K12 Online: The conference is coming

The 2nd annual K12 Online virtual conference is just about a month away. Make sure you attend, or attend the conference archive. The event is completely free. Important thinkers and dreamers and practitioners will present. Connect yourself with their visions of how our schools are evolving, how learning is changing.

Because the presentation list might overwhelm, yesterday the site began posting the workshop presenters’ teasers–short, online videos to give attendees a better idea of what their presentation will address. Four teasers are already up:

• Lisa Durff - “Pushing the Envelope or How to Integrate Web 2.0 Tools on a Shoestring”
• Chris Harbeck - “Release the Hounds”
• Dean Shareski - “Design Matters”
• Silvia Tolisano - “Travel Through Time and Space”

Let’s plan to demonstrate strong library presence at this one! Your attendance will help you help learners learn and help teachers teach.

Here’s the list of strands and presentations:

Classroom 2.0:

• Silvia Tolisano
  “Travel Through Space and Time”
• Drew Murphy
  “Step by Step- Building a Web2.0 Classroom”
• Chris Harbeck
  “Release the Hounds”
• Vance Stevens, Nelba Quintana, Doris Molero, Sasa Sirk, and Rita Zeinstejer
  “Motivating Student Writers by Fostering Collaboration through Tagging and Aggregating”
• Wendy Wolfe
  “If All My Classes Did This”
• Konrad Glogowski
  “Assessment and Evaluation”
• Anne Davis
  “Putting the Pedagogy into the Tools”
• Dean Shareski
  “Design matters”
• Jeff Utecht
  “Sustained Blogging in the Classroom”

New Tools:

• Liz Kolb
  “Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools”
• Frank Pirrone
  “Collaborative Concept Mapping - Breaking the Bounds of Location and Time… for $0.00 per Seat”
• Cheryl Oakes, Bob Sprankle, Alice Barr
  “Flat Agents of Change”
• Anne Davis
  “Learn to Blog : Blog to Learn”
• Jason Hando
  “LMS 2.0 - Engaging Learners Using More Advanced Techniques and the Odd Mash-up inside Moodle”
• Sharon Betts
  “Oodles of Googles”
• Kevin Jarrett and Sylvia Martinez
  “Second Life: K-20 Educators Exploring Virtual Worlds - Panel”
• Kurt Paccio and James Gates
  “The Electric Slide! Twenty-First Century Style”
• April Chamberlain
  “Trailfire”

Professional Learning Networks:

• Jen Wagner, Cheryl Oakes, Vicki Davis, Sharon Peters
  “Webcasting for Educators: Expanding the Conversation”
• Brandi Caldwell
  “Creating PLE’s with TLC”
• Kevin Hodgson and Bonnie Kaplan.
  “The Collaborative ABC Project: Using Technology to Tell Stories”
• Lee Baber, Paul Allison, Susan Ettenheim and Thomas Locke
  “Building Online Communities for Youth”
• Jeff Utecht
  “Online Professional Development”
• James Folkestad
  “Changing a System: Network Centric Learning Communities”
• Sharon Peters, Vincent Jansen
  “Building a Yardstick for PD Success: Establishing Key Performance Indicators for Web 2.0 Personal Optimized Learning Environments”
• Vinnie Vrotny
  “Expanding Horizons - Engaging the Adult Members of your Community (Teachers, Administrators, and Parents) through the Use of Personal/Professional Learning Networks”
• Alex Ragone and Arvind Grover
  “EdTechTalk: A Network of Homegrown Webcasters”

Obstacles to Opportunities:

• Patrick Ledesma
  “The Technology Specialist as Teacher Leader: Strategies to Ensure Successful Technology Integration and Student Learning in Schools”
• Ben Wilkoff
  “Starting From Scratch: Framing Change for All Stakeholders”
• Karen Richardson
  “Crossing the Copyright Boundary in the Digital Age”
• Shawn Nutting
  “Creating a Paradigm Shift in Technology”
• Lisa Durff
  “Pushing the Envelope or How to Integrate Web 2.0 Tools on a Shoestring”
• John Pearce
  ”Me blog? No way!!!”
• Sylvia Martinez
  “Web 2.0 Share the Adventure”
• Joseph Bires
  “Acceptable Use and the Web 2.0”
• Sylvia Martinez
  “Challenging Assumptions about Technology Professional Development”

Copyright-friendly wiki pathfinder

Just wanted to alert those folks who don’t read my SLJ Blog to my latest post.

One of my most popular pathfinders in our high school, where media projects are fairly commonplace, has been the one that leads learners to images and sounds they can use easily in Web publishing, podcasting, and broadcasting.

As I worked on updating my pathfinder on copyright-friendly media, I thought I’d open it up to our library/edtech community.  Can we build together an uberwikipathfinder?  Let’s see.

In any case, feel free to use the resources in the pathfinder if you’d rather build your own.

SLJ SIGMS Podcasts from NECC

SLJ just posted podcasts of our SIGMS panel at NECC.

You can hear my 21st Century Librarian Manifesto, as well as David Warlick on 21st century literacies, Alice Yucht–who throws a lifeline to those drowning in an information ocean and suggests her new three Rs, and Lisa Perez–who urges us to explore the potential for libraries in Second Life.

Please listen and comment.

Wikipedia’s milestone

Quick note: Yesterday the New York Times celebrated Wikipedia’s move past the two million article mark by interviewing Jimmy Wales.

