The Future of the Book

I can tell you the precise moment when I fell in love with reading, and with books. When my Mom read Are you my mother? by P.D. Eastman to me for the first time, she read the line "You are not my mother! You are a SNORT!", but she said "snort" more like "shhhhnort!" I almost fell off my single Sears bed with the sensible coverlet and hospital corners, in peals of giggles.

Since I learned to read my nose has been firmly stuck in a book. Yet I am not worried about the future of "the book." Paper has served us well for quite a long time, and isn't going to disappear anytime soon.

The "future" of the book is what excites me. The possibilities of engaging with the written word, the transformed thought, the flight of imagination, in new ways.

As I talk with our students it is clear that, while they are digital natives, many are still firmly in the camp of the traditional book. Almost uniformly they state they would prefer digital alternatives to text books, but for personal reading, many still want the book in hand. One student talked about the privacy of disappearing into a narrative on the written page, which is a sentiment I have heard from colleagues. And yet this student had never experienced an e-reader, so his opinion is uninformed.

This is one of the reasons we will be grant writing for a variety of digital readers in the next month. I sure hope we are awarded because I look forward to sharing our process. Fingers crossed!

In the meantime, I found this in my neglected RSS feed. Worth the 4+ minutes. Especially the section when they refer to authority and information. But that is a different kettle of fish entirely!



The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

Is a phonebook a book?

The Japanese push the boundaries of digital appliances, particularly in cell phone based reading. In fact, cell phone books are the biggest growth area for publishing in Japan. It is estimated that 86% of Japanese teens read cell phone novels.

From the Mobile Art Lab in Japan comes a new twist on digital reading. The youngest children get this concept and turn the "page" with the same muscle memory used with paper. What an engaging way to read! Is it less valuable because it is digital? I don't think so.

We need to be studying the literacies associated with digital reading and preparing our libraries and faculties. Our collections need ebooks and digital readers to understand and gain experience working with and understanding what it means to truly read digitally. And we need to do it with an open mind.

I'd like to put in a plug for Libraries and Transliteracy, a blog I find very useful in clarifying my views and learning more about the topic of evolving literacies. 

"This blog is a group effort to share information about the all literacies (digital literacy, media literacy, information literacy, visual literacy, 21st century literacies, transliteracies and more) with special focus on all libraries."
 
An example is a recent post by Bobbi Newman, Information Literacy for the 21st Century.

This is the future of reading.



Source:
Ewan MacIntosh's edublogs:

iPhone + Book = Book: beautiful transmedia book

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?

Friday, the last day of classes, and final exams are scheduled for next week. Everyone is frayed at the edges. The media lab is choked with students finalizing multi-media projects. The printers are giving off heat, we are churning out so many papers.

Frenzied? Yes. Creative? YES! As buried in work as students are, many are looking beyond the rubrics and bringing creativity and craftsmanship to their work. It is incredibly inspirational to work with students who care about doing well, but who also care about adding their own voice and creativity to their work. When you consider the obstacles so many kids face in the course of their school career it is all the more impressive.

What about us? As school librarians how do we feed our creativity? Does our creativity give us new ideas? Connect us to the world? Do we let our creativity out to play, or do we allow it to be stifled by budgets, colleagues, and maybe by a sense of  frustration that we are not recognized for our work?

On my desk is a heavy stainless steel paper weight that asks "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"

This question feeds my creativity. It gives me courage to try out new ideas, to go for grants, to approach teachers with ideas for collaborating on units, to work with students trying out new platforms to give them options to show their learning. To showcase their creativity.

Let Out the Creative Beast is a great cartoon by Betsy Streeter that cleverly gives a peek into the working lives of students. And us, as well. Enjoy! And nurture your creative beast.

Let Out the Creative Beast

View more presentations from Betsy Streeter.

Photo credit:
Flickr Creative Commons

Where does creativity hide? ~ Amy...
from Abby Lanes

Dying in and for a good book

Last week one of my students (from now on I will refer to her as Reader Rabbit* ) came up with sigh, slumped across the circulation desk and gasped "You gotta help me." Working in schools my mind raced and I quickly ran through the possibilities. Epi-pen? Diabetes? Swine flu?

"What is it?" I asked, maintaining calm.
Her cheek was flat on the desk, her hair flopped over her face and, in a weak voice, moaned "I need a reeeaally good book." Seriously, that is what she said.

The conversation that followed revealed that Reader Rabbit had just read a few books in quick succession and not one of them had been satisfying. She was seriously hungry for a really good book. She also said that she didn't want to have to hunt. She needed someone to give her a really good book. Just put it in her hands. I could relate, having had exactly that same experience myself.

