Edging Ahead…

… and that’s why I took issue with Doug Johnson’s “Have we Met the Enemy?”, following “Not your Grandma’s Librarian” postings in “The Blue Skunk Blog” http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/ . In my opinion, Doug’s postings created the impression that there is a lack of collaboration, cooperation and forward thinking in the important business of “teaching 21st-century skills” at International School Bangkok, and that the librarians of the past 20 years have failed in their responsibilities to do any of the above.  More than that, Doug goes on to quote Justin and Dennis, two newish Technology Resource Coordinators at ISB and these quotes, taken out of the original context (in Dangerously Irrelevant http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2008/02/change-from-wit.html) made it seem that these two Techno-Warriors have single-handedly dragged us neo-Luddite “Librarians” kicking and screaming into the 21st century in terms of considering and addressing the “essential questions” needed to guide learning at ISB.

 Justin writes “I would argue that their (lack of- rjr) success in embedding these “new literacies” was closely tied to “who” they were as people and the soft skills they possessed with dealing with teachers not their status as “librarian”.

Dennis, on the other hand, is quoted as asking “if librarians [are] holding on to ownership of these ideas?”

 Finally, Doug quotes Dennis and Justing as saying

Over the school year we … came up five essential questions that we felt addressed the core elements of a comprehensive technology and learning curriculum - one focused on the thinking that was needed for the 21st century learner, rather than the technology.             

• How do you know information is true?      
• How do you communicate effectively?      
• What does it mean to be a global citizen?      
• How do I learn best?      
• How can we be safe

 Once again, the way Doug used this quote makes it seem as if we had NEVER considered these issues before Dennis and Justin arrived (tw0 and four years ago respectively) to bring us up to speed in our thinking about learning. Doug’s post ends with the question “…where has your school’s librarian been in your lives that you are just now figuring this out?!” And if s/he’s been telling you about this stuff, why have you not been listening?”

The simplest answer Doug’s questions is that we’ve been right here, plugging away at the issues raised by our two intrepid TRC’s- and people HAVE been listening - but we’ve been doing it in a revolving door environment in which every 3.5 years on average, we need to go back to square one to develop working relationships with yet another incarnation of technology “advisors”.  In the early ’90s we developed a set of shared understandings with the technology people who helped create our first “Framework for Technology Planning”. We retooled the programs that came out of this to mesh with the vision of a new generation of tech advisors who arrived in the wake of the Asian meltdown of 1997. A few years later, we suffered the loss of our TRC program completely but we soldiered on, teaching ourselves, trying out innovative new learning  tools and strategies, and working with our teaching staffs to plug the gap from the missing TRC  program. Finally, a few years ago, we began to work with this latest incarnation of our Technology support program to assess where we were at present and how we might best go about moving ahead.

ISB Educational Technolgy Dept and Library Media Serives have ALWAYS worked collaboratively on addressing the issues as we have continued to innovate over the past 22 years that I’ve been with the organization - and NOT embracing technologies for the “bells and whistles” effect, but embracing them because of the new and more powerful learnings that our students can use to both achieve their curricular objectives and “become experts in their own learning”. Over the past twenty years, we have introduced more educational technology innovations through our libraries than any other department in the school, INCLUDING our department of EdTech. The reason? Because we’ve have a team of dedicated long-service Teacher-librarians at ISB who have gone the distance to see great ideas through from awareness to inception to evaluation and review. Over the same period, we’ve been through FOUR generations of EdTech personnel who each arrived very much convinced that the new and innovative ideas they brought to the table were the “best yet” -and many of them were. As each generaton of tech advisors moved on to bigger and better things, we Teacher-Librarians stayed the course and shepherded many groundbreaking programs and services through to succsessful implementation.

Students and teachers at ISB now take as a matter of course that they will use OPACS, online database AND the best of what’s on the open web to further their learning objectives. They are familiar with the tech tools like Noodletools and Turnitin and  that will make their reference and research work more efficient and effective. And they understand that we’re ALL on a learning curve as technology continues to increase the breadth and the scope of what’s possible at the school level. Most importantly, they understand that we’re all working as SMART as we can to continue to raise the bar when it comes to helping kids become efficient, effective users of information and informed citizens of a changing world. TEACHER-Librarians at ISB have been in the forefront of this growth curve at ISB - and will continue to be so.

 Doug’s posting ends with another quote from Dennis, in which he says,

…librarians need to speak louder, be more active in curriculum building, and/or let go of ownership of ideas related to information.

I believe I’ll do exactly that. I’m tired of being marginalized by a system in which NEW is equated with BETTER and New Personnel are automatically assumed to have a monopoly on the latest good ideas. I”m tired of being marginalized by an administration that assumes that just because I’ve dedicated  more than two decades to a single career position, that I’m “yesterday’s “Librarian”. And I’m tired of being disregarded because everyone else in the room is young enough to be my son or daughter (as a matter of fact, my actual son is just 8 month old - I believe in savoring these things).

 I’m a TEACHER-Librarian (not a “librarian”), I’m a LIFELONG Learner (of everything from great new literature to wonderful new communication technologies), and I’m GOING to reclaim my Voice in addressing the changes we are confronting in libraries, in education, and in the world in general.

End of Rant…