps some others.
Uncategorized | Comment (0)Make sure you read Doug Johnson’s full response to my post on obsolescence in his Blue Skunk Blog.
Doug addresses one of the really big elephants in the room–” How can we remove the individual as a factor in whether the library position in a school is in jeopardy?” And Doug quotes some of his own strategies for reducing vulnerability to budget cuts.
And speaking of individuals, individual buildings have individual needs and a librarian’s true relevance has a lot to do with assessing and meeting those most pressing needs. Doug shares a conversation with Mike Eisenberg:
You can build all the lists you want about why librarians are important. But in the end it comes down to “Why are librarians important in MY school?” I visited with library guru Mike Eisenberg last week. He believes we all need to be important in our own ways in meeting the needs of our individual buildings and teachers. Some schools will want a reading specialist, some a computer geek, some a Chief Information Officer or uber-reseacher, and some an information literacy teacher. Be what your school needs you to be, he recommends.
I think we must also recognize that what some schools need is someone who not only responds to immediate needs, but someone who has the vision to invent and create and apply, someone who can help move learning and learning forward, beyond what is currently being assessed. Someone ready to get on, no DRIVE the new bus, when it arrives.
Doug poses a question that invites our profession’s response:
About libraries, Uncategorized | Comments (4)If you won the lottery and retired tomorrow, would your school replace you - and why? Is your position librarian-proof?
New Google Libarian’s Newsletter
The fifth Google Librarian’s newsletter was posted today http://www.google.com/librariancenter/newsletter/0609.html.
It features two new posters–one on using Google Scholar; the other is a quiz on Google’s slightly lesser-known features.
The newsletter also discusses news on downloading the classics:
Starting today, you can go to Google Book Search and download full copies of out-of-copyright books to read at your own pace. You’re free to choose from a diverse collection of public domain titles — from well-known classics to obscure gems.
Google promises, “this is just the beginning. As we digitize more of the world’s books — whether rare, common, popular or obscure — people everywhere will be able to discover them on Google Book Search.”
My initial searches of classics like Thoreau, Twain, Austen, Shakespeare were pretty satisfying!
Uncategorized | Comment (1)Meme: “You’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, For the times they are a changin’”
With this blog reaching its first birthday (my first post was August 22, 2005!), I got to thinking about how the library and the classroom have changed for many of us in the last couple of years.
I got to thinking about how incredibly dramatic the change has been since I first got out of library school in 1976 and then when I had to do that masters over again for my educational credential in 1988. But the changes occurring between 1976 and 1988, when the PC and automation were just becoming ubiquitous in libraries, had nothing on the changes we were to see in the last five, no the last 2 years!
I see an urgent need for librarians to retool. We cannot expect to assume a leadership role in information technology and instruction, we cannot claim any credibility with students, faculty, or administrators if we do not recognize and thoughtfully exploit the paradigm shift of the past two years.
I started playing around with a chart to record the changes and help plan for the future. I invite you all to help me refine this chart. It is very rough! Here’s a slightly neater version.
How life has changed since I left library school.
How should practice respond
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Things that have changed |
When left library school preservice (1976/1988?) |
2006/ 2007 School Year |
Implications for Future? Learners, Educators, Schools? Library Profession? |
| Most used reference sources | Encyclopedias and almanacs, Readers’ Guide, CD-ROM Databases, books, magazines, newspapers | Wikipedia, Google, Ask.com, MapQuest, subscription databases, ebooks | Need to introduce a fuller information toolkit. Need to promote lesser known or used tools—subscription databases, alternate search tools, ebooks. Potential for an information underclass! Need to help students determine where to start. Need for high quality federated searching to cut through the noise? May need to promote the value of books for some projects. |
| How we most often communicate | Letters, phone calls, email through Pine and other text-based systems | Cell phones, texting, email, IM, Skype (VOIP), social networking (MySpace, Friendster, FaceBook, Elgg), telecommunications, blogs, wikis, Web goes two ways | Librarians need to communicate with users using emerging tools. Blended service and instruction. Two-way communications. Learner-centered/learner empowered environment
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| Reference service | Reference service at the desk, in-person reference interview, Mudge Guide to Reference Books | Students expect immediate interaction and 24/7 information service. Students expect independence in information access—on home PCs at any hour of day. Some libraries and states offer IM and email reference | Users expect information and services to be immediate. Need for blended service in the form of Web sites, blogs, pathfinders customized to meet students’ information and developmental needs. Need for extended just-in-time, just-for-me guidance/intervention. Libraries should aim to be a window on students’ home desktops. Virtual library as customized information landscape. |
| Options for student projects, learning | Student projects: term papers, Hypercard, dioramas, essays, speeches, debates, etc. | Term papers, essays, speeches, debates, etc. PowerPoint, websites, learning objects, podcasts, video editing, Internet2, wikis, blogs, digital storytelling, WebQuests, I2 and teleconferencing bring authors, experts, performances in and connect teachers and learners with remote partners. Learning can be face-to-face, online synchronous, asynchronous. Growth of distance learning options | Librarians must partner with classroom teachers to create projects relevant to 21st century learning using emerging tools for communication. What is the best communication tool for the project? How can we use these new tools for teaching, practicing, and reflecting on information fluency? |
| Audience for student work / writing | Teacher’s eyes only, class presentation, file cabinet | Website, podcasts, wikis, blogs, digital portfolio–open potential global audience | Student work can easily be public, global! How does shifted and expanded audience change approach, instruction, motivation?
