media centered

Happy New (Academic) Year

Our 08-09 school year kicked off today. Parents, teachers, and students alike all expressed disbelief that the summer has ended. As I set out on another year I have made a few resolutions (in no particular order) -

• Continue to expand and depend on my Professional Learning Network (PLN). My PLN extends beyond the confines of my school and includes people from many different educational settings and geographic locations. This is an idea that David Warlick has discussed and will be addressing in upcoming webinars. Presently my PLN includes teachers in my building, Twitter, a couple of Nings, conferences and seminars, Blogs, and list servs.
• Reflective Practice – many of my resolutions will be interconnected and support one another. I want to make a concerted effort to think about my teaching. Action research projects will be one way to foster this practice. Reflection will demand that I set aside time each week to read professional publications, connect with my PLN about issues, and redesign projects that are not working.
• Read more YA. My summer gig at the public library of Wake County showed me that I am way behind on reading Young Adult fiction. I’ve not read the Stephanie Meyer books yet…
• More exploration of Constructivist Inquiry-Based education. The book In Search of Understanding has been my guide so far. I also will work this year to integrate the new Standards for the 21st Century Learner into my teaching practice. I am more and more convinced that real learning must begin with the individual student and where they are as a person at the moment they arrive in your classroom.
• Defeat the physical inbox - I am terrible at the paperwork end of things. Unfortunately, the wonderful administrative staff in our school have expanded by inbox capacity thus allowing me to further ignore it. I will stem the paper tide this year!
• Clean off your desk Mr. Cox – last year a student caught a glimpse of my desk (I thought I had closed the door). They said that they would never be allowed to have a mess like that in their locker. Good point. We encourage (and often demand) organizational performance from our students. I will clean my desk (and office). The time I will save looking for things could support all of the above resolutions.

There probably are more resolutions that will arise as the year progresses but this seems like a good place to start.

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Conferences 08-09

I’ve been working on my 2008-2009 academic calendar and want to share a few of the conferences I plan to attend. Also listed are some I will be missing but wanted others to think about. In the fall I will be staying pretty close to home.

SEPTEMBER 2008

September 18-20 / ALSC National Institute in Salt Lake City
more information and registration (deadline coming soon) information at http://www.ala.org/ala/alsc/alscevents/institute/index.cfm
(I’ll be missing this one since our newest arrival is due during this time)

OCTOBER 2008

October 29-31 / North Carolina School Library Media Association Annual Conference in Winston-Salem, NC webpage http://www.ncslma.org/Conference.htm

My friend and colleague Vicki Stanfield and I will be presenting “Move over Dick and Jane: reconsidering books for beginning readers”

NOVEMBER 2008

November 13-14 / NCAIS Teacher Conference in Raleigh, NC more at http://www.ncais.org/events_current_indiv.asp?event=53

I will offer two sessions – “Great Reads for the Lower School” and “International Children’s Literature”

JANUARY 2009

January 10 / Librarian to Librarian Networking Summit at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC
webpage to follow

proposed session – “Great Reads – the Stars of 2008″

January 23-28 / ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver, CO – http://www.ala.org/ala/eventsandconferencesb/midwinter/2009/geninfo.cfm
consider the Bundled Registration which open September 2, 2008

FEBRUARY 2009

February 25 27, 2009 / NAIS Annual Conference in Chicago, IL, USA
Schools of the Future: Sailing the Winds of Change
http://www.nais.org/ac/ac.cfm?ItemNumber=150610&sn.ItemNumber=150620

My Independent school colleague from the Sidwell School, Patt Moser, and I have submitted a proposed a session on 21st Century Learning and the school library – we are awaiting a decision.

MARCH 2009

sometime in March / NCaect conference http://www.ncaect.org/index.html

considering a proposal about Google School Applications (Sites, Docs, gMail) and how our use of them supports the new 21st Century Learning standards. (give it a try here before Internet @ Schools).

March 30-31 / Internet at Schools East in Arlington, VA
http://www.infotoday.com/I@SE2009/default.shtml

considering a proposal about Google School Applications (Sites, Docs, gMail) and how our use of them supports the new 21st Century Learning standards.

APRIL 2009

April 18/ 2009 Arbuthnot Lecture in Clinton, TN http://www.ala.org/ala/alsc/awardsscholarships/literaryawds/arbuthnothonor/2009arbuthnot.cfm

MAY 2009

I just can’t think about it yet….

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Food Marketing to Children & Teens

A new report from the Federal Trade Commission entitled Marketing Food To Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation: A Federal Trade Commission Report To Congress has been made public. The press release and full report (PDF) are available online. Some highlights from mandatory reporting from 44 companies in the year 2006:

• spending was $1,618,600,000.
• 63% of this total marketed fast food, carbonated beverages, or breakfast cereals.
• television is still the predominate advertising medium intended for children (46%).
• new media (Internet, text, email, viral web) accounted for only 5% of youth marketing expenses – keep in mind it is cheaper to produce this type of media.
• spending on packaging (e.g. cereal boxes) and in-store displays equaled 12%.
• cross promotion was used for as many as 80 movies intended for youth. This advertising technique, which includes fast food tie-ins, toys, and Internet games is growing in its sophistication.
• The report includes information about industry self-regulation to improve advertising for healthy foods and recommends the reduction of advertising for “junk food”.

Lots more to read about in this report. The evolving media environment is creating incredible opportunities for educators – we’re not alone though. Kids are receiving information (including advertising) from all directions. Helping them to possess a literacy of all these mediums and how they work (and who controls and uses them) continues to be a crucial part of our teaching mission.

Posted in media literacy, reports | 1 Comment »

Back to Basics

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.

Tags: hodge podge

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Library of Congress Summer Institute

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.

Posted in Library of Congress, collaboration, primary sources | 2 Comments »

Are you boring?

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.

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Internet Safety

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.

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Copyright Cops

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……

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Online Safety and Social Networking

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.

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Looking back

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?

Posted in books, children's literature, critics | No Comments »