Hijacked by Gutenberg

In the cacophony following the publication of Growing up digital, wired for distraction (Matt Richtel, NYT) there have been a flurry of articles and blog posts. The story of poor Vishal, the 17 year old now immortalized for not reading more than 43 pages of Cat's Cradle during his summer break, has added grist to many a mill. (Maybe the article should have been about choosing a more relevant and engaging book.)

These are, indeed distracting times. If I am honest with myself I have to recognize how difficult it is for me to unplug, to stop compulsively checking in on my online world.  You will get no argument from me that our young people are highly distracted with their digital lives. (Maybe the article should have been about the importance of teaching time management skills at an early age, and not leaving it up to the immature teen brain.)

What has been interesting to me is the "ah HA!" response. The gleeful vindication that all this technology is distracting teens, and us, from REAL engagement. From REAL critical thought. From REAL learning.

Take, for example, Clifford Stoll's Newsweek article The Internet? Bah! in which he states "What Internet hucksters won't tell you is that the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data." Really? (Maybe this article should have been a request for a librarian to teach him how to search effectively.)

In the midst of the hubbub appeared what is, to me, the most elegant response to Richtel's article. Jeff Jarvis, board member of Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, asks Who says our way is the right way?

Citing research done in Denmark, the Gutenberg Parenthesis is generating a lot of interest. The theory is that we are leaving Gutenberg's "structured, serial, permanent, authored, controlled era of text and returning, perhaps, to what came before the press: a time when communication and content cross, when process dominates product, when knowledge is distributed by people passing it around, when we remix along the way, when we are more oral and aural."

This describes the behaviors I see on a daily basis. Add to the possibility that Gutenberg and the print mentality of learning, the concept that information will ever be "complete", that the print based knowledge that has served us so well for centuries may actually be limiting the potential and power of the human brain, and Richtel's hand wringing is actually damaging.

This is an evolutionary time featured by profound, abrupt change. It is hard, it is frightening and it can be divisive. It can also be joyous and elevating.

Don Tapscott, original researcher and author of Growing Up Digital (1997) and the subsequent Grown Up Digital (2009) addresses changes in brain performance, social skills and yes, education, in this scholarly response  New York Times Cover Story on "Growing Up Digital" Misses the Mark.

In defense of teens and the digital environment Tapscott poses, among other things:
"Rather than creating dysfunctional brains that can't focus, the evidence is just as strong that experience being "bathed in bits" is pushing the human brain beyond conventional capacity limitations. So-called multitasking may in fact result from better switching abilities and better active working memory. Young people are likely developing brains that are more appropriate for our fast paced, complex world."

There are two sources (among many) that have helped me process and make sense of this changing environment, and my role as a teacher librarian. Joyce Valenza's stirring response to the charge that libraries and librarianship are anachronistic remind me of where I need to focus my energies. As always she brilliantly articulates the rights of students to an education that values and teaches the skills necessary to navigate this faster paced and evolving world.  Indeed, if Matt Richtel had a librarian like Joyce he never would have written this article.

Please take a moment to read - and listen - to this.
What librarians make. A response to Dr. Bernstein and an homage to Taylor Mali

Always ahead of the information curve, Libraries and Transliteracy is a scholarly blog dedicated to making meaning and deep understanding of the new multiple literacies necessary to be truly educated today. Some good foundational material can be found in this post:
On Defining Transliteracy and Why Transliteracy Matters

We are shifting from centuries of tradition to a new model of thinking, learning and sharing. Libraries stand at the fulcrum of this change. As librarians it is our responsibility to deeply invest ourselves in this ongoing conversation.

A final thought on the role of libraries from  On defining transliteracy:

Libraries are on the front lines of traditional literacy initiatives. But, libraries are also the vanguard for information literacy and digital literacy. In fact, if you can call it a type of literacy, you'll probably find it in a library. This is important because it follows that libraries should be the natural proving grounds for exemplary instances of transliteracy.

Photo Credit:

Estampa Gutenberg

The Guy

Don't kid yourself. School libraries are businesses. We have budgets, we are accountable to our school administrators, we have curriculum standards and benchmarks, and most important of all, we have customers. Without the kids we have no business. If we do anything less than make ourselves indispensable, we are on the cut list and our programs are lost. It is really the students who lose.

