I spent much of the fall semester exploring  new technologies encountered at Learning2.0 in Shanghai and had striven to bring new interactivity to our work in ISB’s Main Library.  Returning from Shanghai in September, I had;

• tinkered with our library blog (adding a couple of social networking options – Flickr feed, promotional title carousel, etc.)
• launched a Student Writers’ Ning and tried to establish a Skype-video collaboration with student writers in Shanghai. Weekly f2f sessions between student writers at ISB and Shekou were to present students with new opportunities for personal expression, to promote interest in personal writing projects and to provide writers with external feedback from outside our closed community.
• added a “Gamers” section to my HS Library Club (”Gutenberg’s Intent”) and invited MMORPGers to help me learn about Halo, WOW and the other games they’d rather play than work…
• worked through an entry-level launch of our new online catalog (Follett’s Destiny, complete with Webpath Express and OneSearch, with one-stop access to 6 research databases)
• helped prep our “Library Review” committee with background reading to our Main Library review, with key readings from Johnson, Stephens, Todd, Valenza and others currently leading the field.
• worked at enhancing student interest in library research by buttressing sessions on subscription research tools with Delicious tagging and YouTube Videos (“Guybrarian” – listed 2004, actually 2005, & due for an update)
• Joined Twitter to connect to like-minded librarians. My Twitter name’s rubisr – the same that I use for most public log-ons.
• Updated my Second Life account, tweaked my avatar (he still looks like a ’60s dropout, but he’s all mine! – “Sonof Smadga”, if you’re in SL), and joined Chris Smith in a virtual round-table discussion on the state – and the future – of libraries, with Doug Johnson and Diane McKenzie.

In spite of best intentions, though, I was feeling, at semester’s end, farther than ever from achieving a balance between what’s possible and what’s practical in a real-world school library setting. I was less than enthralled with the real change brought about by any of my fall efforts. Specifically;

• we haven’t really moved our blog forward in terms of functionality, and apparently not really captured student interest with it. A library walkthrough reveals continued prevalence of Google, Wikipedia, games and and social networking sites.
• the challenges of flaky bandwidth, grainy webcams, and, frankly, sketchy goals have brought the Skype-video project to an indefinite hiatus. The Ning has garnered no new postings since November. Several of my student writers claim they’re working on material – but the Ning’s not what they need at this point, and the Skype sessions just seemed to have no purpose.
• In spite of enhanced catalog functionality (TitlePeek adds a Google look; WebPath Express links to focused websites), we haven’t seen a change in student propensity for Googling through assignments.
• Although the social tagging power of Delicious and YouTube is seductive, the research “course of least resistance” is still prevalent in both students – and in teachers. Truth is that a simple Google search still points researchers to adequate resources to meet most assignment needs.
• My Twitter account has languished – no, it’s truly moribund. I haven’t posted since November. I still have 13 “followers” – but they just haven’t gotten around to dumping me yet.
• Since stumbling through a virtual seminar on SL, where bandwidth limitations reduced my avatar to a shambling caricature, I haven’t been back. I’m intrigued with Second Life, and all virtual worlds – but realistically, at least from my vantage point in the rice-paddies outside Bangkok, it’s not really there yet.

And so, it’s time to rethink where I’m going with both my efforts to infuse new approaches into our library program, and whether I’m still obsessing over “stuff” (a la Ross Todd, 2008) rather than truly introducing transformational ideas that will connect with kids’ interests and needs.

In the month I was away from RSS feeds and daily blogs, the world has continued to climb that ever-steepening curve of technological evolution tied to educational innovation. Glancing over the Blue Skunk blog, the Never-ending Search, and Tame the Web, to name just a few, suggests that if I had my work cut out for my last semester, I’m now faced with a task of Herculean proportions.  My first inclination, honestly, was too simply say, “There’s no way. It’s just too much.”  But hey, what’s that saying about a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step?

