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The personal learning of ALA July 3, 2008

Posted by maharlan in : Check this out! , add a comment

I am back from the ALA conference in Anaheim.  Conferences are an interesting event as the experience is both personal – what did you learn, do – and communal – the opportunity to share, discuss, and collaborate.
This year at ALA I only attended a couple of sessions – a presentation by Judi Moriellon and Deb LaPlante about collaborating to teach reading strategies.  This session was of particular interest to the elementary librarian as most of the strategies discussed were piloted with elementary school students.  What I appreciated about Judi and Deb’s approach is that they were advocating moving beyond reading promotion to teaching reading.  As a former middle school language arts teacher the strategies were familiar, and usable at all three levels.  More information can be found at Judi’s website.
I also attended a presentation on youth involvement in legislation through teen advisory groups or youth council.  Two teens, the director of Oakland Public Library and the coordinator of teen services (brand new) spoke.  The teens emphasized how their participation in Oakland’s Youth Leadership Council had made them more self-confident and improved their public speaking ability which is a pretty cool thing for a library program to be able to provide, particularly the self confidence.  The teens represented the library and local and state legislative events, talking to state representatives, city council and the library board.
Mostly I attended meetings, which is a great way for me to make new connections and see old friends.   I met someone in the throes of her doctoral thesis, a content analysis of popular titles using adolescent development traits, which I am very interested in seeing the outcome.  I put faces to the names of people who post on this blog, who I have never actually met.  And I enjoyed myself . . .
There were a number of interesting events: a videoconference with teacher librarians at NECC,  Newbery/Caldecott dinner, an Advocacy workshop, and  other interesting presentations that I missed.  I hope to hear more about people’s ALA experiences.

Let’s fill the next group of Emerging Leaders with school librarians June 27, 2008

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School librarians and media specialists made up less that ten percent of the last Emerging Leaders cohort. If you’re looking for a way to increase your involvement in ALA, consider applying for the 2009 program. It will put you in touch with with ALA leaders and on the fast track to committee participation as you work on exciting projects with an experienced mentor. More information is posted on the ALA website, with requirements outlined below.  The application deadline is July 31.

To qualify for the Emerging Leaders program, you must:

  1. Be under 35 years of age or be a new librarian of any age with fewer than 5 years post-MLS experience
  2. Have a recent MLS degree from an ALA or NCATE accredited program or be in an MLS program currently
  3. Be able to attend both ALA conferences and work virtually in between
  4. Be prepared to commit to serve on an ALA, Division, Chapter or Round Table committee, taskforce or workgroup upon completion of program
  5. Be an ALA member or join upon selection if not already a member.

About a third of the 100 or so Emerging Leaders in the cohort will receive funding in the amount of $500 from divisions or other ALA or state library and media organizations to defray travel expenses for each of the two annual conferences.

Don’t miss this opportunity to increase the voice of school librarians within the organization.

Webquests, Pathfinders and Information Literacy June 24, 2008

Posted by jhurd in : Check this out! , add a comment

We’ve been having quite the animated discussion on LM-Net today, all around this article by Australian webquest guru, Tom March. In it, he wonders whether Web 2.0 has made the traditional webquest, with teacher-supplied links and pen/paper responses, obsolete. There seems to be a 50/50 split between those who agree and disagree.

It started me thinking about pathfinders, however, as I think there’s a similar issue related to them. They are as much a staple of school libraries as card catalogs, and my (middle school/high school) students and faculty love them. This is my first year at the school, and the teachers here had never seen a pathfinder before. They did as much to advocate for my program as anything else I did all year. Teachers would come in and ask, “Hey, can you make me one of those resource thingies the kids mentioned?” I was thrilled.

And yet. As the pathfinders grew more elaborate over the year, with links to the OPAC, databases, suggested books and long hotlists of websites, I started wondering if I were doing the students a disservice. Why spend two or three days teaching them how to search for and evaluate sites, then give them a long list of “approved” links? Wasn’t I defeating my information literacy goal? But teachers loved them.