As a reader you can go through a few titles and each seems better than the last, and then you hit a dry run. Nothing is really, deeply satisfying. When Reader Rabbit next comes by I am going to put this in her hands.

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Sixteen year old Cameron just wants to get by in life. He has no direction, no ambition. Then he finds out he is going to die. This is a coming-of-age/road trip that involves gnomes, jazz, fire monsters, and Nordic Gods, to name a few themes. But really it is an analysis of society, religion and the meaning of life. And love.
Excellent.

View all my reviews >>

 The link is to my GoodReads account. Like Reader Rabbit, a lot of people respond better to a personal recommendation. They want that 5 star assurance that puts a book into their hands. As part of our continued effort to build our virtual learning commons I'll be assessing GoodReads, Shelfari and LibraryThing as tools to reach out to our students and act as a virtual reader's advisory. Gotta keep our readers satisfied!

*Reader Rabbit is a real student who has made a few appearances in past blog posts. She is a great kid who gives me a lot to think about.

Photo credit:
EveryStockPhoto

Working hard or hardly working?

Come by the CCHS Learning Commons and you will see a lot of students, doing a lot of stuff. Are they working hard, or hardly working? Two recent blog posts had me thinking about this.

New tools are replacing the familiar, and work looks different. With students what might look like messing around on Facebook may actually be very valid work.

As an example, in Jenica Rogers post, Attempting Elegance, she reflects on transliteracy as literacy in using new media. She was pulling photos off her iPhone and communicating on Facebook and Twitter during a seriously busy day. Why? She was studying her library's  Facebook presence because they are "about to use it as a reply venue for our lobby’s suggestion board". She was Twittering a source regarding assessment data. All work, all important, and these are the tools that are most efficient for her and the stakeholders she works with.

Stephen Abrams writes in his blog, Stephen's Lighthouse, about building relationships as being of primary importance to libraries, and perhaps more relevant data than circulation statistics. Harder to quantify as well. "...the foundation of library relationships is communication – one to one and one to many. It’s not really what we measure a lot – circulation. And it’s not easy to measure."

We need to be doing more with these communication methods  in the CCHS Learning Commons. We will definitely be creating a Facebook Group as well as a Twitter feed. Our wiki portal will be updated to include a photo stream from our account for images of the work and fun we experience daily.  So if you see us typing away on Facebook, you might think we are hardly working, but we will be working very hard to build our relationships with students and staff through these dynamic communication tools. Just like our students.

Photo Credit:
Abram, Stephen. Stephen's Lighthouse. 2.25.10
The Foundation of Library Relationships
http://stephenslighthouse.com/2010/02/24/the-foundation-of-library-relationships/

via
The Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarian's Weblog

The problem with paper

It really came home to me for the first time that the paper format was holding me back. I just finished reading Born Digital: Understanding the first generation of digital natives, by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser.

The problem isn't the book, which I really liked (my GoodReads review). The problem is the post-it notes. This book had so much original research and concepts so eloquently developed that I ended up with over 40 post-it notes that I now need to go back and review.

If this were a digital text I could have been using Diigo to highlight and annotate the whole time. From Diigo I could share with a group, like HS Librarians, and see what others had to say, discussing ideas and their application to school libraries with my professional peers. I could export my notes to NoodleTools for organizing for future reference if I want to write a grant or article. As it stands now, I will end up re-typing passages into NoodleTools. What a waste of time. (It also needs to be pointed out that if I had a reading disability I would be unable to access this text because paper has no text-to-speech option, and it isn't available in audio format.)

Research, investigation and inquiry tend to be solitary endeavors. This no longer needs to be the case and,  by utilizing the symphony of free digital tools, we can offer a much richer experience, enhanced by collaborative networks and accessible to all learners, including those with disabilities.

After reading this book I have a much better understanding of our digital natives. They are very polite and patient with us, but for how much longer? Pretty soon they are going to start getting annoyed.

2010

"It's not the rats you need to worry about. If you want to know if a ship is going to sink, watch what the richest passengers do... If your ship is sinking, get out now. By the time the rats start packing, it's way too late."

Seth Godin's very smart post highlights the importance of paying close attention to your "market," adjusting your service model, and remaining relevant to your customers. In the world of school libraries the rats leaving the ship is analogous to finding your job on the cut list. By the time your program is on that list it is too late.

How do you avoid this fate? Be curious, be bold, find out what the smartest school librarians and educational tech visionaries from around the world are doing and saying, and see how it can be implemented to the benefit of your students and faculty.  Embrace the unknown, and be prepared to jettison the familiar if it fails to move learning and student achievement forward. Be a crucial voice in discussions of change and innovation and the first to roll up your sleeves to make it happen.