(Need for caution/instruction about “stickyness” of student personal and other writing. Admissions officers and potential employers are watching.) |
| What we know about how learners learn | Move away from fact memorization, right answers, textbook reliance, and reporting to constructivism. Move away from “frontal” teaching, group projects, inquiry, essential questions | Influence of brain research / cognitive science. Learning is: multidisciplinary, social, multi-intelligence (Gardner), potential for gaming/simulations, brain needs to “pattern”, every brain different, learning styles vary, importance of building on prior knowledge, application of knowledge, real world, growth of relevant service learning, learner-centered, community-centered, problem-based | How do we use what we know about learning to partner with teachers to create effective learning activities? What role will collaboratively created e-books, new media, a.i., gaming play? How will we design learning environments that work? |
| How we and our students find out about books and other new materials? | Bestseller lists, recommendation lists from organizations, book review journals, | Amazon & other online booksellers, push technology suggestions, mega-bookstores, book trailers, book review blogs | Need to promote and solicit suggestions for materials in new ways. Interactive forms? Encourage student/teacher book blogging? Student-produced book trailers? |
| Understandings about intellectual property | Copyright laws | Copyright laws, Multimedia Fair Use Guidelines, Tassini decision Creative Common Licence, Open Source, copyright-friendly portals for sharing content | Need to teach new world of information ethics. Copyright options are expanding for creators. How do we guide learners to copyright-friendly options? How do we behave responsibly? |
| Students and intellectual property / academic integrity | MLA (and other) books and handouts, teachers and librarians check for plagiarism by searching through print sources | Tools like turnitin, bibliographic format available on the Web, citation generators, Google as an originality check. | Need for instruction and guidelines in respecting intellectual property in a cut-and-paste, mixed, mash-up world. Need to define appropriate levels of collaboration. |
| Evaluation | Resources limited. Evaluation simplified by formal, vetted publishing process. Print sources—books, magazines, journals, newspapers—well-know to teachers and librarians. Relatively easy assessment of credibility, authority, relevance, scope. | Resources vast—choices among formats explode. Multiple voices available. Anyone can author content. New challenges in assessing credibility and authority. Read/Write Web 2.0 facilitates immediate power of the citizen as author. No more black and white evaluation rules! | Need to teach about how to evaluate for particular information task. Notions of authority are shifting. Need to annotate to explain some information choices. How do we learn to evaluate blogs, wikis, shared video, podcasts, etc? |
| Understandings about cataloging | Sears and LC Subject headings | Sears and LC, and access to computer cataloging services. And: meta–tagging, tags, folksonomies. Emerging strategies for tagging non-print media—images, film, music | Need to rethink ineffective cataloging schemes to recognize power of keywords and tags that make sense to users. Need to teach about tags, RSS, etc. as new ways to locate relevant information. Cookery—India no longer plays! Personalization of the OPAC? |
| How we get news | 3 major news channels, newspapers, weekly news magazines
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24-hour news, 100s of channels on television, websites, blogs, RSS, push news, access to global news sources for multiple perspectives, news portals gather content in varying formats | Need for pathfinders to lead learners to news sources they will need for particular projects |
| Standards | Information Power released in 1988—new focus on information literacy | IP2 released in 1998
ETS releases ICT Literacy Assessments, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, ISTE’s NETS for Students, Teachers, Administrators, release of state and national content area standards |
How do we use new tools to deliver both content and process standards? |
| Intellectual freedom | Books have been challenged and sometimes banned from collections | Challenges of all sorts. DOPA threatens access to Web 2.0 tools, filters required for e-rate funding | Increasing need to protect student access to information. Need more complicated in a political environment motivated by fear of new tools. |
| What our collection looks like | Books, magazines, filmstrips, cassette tapes, 16 mm movies, software on disk | Books, ebooks, streaming audio, streaming video, blogs, Webcasts, podcasts, wikibooks, open source, software & Web-based apps | Need to create signage, guides, pathfinders for new additions to “collection.” How will we lead students and teachers to them most effectively? |
| What our space looks like | Traditional shelves—books, magazines, videocassettes, reference workstations |
