A friend of mine recently posted a blog entry on why librarians should be in charge of technology in schools. In larger school districts I believe that Doug Johnson is right there needs to be a Chief Information Officer and that should be Librarian, with an Information Technology background.
Knowing that I've been bitten by the tech-bug you would think that I would agree with his assessment of the situation. While this may work in big school districts, I don't think it will work out well in the smaller school districts for three reasons.
#1 In a small school district the librarian's focus should be on 21st Century Skills.
While this includes digitial communication and the ethical use of information resources, a librarian needs to be able to focus on literacy. Literacy in this case in not just technology lingo. Literacy can mean the difference between students becoming skilled thinkers or Luddites.
#2 Technology demands need to be the center of someone's attention in the smaller school district.
If the librarian is attempting to teach, collaborate with other teachers on their curriculum needs or work on a special project with school administration while having to fix or fulfill all the technology needs in a school, their focus cannot be student centered. Technology is a demanding discipline that requires serious maintenance.
#3 Being a model for 21st Century Skills in a small district requires a certain amount of glamour.
Implementing and developing professional training for colleagues regarding new technology is a big part of being a role model. Running ethernet cables, setting up equipment, fixing fried motherboards, cleaning spilled coffee out of a keyboard is not glamorous nor does it provide people with a positive view of 21st Century Technology. Not to say that in a pinch, we can't do that. I have and will continue to pitch in when our tech department needs assistance.
Though I agree with my friend that this is where our bigger school districts need to go, I think the smaller school districts need to forge working partnerships with their technology oriented cohorts. Modeling student technology needs for the Information Technology department and helping them understand our pedagogical reasons for implementation of technology in education.
My two cents.
-AMA
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Librarians and Cataloging
Today I met with an aspiring school librarian. We talked about cataloging because that is her next class, and the importance of being able to find information in your library.
Long ago in the dark ages, when I took cataloging, doing it yourself by hand was the only way to make sure that information in your library had a proper location. Cataloging and classification of materials used to be the center of a librarian's universe. A librarian would spend hours examining books for subject headings, measuring and precisely recording the size and shape of a book so that other librarians could find and retrieve information for patrons. Theory and relationships factored into how a book was finally classified. When your librarian had finished with the book it was ready to be shelved, sometimes never to move again during it's entire stay in the library.
Books and librarians have changed. While being able to catalog a book properly is still important (thank you to my cataloging teacher) there is nothing more important in your library than the students these materials are intended to help. Cataloging can still take me away to a quiet place where I achieve a certain Zen Oneness with the library universe, but most of the time, I admit to not having time to catalog. There I said it, go ahead call me a blasphemer, but I don't believe that using the Library of Congress or OCLC as a source for records is wrong.
Cataloging as we knew it 20 years ago should not happen in small libraries. We do not have the resources to spend an hour cataloging 10 books by hand, most of us don't have the resources we had even five years ago. Clearly there will be exceptions i.e. libraries without Internet access, special books that don't have records in the big libraries, ephemera (still my favorite to classify) and self published items, just to name a few. If you want to be a cataloger there are libraries out there that are looking for you...
But, if you want to be a library media specialist ask yourself the following questions: What is the real reason you wanted to work in a library? Did you think it would be a quiet place where you could read and not be disturbed? Where you would look at books all day long and never be bothered? Or did you want to help people find information, learn how to distinguish the good stuff from bad? Do you like helping people? Libraries today are not bastions of silence. At least not my library and not any of the others that I have visited. Libraries if done right, are the center of a school or community. A library is where the heart of learning and culture in your building should exist. If your library is a quiet place where people are afraid to ask questions, you need to find a real librarian.
-AMA
Long ago in the dark ages, when I took cataloging, doing it yourself by hand was the only way to make sure that information in your library had a proper location. Cataloging and classification of materials used to be the center of a librarian's universe. A librarian would spend hours examining books for subject headings, measuring and precisely recording the size and shape of a book so that other librarians could find and retrieve information for patrons. Theory and relationships factored into how a book was finally classified. When your librarian had finished with the book it was ready to be shelved, sometimes never to move again during it's entire stay in the library.
Books and librarians have changed. While being able to catalog a book properly is still important (thank you to my cataloging teacher) there is nothing more important in your library than the students these materials are intended to help. Cataloging can still take me away to a quiet place where I achieve a certain Zen Oneness with the library universe, but most of the time, I admit to not having time to catalog. There I said it, go ahead call me a blasphemer, but I don't believe that using the Library of Congress or OCLC as a source for records is wrong.
Cataloging as we knew it 20 years ago should not happen in small libraries. We do not have the resources to spend an hour cataloging 10 books by hand, most of us don't have the resources we had even five years ago. Clearly there will be exceptions i.e. libraries without Internet access, special books that don't have records in the big libraries, ephemera (still my favorite to classify) and self published items, just to name a few. If you want to be a cataloger there are libraries out there that are looking for you...
But, if you want to be a library media specialist ask yourself the following questions: What is the real reason you wanted to work in a library? Did you think it would be a quiet place where you could read and not be disturbed? Where you would look at books all day long and never be bothered? Or did you want to help people find information, learn how to distinguish the good stuff from bad? Do you like helping people? Libraries today are not bastions of silence. At least not my library and not any of the others that I have visited. Libraries if done right, are the center of a school or community. A library is where the heart of learning and culture in your building should exist. If your library is a quiet place where people are afraid to ask questions, you need to find a real librarian.
-AMA
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Assessment
How many of you have dragged yourself into yet another workshop on assessment and wondered why am I here? Go ahead raise your hands. You know you all have. 45 minutes of canned presentation that your school district thinks will invigorate rigor in your classroom. Most of it is mind numbing garbage. You dutifully take a handout and make notes, but you already do most of what the presenter is talking about and you can see that it's not really working for your students. Now ask yourself the big question. Why?
Assessment requires you to make a judgement on what your student is learning. The reason why those canned assessments don't really work is because they don't measure what a student knows. In our school we do a lot of project based learning. Students are given a rubric that defines what learning is for them. Most students work toward an A on their rubric. Rubrics are a useful tool and project based learning can help your students become strong work-ready people. But they do not really measure what a student knows, just what the student can do. Frustrating isn't it? Even when you think you have a foolproof measure of student learning, you don't.
As a society we need to make a paradigm shift from our old industry geared education to learning that requires students to be active participants. We need to assess learning by measuring the formation of thought. When a student is capable of forming an opinion on your subject that is a true assessment of learning in your classroom. Therefore the best form of assessment is still Socratic. When you guide student learning without giving them the answers you provide them with a gateway to learning, that paper tests and projects can not measure. So spend some time brushing up on guided questioning in your classroom. Teach your children to think.
-AMA
Assessment requires you to make a judgement on what your student is learning. The reason why those canned assessments don't really work is because they don't measure what a student knows. In our school we do a lot of project based learning. Students are given a rubric that defines what learning is for them. Most students work toward an A on their rubric. Rubrics are a useful tool and project based learning can help your students become strong work-ready people. But they do not really measure what a student knows, just what the student can do. Frustrating isn't it? Even when you think you have a foolproof measure of student learning, you don't.
As a society we need to make a paradigm shift from our old industry geared education to learning that requires students to be active participants. We need to assess learning by measuring the formation of thought. When a student is capable of forming an opinion on your subject that is a true assessment of learning in your classroom. Therefore the best form of assessment is still Socratic. When you guide student learning without giving them the answers you provide them with a gateway to learning, that paper tests and projects can not measure. So spend some time brushing up on guided questioning in your classroom. Teach your children to think.
-AMA
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