I began to start each web section of the pathfinder with a group of portals and useful search engines, with a brief explanation of why they were useful and a good place to start their own searching. I also used wikis to create the pathfinders, gave students the password and encouraged them to add their own sites, making it a collaborative effort that also involved critical thinking.

If you’d like to peruse my ‘pathfinder evolution,’ you can find them here.

I’m still not entirely happy with the process; how do we balance findability with information literacy? It would be great to hear what other librarians are doing. Or is this already a settled issue and I just don’t know about it because I’m a newbie?

Virtual Library Legislation Day June 23, 2008

Posted by droth in : Check this out!, Conferences, SKILLS Act , add a comment

Serve your students. Promote and protect school libraries. Make your voice heard.

Virtual Library Legislation Day is Tuesday, July 1, 2008 — Participate!!!

Prepare now (so you know what you want to say and do when the time comes).

Take action on July 1st.

Here’s how:

PREPARE
Read the ALA Washington Office (WO) webpage about the SKILLs Act: http://www.capwiz.com/ala/issues/alert/?alertid=10223941

Write a short piece telling your Senators and Representative the importance of passing the SKILLs Act. Use information from the WO webpage together with with your own thoughts and experiences to demonstrate the vital need to enact SKILLs.

If any of your Senators and Representatives already co-sponsor SKILLs, include your thanks and appreciation.

If they do not already co-sponsor SKILLs, ask them to take this step now.

TAKE ACTION
2 parts to this — for those at ALA Annual in Anaheim on July 1; and for those anywhere else

At ALA ANNUAL in ANAHEIM:
Bring your prepared statement to the Virtual Library Day Pavilion in Exhibit Hall sometime between 8:00 a.m. and 12 noon on July 1.

You will get a t-shirt.

You will participate in the excitement and enthusiasm of people representing the entire library community coming together to empower their political voice.

You will contribute to the voice of school libraries within the entire library community.

You will see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a strong library supporter, who will be adding his voice to the call for political support of libraries.

For more information see the WO Virtual Library Day webpage at http://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/?p=498

Not at ALA ANNUAL in ANAHEIM
Sometime on July 1st, deliver your message to your Senators and Representative.

How to do this:

Go to the WO Take Action Webpage at http://www.capwiz.com/ala/issues/alert/?alertid=10223941

Enter your zip code in the field provided and the message page comes up addressed to your Senators and Representative.

Put in your message and with a click of the mouse send it your Congressional delegation.

Mark your calendar. On Tuesday, July 1 take a few minutes to participate in our democratic system. Serve your students. Protect school libraries. Let your representatives in Congress know that school libraries are vital for the education of our students and therefore for the good of our communities and our country.

Doc

DIY Google June 18, 2008

Posted by jhurd in : Check this out! , add a comment

If you haven’t discovered it yet, Google has a useful new custom search engine that you can host on your own website. You create a name for the search engine, then manually enter the website URL’s that you want the engine to use in searching. Time consuming, yes. But what a great school-wide project, and imagine what a powerful tool you would have after a few years. There are also options to search the entire web, emphasizing your selected sites, or just to search the entire web.

Google then allows you to host the site on your Google homepage, your blog, or another website, and generates the embedding code.  Nifty, eh?

I will admit that, as a high-school librarian, I have issues with using filtered search engines; students must learn to find and evaluate their own sites. Still, this has real potential, and I can see some wonderful content-specific possibilities here.

Departments can create a subject specific search engine, or teachers create a search engine for a specific topic of study. The History department at my school requires students to use a minimum of seven primary sources in their research papers. I spent an inordinate amount of time this year hunting links down for the pathfinders (have you ever had to find seven primary sources on Zulu warriors?!), and worried I was doing the students a disservice by finding the sites for them.

So I plan to create a primary source search engine with ALL of the links from the various pathfinders. Students still have to dig and root, but with better luck. They’ll even still need to distinguish between secondary and primary sources, as some of the sites are a mixture of both.

Really, you have to love Google, sometimes!