Much of reference is moving online, video and audio streaming, still need for fiction and nonfiction | Increasing need for group, creative production space—iMovie, podcasting, blogging. Library as group planning/collaborating space. Library as performance, presentation space. Library as event-central, telecommunications, remote author/expert visit space. Library continues as study/reading/gathering/cultural space. |
| What we loan | Books, videocassettes, audiocassettes, magazines | Traditional items & ebooks, digital audio, laptops, memory sticks, digital cameras, etc. | Budgets and policies need to recognize students’ new needs for learning materials. |
| Need for retooling / How we retool | Every five years or so
Professional journals, conferences |
Frequent! Professional journals, conferences, virtual conferences, Webcasts, professional blogs, collaborating through professional wikis. | Learning happens between annual conferences. Blogs publish professional news, new strategies before it can travel through traditional publishing process. (Essential strategies for keeping up!) Attend conferences without traveling—viewing keynotes online. Use tools like Hitchhikr, visit sources like EdTechTalk |
| Typical assessment | High stakes testing, beginning of project-based assessments | High stakes testing + growing recognition of need for alternate, authentic performance-based assessment. High stakes backlash beginning | Need to move schools beyond knowledge needed to pass one or two high stakes tests. Digital portfolios more practical option for performance-based assessment. Students need to solve problems, make decisions, collaborate, and communicate effectively with traditional and emerging tools. |
About learning, About libraries, School culture, Teaching Strategies, Uncategorized | Comments (21)
Last techlife@school column this morning
I got a little teary this morning when I actually saw my last Inquirer column in print. Shucks.
Perhaps it is a natural evolution, moving to blogspace. But isn’t it a little sad?
Print reaches a different audience, even techlife kinda print. Those folks who read the business section, those who paged through random sections of the Sunday paper, were forced into the serendipity of hitting a techlife article.
And I can say it here, because I suspect most of you are friends from the library world, it was swell giving librarians a voice beyond our the voice we present in our own publications.
Call me old fashioned, but I am going to miss print. 
Internet 2 rocks!
I must share yesterday’s exciting event. Our videoconferencing equipment busts open the walls of our school, allowing the authors and experts to come right in.
Yesterday, author George Harrar visited with a group of 8th graders from Sonia Andre-Borges’ class. Students prepared questions and engaged in a discussion of Harrar’s Not As Crazy As I Seem with four other schools. Following that discussion, they engaged in a question and answer session with the author. Our student moderators ably introduced the event, introduced the author in a PowerPoint, and did their best to manage the questions coming from the various remote sites.
Sure, it was exciting to meet the author and interact real-time. Sure it was fun to have all those other kids around to interact with.
What I loved was that the experience forced our students into using the communication tools like professionals. I hope they will go into their future worlds knowing a little more about how to run an online conference. How to negotiate who speaks when. How to plan for and manage successful online discourse in a flattened world.
Thanks a million to Heather Weisse at our favorite university gigapop: MAGPI at U. Penn! You rock too, Heather!
Uncategorized | Comments OffConfessions (2.0)
Will you think less of me if I don’t always blog both ways? I worry that I am the only one thinking retroWeb thoughts and I am afraid to share them.
Web 2.0 / Library 2.0 is a powerful movement that offers great power for users, and for librarians, and for the growth of libraries. Most days I feel part of the movement. Most days I am thrilled by it.
While I am excited about discovering my voice in this blog, and as I build wikis and other things interactive, I prefer some of my communications to be slightly more static.
In our blogevangelism, I fear we may lose sight of the importance of schema for young people. Some things–like catalogs and parts of library interfaces–may be more useful when they stay put, when they remain familiar for users. While I am adding elements of interactivity to my old-fashioned pathfinders, I am not sure I am ready to throw those robust babies out with the blogwater.
I also worry that in our passion to share the excitement we feel for this medium, we may force bloggers to blog before their time. I speak as one who failed miserably twice before discovering a voice and a purpose and an audience. Those early blogs went nowhere. Perhaps, I needed those two public failures and frustrations. Perhaps I should have waited.
Colleagues quietly confess to me that they want to blog, that they feel guilty that they don’t blog, that they feel on the outside looking in on this movement. But they have no idea what to say or whom to say it to. I suggest they might not actually NEED to blog themselves. Or maybe there are more pressing needs–visiting classes, lessons, family, etc.