So what does a global business marketing guru have to do with school libraries?

Everything.

• Delivering relevant product (our 21st century curriculum)
• Shipping every day (student and faculty service with a SMILE!)
• Innovation (staying cutting edge)
• Dominating our niche (being the go-to person for information technologies)
• Visionary (inspiring and leading change)
• Product (preparing our students for productive lives in the information economy)

Godin has just released his latest book as a vook. For $4.99 you not only get to hear from an exceptionally smart man, but also experience the quickly approaching environment of the hybrid book. This is an example of what our collections will soon be accommodating.

How do we catalog this? Curate this? Manage this? I sure as heck don't know, but I'll be scrambling to find out in order to be ready.

So, go on, take a look at the Vook...

Unleashing the SUPER Ideavirus

"In a world where an Internet video of a piano playing cat can get more public attention that a multi-million dollar television advertising spot, how do marketers, business or anyone who has an idea they want to spread get the right attention? Seth Godin might not have a quick fix or a miracle solution, but his Unleashing the SUPER Ideavirus Vook will bring you completely up to speed on the tactics you need to survive and thrive in today's fast paced information economy."

For a little more Seth, check out his recent TED Talk.

(Source:  Seth Godin: This is broken | Video on TED.com)

Seth Godin at Gel 2006 from Gel Conference 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

Only YOU can prevent helmet fires

The school year is a roller coaster ride that keeps accelerating.  By the time spring rolls around you hear words like "overwhelmed" and "overload".  My personal favorite is  "helmet fire", defined by Wikipedia as "an expression for a mental state characterized by unnaturally high stress and task-saturation and loss of situational awareness." The phrase originated with the military who said "the pilot is undergoing so much stress that his brain is on fire or smoke is coming out of his ears." Basically,  you have so much to do, and so many tasks to accomplish during a critical window that it is physically impossible to complete it all.  I think this describes a lot of teachers during the month of June!


Educational technology is often times the scapegoat of stressed teachers (and is a good example of the ideas put forward in the Information Gap).  Thoughtful professional development is required to nurture teachers and provide the support for continued growth in the quickly evolving world of information and education.

A lot of the skills and new literacies described in this excellent two minute video are found in the AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner. As information and media specialists we have an obligation to provide leadership and thoughtful professional development opportunities for our colleagues during the summer.  Our teachers need us. Only YOU can put out helmet fires!




Source:
YouTube - Partnerships for Powerful Learning

Photo Credit:
Flickr Creative Commons: My Co-Pilot

Social convergence

Another great post from  Stephen's Lighthouse
got me thinking about about convergence. So much is going on with technology that at times it is overwhelming. Our students are also overwhelmed with multiple platforms and developing strategies for merging their work with presentation formats.

Two examples from this morning.

1. A teacher walked in with a stressed student before the first bell. She had spent the weekend trying to merge a powerpoint with audio, a downloaded YouTube clip, images and other elements of her project into an video presentation using iMovie. She had been emailing her teacher, who was out of town, and the two of them were trying to trouble shoot long distance. It was frustrating for both of them, and ate up a lot of their Sunday. She is coming back later today for help and instruction in how to generate this project.
2. A student creating a digital book trailer using Animoto stopped by for advice on how to embed his photo and music credits. After a couple minutes of brainstorming we came up with a very elegant solution. He would type them up as a document, save it as an image and then upload the image. Easy, but we needed to talk it through.

Creating knowledge in the digital age can be really challenging, and it can be frustrating. This is what learning looks like today, and it is very different than it was a short five years ago. Learning, information, technology, social media, and globalization have changed the landscape of work, and this is the future our students face.

The Economist agrees. In October of 2009 they hosted a global conference on media convergence in New York. They created this short video on the topic as a wake-up call to the captains of industry.



Teaching academic content now includes convergence. Teachers as well as students have a lot on their plates. This is the new terrain of the learning commons. A place where students and teachers turn for instruction and support in navigating the new world of work in a media rich environment.

Every day there is something new to learn, and challenges to troubleshoot.  This is my world of work, and I wouldn't change a thing.

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

...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