Not So Distant Future

   What follows is a random assortment, pieces loosely joined, from sessions that I attended at NECC.  I’m sharing these fragments here as a way of helping myself make meaning of them, and to invite discussion of these significant questions for schools, and for libraries specifically.  Feel free to share your thoughts.

Barbara Kurshan–from Curriki–

Linear versus random knowledge.  We learned in a linear fashion, page 1-60.  Our students are accustomed to a more random learning pattern–seeking what they need to know.

This is a fundamental shift.   Not only are students viewing information as more changeable and less “fixed” as we did, they think of it as more interconnected and randomly accessible and organized.     I do wonder if students really can learn randomly, but I agree that students don’t necessarily need to know how information is stored or organized anymore to “find” it.   They can use Google or keyword searching or tags, so it doesn’t make any difference how it is stored.   And the tools we all use now are primitive in comparison to what types of search capabilities they will experience in their lifetimes. 

Fari Ebrahimi – CEO of Verizon–

Speed of technology is changing everything.  To be competitive in the workforce, or just part of the broader social network, our students need to be able to learn to adapt to this speed.  He asks, How do you continue to educate yourself?  

How can we help students adapt to this speed?  Some of our students are very adept and this speed is a big motivator to them.   But others aren’t as good managing the constant flow of information; the technology makes them nervous, just as it does some of us.  How do we help those students feel more comfortable?  What tools can we share with them to help them manage this?  And how can we model confronting our own discomforts around the speed/pace of technological change for them?  Do we just block out the changes?  Do we try to learn some of the new tools?  Do we show them how we define our purpose first, and then choose the best tool for the job, second?

Doug Johnson–Director of Media/Technology–Mankato Public Schools

2 big understandings when dealing with the Net Generation–
–It will be easier to change the way we teach, rather than the way our students learn.  We can’t change a whole demographic group.
-Today’s students like to learn.   Like to learn by failing or by discovery.  They just don’t necessarily like what we want to teach and how we teach it.

I’ve also been thinking of a quote Joyce Valenza mentioned in her presentation on Information Fluency–a quote by Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia–that getting kids to stop using Wikipedia(or any site they prefer) is like trying to get them to stop listening to rock and roll.    All of this drives home the fact that we can try to “bar the gates” and “hold back the tide” in schools–but these efforts will ultimately fail.  Students will gravitate towards the tools that they find helpful and successful(by the way, just as we as adults do).   As educators, we should be out there at the forefront, trying to understand those tools with them, and to use our evaluative skills to help them be wiser users of these tools.

Mary Cullinane–from Microsoft School of the Future who came from education to Microsoft.  The norm of the environment at Microsoft was constantly questioning “how can I get better?”    She had time to think.    She wishes we had that kind of environment at schools.   Employees were encouraged to think.  They had gathering spaces to share.   No need to justify what you were doing.  Doing and thinking were the same thing. 

Create a school where failure is an option–where educators and students can fail.   Agree not to know everything.

Elizabeth Streb–Choreographer–Set aside what you know and seek a new solution.

This is a big hurdle for both schools in the current climate, and for teachers and students.  Teachers are generally those who did well in school.  So the idea of failing, or just leaping out there with something, may not come that naturally.   I also see that in many students–they are used to being achievers, used to being asked to conform to their school–so the idea that it is all right for them to try something and fail, and try again, just seems really foreign to them, and downright stressful.  

I was thinking of an article I read in February in a tech magazine(Business 2.0?) about a dot.com–the software developers were talking about their process–and the speed with which they would try out and discard ideas or aspects of their software.  Sometimes within days they would try something out, discover it didn’t work, and change it.

Now certainly it would probably be chaotic if a whole school did that constantly.  But I was thinking about this specifically in terms of the research process.  Do we really let kids know that it’s okay to go down a certain path, try out an angle, and just completely discard it or alter it if it isn’t working?  I’ve seen some of the best teachers coaching kids through that.

Kids (and teachers) have a hard time with this ambiguity.  Carol Kuhlthau in her description of the research process would say that it is one of the most difficult stages of the process–as students move toward finalizing and defining their topic and it is a period of the process that causes a great deal of stress.   How can we help them with this?