As we embark on the second decade of the 21st century, these are a few of the projects I believe will keep the school library central and indispensable.

1. Transform the "library" into a "learning commons." Libraries are crucial in this age of abundant information, but only if they provide relevant support for those actively navigating the digital environment. Hang up your "shhh," stop fussing over the coffee cups, welcome students in with wide open arms along with their mess and Facebook. Give them new tools so that they can find, evaluate, and create. Teach them how be ethical and productive citizens. Teach them how to communicate responsibly and publish to the world. Creativity can be messy and loud. Get over it. Welcome to the learning commons.
   
2. Stop paper training students. Push information out to students digitally and also teach them the critical skills of finding and evaluating it for themselves. Paper is our orientation, but doesn't do any favors for our digital natives. The age of the reading packet is gone because it can't be accessed by students with reading disabilities. It can't be posted to a collaborative platform for analysis and discussion. It can't be linked or embedded, and it isolates the learner. Students need to manage their information and materials using  RSS feeds, web portals, and collaborative platforms. They deserve the opportunity to share learning with an authentic audience made up of peers, experts in the field, or a global audience. Use paper only as a last resort.
   
3. Be a leading voice in bringing new ideas to your community as a tool for evaluating current practice. Change is hard. Be enthusiastic of innovation and supportive yet positive with those who may feel overwhelmed.  There is no such thing as a "dumb question". Recognize and value the best of "old school" methods with the same vigor you use to promote the new.
   
4. Advocate for the diversification of formats.  Planning for the future still involves books, but collections should also include ebooks, MP3 books, graphic novels, and collections that are rich in media. This means leading investigations into new technologies that will allow us to manage, catalog, and curate media productions, media files, student artwork, student performances and more. This means researching vendors, piloting digital textbooks, and supporting hand held digital devices for students.
5. Treasure and promote curiosity and creativity in our students. Bringing new tools  to teachers as a way to provide alternate ways for students to find information, create meaning, and share their learning is a unique skill librarians can bring to their schools.

Wishing everyone curiosity, joy, and healthy budgets in 2010.

Robin

Blog inspiration:
Seth Godin
Seth's Blog 
It's not the rats you need to worry about

Photo Credit:
2010
R. Cicchetti
Using LiveBrush

My toolbar

These are my daily tools, and this is how I work. Every single day my iGoogle page acts as my portal for work, play, and socializing. So, let's break it down. (You can click on the image for a clear enlargement.)

The upper toolbar holds the bookmarks I use most often. Google Wave is still in beta, and I play here, seeing what it can do and how it might be used by students and teachers. Once it is opened for general use I can see it as an ideal collaborative space for group project work. My blogging tools are Blog This, Blogger Dashboard, Share on FaceBook and Flickr Creative Commons. I can grab interesting posts from my RSS feed and quickly add them to a post to blog about later, or even just to re-visit and think about and try. Of course, a picture tells a thousand words and Flickr Creative Commons is my one-stop shop for great images I can use with attribution.

The next bar is for Diigo, a FREE social networking site designed for researchers. The Diigo toolbar allows me to grab a website or blog post, annotate it on the live web, attach digital sticky notes, archive it for later use, save it to lists, and if I want I can share it with my Diigo network. Every morning I get an email from my Diigo groups with articles that have been shared by other educators and researchers. The generosity of the Diigo community is a large source of information, most recently from a guy in the U.K. who has been sharing wonderful European primary source sites. I follow lists for school librarians, Web 2.0 Educators, History and English Teachers and a couple of others. Each morning (at the ridiculous hour of 5:30am)  I have my tea, listen to the weather, ignore the dogs, and go through my Diigo updates. Right then I will pull out valuable resources and post them to the library wiki. This allows us to keep enriching our  portal to be a true 24/7 support and resource for students.

After Diigo comes the YoLink toolbar. Another FREE resource, this facilitates deep web searching in a very elegant, easy to use way. As a case study, if you look carefully you can see I accessed Google Scholar (academic sources - terrific resource!) to search "Brecht" and "anti-colonialism", used YoLink to help with the search, and annotated the site using Diigo. YoLink plays beautifully with other applications and also archives searches and sites for notation. If they would partner with NoodleTools life would be perfect in research land. (Why I was searching Brecht and anti-colonialism is another story that involves my college age daughter, a late hour call and a fast approaching deadline.)

Finally you can see the tabs I had open at the time, which are generally always the tabs I have open. Google Docs holds my library documentation, primarily the forms we created to track library data and lesson plans. These forms keep our data organized and churn out beautiful little graphs that I can share on a moment's notice. At this point Google has so much information about me they could create a clone and nobody would ever notice. I got over that reality awhile ago.

