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ALA in NOLA = a good thing June 28, 2006

Posted by Laura Pearle in : ALA2006 , 2 comments

The New York Times wrote about us, as did the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

And these are just some of the personal reflections from other librarians who were there:

Good work ALA!

Back and thinking hard about what I learned

Posted by jvalenza in : ALA2006 , add a comment

I am back. And ALA was dizzying.

For those of you interested in seeing our little gang posing around the Convention Center, check out the Flickr account.

I was grateful to get my research presentation out of the way on Saturday afternoon. I invited the audience to help me interpret the vast amount of data I collected and folks in the room, like David Loertscher, asked some hard questions about what it all means. I love questions that force me to look with a new lens! And I am quite excited about the next steps. Research can be thrilling, you know!

Some highlights of my conference:

Flat World Classrooms (Saturday) Some very random ideas from David Warlick–
I couldn’t agree with David more. If you want to be in on any discussion of change, you have to read Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat. It is talked about everywhere and it has forced me to think about what it is I do that is important and what it is I do that won’t be outsourced to Bangalore or UPS headquarters.

Warlick points to some of Friedman’s big ideas that are relevant to an also flat classroom:

We are living in “a world that is increasingly global, where industry is crossing political boarders, and not only purchasing the natural resources of other countries, but also contracting for the intellectual talent that is located any place where there is an Internet connection.” You can read many of the flat examples David provided in his wiki:

http://davidwarlick.com/wiki-warlick/index.php?title=Flat_World_Classrooms

David also recommended Richard Florida’s titles: The Rise of the Creative Class and The Flight of the Creative Class. He argues that historically, the Internet has moved from conversation (remember text-based email systems? How I loved my Pine!) to library (remember when we didn’t talk back to websites?), and back to conversation (how we are interacting and collaborating and will interact and collaborate through our blogs and wikis and what is next to come).

The workforce of the future will have the need for more creative arts jobs. We will need people who can express ideas compellingly. Learners should ask, “How do I get my message through the storm?” It’s not about the technology; it’s about the information, the story! We need to teach kids how to be creative producers of information.

The internet now allows business to meet the needs of the “long tail” by fulfilling the needs of emerging niche markets.

Every citizen should have access to networked information. Although we are seeing more home broadband access among most groups of later adopters—one major exception is people in rural areas

Among the many links David recommends is the amazing Technorati http://www.technorati.com/ which tracks the blogosphere, Hitchhikr http://www.hitchhikr.com/ where you can hitch a ride to conferences you are, and are not attending physically, Buzztracker http://www.buzztracker.org/ where you can learn more about mashups, Lulu.com http://www.lulu.com/ for self publishing, and YouTube http://www.youtube.com/ where folks are energetically sharing their videos.

David believes we need to retool education for the flat classroom. Though he is pessimistic, this North Carolinian also believes “we might could do this.” I think so too and I am ready for the next workshop on just how we will do it.

On Sunday at Treasure Mountain a group of researchers and practitioners discussed Tomlinson and McTighe’s new Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding By Design. The question on the table: How would you modify the book’s axioms to make them relevant in an information-rich and technology-rich environment (the LMC)? Would you add any new axioms that would merge the three-part Venn diagram: UBD, DI, and LMC program?

Fearless leader David Loertscher provided the two units of instruction that have transformed old “bird units” to higher-level ones. We discussed the units with their creators, David’s students in California via telephone.

David urged us to learned to speak UMI and Di and to continue to ask the most essential of questions How do we move the library media program into the center of learning?

Sunday at Crystal Ball 2, the eminent panel of KQ editors spoke thoughtfully of change, but it was Danny Callison’s voice that continues to resonate with me. Danny believes that “we don’t know nearly as much as we should about school library media professionals and programs, nor instructional interventions for student learning and best practices. We’re tending to learning only what seems to make us feel better and we are not learning enough about how we should improve and what other stakeholders value.. . We need to test for the Future rather than to preserve the Past and Present.

Danny discussed and compared current research and spoke of the need for new research. From his handout: “You don’t need 99% to be impressive. You do need to be believable. Establish credibility with recognizing challenges with success. . .We learn from critical review if it is valid.”

Monday–YALSA’s President’s Program and Membership Meeting: How Adult Is Young Adult
This discussion of those many young adult titles that are both literary and sophisticated featured a wonderfully thoughtful panel and I wish I could have captured far more in my notes.

Michael Cart spoke of the history of YA lit. He spoke about crossover titles. The importance of leading teens to books that maybe labeled adult and equally importantly, leading adults to books that may be labeled YA. Publishers arenow doing some simultaneous publishing. But according to other panelists, there are several reasons for so little crossover. Among them–writers who write for adults get larger advances.

Whether a book is YA may depend on how close the narrator is to the teen experience. Catcher in the Rye, considered by many the first YA book, is actually written in the Peter Pan tradition. Huck Finn is actually the first book (by a genius) who could write in the consciousness of an adolescent with the soul of a 50-year-old.

Author Adrian Chambers left us with the message: Life follows art. Those cave paintings in France are truly examinations of people considering “how we can do it better? What’s the best plan for us to kill buffalo?”

