Edging Ahead…

My experience at the Shanghai Learning2.0 conference overlaid on recent reading has left me wondering more  than ever about technological change, the increasingly sharp rate at which it is happening  - and about the consequences, both hoped for, and unintended, of the same.

In “Proust and the Squid”, Maryanne Wolf raises a host of questions about the future of the reading brain as a result of the the move to “digital literacy”, and conversely, about the future of reading as a possible consequence of these potential changes in the brain. She is careful to draw no conclusions, but her questions are grist for mill of many philosophical meanderings.

Wolf lays out the basic questions in her introduction, p. 22

• “What is being lost and what is being gained for so many young people who have largely replaced books with the multidimensional “continuous partial attention” culture of the Internet?’
• “What are the implications of seemingly limitlesss information for the evolution of the reading brain for us and for the species?”
• “Does the rapid, almost insantaneous presentation of expansive informaton threaten the more time-demanding formation of in-depth knowledge?”

Near the end of the book, on p. 213, she quotes Ray Kurzweil in his belief that;

• “We can have confidence that we will have the data-gathering and computational tools needed by bye 2020’s to model and simulate the entire brain,…” and
• “We will also benefit from the inherent strength of machines in storing, retrieving, and quickly sharing massive amounts of information.”

From this, however, Wolf concludes, not that the results will all be rosy and should such come to pass with all possible speed, but instead, that;

• “One thing we can imagine is that our capacities for good and for destruction will also be exponentially increased. If we are to prepare for such a future, our ability to make profound choices must be honed witha  rigor rarely practiced by learners in past generations.”  and;
• (Wolf) differ(s) with Kurzweil’s impicit assumption that an exponential acceleration of thought processes is altogether positive. In music, in poetry, and in life, the rest, the pause, the slow movements are essential to comprehending the whole.”

Socrates would, (pause :)) I think, concur with Wolf’s final point…

So what do we do with these questions? Well, speaking for myself only, I read articles like Mark Bauerlein’s Online Literacy is a Lesser Kind and look for significant congruence between his questions and those Wolf raises. I read each new piece with a gradually expanding awareness, and perhaps, a slightly more anaylytical perspective - “edging ahead”, as it were, in my thinking.

I hope that in examining carefully all sides of the issues, that I will be both critical of past failings and discerning of both the promise and the peril of future possibilities. I hope, in short, to become a more informed learner, and so a better mentor to the students in my charge.

Looking for one thing and finding a gold mine along the way…

Following up on Learning2.0 and the themes that piqued my interest - with Twitter! I started following some Learning2.0 presenters, then checking out who they were following - and have come across these;

Simon Power - the Swivel Chair - great postings on Blogging, Google Apps, Social Networking - more to catch up on - and The Swivel Chair led me to;

Judy O’Connell - Heyjude: Learning in an online world - Second Life to “Write a Book in a Day” to Wiimote - Wow! - and HeyJude cashed in with Judy’s list of Lib Bloggers, which is worth a look in itself

And then there was my discussion with my MS colleague Ida (who keeps me honest regarding useful technologies!), who showed me David Navis’s really insightful it’s iNavis…the teacher technologist

It may be that these are well known to the blogging world (I note some awards here) but they’re still new to me, so may be to others. Passing along the gold…

Doug Johnson commented on my Learning Two Point OH! post to ask if I was hanging up my “Devil’s Advocate” trident, and my response is “No Way!” I’m open to applicable technologies that promise (for me, at least) a way to stay in touch with where my patrons (kids from age 13-18 and teachers from 25-65!) while staying grounde in reality…

My latest “think-piece” was forwarded to me by Jeff Harper, one of our HS Counsellors, who is also a Dr., and like Candace Aiani, is still one of the smartest people I know:)

the Title says it all: “Online Literacy is a Lesser Kind“. Provocotive? You bet. Thought provoking? Absolutely. I’m marshalling my thoughts on this one as we speak.
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Oh, indeed! I posted a couple of times from the ECIS Librarians’ Conference in Berlin with Ross Todd in February, and although I found Ross’s exhortation to librarians to “move from Informational to Transformational services” compelling, six months later I can’t say my professional skillset was really advanced by that experience. Philosophically, I was there, but then reality set in; Summer Home Leave, firstborn son starting to walk and talk, connectivity challenges at school; everything got in the way of really changing the way I do business.

