media centered

Good grief! It is the middle of July already. Where has the time gone? I will begin an accounting of my summer so far. Since our daughter quit going to daycare at the end June a large amount of time has been dedicated to establishing a new at-home routine for the entire family. As much as possible we are attempting to have a learning environment during the week. Reading, crafts, plenty of field trips to museums, cooking time and some pre-literacy work. She has letter recognition down, we are working on sounds and how those sounds form words. Counting is going well but she doesn’t know her numbers by sight. So, we have been working on the basics.

We have also watched her favorite video, Totoro, about twenty times (we’ve had it checked out from the local library for most of the summer). This animated film is by Hayao Miyazaki and produced through his Studio Ghibli (which now has its own iGoogle theme -see above).

Home school is going well so far. Today we learned about the parts of a car - tire, trunk, hood, steering wheel, etc. As an educator this has been good for me - if she’s not truly interested the whole endeavor falls apart. Without the power of GRADES looming over her our lesson must be authentic all the time.

I am sorting out the stacks of materials from ALA in Anaheim and will post about that adventure soon.

I am happy to report that my application for one of the Library of Congress Summer Institutes for Educators has been accepted.    Below is a description of the institute as well as part of my application:

July 30- August 1 Incorporating Primary Sources into the Teaching Process

This institute will help teachers take advantage of the instructional power of primary sources, the documents and objects left behind by participants in past events. Though most teachers are familiar with the importance of primary sources, many are unsure about how to use them in the classroom or how to help students use them in projects. In this workshop, Library of Congress specialists will introduce participants to the unique characteristics of primary sources, while helping explore some of the millions of digitized primary sources available on the Library’s Web site. Participants will look at ways to introduce students to primary sources, as well as to help them understand how to use, and cite, primary sources in projects of their own.

From my application:

What You Hope to Gain: I hope to gain a better understanding of the total scope and depth of subjects, topics, and issues represented in the digital and physical collection of primary materials available through the LOC.   Additionally, I wish to acquire a better understanding of the common features and qualities found in primary sources.  I look forward to Library of Congress experts helping me to compare and contrast the elements of these primary sources to the secondary sources with which students are more familiar.

How You Plan to Share: At the building level I will use knowledge gained at the Summer Institute to collaboratively design projects with subject area teachers that integrate LOC primary sources across the curriculum.  These projects will address a component of our information literacy program which is presently missing.  At the state level I will share my Summer Institute experience and the resultant school-based projects during the North Carolina School Library Media Association 2008-2009 conference. This conference is attended by approximately 1000 media specialists representing school districts across the state.

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I look forward to bringing back new knowledge from this Institute and working with our faculty to design research projects for the 08-09 school year and beyond.

Now to the Next Step: Before I go to the Institute I want classroom teachers to give me some guidance.  Please add a comment to this post telling me about primary sources you would like to use.  I will go on a search for them during the institute.

In a recent post on his blog Ideas and Thoughts David Shareski ponders a question - can teachers be entertaining and informative? He created this quadrant as a visual. Where do you place yourself? How would your students rate your teaching style? Do you believe that learning can be enjoyable? Is your preferred mode of learning the same mode your students would chose? Should our teaching styles evolve and change over time or remain static?

I’ve attended lectures by people who where incredibly informed and totally boring (please don’t read from the article you have written- I can do that!). How can our schools be both engaging and informative? I’m convinced that inquiry-based learning is one way to accomplish this goal. Meaningful, authentic learning begins with the questions we invite students to create not the questions we give to them. For a straight forward look at the inquiry based model visit this site hosted by the University of Illinois - http://www.inquiry.uiuc.edu/us/inquiry_page.php. Learning shouldn’t be a bitter pill we force students to take - it should be an exciting experience.

Some recent activity related to internet safety.

A Task Force has been formed by the Berkman Center (Harvard) to address internet safety. This group will work to find technological ways to ensure child safety online.

The APA has released some interesting research showing the actual threat from online predators to be much less than the popular media would have use believe.

Greater technological safe guards would be great. However, I think we’ve seen enough evidence from internet filtering to know that systems alone are not the answer. While instances of internet predators might be over exaggerated employers and colleges are increasingly looking at people’s digital lives. As educators we can guide kids to an understanding of how web 2.0 works and recommend save and responsible practices - this will go a long way.