As part of our efforts at ISB to institutionalize (dangerous word, but I think it fits in the purest sense) thinking about learning, we’ve launched a new series of graduate courses leading to either a Masters Degree or a Certificate on Educational Technology and Informational Literacy. One of our first assignments was to develop a blog, and to link it to the online course framework. This is going to be it.

Michael Stephens’ post on “Ten Trends and Technologies for 2009″ looks like a great place to start, particularly with the nuggets he’s embedded in the “What does this mean for libraries?” notes. A few of these include:

• Investigate what it means to offer a space that feels like “home” where access and information is unimpeded (the Value of the Commons)
• It’s not the library blog or wiki, or Bookspace, or GoodReads, or Meebo embedded librarian on the results page, it’s people…and connections…it’s about meeting people where they live and providing them with the services they need or want. It’s about encouraging them (The Care and Nurturing of the Tribe)
• people want to feel connected and welcome. The want to feel that a space – physical or virtual – that they spend time in – belongs to them (The Importance of Personalization)
• make things easy and useful…Use failures as learning moments to influence the next plan or service. Failure is cool if it doesn’t prevent you from moving forward (The Shift toward Open Thinking)

And so – with those exhortation to guide me, it’s back to the fray!

A little belatedly – Welcome to 2009! (or Gung Hoy Fat Choi, for the internationally inclined)

Rob

“It’s not what we say, it’s what we do – day by day.”

As we approach the almost vertical part of just about any of the many technology implementation or change curves (on a standard graph) regularly popping up these days, I’m plagued by the question, “What happens when the timeline crosses over the vertical line of the y-axis? What will we do, day-by-day, when we cross this threshold, or the one we see coming next week, or the Technological Singularity that Ray Kurzweil predicts will happen within our lifetimes. What will it mean for my work as a teacher, a librarian, a professional colleague and a lifelong learner?

Kurzweil’s “MassUse of Inventions Diagram from  “The Law of Accelerating Returns” shows the problem.

According to this one, we’re already ON the other side of this vertical curve! With the birth of the internet, the world became connected in ways which we are told will fundamentally change how we, as a species, develop, archive, access, share and “transform” information and ideas. In a way, the birth of the Internaet has been a dress-rehearsal for the Technological Singularity, that point at which Artificial Intelligence exceeds biologic, human intelligence. It has been almost a “mini-singularity”.

So have our lives changed in fundamental, core ways? Do I interact, on a day-to-day, moment-by-moment basis with my family, friends and professional colleagues, in a way that is fundamentally different than I did before 1995? Are my daily life routines (getting up at 4:50 am, working from 7:00 – 4:00, spending from 6:00 – 9:00 with family, and awaiting “weekends away” from work) different in core ways from what they were “before”? Has the business of meeting work commitments, fulfilling family obligations and achieving personal goals changed become fundamentally different from what it was?

On the face of it, it doesn’t seem like it.  Throughout the last twenty years of educational pedagogy evolution, of global issues awareness-building, and of the exponential increase in the power of the technology at our fingertips, one thing seems to have remained constant. We love to talk about the need for change, and how these latest tools will help us succeed where past innovations have failed. Today we can can brag about the size of our personal online network, expound on the virtues of the new “mashup” tools on our desktop, or chortle about how how we are “reaching out” to a global citizenry using the social networking flavor of the week. When it comes right down to it,  though, is that all it is – just more talk about how things are going to change, now that we have a new widget to help us get a new “round tuitt”?

But then along comes an event like today’s United States presidential election. Although I’m generally cynical about politics and politicians in any areana, I saw a fundamental change today in the way the community to which I’m currently attached, reacted to the momentous events of the day. I saw students shriek in ecstasy at the CNN Win projection. I saw teachers with tears in their eyes at the concession speech. And I spent the 45 minutes on the way to an afternoon meeting listening to American colleagues marvel about how finally, after so many years of guilt-feelings about their country’s failure to measure up to the world’s expectations, they can finally once again wear their nationality with pride.

I am old enough to remember the euphoria that gripped the world in the Kennedy White House years, and after 45 years, I’ve finally seen that same optimism, eagerness, and, yes, euphoria, grip the participants (as we all are in this new “wired” world) – and to reflect that maybe the world IS different on this side of Internet’s “mini-singularity”. Maybe, just maybe, there is hope.