I have been struck by the differences in the conference in Shanghai; by the quantity - and quality, of my direct learning coming out of it. In short, either leading up, to, during, or immediately following the close of Learning2.008, I’ve;

• Upgraded my HS Library Blog before leaving to show that I’m moving toward Learning2.0. I added a new header photo (live kids!), found a widget (with TRC Dennis’s help) to add a “carousel” of “books of the week”, and updated our Main Library Flickr stream.
• Connected with a vibrant new group of  librarians here from as far away as Australia and Canada, and sat f2f with several to mull over web2.0 and the future of libraries. After meeting many of the same faces for years in the EARCOS region, these folks are are the heart of what I see as a vibrant new Personal Learning Network.
• Reconnected with several colleagues who’ve influenced me over the years, notably Candace Aiani, Upper School Librarian at TAS. Candace has just finished her Doctorate and is still the smartest librarian I know in SE Asia:)
• Started checking out blogs by Learning2.0 presenters, and and their links, and so through them broadening my thinking on the big questions. This Learning Network intersecting with the above.
  
• Became a Twitter convert, finally seeing how it can bring all the above together in a Personal Learning Network with a combined intellectual resource set that’s nothing short of awesome.
• Revisited the TeacherLibrarian Ning that Joyce Valenza set up last year, joined “The changing and evolving library” Group, and invited several librarians I met today to join that conversation.
• Revisited Second Life, sat in on Chris Smith’s tour of International School Island, and seen new potential for learning in virtual worlds.
  
• Read Jeff Utecht’s latest post in The Thinking Stick in which he challenges us to move beyond the idea of “technology as a tool” to technology as a “Connection Creator”. Food for future thought here.
  
• Forwarded several resources directly to my Head of School, to help keep him in touch with what’s influencing my thinking regarding the future of libraries in general, and our library in particular. The best of these might be “The Horizon Report 2008“, brought to us by presenter Alan Levine.

More as it sinks in - but this may have been the best conference I’ve attended in ten years. WOW!

…not really, but I am wary of becoming a cheerleeder for uncritical adoption of “digital literacy” as the wave of the future - if it’s at the expense of traditional reading skills and the metacognitive abiities that arise from these.  This blog has helped me to reflect on my growing ambivalence, and the small cadre of readers who’ve responded to my posts have convinced me that the issues I”m mulling over are legitimate and my concerns shared by others.

I’m relieved to know that I’m in good company when I wonder whether jumping onto the digital literacy bandwagon  has any obvious downsides. When Maryanne Wolf’s “Proust and the Squid: the Story and Science of the Reading Brain” was released on Audible.com last week, and after reading the reviews in the California Literary Review  and in the Guardian (thank you, Google!),  I couldn’t resist. Would Wolf shed some light on my ambivalence toward the latest incarnation of instant messaging and social networking? Would her conclusions about Socrates’s fears for the future of the “thinking mind” with the advent of written literature help me more unconditionally embrace the new technologies that I fear are threatening a traditional love of reading?

I bought the audio download and over the long weekend just past I listened to the full 8 hours and change once, and Chapter 1 and 9 (the introduction and conclusion) twice. Several chapters are rather tough sledding through the study of memory, reading and intellectual analysis at the molecular level, and much of the book is devoted to the study of dyslexia, a topic I find relevant and important, but not as compelling to me as the overarching issues involving the future of reading for all, dyslexic or not. Wolf’s analysis of Socrates’s fears (introduced in Chapter 1 and revisited in Chapter 9) alone, is worth the price of purchase.

To be sure, if I had tried to read this book in the traditional print format, I never would have made to the end. Having listened through, however, I’ve now dropped a copy in my Amazon shopping cart and I really do want to dig into what she says in a format where I can take the time to really absorb what she’s saying; to internalize the questions she raises and the conclusions she offers, and to incorporate these fully into my personal schema for understanding a little better what motivates my students to read.  For me, and, according to Wolf, that format is, and should continue to be, print.

PD Smith (the Guardian) says it better than I could. Until I can get my own copy of “Proust and the Squid”, I’ll close this post with Smith’s summation of what is, for me, the most compelling issues Wolf raises.

” But in the “Google universe”, with its instant over-abundance of information, how we read is being changed fundamentally. On-screen texts are not read “inferentially, analytically and critically”; they are skimmed and filleted, cherry-picked for half-grasped truths. By doing this we risk losing the “associative dimension” to reading, those precious moments when you venture beyond the words of a text and glimpse new intellectual horizons. Although not opposed to the internet, Wolf concludes on a cautionary note: we need to be “vigilant” in order to preserve “the profound generativity of the reading brain”.

And so, onward, promoting digital literacy in my library as an adjunct to, rather than a replacement for, traditional reading.

Looking for a new header image for  “Edging Ahead”, I noticed the Bodhi-man (a Javanese buddha in meditation) on my bookshelf bracketed between Kesey’s “Demon Box” and King’s “Dead Zone”. I set a MagicJack webphone jack in frame and stuck headphones on him, but the body-language says it all…