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ALA and ISTE: policy statements and what we share January 2, 2009

Posted by Debbie Stafford in : AASL News, ALA MW2007, Community, SKILLS Act , add a comment

As reported in an earlier post, ALA has submitted “Opening the Window to a Larger World: Libraries’ Role in Changing America,” a policy statement for the new presidential administration’s transition team. ISTE  (The International Society for Technology in Education) also published a policy statement, “ISTE Policy Recommendations for President-Elect Obama”

Comparing the two documents highlights similarities, the most obvious being increased funding.  ALA’s document leads off with the need for a strong policy to provide broadband to libraries and to both increase and simplify the E-Rate program; ISTE’s document ends with the same request.  

Second, both organizations advocate for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), although there is difference between the two concerning specific parts of the ESEA. ALA pushes for inclusion of school library media centers, while ISTE promotes inclusion of the Achievement Through Technology and Innovation Act (ATTAIN). Further differences include ALA advocating for the “Support authorized funding for the “Improving Literacy Through Schools Library Program” in No Child Left Behind (NCLB)” while ISTE pushes for “Enhancing Education Through Technology (Title II-D, NCLB).” Though not mentioned in the ALA document, AASL supports the Skills Act, which create a standard of a certified school librarian in every school. The ISTE document includes a section concerning expanding the definition of “fully qualified” to include skills in integrating technology into the curriculum.

Each organization’s document includes an area of focus not shared by the other. ALA includes a section concerning “Safe Computing and Children,” advocating for education rather than reliance on Internet filtering. ISTE includes a focus on supporting technology innovation and use of data to assess student learning. Both documents stress the importance of education and the need for support.

Take the opportunity to read both documents, follow the ALA Midwinter town hall meeting and voice your opinions through your elected officials. 

Building Teen Communities Online January 23, 2007

Posted by fharris in : ALA MW2007 , 1 comment so far

The YALSA Institute on Building Teen Communities Online, held Friday, January 19th, saw an overflow crowd of enthusiastic attendees. The first speaker was Audra Caplan, former president of YALSA, now Director of the Harford County Public Library, Maryland. Her role was to give the director’s (principal’s, superintendent’s, etc.) perspective.

Audra began by describing the many barriers librarians cite when trying to implement technology services for young adults, from concerns about resources to basic discomfort in working with teenagers. Next Audra described many of these issues from the director’s point of view. A director must be sensitive to the political climate and composition of the community. Sometimes communities are conservative, yet they love the library. Audra often feels she walks a tightrope (her library receives an average of two challenges a month!). One approach is to add new services without lots of fanfare. Then people gradually learn about new services and fear of the unknown is minimized. In sum, Audra advised: 1. Make choices (you can’t have it all or do everything at once). 2. Don’t blindside your director. 3. Watch how certain types of use can put pressure on the computer network, and always communicate with technology department. 4. Turn lemons into lemonade. If you have rowdy, loud kids, what do you do? Always support the staff, but implement programming, even security, and meet the situation head on. 5. Understand that the director may be very busy. Your top priority is not necessarily the director’s, who is juggling everyone’s top priority and continually putting out fires. Be patient and don’t badger. 6. Be aware of the budget process. There are always restrictions. To buy video games, Audra’s system literally shaved funds off every other materials budget line. When you do ask for funds, make your arguments compelling and have your ducks in a row.

Audra had a number of suggestions for overcoming barriers. 1. First and foremost, create well thought-out proposals. Do your homework. Have statistics and use published research to bolster your case. 2. Directors, principals, and superintendents are often fairly ignorant about technology. Take explanations down to the level that the administrator will understand. Plant your seed first by supplying “for dummies” articles, then tend the seed. Use incentives for reluctant staff (like free mp3 players after attending professional development sessions!). Don’t reinvent the wheel. Use YALSA’s Teen Tech Week materials, YALSA’s 30 positive uses of social networking document, and data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project and from the Chapin Hall Center for Children. 3. Figure out how you can make your boss or your local politicians look good. Collaborative efforts are always good. Join up with another library, agency, etc. 4. Find money. Seek out funds from “Buy” grants from local retailers, friends groups, and library foundations. Tell your director before you apply for a grant!

The second speaker was Linda Braun, LEO: Librarians and Educators Online. Her mission was to describe how social technologies help build community. She first demonstrated by (*warning, not pretty!*) recruiting four volunteers to record the song “Fame” on singshot.com, an online karaoke site with sharing features. What makes this a community activity? Everyone knows the song, everyone sings, those singing together form a community, by posting it you are sharing it. You can add other singers in your group to your friends list, share profiles, etc. Communities happen when people share common interests and have opportunities to bond over those interests. Librarians can participate in the communities that teens use to reach those who don’t come into our buildings.