And Facebook. I check in quite a bit and use this for professional as as well as personal connections. Awhile ago a library colleague from central Massachusetts recommended a friend. I had never met this person but over Facebook we developed a lively friendship based on similar humor and a mutual (slightly manic) addiction to quizzes. This online friendship resulted in Anita (hi, Anita!) spending professional days observing in the CCHS Library and we will be attending the ALA Mid-Winter conference in Boston together.

There is always something new to try, to play with, to learn. I am connected to smart people who care passionately about learning and generously share this wealth. Our students and staff are the beneficiaries.

Now, about Brecht and anti-colonialism...

...and a child shall lead them

Watch this middle school student manage her life and learning with confidence and pride. You can hear the enthusiasm in her voice. In 3 minutes and 20 seconds she gives us a breathtaking vision of what is possible, and how quickly the digital world has evolved.



So, here is the challenge. How do we provide our CCHS students with the same educational opportunities? How do we provide the tools for students to acquire information, the critical thinking skills to evaluate and reflect on what they find, the tools to understand, make meaning and share their learning, and the organizational skills to manage it all, as shown by this middle school student? What she demonstrates is the result of careful planning and a systemic, consistent approach to learning. This is an incredibly exciting discussion for educators, and it is inspirational to see students mastering the skills we want for our own kids. It is time for us to begin pushing ourselves to move away from paper and shift toward the intellectual skills and digital tools to seek, find, organize and share.

As adults, we have to jump in as well, and this terrific middle school student is leading the way for us. These are a few FREE Internet desktops designed to help organize the web to work for you. My personal favorite is iGoogle, but they all look pretty amazing.

Symbaloo 
With Symbaloo, you can now create your own desktop on internet, including your favorite websites and sources. The advantage is that you can navigate easily to the most important websites, without remembering the links. 

Pageflakes 
Pageflakes, the social personalized homepage, is revolutionizing how we how we start with and use the Internet. At www.Pageflakes.com, you can easily customize the Internet and make it yours using ‘”Flakes” – small, movable versions of all of your web favorites that you can arrange on your personal homepage. You can also participate in the Pageflakes community, sharing your page as a “Pagecast” with a private group or with the world, and connecting with other users across the globe. Over 235,000 Flakes and 140,000 Pagecasts are available for thousands of uses and interests, including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, news, sports, e-mail, local events, search, photos, music, videos – even interactive tools like a calendar and a to-do list – and just about anything else you do on the web at school, work and at home.

Edu 2.0
EDU 2.0 is a free, web-hosted learning management system that allows anyone to create an online school in minutes. It's easy to use, comprehensive, and can be accessed from any web browser.

iGoogle
iGoogle lets you create a personalized homepage that contains a Google search box at the top, and your choice of any number of gadgets below. Gadgets come in lots of different forms and provide access to activities and information from all across the web, without ever having to leave your iGoogle page. Here are some things you can do with gadgets:

• View your latest Gmail messages
• Read headlines from Google News and other top news sources
• Check out weather forecasts, stock quotes, and movie showtimes
• Store bookmarks for quick access to your favorite sites from any computer
• Design your own gadget.

Listening to the enthusiasm of a middle school student share her learning and demonstrate her skills is certainly inspirational for me, and provides an exciting glimpse of what is possible in education. A very nice gift in this holiday season.

Thanks to Buffy Hamilton and her Media 21 Project, Wendy Drexler, and Dr. David Loertscher for sharing and leading the way.

Photo credit:
Flickr Creative Commons
Digital Collage: Child In Me
Uploaded on February 19, 2006
by Isabel Ginsberg

Free books! Give it a click.

It has never been so easy to read. Carbon based or digital based, stationary or mobile, books are everywhere. Thanks to e-books a cell phone can access millions of books - for free.

Developing the CCHS Library Learning Commons web portal has been a big project this year. One aspect of this work has been focusing on diversifying the formats available to students. Today I created a Google Custom Search widget for eBooks and added the link to the catalog page. This widget searches 8 free e-archives for titles in every branch of study, all downloadable with a click. (See widget below. Go on, test it out! )

The thing I really like about this is that if a title is not in the public domain the search also returns commercial sources (Barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc.) You exit the search with a book or the ability to purchase access.

What does this mean for libraries? The ease and portability of e-books means they are here to stay. The new Nook looks very exciting and early reviews are positive. Over the next few months there will be an explosion of new devices and the technology is leaping ahead almost daily. In the not-too-distant future libraries will be checking out e-books and e-readers as often as they check out print material. And don't worry, print books aren't going anywhere. It is the addition of so many alternatives that is exciting.