Books are like that too. They explore and offer ways to consider how to be a teen. There are many ways, of course, just as there are many ways to be a seventy-two year-old man, as Phillip Roth and Chambers himself are both exploring.

After noting that Catcher in the Rye pretends to portray teen consciousness but actually presents the consciousness of a bitter, middle-aged man, author Greg Galloway looked at what makes a book literary and sophisticated. “The Windex approach” is at odds with “the stained glass approach.”

Dan Brown uses “the Windex approach” when he describes his DaVinci Code protagonist as “tall and broad” or as “Harrison Ford in Harris tweed.” Raymond Chandler and Vladimir Nabokov (and many others) really know how to create “stained glass” descriptions.

Galloway shared delicious descriptions of Chandler’s women– “Inside was a blonde. A blonde! A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.” And Humbert’s (Nabokov’s) descriptions of Lolita. “My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

I come back from this events feeling I have so much work to do. I hope to have more to share and to worry about doing from NECC.

The Future of School Librarianship: Review of Research & Implications for Practice

Posted by fharris in : ALA2006 , add a comment

On Sunday, we heard from three researchers about the future of school librarianship. Keith Curry Lance, Director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library, gave an overview of recently released studies (New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota, etc.) and some of the state research efforts that are currently in progress (Indiana, Colorado, Delaware, etc.). He also summarized information from new articles appearing in the new volume of School Library Media Research. Links to information about the state studies can be found on the LRS website at http://lrs.org/impact.asp. Collective findings? When school librarians participate in educational reform efforts and school cultural change, dramatic things happen.

Keith was followed by David Loertscher, a professor at the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University. David spoke about effective data collection. What’s the most important kind of data to collect and share with administrators? NOT how many books you’ve shelved. Instead, focus on the data that shows student achievement. He challenged us to use existing data and apply it to library issues, noting that the number one use of computers in schools is for data mining. Make friends with the person who does data in your school or district!

Donna Shannon, a professor at the School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Carolina, then discussed her research on the recruitment of students to the USC school library media program and reviews of the program. She studied the “stakeholder” perspective, stakeholders being defined as program completers, current students, internship supervisors, district supervisors, human resource directors, and school principals. The data she has collected is helping the department improve its program and increase recruitment and retention rates.

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Council III

Posted by tkirk in : ALA Council , add a comment

Good morning! This is our last day in New Orleans and I have to say that this has been one fast week! I, for one, will be sad to leave. It has been such an awesome experience being here. We have election results and good news for us! Two school librarians and two youth services folks were elected to two key committees. Stephen Matthews, a Virginia high school librarian and an AASL member, and Barbara Genco, an ALSC past president, were elected to the Committee on Committees. This is a very important committee and we are very happy that these two were elected. The other winners were Katharine Lehman, another Virginian AASL member, and Bonnie Kunzel, a YALSA past president. They were elected to the Planning and Budget Assembly. This group serves as an advisory board to the Budget Analysis and Review Committee which is the group that sets the budget for all of ALA. Congratulations to these members. It is very nice to see that school librarians are being elected to these important and powerful committees!

Laundry list of ideas to try for your school library

Posted by pmoser in : ALA2006 , 2 comments

I’m sitting in the New Orleans airport along with about 100 other school librarians waiting for my late plan to arrive so we can fly back to destinations in the northeast which is being inundated with plane-delaying rains. The airport wireless signal is too low to continue checking my email or trying to understand Web 3.0’s “Second Life,” so why not blog? I pulled out my conference notebook and decided to write up the ideas I got at the conference that I hope to try or explore later this year. In no particular order, here they are:

Elephant on a trampoline: Find the video David Warlick showed at the start of his talk on flat worlds of an elephant jumping on a trampoline and show it to my principal as a metaphor for getting some of our faculty to think in a new way. Might be a great thing to show at the first faculty meeting when we return to school in September.

Wiki for library instruction: I liked Warlick’s explanation of a history teacher who had students create their own study guide for upcoming tests which would then be used by students the following year and improved upon. I want to play with how I might be able to use this with information literacy instruction. What about a little cooperative learning using a wiki? I could ask a tech savvy history teacher to assign each of his students to practice using one of our databases and write up helpful hints on a wiki I create. Students would then come to class in the library, read another’s wiki, try their tips, and then add their own. The next semester we can improve upon the first wiki. I want to experiment with this with at least one class this semester and compare it to my traditional way of teaching about the databases.

Technorati and tag clouds: Explore the Technorati (http://www.technorati.com/)web site and learn to use it for checking on topics in blogs. Learn more about tag clouds.

“School Library” on Wikipedia: I’m told the entry for “school library” on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_library) is not very flattering. I haven’t had a chance to look it up yet but want to remember to read it, perhaps with a good stiff drink in my hand.

“The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life”: A book by Richard Florida that says there will be more jobs available in the creative areas than in the science and technology areas. This would confirm the information in “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel Pink and would really be an interesting discussion to have with our head of school and Arts Department.

Mashups: Try using BuzzTracker.org (http://www.buzztracker.org/) to learn more about mashups and their usefulness.