I attended an event in Second Life that might be of interest. “Beating the No U-Turn Syndrome: A New Approach to Teaching and Enforcing Copyright Compliance” by Doug Johnson. The text of this presentation is available on Doug’s wiki.  Here are my notes from the evening.

He began by talking about the image of the Library Media Specialist related to copyright. Currently we are viewed as the enforcer (a role many people might enjoy) but we need to change to an enabler role.

His four main points are:
1.) refocus copyright education with an emphasis on what is permitted - not just what is prohibited.
2.) when in doubt err on the side of the user - safe harbor posters are not statements of law, they err on the side of extreme caution (these are the posters hanging over copy machines in many schools)
3.) be prepared to answer tough questions about copyright - for example what if someone brings up the public performance question? Does your school have rights to show all of the video content it uses? Be a counselor though - not the cop
4.) teach copyright from the point of view of the producers (as well as the consumers). this makes good sense, especially if we are teaching in an environment that encourages students to create content. As a way to approach this topic ask students to assign Creative Commons licenses to their own works.e

The Second life experience was great- Doug is an engaging speaker and something about the 3-d element made it feel more real than a podcast. Now back to my First Life……

I, along with our school information services manager, hosted a presentation and discussion about internet safety and social networking for teens and tweens. Specifically, I talked about MySpace and used information from the research done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project to provide a more balanced look at teen use of social networks. Our goal was to respond to the negative press about sites like MySpace. We had a large crowd of middle school parents and provided lots of information to guide them through the online worlds of their digital natives.

Each summer I attempt to read some history and criticism of children’s and YA literature from earlier decades. One of the people I have been reading a bit about recently is Anne Carroll Moore, a pioneer of children’s librarianship and literary criticism. She had a tremendous influence on public opinion and the purchasing decisions of librarians and parents throughout the early 1900s. Her annual “Children’s Books Suggested as Holiday Gifts” and “Holiday Books for Boys and Girls” lists were eagerly awaited every year she produced them. The amount of power held by Moore is in marked contrast to our own time - we have an abundance of review sources, critics, authorities, and publishers. It seems that most of the time Moore used her influence for the betterment of children’s literature and library services. I am on the hunt for a compilation of her book reviews entitled The Three Owls which originally appeared in a column of the same name published in the New York Herald Tribune. What treasures from the early 20th century will Moore introduce me to?

Something I’ve been working through this summer…

School Library Learning 2.0 is a program of the California School Library Association. This “self-discovery” program is open to non-members and is an interesting way to explore web 2.0 for libraries. Why be concerned about web 2.0? According to the CSLA site:

Why Do This? Web 2.0 is a phrase that was coined in 2004. It refers to the fact that the Internet is now an interactive medium rather than a ‘place’ to go to get information. Since it is the young who are flocking to these Web 2.0 sites, it is important that those of us who work in school libraries should be up-to-date with the latest trends in education and technology and learn how they can be utilized in or with our school libraries.

One of the “things” you will do is create your own avatar. How did mine turn out?

Social networking is evolving as sites catering to niches begin to come online. If MySpace doesn’t work for you there might be a niche network out there. My wife is a knitter and now a beta member of Ravelry - “a knit and crochet community“. While I don’t knit myself, this is a great example of what a social networking niche can do. All types of knitters are using this site (currently about 4000 beta testers) with 1000s (around 7) waiting to join. On the education front take a look at Classroom 2.0, a social networking site for classroom teachers interested in educational technology integration - particularly 2.0 tech. Library 2.0 is the the same idea for library land.

Our school is planning a series of evening programs for parents. We will kick off with a session by our IT director and me.

Being Online: MySpace, Blogs, and IM
MySpace is now the most visited site on the web. Most of this popularity is due to young adults. Come for a guided tour of several popular social networking tools including MySpace, Blogger, and AOL Instance Messenger. We will go beyond the headlines to see what creative, educational, and social benefits these tools offer and how to use them safely. Explore strategies for becoming involved in your teen and tweens digital life.

We are going over the results of a recent survey of parents to glean more relevant ideas for this series.  Other teachers will conduct some sessions and we will bring in outside experts for other topics, such as Bullying.