And how can schools nurture a culture where it is okay to float ideas out there, or to set aside what you know about the past, or try something new for a “trial period” and evaluate it?   (A trial period can be less than a school year, can’t it?  A semester?  A six weeks?)

Michael McCauley–Marketing–

“Seek out your cathedrals.”  Always seek a higher purpose because it elevates your thinking.

Tim Tyson–Mabry Middle School
When does meaningfulness start for our students? When they graduate from high school or college?  When they begin a family?  When do our lives assume a level of significance that really matters?

These two statements were really challenging ones.  Tim Tyson talked about that in the past, kids were contributing to the very survival of their families–helping on the farm, helping support the family–but that now they have a longer childhood, and we don’t always ask them to really “contribute” to the human family or acknowledge the possible value of their contributions.  

How can we in schools both honor what they already know, and ask them not to settle, but to believe in their own voice and to feel that there is value in what they have to say?

One of the great thing about some of the sessions I went to, like Women of the Web’s presentation, was that they asked the audience what their contributions were, or what they had to share–acknowledging that many people have expertise.   Are we asking for our students expertise enough?  In the research process, do I ask my students what they know or what they can tell all of us about their research tools before I share what I know?

One of the powerful things about web 2.0 tools is that it gives students the ability to project their voices, their contributions, out into the world.   What can we all do to help them make those contributions?–that is one of the core questions I walked away from the conference with.

Comments?  Thoughts?

In her presentation at NECC on information fluency, Joyce Valenza  described how she sees herself as “version 1.8,” in perpetual beta, because she is always learning.

What a great way to project to your students and staff that you are always in the process of “upgrading” and exploring new things.

She pointed out that students often settle for a “good enough/why bother” point of view when it comes to searching and using information, and that both teachers and librarians need to “own” this problem, and ask more of our students. 

One way she tries to do this is by always providing them lists and pathfinders of the best resources.   We do this for some assignments by creating pathfinders, but the number of pathfinders she has created or has on her site is simply inspiring.   They set up a wiki for each pathfinder and invite teachers and some students to help create it –which is a wonderfully collaborative way to gather the best resources and to bring together the best practices.

She also includes resources in the pathfinders that make sense, but that I wouldn’t have necessarily thought of, like wikibooks that have been created on a topic or blogs about a topic.  

She suggests asking students to do more original research–at least using a survey tool like zohopolls, surveymonkey, surveyscholar, zoomerang or responsomatic.  At her campus, when they ask students to use these tools, they guide the student in creating appropriate research-based questions and preview the poll before the student publishes it, so it is a guided experience.

Another type of guidance the library provides is creating evaluation tools for each different type of site–like she has tips on evaluating a blog, or on evaluating a wiki.  Interesting idea.

I think one of the most powerful things in all of this is how the library and the teachers provide more guided experience for students, so that they are using the the best sites and using best practices for their research process and for creating their work.  I think too often we assume students know all there is to know about the internet or production and so don’t provide them enough guidance.

I really want to approach this as a team at our campus and need to sort out how to do that better.   I am putting this out here for my campus to read and to be honest, I want to know that teachers think of me as a partner when they are creating a research assignment, not as an add-on, or a barrier, but as someone who can help their students and help them as a teacher create the best practices for research for their students, because it’s in the students’ best interest.   Our schedule has more planning time this year so I think that will facilitate connections as well.

     I’m going to have an interesting opportunity this year (since I am trying to think of it as an opportunity, as Vinny Vrotny mentioned at NECC, not as an obstacle) — our library is being gutted and renovated(which is another post altogether as it has been an exciting process).   I foresee my role changing in ways that maybe it already should have–and I foresee that while the library is closed, I can be an “outreach” person–and go to where the students and teachers are–the classroom.

I am planning on going to the classroom to do booktalks, help with research guidance, collaborate with teachers on projects, and it may end up totally transforming my practice and their practices as well.  That is my hope–that in the end, this renovation will have transformed our library from the inside and the outside, so to speak.