“Stop thinking about library as place and start thinking about places where library should be.”: from the ACRL workshop “Use What They Own – Go Where They are” with Nancy Davenport and Lynne O’Brien.

Parents as our allies: Nancy Davenport reported that a University of Rochester study found that college students called their parents within the first three steps when beginning their research. I think this is true for my students too. I want to ponder how I can make use of that fact enlist the parents as allies as I try to get my students to stop using Google and start using my subscription databases. Possibly hold library orientations for parents, or parents and children together? Tried parent workshops before but need to get a larger turnout. Maybe offer mini workshops before and during back-to-school night when parents have “free periods.” Attach some sort of attention-getter to the back-to-school night program and ask the principal to announce it at the gathering before they all go to their “classes.” Perhaps offer a longer workshop in advance and announce that in the parent newsletter before back-to-school night. Also see about doing a workshop for incoming freshmen parents perhaps with their children in tow.

Facebook and MySpace: Consider setting up the library as a Facebook and MySpace participant. Other libraries have done this and gotten a lot of “friends” this way. Ask a student or two to help? Might be difficult since we have banned it from the school network.

Email is out; IM is in: Students only use email for formal communication and IM for everything else. Explore how we can use this fact. Some libraries are doing IM reference.

WIRED magazine and EDUCAUSE: Pay attention to these resources as good ways to learn about the newest technologies and their applications. (http://www.educause.edu) and (http://www.wired.com/)

IPods for Development: Tell out Development Office about Colorado College’s outreach efforts to donors that include sending them IPods with the college logo on them and fully loaded with podcasts of notable lectures, faculty bios, concerts, pictures with how donated money has been used, etc.

Podcasts: Lynne O’Brien from Duke explained the IPod program. They got initial faculty interest in participating in the program by telling faculty that if they came up with a viable idea for podcasts for their curriculum they would be given an IPod. The first year they had eight faculty members who participated. Now the uses of podcasts include “Radio Theater of the Mind,” audio flash cards for Spanish classes, automatic recording of lectures for those professors who want them available for their students, and a 500 word dictionary of neurobiology terms which includes audio pronunciation and brain images optimized for the IPod screen. What sorts of podcast applications would work well for our students? Who are the teachers who are likely to use them? How can the library make use of them? I want to have podcasts of the principal, head of school, popular teachers and students reading parts of their favorite books and link them to the library web pages. I could also do this with my seniors for National Library Week when we ask them about their favorite book and immortalize them on our READ bookmarks and posters.

Focus Groups: I’ve heard Joyce Valenza talk about this before and heard her mention it again: focus groups for exiting seniors. I really want to set this up and learn more about what our seniors found useful and what they did not. There may also be a way to get some of this information by setting up a blog or wiki for students to contribute their ideas to. The problem will be in getting them to take the time to add their thoughts. Some incentive might be to incorporate the task as part of a teacher’s assignment or to offer prize incentives.

Collection policies and donation policy online: I know lots of school libraries have already done this, but we just haven’t gotten around to adding links to our newly formed collection policies, donation policy, and newsletters to our web page.

Library video: We have started work on a library orientation video for freshmen, when it’s done, post it online so it is always available to our students and parents too.

Joyce Valenza’s blog: Read it and her wiki too! (http://joycevalenza.edublogs.org/)

Google Librarian: Sign up for the Google Librarian’s Newsletter. Several of my colleagues said this is well worth paying attention to. (http://www.googlelibrarian.com/)

ICT test: Contact ETS to see how I can take the ICT test (http://www.ets.org/) to find out for myself what it is like. Begin exploring the possibility of a pilot project for our students, or a sample of our students, to take the test. ETS is working on a similar test for 8th to 9th graders. Continue to follow their progress.

Assessment idea: Instead of looking at all the works cited pages for all two hundred sophomores and juniors, ask for a sampling of papers from each teacher that represents a variety of grades. Look over the entire paper to get a sense of the final product and then check the works cited pages to see how many actually used the resources I’ve taught them about.

Library blog: Check out the blog from Northfield Mount Hermon School. (http://nmhlibrary.typepad.com/) Alison Ernst says it has pictures of “lounge lizards” – students in the library which are archived so kids can look for their friends, write-ups about new books, info on speakers, etc. Students can add their own comments. Consider doing something similar for our library.

Gaming night: Seek out the gamers in the school and set up some gaming nights in the library. Have them teach me what it’s all about and provide a new way to appreciate the library. Consider having a student or two do a quick demo in a faculty meeting or maybe even run a faculty workshop at lunchtime just for fun.

Milennials and their brains: Read more about recent research that shows how our current students’ brains learn differently than we do and how that is becoming hardwired into their brain circuitry.

Second Life: Continue to explore what this is all about and comprehend it as an intro to Web 3.0???!!!!! (http://secondlife.com/)

Well, I made it into the air and am now heading for home in soggy Washington DC. When I get back to school I will share these ideas with my principal and my library and technology colleagues to see if any of them are interested in collaborating on any of these projects. I will also print them out and keep them on wall space near my desk to constantly remind me of all that I want to try. I consider these ideas well worth the price of admission to ALA 2006.

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