What does this look like here at CCHS? We already have a substantial collection of e-books. Take a look at our catalog and do an author search for Shakespeare. Of the 95 titles, almost half are either e-books or audio MP3 formats. So many different ways to access the works of Shakespeare! The manga versions are a lot of fun and provide a terrific introduction for students. What a fantastic time to be a reader!

Explore our catalog and see what an e-book looks like. Try the Google Custom Search widget and download a classic text to your desktop.

Custom Search

Google Custom Search - Free eBooks!



Photo Credit:
Flickr Creative Commons "Mis ebooks, o "sólo falta el Sony Reader"
Uploaded on September 17, 2008
by kandinski

A Library Without Books?

Getting rid of the library books and switching from paper to digital is a daring move, and has generated wrath and outrage from librarians and bibliophiles around the world. Just a guess, but I'll predict that in twenty years all libraries will look more like Cushing Academy than they will resemble the libraries of today.

Remember Captain James T. Kirk on Star Trek? Kirk had funny little glasses that he wore to read the old-fashioned, antique books he collected, rather than online reading like everyone else. His character was more sympathetic, romantic, and intelligent as a result. (Is my crush showing here?)

Libraries are evolving. Magazines and the good old Reader's Guide to Periodicals (remember that!) have shifted to online databases. Much easier to use and search, and they don't take up space. Paper is a format to transfer information. We love it, and have powerful feelings associated with reading from paper. What about our digital kids? Do they have the same romantic feelings for holding a book? Some do, and are quite adamant about their love of books. Lots of kids prefer digital and say they like online reading. Some of the most dedicated readers at CCHS will proudly show you the reading apps they have on their phones. These teens usually have a hard cover edition at home, and use their phone edition so they don't have to carry an extra book during the day.

The financial implications of such a radical shift are tremendous. Investing in e-readers of various brands before a clear industry standard has emerged is a risky investment. Paying for licenses for an entire new collection is expensive, and again, in a quickly evolving technology the "shelf life" (ha ha) of titles isn't guaranteed. This move is clearly garnering a lot of publicity for this small, private school, so perhaps that entered into the business plan as well. This is not a transition a public sector library could afford, nor should they at this point in the technology.

I also wonder what a shift like this would mean for our shared culture of reading. The sensory experience of a book in hand, the sound of pages rustling, small pencil notations in the margin left by a previous reader, the satisfaction of seeing the bookmark move through the volume, tracking our progress. The best is the sense of dread I get when I see I am approaching the end of a book I just can't put down. Yet, I also love the portability of the Kindle.

What about that child, so proud to walk around with Harry Potter under his arm? And those unexpected connections with people when you see what they are reading and strike up a conversation? Is this a sort of book-vanity, or an important part of our culture and the comfort we get from libraries and books.

So where do I stand? Somewhere in the middle ground. Let's watch this trend, continue to evaluate the digital shift and the role of paper. For now, I say go for it, Cushing. And let us know how it works out.

This is a clever YouTube video on a similar theme.





Boston Globe: A Library Without Books
YouTube: Introducing the Book

Turn Off That Phone! Or, there's an app for that!

I have seen teenagers texting with the phone under the table. Their thumbs are flying, their faces show the multitasking involved in trying to look like they are listening (the "I am looking like I am listening" look is the dead give away), and send their text simultaneously. What powers of concentration!

Phones are powerful mini-computers that can be used for much more than chat and texting. We sure spend a lot on new technologies for the classroom. Are we ignoring one of the most important assets already riding around in the backpacks and pockets of our students?

PollDaddy is just one of the many free online polling services that, in some schools, are being used for student surveys, and even fun quiz alternatives. I heard a presentation from a teacher who had students text their short writing exercises to her, had a higher percentage of timely submissions, and the writing was better than in previous assignments. Her students loved writing on their phones, felt more attached to their writing, and indicated they felt the assignment was "valuable" to them. When it was time to edit, they were much more enthusiastic.

In Africa cell phones are used extensively in what we might consider non-traditional ways. Much of the continent is still waiting for the cabling infrastructure to support widespread Internet access, but this hasn't held them back. In Kenya, they are using cell phones in education for assignments, attendance reporting, administrative functions, and many, many other ways. Cell phones have opened up banking functions for people who live far from commercial centers, allowing them to participate more fully in economic activity. Cell phone minutes are bought and sold as an alternate currency in many areas.

I was walking around on the third floor of the CCHS Library Learning Commons the other day, wondering where to place a computer for catalog access. Then it dawned on me. Tons of kids have phones with Internet connectivity. They have access to the catalog already. They have access to the world.

Social media has already gone mobile. By utilizing the power of the cell phone in education, we can also empower kids to recognize the possibilities to do more than text their friends and check their Facebook page.