Joyce has an excellent resource wiki with links to many of the tools she mentioned,  including the NECC powerpoint, and I blogged the presentation that she and Ken Rodoff did as well.   Ken also mentioned some fascinating projects they did in the English classroom, and the links can be found on the wiki.

    I’m wondering about other ways libraries can provide that support and guidance and be collaborative.   There are so many web 2.0 tools that we talked about at the conference and I’m going to be spending time thinking about how to put those to use effectively, and to reflect to students that our program, too, is in perpetual beta.

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I’m so thrilled that NECC08 will be in San Antonio, because it’s one of my favorite cities and favorite getaways (and I’m sort of a local, being from Austin).

So, since it’s summer and I was thinking about it, I have put together a wiki for planning your trip to San Antonio in 2008 (never too soon to start !).   I’ve stayed at, eaten at, or visited almost all of the places on the lists, so these are based on personal experience.

I’ll add more as we get closer, but just to get you started…  If you want to add to it, email me.   The page will be stored on the NECC Notes page, for future reference.

Happy planning!

I rode the subway to the Atlanta airport yesterday.  The people getting on looked weary, for the most part, weary, footsore, and like they worked hard.  

I started thinking about the session at NECC on Digital Equity that Barbara Bray told me about, and about Joyce Valenza’s comments about how it’s a responsibility of educators to be aware of equity and access issues for their students, to fight for them to have access, and to help locate tools for them that are free.  

I was thinking about the One Laptop Per Child project, and how that will impact a whole generation of children.   (even if the laptop doesn’t succeed, it is succeeding in getting the other players in the game motivated to work on something similar).  

I think Joyce is right.  

What bothered me about this subway ride is when I started thinking of all those people on the subway as though they were our students(and some of them are or were at some point).  I started thinking about what we were talking about at NECC, and how few of the people I was riding with had probably been afforded the opportunities to share their stories, learn to be information fluent, to create art, and I wondered what we can collectively do about that?

I thought of what I’d heard about schools in Philadelphia, and D.C., and inner city Houston, and many other places, of articles I’ve read about school buildings with mold, leaking ceilings, where nothing works, where the kids with the most need get the least experienced teachers.  

I read about the Supreme Court ruling today, and worry about the impacts it will have.

I thought about the videos that Tim Tyson’s students made, attempting to change someone’s mind about an issue.  One of them asked what we would choose.

And I thought, mirroring their question–What will we choose?  

Aren’t these kids worth it?  Aren’t they worth beautiful school buildings, computers that work, teachers who care, educators who help them become fluent in this new 2.0 world, tools that help them tell their stories and share them with the world?  

Education can be a great equalizer.  Technology can provide access to worlds and knowledge beyond our own.

 And isn’t it time to spend the money to provide all of the children in this country beautiful, clean, inviting learning environments?    The best teachers?   The newest technology?

When are we, as parents and as educators going to ask our nation–aren’t these children worth it? 

Collectively, those of us who were at NECC and those of us in education know a lot.  We’re contributing a lot at our own schools.  But how can we, as part of our writing, our talking, our workshops, and our efforts to craft a compelling message about transforming education–how can we keep these children and these parents in mind?

Even if they aren’t in our own school or our own neighborhood, aren’t these children, as citizens of our world, worth it?

Update:  7/1   Will Richardson’s take on his experiences in small town Georgia here.

Edublogs has been having a few issues lately, so I’m posting on an alternate site– www.technolibrary.tumblr.com for NECC until things smooth out!

It’s less than two weeks until the NECC Computing conference in Atlanta!

I’m very excited to get to attend an Edubloggercon, which is a sort of self-organized conference of bloggers who are attending the larger NECC conference.  The participants are using a wiki to volunteer to organize different sessions and NECC has donated space for us to meet.  It’ll be my first time to meet most of the teachers and writers whose blogs I read.

If you are interested, and want to participate from afar, there is a wiki site where you can add yourself to the list of those who want to “listen in” remotely.  I’m not sure how the remote participants will participate but it should be an interesting experience with this many educators gathered in one place!

By the way, next year’s conference is in San Antonio–hopefully many from our district will be able to attend!