This election is a fitting backdrop for this posting. As I was drafting this earlier, watching Barak Obama deliver his acceptance speech to the American people, and to the world, I heard a subtext in everything he was saying (”change”, “yes, we can”, “we shall overcome”). And that subtext was;

“It’s not what we say, it’s what we do – day by day.”

Congratulations, America, on renewing my faith in democracy, my belief in the work we as educators do to prepare today’s students for tomorrow’s challenges, and my hopes for a brighter future beyond the shadow of the clouds hanging over us today.

Having assembled a team of “lay-teachers” to engage in a systematic review of our Main Library programs, collections, services, staffing, and, ultimately, facility, we decided we should provide members with a basic starting point. For our next meeting, all members are asked to read three pieces (listed below as well), and then each committee member will be assigned one of the following to read, annotate, and share understandings and insights from with the group at our next (half-day) meeting.

What “big-picture issues have we missed – understanding that we have not yet begun to get into the Nuts ‘n Bolts of what happens day by day in a contemporary school library – and what should happen there… rjr

ISB Main Library

Fa     Facilities Review – Internal Audit

R  Recommended Reading List: (NOT in approved MLA format, but note-referenced and numbered for reader referral. Downloadble free access (as of 16/10/08) websites listed)

A. Information Access/Use Trends and Technologies

3

1. The Horizon Report 2008 edition. A collaboration between New Media Consortium and Educause Learning Initiative.. http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2008-Horizon-Report.pdf

2. Harper, Meghan, and Jason Holmes. The Impact of Ubiquitous Computing on Library Facilities. ALA. http://www.lita.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/aaslpubsandjournals/kqweb/kqarchives/volume35/353/353harperholmes.cfm

3. Stephens, Michael. Web 2.0 & Libraries, Part 2: Trends & Technologies. Library Technology Reports . ALA September–October 2007 . 2007 (PDF file obtained directly from the author. Request from R. Rubis at rubisr@isb.ac.th)

B. Social Networking Tools & Implications for Libraries

1. Aronson, Marc. Do Books Still Matter? School Library Journal. 4/1/2007. http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6430154.html

2. Friese, Elizabeth E.G. Popular Culture in the School Library: Enhancing Literacies Traditional and New. Vol. 14, No. 2. School Libraries Worldwide. July, 2008. http://asselindoiron.pbwiki.com/SLE+14%3A2+Friese

3. Naslund, Jo-Anne & Dean Giustini. Towards School Library 2.0: An Overview of Social Software Tools for Teacher-Librarians. School Libraries Worldwide. July, 2007. http://asselindoiron.pbwiki.com/SLW+14%3A2+Nasland+and+Giustini

4. Stephens, Michael. Web2.0 & Libraries. Chapter 1. Exploring Web2.0 and Libraries. Library Technology Reports . ALA September–October 2007 (PDF file obtained directly from the author. Request from R. Rubis at rubisr@isb.ac.th)

C. Teaching/Learning Pedagogy and Standards

1. Standards for the 21^st Century Learner in Action. Draft 2. American Association of School Libraries Draft 2 (AASL) Sections available as individual downloads 2008.http://www.lita.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/aaslproftools/standardsinaction/standardsinaction.cfm

2. Lewis, David W. A Strategy for Academic Libraries in the First Quarter oof the 21^st Century. College and Research Libraries. Sept. 2007.