Blog source:
10 Ideas for Engaging Learners with Cell Phones Even in Districts that Ban Them by Lisa Nielsen

Photo credit:
Flickr Creative Commons

todos showing my apps

Uploaded on July 16, 2007
by Stryler

Did you know - 3.0

What does it mean to be a child today? How do we prepare kids for their quickly evolving future? How do we guide them in new ways of questioning, finding, evaluating, collaborating and sharing? These are questions every parent must ask every teacher, every principal, every superintendent, every school board. These are exciting times filled with challenge and creative responses.

I'm off to Newcomb Hollow Beach in Wellfleet. Going to body surf with my daughter and the harbor seals. I'm going to watch the little kids digging sandcastles, and think about what I can do to be better prepared for them when they come through our doors. Then I'll eat far too many fried clams. August is a good thing.

Developing Digital Learning Spaces from Vision to Reality

Session #8
Raw Notes

David Jakes, Developing Digital Learning Spaces from Vision to Reality
(slide deck and resources available from this link)

Educause eBook - book resource w/ pdf chapters on online spaces

Poptropica - 26 million kids are registered on this virtual world website. Mostly used by 14 year olds.
Online activities - friendship and interest based. We need educational intervention with their online activities so they can transfer their skills to academic and professional tasks. What happens when networked kids come into the classroom - is there a disconnect when they hit the classroom?

kZero - online data/consultancy: K Zero is a virtual worlds consultancy. "We are specialists in connecting real worlds brands and companies with the residents and environments of virtual worlds. Since 2006 we have been examining and assessing the drivers affecting virtual world adoption and the marketing opportunities presented by the metaverse." Growth of virtual worlds for kids is staggering and we have to adapt. Toy manufacturers recognize the value and extend toys to virtual worlds, targeting kids. They are tapping into it, so should education. GREAT DATA with graphical representation!
PEW Report online use data - social network websites

How can we utilize informal learning opportunities in non-classroom spaces? Can we empower informal learning opportunities like Stanford iTunes courses (ex. programming call pone apps). Enlarge the boundaries of what learning can be.

Core components to a multi-dimensional learning space? Systemic approach based on suite of tools that support digital learning.

• teacher space
• student space - content should travel w/ and belong to student
• knowledge commons (library) - peer tutoring area, adult reading support specialists, professional development area w/ cafe, social bookmarking (teach tags). Supports teacher and student spaces.

Critical stakeholders

• need equitable access to 21st century skills / sets of experiences for every student
• parents
• support staff - ask their opinions about learning
• teachers

Technology & Literacy Goals

• articulate these Jake's docs link including by disciplines!

New Literacies - new context of old literacies: read, write, communicate, listen, speak
Different from skills, but need to develop new skills to achieve evolved literacies.

Fluency - Closing the Fluency Gap, Mitch Resnick
Beyond literacy is fluency. Ex. digital reading is different from paper reading - new skills needed to gain fluency.

The Internet (Web 2.0) is "acontext in which to read, write and communicate?" Leu
VAlues" research, collaborate, create, network, present
assign core platforms for each value

• research: RSS feed, delicious, Google, wikipedia
• collaborate: wikis, google docs, moodle
• create: blog, drupal, film, podcasting
• network: Twitter, Skype, FB IM email
• present: uStream, Flickr, iTunes, Voicethread

SPACE

• knowledge commons
  
• students learning space - Google apps / student blog - students can take their accounts with them after graduation. Blogfolio
  
• physical learning space
• course learning space

• Google apps integrated w/ Moodle - ths is a great idea. Seamless integration of teacher and student space.

David Kirkpatrick - A World Without Story

Thursday Afternoon Special Guest Keynote David Kirkpatrick
Plymouth Rock Studios - breaking ground 10-09

Raw notes

We relate to the combination of sound, music, and movement in an almost mystical way.

Homer, Shakespeare, Spielberg - hierarchical storytelling
Spielberg's next novel Lincoln, based on Kearns Goodwins' Team of Rivals.

What is mass media/TV goes away? What will the business model look like?
Sound stages needed to "protect the story" during production.

Story
Last 100 years people driven together by story.

Mass Media & Pop Culture L
Last 100 years of sound and motion. Majesty of anarchy, commonality, adds to our definition of who we are.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs


Creative Destruction - nature of economics in America.
agricultural > industrialization > information > flat world
"The end of the affair." - Wall St. Journal - end of the car. All old platform we grew up on are disappearing. TV networks, music distribution, etc. One solid entry, the screen, broadcast is now narrow-cast, to bring the networks down. Redefining pop culture hits- the hit has changed. Erosion of mass media in exchange for participatory culture. Social media is a new level of participatory media culture.
Watching online culture grow PEW reports exponential growth. Broadband the same.
64% of online teens are content creators.