Linda showed us how she created a list of resources for the Institute using the social bookmarking site del.icio.us. She had already added the links Audra spoke about and demonstrated how libraries can build community by distributing login information to a user group so all members of the group can contribute bookmarks. This simple tool connects not only people, but resources (which is a lot of what we’re about). In the school setting, I can imagine students build collaborative online pathfinders as they find resources for research projects.

Next Linda played excerpts from a couple of podcasts, one from a class of middle school students in La Crosse, Wisconsin who described their fears on the first day of 7th grade, and the other from a class that was doing research on arthropods. The teacher also made her own podcast in which she described the year-long process and how she educated the larger community about it (as Audra advised). Class members developed a much tighter sense of community as a result. Linda observed that communities can also be temporary, serve a specific function, or die a natural death when a function is over. It’s okay if things don’t last forever because interests change or services fall in and out of favor. It doesn’t mean the service or community has “failed.” For example, in some teen communities, Facebook has become favored over MySpace. One library managed this shift by making a widget in its MySpace page that links to its Facebook page. It’s very important to have policies and guidelines for anything you build collaboratively with teens. Have a policy for who can be “friended,” in the same way you have a collection development policy. Customize your online presence. One MySpace page approach doesn’t fit all libraries. You can use the bulletin feature on MySpace to get out a message to everyone in your friends group. Authors and musicians do this and we should too. It’s a way to connect to the kids, especially to those who don’t necessarily come in to the library on their own.

Last, Linda spoke about connecting to teens through devices. We are missing a really big boat by not making more use of text messaging. We need to start thinking about how our websites display properly on cell phones. We need to keep acceptable use policies up to date because new devices and services create new issues, particularly in terms of privacy. Pick the tool or service that works for you in your environment at the current moment. You want to build trust. But don’t try to do what you can’t do.

Next up were two speakers from My Own Café, of the Southeastern Massachusetts Library System, Vickie Beene-Beavers (Assistant Administrator for Youth Services) and Kathy Lussier (Technology Consultant). Their presentation included a 10-minute video of teen volunteers describing their experiences working on the project.

The basic mission of the My Own Café project is to assist member libraries in their provision of online services to teens. Using grant funding, the system recruited teens to advise on site’s content and design and hired a professional design team and a project manager. The site provides information services, communication services like message boards, some downloadable music from local bands, community and local information, and college and job information. Users can view all information, but must log in with a library card number to use interactive services. Teen moderators monitor the message boards and are heavily involved in decision-making and administrative issues, from establishing conduct and privacy policies to selecting the logo of the service.

Teens feel safe using My Own Café. Vickie reported that in many ways the teen moderators and stricter than librarians would be. They also have a strong sense of ownership in the partnership, particularly as suggestions they make are acted upon. For example, teens are now given the option of selecting different skins (backgrounds, appearances) when they log in. Not all the member libraries have come on board. And it has been harder to reach school librarians, who are working with lots of restrictions. Even though the message boards are heavily moderated, many schools do not allow any such service on their computer networks.

For those who would like to take a look at the full range of My Own Café services, these guest logins are currently available: January – login is guest, password is midwinter; February – login is guest, password is groundhog.

The day concluded with a panel on using gaming to promote community. Panelists were Beth Gallaway, Trainer/Consultant for Metrowest Massachussetts Regional System; Andy Fletcher, (Upper Deck Entertainment); Jean Gardner, YA Librarian and Team Leader for Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library; and Jami Schwartzwalder, recent MLIS graduate and instructor/volunteer on the virtual world Second Life. All agreed that gaming is social by nature, which makes it perfect for community-building efforts. The big take-home message from the panel was to be open to teen interests and to listen, listen, listen. You don’t have to be a gamer yourself, but you do need to listen to what the teen gamers tell you and be aware of basic trends. Games fall in and out of fashion. Certain types of games lend themselves more to community building than others. For example, in MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games) all participants have to work together to move through the quest. Panelists reported that even when kids have the technology to play a game at home, they come to the library to play with a group. Similarly, even when being competitive, teens help each other get better.

How can we in libraries facilitate the community aspect of gaming? You can provide the wherewithal even if you aren’t a gamer yourself. Programs or collections can support the activities that occur around gaming, like card trading, miniatures, and gaming-related magazines, books, and films. Support a gaming initiative with communication technologies like blogs (check out the comments on the Ann Arbor District Library gaming blog!) and by sponsoring clubs or discussion groups. Capitalize on teens’ tendency to be “format agnostic.” So don’t just put up book displays, but add related content like videos and other formats. Justify what you want to do by connecting adolescent developmental needs to gaming attributes. Recent research on learning has a lot to say about the positive role gaming can play. Gaming has become legitimized in ways not seen before.

All in all, it was a VERY full day and gave participants a great deal to think about.
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Who’s Watching YOUR Space? January 22, 2007

Posted by Laura Pearle in : ALA MW2007 , 1 comment so far

This symposium was sponsored by OCLC, and it’s probable that the video feed will be available on their site - when it is, we’ll let you know.