3. Novotny, . I Don’t Think, I Click: a Protocol Analysis Study of the Use of a Library Online Catalog in the Internet Age. College & Research Libraries Nov. 2004. http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/crljournal/2004/november/Novotny.pdf

4. Valenza, Joyce Kasman. A Few New Things. Library Media Connection. blog post at; http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334/post/760015876.html pdf; http://www.linworth.com/pdf/lmc/reviews_and_articles/featured_articles/Valenza_April_May2008.pdf

D. Facilities Design

1. Abilock, Debbie, ed. KQWeb. Facility Dreams. Knowledge Quest on the Web. ALA.. http://www.lita.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/aaslpubsandjournals/kqweb/kqarchives/volume31/311Abilock.cfm

2. Johnson, Doug. Some design considerations. Originally published as “Questions to Ask When Building or Remodeling a New Media Center”) ERIC ED425609, Jan 1, 1998. http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/some-design-considerations.html

3. Myerberg, Henry. School Libraries: A Design Recipe for the Future. ALA http://www.lita.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/aaslpubsandjournals/kqweb/kqarchives/volume31/311myerberg.cfm

4. Woodward, Jeannette. Human Error. When Good Intentions meet bad planning, library users pay the price. American Libraries, April 2007. http://windriverconsulting.com/files/0407_Feature_Woodward.pdf

For Further Reading:

ALA Annotated Bibliography on Building Libraries and Additions: http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=Library_Fact_Sheets&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=25417

ALA Information Literacy Links – http://www.lita.org/aasltemplate.cfm?section=aaslinfolit

School Libraries Worldwide., Volume 14, Number 2, July 2008 file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/rubisr/Desktop/LibReview%20Readings1008/Pair-Share/School%20Libraries%20WorldWide%20Volume%2014,%20Number%202%20-%20July%202008.htm

Library Blogs worth Browsing:

Blue Skunk Blog – Doug Johnson. Author Bio; Doug Johnson has been the Director of Media and Technology for the Mankato (MN) Public Schools since 1991 and has served as an adjunct faculty member of Minnesota State University since 1990. http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/

Infomancy – Christopher Harris – http://schoolof.info/infomancy/ Author Bio: Christopher Harris, leader of a School Library System in New York. Currently working on MLS… from a background in elementary teaching and instructional technology… These are my personal rambling thoughts from a different perspective on libraries, and do not reflect any position of my place of employment. I can be reached at infomancy@gmail.com.

NeverEndingSearch – Joyce Valenza – now hosted at School Library Journal. Author Bio: Joyce is the teacher-librarian at Springfield Township High School, a technology writer, and a doctoral candidate in the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program at UNT’s School of Library and Information Science. http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334.html

Tame the Web – Michael Stephens. Author Bio: Michael Stephens, Ph.D., is currently Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. http://tametheweb.com/

TeacherLibrarian Ning – (not a blog, but a social network created by Joyce Valenza to link librarians and explore Library2.0 issues. http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com/

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!

]]> http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/2008/09/20/learning20-oh/feed/ 3 http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/2008/09/14/devils-advocate/ http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/2008/09/14/devils-advocate/#comments Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:52:15 +0000 rubisr http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/?p=47 …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.

There’s a story in itself, in view of Ross Todd’s exhortations that we stop obsessing over collections of “stuff”, but that’s not the issue here. The question is whether we should limit, or even deny use of our replacement collection of DVDs to our school community.

Why would we deny access to our collections? To provide full access to our collections – for our primary users (students and teachers).  But if we do so, are we denying full Library2.0 access to ideas (and opportunities to create new ideas from these)?

On the other hand, is the the whole issue academic? Are DVD’s passe in a Web2.0 world anyway? Is it time to simply abandon “realia” media collections  altogether? Should we just open the gates wide and deal with access issues IF they arise?

As an international school where our students have minimal access to the public libraries,  Borders-quality bookstores and commercial video outlets that populate most neighborhoods in the developed world, we’ve always felt a responsibility to offer our collections for “community” use.  This manifests itself in regular (often daily) use of our facilities by a small cadre of unemployed parental “spouses” who live in the gated community in which our school resides, regular circulation of adult-interest print (e.g. travel and geography titles, along with adult-interest fiction) materials – and, of course, what I’ve called the “Saturday morning Video Club”. These are the parents, who stock up on video titles every Friday. the sheer number of titles they borrow and the timing of these loans suggests that they are not used in an instructional setting, but rather, as an “educational” alternative to the limited cable-tv offerings in Bangkok.