Movies coming from new mediums - books, cartoons, toys. Ultimate re-mix. Shows level of popular acceptance. Hollywood no longer manufactures original dreams but reconstitutes popular choices. Story is vibrating across multiple platforms, but nobody has figured out how to bring them all together. Hierarchy of mass media has changed. People on web are influencing storytelling. Participatory culture a co-team in creative process, no longer slapped away but encouraged to be involved in crafting story.

Marketing
Smaller niches, needs to get out into the space, no longer just through the regular screens. Kids today see brand, not product. Creative expression is the key to success. Ex. Coke is now an entertainment company, not just beverage. brand i red & white. What if kids of future see things differently? What if kids see red and "see" Coke brand instead?
Decreasing attention span of the human 1970 - 125,000 / 2006 - 9,000,000

Is Google Making Us Stupid? (Atlantic Monthly July/Aug 2008) It is our search response. People are no longer reading deeply. 75% of college grads will never finish another book after graduating. Are we losing ability to read deeply?

Trends
Immersive experience. Old way of movie viewing will become interactive, showplace because of availability of large screens in homes less need to go out for movie. Production increasingly geared toward young audiences because they are the only ones going out to movie theaters.

Cloud Storage - ownership not required, just access. No longer ownership culture moving toward access culture.

Open Loop Creativity - not hierarchical. Big studios not nimble enough to respond to quick market changes.

Artist - it is us. Collaborative.
Renaissance 2.0 - new age of creativity.

Availaility of creative resources is crusial for children.
Where have all our muses gone? (Wall St. Journal, 5/09) They are our students.
Harris Poll - America's Favorite Books 2008
The hierarchical storyteller is us.

Interacting with the 21st Century Learner

Raw notes

Session #1 - Dr. Joyce Valenza
School Library Websites: Interacting with the 21st Century Learner - What Does Effective Practice Look Like Now

What is the next iteration of school libraries? Vision for the future of libraries. Libraries were places where you "get stuff" like a grocery store. Now it is more of a kitchen when there is loves, community, belonging. Transformational rather than transactional.

Make, taste, smell, collaborate, create, invent, make a big mess when called for, share. Library as a bowl, pots and pans. Our collection are tools that allow learners to make and do stuff, and students contribute what they make to the collection. LIBRATORY -active place.

Infinite possibilities. Web 2.0 = IF (Intellectual Freedom) unblock the things our learners need to learn. Our mission in upcoming years. This is our job. *CCHS does not face this challenge.

Reading 2.0 - Anita Beaman & Amy Oberts - wiki on reading in the 2.0 world - suggestions/ideas

• digital photo frames with reading lists (or ActivBoard)
  
• advertise books on screen savers
• stickies with author websites/blogs/music playlist from authors - stick them into best books
• http:readingtech.wikispaces.com/Low-Tech=Labels
• Buffy Hamilton - The Unquiet Library
• de.lici.ous bookmarks to expand opportunity for understanding required reading (like 3 Cups of tea - Sharia law, education in Afghanistan)
• Let kids create posters to get students to return books
• How would kids advertise "One School One Book"? Students develop READ campaign.
• International Children's Digital Library
• Valenza's book page
• Google Books - create a booklist for library with classics available online. Embedable. Hundred of out-of-copyright boos. Can link and dput on iPhones.
• Can embed book widget (Random House - updated website) GRAB CODE and embed
• READ poster - 4 free from ALA w/ mage generator
• eBook search - free federated searcg ebook widget
• create book widgets for titles regularly used in booktalks
• Glogs for book reviews/booktalks. Bring in book trailers with widgets for video/media. Good for student projects - develop design skills that can be shared. Can grab entire thing as a widget and embed the whole glog.
• PaperbackSwap - free swap, good for reading list books - use temproary cataloging so you can swap put your old books. Bargain hunting - use swap books that are hanging around.
• GoogleDocs surveys for material selection form and embed in various location. Lots of pretty templates.
• Ning - One School One Book - include trailers, music, kids can produce promotional material including student related productions. READ carpet event at local movie theater?
• Skype an Author - free or low cost author visits. Record and share. Lots of authors are happy to do this. Quick conversations.

Research 2.0

• Consortia pulling together great speakers. (Ex 3 Cups - Afghanistan women's rights speaker - use back channel for group Skype style presentations.)
• Pathfinders - como of wikis and flakes. Widgets like crazy from EBSCO, Gale, JSTOR FB widget, RSS feeds into pathfinders
• Librarians for the world.
  