Should they want to demonstrate constructive use of this tool, they may not really need to hurry to find their own voice. They might help a teacher set up a journal/blog project for learners or help a teacher get started. Gigi Lincoln, my colleague and fellow cohort member, brilliantly began her Night Blog http://nightwiesel.blogspot.com/ with true inspiration. I am proud of my helping my colleague Sarah create her Hurston Blog http://hurston.learnerblogs.org.
For those of you pressured to blog, I say don’t push. Wait. The inspiration will hit. The right project will come along. The right issue or user group will face you. It is not necessary to blog before your time.
About blogging, About libraries, Uncategorized | Comments (4)Accountability
I am preparing a workshop on evidence-based practice. While I want to share the importance of reports that address student achievement, it occurs to me that some of the best evidence regarding our effectiveness has nothing to do with checking to see if student reading scores have grown by a few points, and, in fact, happily they have.
Some of the evidence in the school library arena has to do with helping a school, its learners, and its teachers, grow into 21st century relevance. So maybe evidence-based practice for teacher-librarians has got to also deal with portfolios and carefully looking at the work students create. And some of it has to do with ensuring that the authentic tools of business and academics make their way to K12. Can I truly be accountable if my students move on without those tools and the skills and attitudes they need to use them thoughtfully? More on this as I work further on that presentation.
Uncategorized | Comments OffBlogging in the classroom
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In previous posts, we discussed podcasts and wikis as new tools for student communication. In this column, we examine blogs.
Blogs, or Web logs, are chronologically arranged online journals, a medium for personal publishing. They generally include personal commentaries and observations, with comments and links, and opportunities for asynchronous response. Blogs tend to communicate their writers’ personalities and points of view. And they are proliferating: Some say a new blog is built every second. We already teach students writing in a variety of forms. We teach research and exposition. Where does blogging fit? Blogs let students engage in a form of journalism. Their journals work best when they become sustained conversations - when students write and reflect about a particular topic or issue over time and when that writing inspires response from an audience. The conversation might incorporate the works of others, breaking news in the form of newsfeeds, and students linking to and responding to the external resources. When it works well as an educational tool, blogging involves students in content, critical reading, and thoughtful, reflective writing. David Warlick, educational technology consultant, author and director of the Landmark Project, sees blogs as strategies for encouraging writing. When blogs are effective, students write for an audience and receive authentic response. Warlick notes that blog writing might occasionally warrant a more casual approach. Traditional writing assignments are “for teacher’s eyes only. We are teaching rules and syntax and students have to follow rules. Blogging is much more about communication and kids are all about communication.” Warlick suggests that for some assignments, teachers might allow students to use instant-messaging-speak, especially when the audience is other students: “We have to respect kids for the incredible feat of inventing a new grammar.” Other assignments would, of course, require students to use formal language: “It’s about the audience and the goals. It’s about the excitement of responses from the class and beyond.” Beyond their personal reflections and experiences, students might create simulated blogs for a historical or fictional figure. Students can represent the ideas of the great philosophers or portray the characters in Julius Caesar. They might express particular points of view on a controversy over the course of the semester, inspiring comments and argument from classmates and beyond. Warlick also sees blogging as a teaching tool. Teachers could use their own blogs to organize general class dialogue or small-group literature discussions. In Portland, Ore., Lewis Elementary School, at http://lewiselementary. org/, uses a blog to transmit information to its school community. Middle school teacher George Mayo publishes Brandon’s Online, at http://mrmayo.typepad.com/magazine/, to collect the blogs and podcasts of his sixth-grade students at Brandon Middle School in Virginia Beach, Va. Closer to home, Thomas McHale, an English teacher at Hunterdon Central Regional (N.J.) High School, maintains three educational blogs. In Open Classroom: Using Technology, Transparency, and Discussion to Transform Education, at http://tmchale.blogspot.com, McHale invites parents and fellow teachers to join a conversation that revolves around “weblogs, interdisciplinary teaching, writing, journalism, high school newspapers, and the culture of high school.” Last year, as an experiment, McHale began a blog for his yearlong interdisciplinary American studies class, at http://central.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/americanstudies/. McHale’s journalism class, at http://central.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/mcjournalism, is blog-based and paperless. He links to his students’ individual writing blogs as well as the blogs of several writers’ groups. For McHale, blogs have opened new possibilities. Blogs “engage students in the processes of reading and reflecting and they can improve writing.” But he notes that “having a blog in itself doesn’t do it.” Blogs require audience and interaction: “You have to recruit people in.” Over the last year, McHale has invited journalists, parents and others into the conversation. McHale feels that blogs can “expand the classroom beyond its traditional walls to involve parents, other teachers, other schools. The possibilities are great if teachers are willing to take the risk.” For a linked list of Web resources visit: http://joycevalenza.com/podblogwiki.html. |
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