So why is this a problem? A couple of years ago, I published the following in our PTA publication, “the Touchstone”.

Recently, a number of Main Library video titles have not been available on request by teachers during the school day. Following a review of our policies, I have decided that the policies are fine but enforcement has “relaxed” over the years, so have asked Main Library staff to strictly enforce the “Overnight Loan” policy for all video material loaned to anyone other than a classroom teacher.  The policy has been in place for several years, but regular users may sometimes keep titles for several days and may have asked to borrow  items during the school day rather than at the end of the day, once the chance of a classroom request has passed.

From March 1 onward, I have asked staff to provide videos on strict overnight loan to non-teachers for parental review or student extra work on the following basis;

1. Titles may be borrowed following the regular school day between 2:05 and 3:00 (following which we have only one staff member on duty and close down the Special Collections area (including videos)
2. All titles provided on Overnight Loan should be returned between 7:00 and 7:20 the NEXT school day.
3. As we have only a single staff member on duty on Saturdays, we cannot offer video service on Saturday 

We would also like to remind patrons that while ISB’s Main Library holds an impressive video collection, each title in the collection was purchased “with instructional intent”, meaning that it is not our primary purpose to provide weekend entertainment for our students. There are many video outlets available in Bangkok providing this service.

We value the wonderful collections that ISB has built to help every one of our students achieve to his or her potential. Please help us to ensure that these materials are available at all times for their intended use.

**********************************

The American Library Association provides the following guidelines for non-instructional use of school-purchased videos.

1. Loan/Rental of Videotapes
Libraries may loan/rent videos to patrons for their personal use. This is true even if the video is labeled “For Home Use Only.” According to (ALA) “a library or school that resells, rents, or lends a copy of a copyrighted videotape, which it owns, is not infringing on the copyright owner’s rights.” Some guidelines to follow when loaning/renting a video to a patron:

·         Libraries should not obscure (i.e., cover or deface) the copyright notice as it appears on the producer’s label.

·         Libraries should not knowingly loan a video for use in public performances. If a patron inquires about a planned performance of a videotape, he or she should be informed that only private uses of it are lawful.

·         Libraries can charge a nominal fee for use of videos…”The fact that a fee is charged is irrelevant; the right to distribute a copy includes the right to rent it — for a fee or deposit or otherwise.”

Check out the ALA “Fact-Sheet” site containing this at;

http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=Library_Fact_Sheets&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=24635

The question at hand – Should we continue this policy, or are we justified, given the new access to commercial media, internet sources and social networking options, in locking up our DVD collection and making it available exclusively for teacher preview, instructional use and student review (in-house). 

Over the past 30 years we first added computers and every peripheral we could get our hands on to the lineup of “must-have” technologies in the classroom and the library (the ’80’s). We then populated the ever-increasing RAM and hard-drive space with a plethora of electronic databases and data sets (the early ’90’s) that promised “anything, anywhere, anytime” access to information. When that still didn’t seem to produce the quantum-leap in learning we’d anticipated, we jumped on the “Information Highway” big-time in the late ’90’s and into the early 21st century in order to provide our students with access to “real-world” data and information. 

 And it seemed to work. Life was good. Technology had saved the day. A slew of studies in the ’90’s and early 2000’s said so. The Ohio Study by Ross Todd and Carol Kuhlthau was just one of  these. But in spite of the positive results, The School Library Journal interview with Todd in 2004 ended with;

“We see so many kids coming into the school library with a project to do. At the end, did they learn anything? And what does that learning actually look like?”