Michael Stephen moderated and asked the audience to participate by texting and/or IM’ing him. It’s unclear how many did do just that, but between that and the cool voting tool, we were definitely part of the conversation.

Michael started by talking about the “culture of participation” we live in: we (adults, communities, etc.) cannot control what’s going on on-line. It’s simply growing and changing too fast. This is a new form of social organization, and our mantra should be “Experience. Play. Discovery”.

As Howard Rheingold reminded us, the internet has changed the authority of the text. It used to be the publisher (and editor) that controlled it, now we, as readers, must ask questions about what we find on-line. The reality is, however, that the institute (be it schools, libraries, publishing, whatever) doesn’t change as quickly as this on-line thing is. However, moral choices can be taught (Howard made it clear that he believes that it is up to parents and churches to teach the morality; schools and teachers should only teach the “how to choose/evaluate” part.) Parents need to talk to their kids about what they’re finding/doing on-line: do not just leave it up to the schools. He also spoke about the Public Voice, the linkage between media and participation.

Students learn by clicking around, learning by doing rather than reading the manual. They then teach others, or they take on the role of “doer”. We, as adults, need to help them make the moral choice so that they learn to engage with issues about which they care (in other words, teach them to participate in a democracy). One example given was the student protests organized by cell phone.

Where on-line media comes in is in the role of allowing students to play with their self-expression, and self-exploration. It may also help revitalize public/civic life by allowing more participation.

He ended by inviting us to go to http://www.socialtext.net/medialiteracy.

Next up was danah boyd (yes, without the capital letters). One of the things ms. boyd mentioned was that kids use Google for everything: they’ll type in MySpace rather than typing the URL into a browser!

She talked about how kids view on-line communities: they want a free space to socialize in an unstructured environment. Within this space, expression is validated (or not) by strangers - this is how they learn their social norms and cues. MySpace, for example, allows them to build a social network (which can be a niche network), knowing that all “conversations” are witnessed socially (much like a face-to-face interaction). Thus, they are held accountable for their “talk” and can gain - or lose - status as a result. What do they like about all this? It’s persistent, searchable, replicable and there’s an invisible audience; all this is new and very different that what we grew up with.

The big question: how do we teach them how to be good members of society if we keep segregating them?

Marc Smith was the last speaker. He commented that we tend to focus on the failures of social order rather than the successes (much like we do on the few airline crashes, rather than the millions of successful flights). He then said that Time magazine got it wrong. It’s not “you” that was the Person of the Year, it was “y’all” or “youse” - in other words, the collective “us”.

The main thrust of his talk was on MoSoSo (Mobile Social Software). Most of us already have it in our pockets: our cell. This can be used to explicitly or implicitly annotate our lives; the data is collectible, aggregatable, and identifiable. He suggested several Big Thinkers about this societal change:

The question is, do we want to by only viewed, or do we want to observe ourselves? Reality check: the three terrabyte footprints we leave will not fade.

Marc also said that the age of the desktop is over - the world is now mobile. So, what’s in this new world? Some of the projects mentioned were:

He ended by saying that amateurization is all over (just look at what digital cameras have done for photography) - we need to figure out how to get to higher ground. Mistaking recency for relevancy is a sign ADD. We need to be more thoughtful about all this.

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“I would whore myself for a totebag”

Posted by Laura Pearle in : ALA MW2007 , 1 comment so far

Yes, someone actually said that at Midwinter.

One of the nicer perks of coming to these conferences: the exhibits. Of course, there are the OPAC/ILS guys and other techie people trying to sell you their new product. And many of us flock to those booths to learn what’s new with those programs (remember when everyone suddenly had a GUI interface? or web browsers became the norm?), or to see and evaluate the newest databases. There are always the arts people selling t-shirts and other “library gear”. Almost every booth has a give-away pen or post-it note pad or other tschoke with their logo on it.

And (for some, this is the best part) there are many publishers “pushing” their upcoming catalog by giving away free copies (aka “Advance Reader Copies) for us to get all excited about.

This brings up the excitement one has over the tote bag issue. At registration, you usually get a tote bag. Many booths have them, in a variety of flavors: there are ones that are durable, with pockets and areas in which to keep things; there are ones that are simply large and therefor perfect for the ARCs you’re collecting; there are ones that are collectibles in and of themselves (these you learn about when people say “did you go to [vendor] and see their bag?” or “you have to get a bag from [vendor]”).

I know whereof my colleague speaks. A good tote bag is really one that I’ll take home, that I’ll bring with me to other conferences (local, for example) and that I’ll pack for the next conference because I’m not sure I’ll see another one that serves the same needs as well as this one does. And, of course, one I don’t really mind carrying around as an advertisement for the company/product. All others get tossed or given to my staff and students.

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