• Valenza LitCrit wiki
• Grab YouTube Video channel widget. Changes whenever new video is added. News politics on current events pathfinder/wiki.
• Valenza's Assorted Widgets - Get database widgets here!
• Build personal information portal. iGoogle create tabs with links and RSS feeds to help you in each subject. Create an info portal to help you. Good for teachers AND students. Send tab via email, but better everyone creates their own.
• Pageflakes - highly recommended for pathfinders. Shop for bookmark flake and add links. Embed widgets - use anything widget to copy/paste other people's widgets. Powerful for building reserch pages. NYTimes widgets!
  
• Social tags for pathfinder but can't embed.
• Jog the Web - [ulles webpages together

Search Tools 2.0

• Valenza's Tools for Search
• Boolify - good for intro database search lessons
• Semester long research - set up the search for them with RSS feed. Whenever something new is created EBSCO will push it to the student.
• Google Squared - great for building context for searching using semantic search using meta tag. Very cool. Power for terms like "explorers", etc. Meta tags aren't perfect, but great for building context.
• Google News Timeline
  
• Google Show Options - Wonder Wheel vertical search turns it into horizontal search, related searches, timeline
• WolframAlpha - semantic search, computations, not result list of documents
• Wikisearches - search wikis for content

Triangulation

• evaluation
• accuracy and truth

Code of Best Practics in Fair Use for Media Literacy - IMPORTANT tool for reasoning fair use/practce in use of copyrighted material. More freedom than every. Use needs to add value to original work and repurpose it.
Fair Use songs on YouTube
Users Rights

Creative Commons
Valenza's copyright page

Blabberize - make images talk
Student art and research part of our collections

SlideShare - look for Joyce
ALA Best Web Sites / Tools

Whack a Mole

Do you remember playing Whack a Mole? You get a big mallet and wait for a mole to pop up out of the game board. The second you smash one mole, another one pops up quicker than you can whack 'em. This pretty much describes finals week in the CCHS Library, except for the whacking part.

The first and second floors of the library are for regular teen-style studying. Groups reviewing test prep packets, some light banter to relieve the tension, surreptitious snacking. We reserve the third floor for quiet, individual study. No group review sessions, no chit-chat. Many students seek out the silence, and this is the only place in the high school they can find it. Good 'ole library "Shhhhhhh."

We pack away the chess and Scrabble boards, and computers are strictly for academic use only. With so many students waiting to finish papers, download ActivBoard flipcharts and check online review material, the demand for keyboard time is high. No Facebook.

Monday was busy and sooo quiet. Kids were a little panicked.

Tuesday and Wednesday the panic was gone, and students were showing up more to relax than study. The chatter was at 11 (homage to Spinal Tap). We would get one group to quiet down and another table would bubble over. I feel like I'm out of quarters!

It doesn't really matter. At the end of the day CCHS has really nice kids who work really hard. The Library is where they want to be, and that's a good thing. I won't get out the Whack a Mole mallet just yet.

Photo credit:
Flickr Creative Commons

Busy week with the kids... by Life in the Pumpkin Shell

Sand in my keyboard

Google Books has come a long way. If you want to play around with alternate formats for reading, check it out.

Personally, I can't read for extended amounts of time off a computer screen. More than 2 pages and I hit print. However, I absolutely love digital ink and the Kindle, so am prepared to give Google Books another shot.

Not sure how well it will go on the beach this summer. Sometimes sticking with print is still the best option. Happy reading!

VocabGrabber : Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus

Roget (of thesaurus fame) is rolling over in his grave, because VocabGrabber is in da' house! I copy/pasted text from a few recent blog posts and got a visual map of my word usage, analysis, relevance, and I can dig into specific words for richer interaction with my vocabulary.

This is a powerful tool for a student to analyze work in a non-threatening way. Kids invest a lot into their writing, and live under the pressure of grading and the whole "my grade=my sense of self-worth dynamic." (OK, I am writing this on Sunday afternoon, and I am ready for a nap.) I can imagine this might also be a powerful way to study the classics and the word choices of the great authors.

I love tools like this because they are relevant to how students process information. This relevance also means they have the opportunity to view their work as relevant, and not something to be turned in and forgotten. Analysis like this is critical to intellectual growth. The colors are pretty, too. Time for a nap ;)

Google - Better than ever!

I have grown disenchanted with Google over time. The search results are massive, flabby, and junky. There is just too much stuff to wade through. The new search options on Google make it suddenly more relevant for productive searches. I still have to play with it, but the graphic organizer looks fantastic! For those kids who are hooked on Google, this will help them use it more effectively. I have to go play now.

By the way, the Google Blog is a great one to add to your RSS feed.

Official Google Blog: More Search Options and other updates from our Searchology event