Put another way, had all of this “stuff” (Ross Todd, 2008) translate into vastly new and better, “child-centered” Learning? It seems not.   Although on the one hand, the data from landmark studies like those of Todd, Keith Curry Lance and others have assured us that there’s a confirmed link between libraries and learning, it seemed that actually, the “Nation’s Report Card” was not showing significant and consistent gains in student performance or learning as we might have hoped, given the promise of Educational Technology over the previous 20 years. Even though several subject areas have shown improvement in 2005 0ver 1990’s scores, the Executive Summary for Reading published in November, 2007 showed that;

“In 2005, the average reading score for high school seniors was 286 on a 0–500 scale. This score was lower than in 1992, although it was not significantly different from the score in 2002. With the exception of the score for students performing at the 90th percentile, declines were seen across most of the performance distribution in 2005 as compared to 1992. More…

The percentage of students performing at or above Basic decreased from 80 percent in 1992 to 73 percent in 2005, and the percentage of students performing at or above the Proficient level decreased from 40 to 35 percent”

Scary? Well, keep in mind that “everything old is new again”. Unfortunately, the Bare Naked Ladies version of the song by the same name might be a more accurate depiciton of the way it’s turned out, at least in the school libraries I’ve worked in. But, to mix in another metaphor, maybe Lenny Kravitz really got it right back in 1991. It ain’t over ’till it’s over… There IS a difference this time around, and the difference is in the technology. It’s called Web2.0.

Web 2.0 has helped us embark on yet another cycle of renewal and rebirth in our dream to take every learner to the limits of his or her personal ability; to help him achieve “to his academic potential” in the parlance of the ISB Vision and Guiding Principles.  If we’re lucky, perhaps this time, the vision and the reality will mesh more neatly than it has in the past. Perhaps the technology has matured enough in “Web2.0″ to really help us make “everything old new again” – in the best Peter Allen Tradition. I’m hopeful…

To begin with, the new AASL “Standards for the 21st-Century Learner” AASL’s New Teaching Standards offer “a vision for teaching and learning to both guide and beckon our profession as education leaders.”

The Standards describe how learners use skills, resources, and tools to

• inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge;
• draw conclusions, make informed decisions, apply knowledge to new situations, and create new knowledge;
• share knowledge and participate ethically and productively as members of our democratic society;
• pursue personal and aesthetic growth.

While the AASL has been framing its new standards, ISTE, the International Society for Technlogy in Education, has been working to the same ends. In 2007, ISTE completed updated standards for students, and these identify;

“What students should know and be able to do to learn effectively and live productively in an increasingly digital world …”

• Creativity and Innovation

• Communication and Collaboration  The new standards identify several higher-order thinking skills and digital citizenship as critical for students to learn effectively for a lifetime and live productively in our emerging global society

• Research and Information Fluency

• Technology Operations and Concepts

• Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making

• Digital Citizenship

  

At the same time, the “Partnership for 21s Century Skills” launched Route 21, an online, one-stop shop for 21st century skills-related information, resources and tools. The group is a veritable “Who’s Who” of the key players in InfoTech  today.  Their core beliefs?

“We believe schools must move beyond a focus on basic competency in core subjects to promoting understanding of academic content at much higher levels by weaving 21st century interdisciplinary themes into core subjects: “ 

• Global Awareness
• Financial, Economic and Entrepreneurial Literacy
• Civic Literacy, and
• Health Literacy

And finally, International School Bangkok’s Own own cut on 21st Century Learning  comes out of the work of Technology Resource Coordinators Justin Medved and Dennis Harter . They write:

Over the school year we … came up five essential questions that we felt addressed the core elements of a comprehensive technology and learning curriculum…        

• 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?

When I look at any of these systems of core values, I see, in each of them;

• Critical thinking in a 21st-century context (deep understanding, just-in-time learning, use of appropriate technology, evaluative abilities, communications skills)
• Global Awareness (the environment, and how our stewardship of the planet impacts on the future)
• Global Citizenship (human interactions and how they influence our individual and collective futures)
  • Encompasing issues of personal “safety” and “health”
• Metacognition (learners’ reflection on and engagement in their own learning)

The rather sobering thought that follows is that I’ve been seeing these core values in every “system” I’ve encountered since my Open Area days in the 1970’s. In other words, however you label them, people looking to the future of education have been zeroing in on the same fundamental skills, topics and themes for as long as we’ve been thinking about it…

Everything old is new again?…

 (planned for an upcoming post – How can we ensure that students who spend a semester, a year, a school division or a complete schooling career with us are adequately prepared for the challenges in those four overarching themes? What do we need to do to reinvent ourselves in school libraries so that we regain the relevance to a learner’s journey that we believe libraries should have? How can we make our libraries, our programs, and ourselves “new again”?