Stop, before you create your next pathfinder . . .

I am just back from the Discovery Educators’ Network National Institute right outside of DC. While I was there, I had an strange chat with Steve Dembo. Strange, because we began brainstorming about where librarians might go with pathfinders in a 2.0 information landscape. I don’t get to talk pathfinders with too many nonlibrarians, but Steve is a landsman of sorts. Anyway, Steve was talking about the potential for using Bloglines as a pathfinder platform.

But on the three-hour drive back to Philadelphia, it became intensely clear to me that every web-based pathfinder I do from this day forward should be a wiki. I got so excited about this clarity that I wrote about the top ten reasons for this shift in my SLJ blog. Because I am concerned about writing the same content for both blogs, please make the extra click to that SLJ post and let me know if you agree.

Also please share any incredible models you’ve already created!

More about what I learned at the DEN in an upcoming post!

More on the Britannica Web 2.0 Debate (and my split personality)

My blog personality is suddenly split.  I blog here, of course.  I now blog for School Library Journal too.  I am thinking that this is more a space where I can blog in my sweats.  At SLJ, the blazer stays on.

Anyway . . .

I wanted to alert you.  I’ve been thinking a lot more about that earlier post, the
discussion Michael Gorman began on Britannica blogspace.  Gorman wonders if the human record is safe in the face of the Web 2.0 movement.  I wanted to post my response on both blogs, but I thought that act might confuse my small universe.

So, please take a look at my two-part response here and respond anywhere you want, no matter what you are wearing.

Web 2.0 Debate: Gorman on Britannica

Just a heads-up about an interesting debate about to start. My old friend Tom Panelas, from Britannica, wrote to alert me about a discussion Michael Gorman is initiating on the Britannica blogspace.

Tom quotes, Michael’s post:

“The life of the mind in the age of Web 2.0 suffers from an increase in credulity and an associated flight from expertise. Bloggers are called ‘citizen journalists’; alternatives to Western medicine are increasingly popular . . . millions of Americans are believers in Biblical inerrancy . . . and scientific truths on such matters as medical research, accepted by all mainstream scientists, are rejected by substantial numbers of citizens and many in politics.”

And he promises:

Strong stuff, and there’s plenty more where that came from. Gorman will have a series of six posts over three weeks as the lead blogger in a forum that will involve some very interesting people.There will be several bloggers on hand to defend the new Internet trends and register opposing views, as well as some who will agree with Gorman and others still whose views won’t fall neatly on one side or the other. We expect pithy, high-quality posts from Nicholas Carr, danah boyd, Clay Shirky, Sven Birkerts, Andrew Keen, Dan Gillmor, Matthew Battle, Robert McHenry, Thomas Mann (L of C, not the novelist) and Gregory McNamee.

It should be a combative but civil and highly intelligent discussion, a debate on the future of culture, education, and intellectual life involving people who, though they may disagree, seldom talk to one another. This time they will.

I am off to do a 2.0 inservice. I’ll get back to reading and thinking and commenting  a bit later.

Two new communication strategies and jargonitis!

This week I discovered the new groups function in Ning.  Like the rest of our TeacherLibrarianNing, this little function appears to be growing nicely.  The widget allows the spawning of special interest groups off the main Ning.  Right now we have a high school librarians group and a YA literature group.  Please join us and begin a group of your own!  I am now setting up little departmental Ning groups off our fledgling high school Ning as a strategy for enhancing faculty communication and collaboration.

Also, after some listserv discussion and a chat with Peter, we decided to create an LM_NET Wiki Annex to handle those files folks cannot send over the list.  Please also join us there and share documents, presentations, videos with wonderful LM_NET community.

One observation:

People outside of this little 2.0 world think we talk funny.  When I talk wiki, ning, flickr. avatars, etc. at home, around the neighborhood, or at faculty meetings, people turn off.  Sometimes they walk away laughing.  I want these people to listen, but I  realize how goofy I must sound to the outside world.  Is there a way we might remedy 2.0 jargonitis?

“Open the door. Let ‘em in.”

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.)

Wikipedia debate in higher ed

In K12, we grapple with offering students advice on when Wikipedia rocks and when it falls short.  There are those moments I just love it and moments when I cringe because it is absolutely the worst place a particular student might begin a particular information task.

Wanna peek at how professors view Wikipedia?  A Stand Against Wikipedia in InsideHigherEd.com presents the debate on campus.  

The history department at Middlebury College is trying to take a stronger, collective stand. It voted this month to bar students from citing the Web site as a source in papers or other academic work.

The article discusses: whether encyclopedias have any place in academic research, the value of Wikipedia’s bibliographies, issues relating to the collective editing process,  the wisdom of telling students flat out that they can never use a particular information source. 

Our colleague, Steven Bell, associate librarian for research and instructional services at Temple University, discusses the impact of Middlebury’s approach on promoting information literacy:

 “I applaud the effort for wanting to direct students to good quality resources,” but he said he would go about it in a different way.

“I understand what their concerns are. There’s no question that [on Wikipedia and similar sites] some things are great and some things are questionable. Some of the pages could be by eighth graders,” he said. “But to simply say ‘don’t use that one’ might take students in the wrong direction from the perspective of information literacy.”

The debate in response to the article is also well worth reading!