Edging Ahead…

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.

As I’ve begun spending more time in the “blogosphere” as I’ve called it here, I’ve come across an increasing number of wonderful, but not as well-know sites as those at the “Blogosphere Heavyweights” Blogroll list to the right.

By all means keep track of Doug and Joyce and Will – but don’t miss these wonderful, thought-provoking blogs on Libraries, Information Literacy & 21st Century Literacy in your quest to become (or stay) “21st Century Literate” . The “heavyweights” are who everyone quotes, but do yourself a favor and have a look at some of these too.

 Library 2.0 An Academic’s perspective - by Laura B. Cohen, Support Librarian, University at Albany, SUNY, who has sadly recently retired. Fortunately, her blog is slated to stay up for a year or so and we can still learn from her insights into the world we’re facing.

Don’t miss either Classroom Tech Tips - by Donna DesRoches

or “Dunstanology” by Jane L. Hyde at the St. Dunstan Libraray at The Library of Christ School, an Episcopal school for boys,boarding and day, in the western North Carolina mountains near Asheville.  Jane’s Feb. 25th posting “The Only Thing Constant is…” neatly summarizes the time conundrums we teacher-librarians face today. Well worth a visit.

 More as I have them…