The answers may lie in the new collaborations that Ross Todd exhorted us to forge with the people who can help us best when it comes to using the power of technology to achieve our aims. At ISB we call them “Technology Faciliators” and we’re working hard to make sure that our next efforts really are the “best yet” in terms of achieving our dreams of taking learners to the places they need to go to be successful in the 21st century world they’re facing. -rjr)

Fortunately, before I invested too heavily in trying to resolve the technical problems I was encountering, my colleague and co-attendee, Kim Cofino http://mscofino.edublogs.org/ posted an absolutely crystalline analysis of the conference.

More to the point, Kim proposes a number of strategies that are absolutely seminal to the teaching and learning issues at hand. Kim absolutely nails the rationale for Edtech Facilitators and Library/Media professionals (in whatever guise we see ourselves) to work together in a new model of collaboration which will marry the innovativeness and enthusiasm of the former with the experience and traditional expertise of the latter.

This frees me up to move in new directions with this blog. In the spirit of  recent postings by Will Richardson URGENT: 21st Century Skills for Educators (and Others) First   and ISB colleague Dennis Harter Is school curriculum still meaningful? I’m going to indulge in a bit of professional self-examination to see if I can develop a bit of that “network cred” that Will talks about. The question might be, “If a blog post exists in a blogosphere vaccum, do the ideas really matter?”

Meanwhild, a last note on Ross Todd.  In addition to the Big Ideas noted in “A Side Trip…”, Ross went on to exhort School Libraries to:

• Offer effective alternatives to “cut ‘n pasting” strategies
• Move beyond the “scope & sequence”  info literacy to “information to knowledge” strategies
• Develop Additive vs Integrative knowledge construction
• Be(come) zones of intellectual conflict, intellectual discontent, intellectual activism.

To get to the nub of  the  work on Guided Enquiry by Dr. Carol C. Kuhlthau & Dr. Ross J. Todd go to; http://cissl.scils.rutgers.edu/guided_inquiry/introduction.html .

All material presented at the Guided Inquiry site is copyright protected under Creative Commons

Dr. Ross Todd http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~rtodd/ is the keynote speaker here, on the topic of Inquiry Learning, and I’m thrilled to say that he’s lived up to all advanced billing. In the all-day preconference, Dr. Todd called us to account for historically abandoning students to their own devices at the key point in their research! For too long, he says, we’ve obsessed about providing “Collections of Stuff” which our students can access, retrieve and excerpt from, but have NOT helped them with the really important work of “creating their own understandings”. Libraries need to become involved in Transformational vs. Informational work.

If we DON’T move beyond the Scope and Sequence information literacy to a mindset of moving from “information to knowledge”, we do ourselves, and our profession, a great disservice. In the end, we put not only our own relevance at risk, but we denigrate the importance of libraries – and reading itself – and when reading is at risk, knowledge itself is at risk!

In the report I’m preparing to take back home with me next week, I’ve highlighted some of the “Rossisms” that I’m bringing back with me. In a nutshell, Ross has convinced me that if I’m going to stay the course, I need to;

• Get off the Information Bandwagon!
• STOP obsessing over “found” items (locating, accessing, finding, evaluating “stuff”)
• Start helping kids Transform Information and Create New Ideas instead of just “finding stuff”
• Have my library be(come) an Intellectual Center, rather than the “Collection” Center I’ve so carefully built over the past 10 years…

And finally, Ross reminded me, keeping in mind that not everyone is ready to jump on this runaway train at exactly the same point I have now rejoined it. Ross lets me off the hook a bit here, and I’ll have to remember this one.

• Don’t Water Rocks!!! (work with the kids, teachers and parents that are ready to join the Adventure)

Powerful exhortations indeed! Now just to get back home, catch up on the work I’ve missed in the past week, and Start the Process. ONWARD!!!